The School of the Art Institute of Chicago Announces its 2009 Student Fellowship and Award Winners

The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) is pleased to announce its 2009 student fellowship and award winners, which include eight Fulbright Scholarships and the School’s first recipient of the Leonore Annenberg Fellowship in the Visual Arts, among many other prestigious awards given.

Consistently one of the nation’s top producers of Fulbright awards for students, in 2009 seven alumni and current SAIC students are recipients of Student Fulbright Fellowships, the flagship international educational exchange program sponsored by the U.S. Government. SAIC winners include Aspen Mays (MFA 2009), who will travel to Chile to produce a body of photographs and artworks inspired by scientific research taking place in the Atacama desert; Roman Petruniak (MAAH 2009), who will travel to Ukraine to explore the underlying infrastructures of economic support for Ukrainian contemporary art; Kristina Paabus (MFA 2009), who will travel to Estonia to study at the Estonian Academy of Arts in Tallinn; Kirsten Larson (BFA 2008), who will travel to Brazil on a Fulbright Fellowship in architecture; Rachel Moore (MFA 2008), who will travel to Greece on a Fulbright in installation art; Michael Ruglio-Misurell (MFA 2008), who will be traveling to Germany on a Fulbright in installation art; and Regina Mamou (MFA 2007), who will travel to Jordan on a Fulbright in photography. Alumnus Scott Weiner (MFA 2007) will be traveling to Germany on a Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst Scholarship.

For the first time, the Leonore Annenberg Fellowship Fund in the Performing and Visual Arts has provided SAIC with an extraordinary opportunity for one of our graduating students to further a career in the visual arts. Angel Otero (BFA 2007, MFA 2009) is one of only four awardees nationwide to receive the Leonore Annenberg Fellowship in the Visual Arts this year, which will support his work over a two-year period in New York. A New Artists Society Merit Scholar while at SAIC, Angel has been featured in the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago Magazine, and New City. The Leonore Annenberg Arts Fellowships were founded in 2007 to assist promising artists progress in their careers, with hope that the recipients of these awards will acknowledge this support by serving as leaders in their fields and by energizing the communities in which they live and work.

This year’s recipient of the $25,000 Jacques and Natasha Gelman Travel Fellowship is Carolina Gonzalez (BFA 2009). The Gelman Travel Fellowship was created in 2006 by the Jacques and Natasha Gelman Trust, a charitable foundation that provides grants in support of the visual arts, with an eye to developing the next generation of artists. Each year, a designated fellowship panel grants one award, enabling the Gelman Travel Fellow to undertake extensive international travel during the year following graduation from SAIC. This year’s Gelman Travel Fellowship was awarded to a Carolina Gonzalez (BFA 2009). Originally from Colombia, Carolina’s imaginative films combine stop-motion animation and live action, and incorporate themes of Latin-American identity. She intends to use the fellowship to travel to Chile, Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay to create new films.

Katrina Chamberlin (MFA 2009) is the recipient of the Toby Fund, a $10,000 award given to further the pursuit of the recipient’s artistic career. Philanthropist, art collector, author, and curator Toby Devan Lewis created the Toby Fund in 2006 to foster creativity in the arts, education, health, the environment, and the development of progressive institutions.

Basar Buyukkusoglu (MFA 2009) and Lisa Yoshiko Radecki (BFA 2009) are the winners of the Fred Hillbruner Fellowship in the Book Arts, awarded annually to students who create outstanding artist’s books. The fellowship’s namesake, Fred Hillbruner was a librarian at SAIC who helped to cultivate the School’s Joan Flasch Artists’ Book Collection.

Jesus Gonzalez Flores (MFA 2009) is the recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant. Named for the renowned abstract expressionist painter and SAIC alumna (BFA 1947, MFA 1950), the Joan Mitchell Foundation seeks to highlight the important contributions of artists working today through grantmaking and art education programs.

Established in memory of Carrie Ellen Tuttle, who received her MFA in painting from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Carrie Ellen Tuttle Fellowship is awarded to a graduate painting student of exceptional merit; this year’s recipient is Kozue Hazagawa.

2009 BFA/Postbacc Fellowship recipients include Gwyneth Anderson, Julia Asherman, Thomas Bosworth, Aylor Brown, David Cook, Jennifer Coster, Carson Fisk-Vittori, Annette Groenewegen, Beth Hetland, Cassandra Jackson, Nicholas Johnston, Jeff Kay, Hyeon Jung Kim, Yongho Kim, Nazafarin Lotfi, Mitsunori Okubo, Megan Ransmeier, Morgan (Bailey) Salisbury, Sasha Samochina, Bret Schneider, William Sieruta, and Elizabeth Yaros.

MFA Fellowship recipients for 2009 include Madeline Bailey, Joseph Belknap, Tiffany Bullard, Justin Cabrillos, Michael Cheatwood, Nathaniel Chung, Matias Cuevas, Frederick Elms, Amber Ginsburg, Jesus Gonzalez Flores, Nadia Hotait, Mary Killen, Chaewon Kim, James Kubie, Jessica Labatte, Daniel Lavitt, Chiao-Hsiang Lin, Raquel Mendoza, Kristina Paabus, Moo Ho Park, Rachel Polla, and Jan Tichy, and the MFA in Creative Writing Fellowship recipient is Mary Kiolbasa.

MA Fellowship recipients for 2009 include Maritza Bautista, Vicki Birenberg, Steven Bridges, Mike Gibisser, Katherine Kurcz, Rachel Mason, Erika Vinson, and Eduardo Vivanco.

MEDIA CONTACT:

Elysia Borowy-Reeder, 312-629-6140
eborow@saic.edu
SAIC