THE 2008-2009 FAWC VISUAL ARTS FELLOWS

Taylor Baldwin is an artist living in Richmond, Virginia. He has received degrees in sculpture from both the Rhode Island School of Design and Virginia Commonwealth University. His work is concerned the specter of imminent catastrophic extinction, primarily through sculptural installation, drawing, and video. Julia Brown holds her MFA from CalArts and a BA from Williams College in studio art. Brown is the 2006 recipient of the Dedalus Foundation MFA Painting Award. She holds a Winter Fellowship at the Fine Arts Work Center, Provincetown, MA for 2008-2009. She is in an upcoming show this fall at Real Art Ways, Hartford. Her work has been exhibited at LMAK Projects, New York, Greenleaf Gallery at Whittier College, 507Rose Gallery, Venice, Supersonic 1 at Barnsdall Municipal Art Gallery, Los Angeles, and Artists Space, New York. She recently finished a year-long teaching fellowship at Whittier College. Adam Davies is a photographer whose work explores the edges of urban and rural landscapes. Using a large-format camera and then digitally scanning the color negatives, his working process bridges traditional and contemporary methods. Davies has been awarded residences at Jentel (WY), Yaddo (NY), the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts; the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown (MA), and the Chinati Foundation (TX). He has recently exhibited at Project Basho Photography Center, Westmoreland Museum of Art, Main Line Art Center and Silver Eye Center for Photography. Davies has held teaching positions at Carnegie Mellon University, Robert Morris University, Harvard University, and the National Gallery of Art, Washington. Born in Cambridge, England, Adam resides in Philadelphia, PA, when not traveling to make work. Meghan Gordon, originally from New York, studied painting at Rhode Island School of Design and has been nomadic since. She is interested in the collection, arrangement and display of furniture and objects in the form of period rooms and historic homes. Meghan is a recent graduate of the Victorian Society Summer School in Newport, RI and is a current second-year fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center Michele Kong was born and raised in suburban Los Angeles. Kong's work has been included in several group exhibitions at a variety of venues including: PS1 Contemporary Art Center (NY), Arlington Arts Center (VA), Maryland Art Place (MD), and Numark Gallery (DC), to name a few. In 2006, the Bemis Center for Contemporary Art (NE) presented her first solo exhibition "Critical Density." Subsequently, she has had solo exhibitions at the Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts (DE) in 2007 and Bucknell University's Samek Art Gallery (PA) in 2008. Kong's artwork has been covered and reviewed in Sculpture Magazine, The Washington Post, The Baltimore Sun and other publications. Several international residency programs have provided support for her work including: The MacDowell Colony, Sculpture Space, Ucross Foundation, and the Atlantic Center for the Arts, among others. Additionally, she received a 2005-06 Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant. Forthcoming in 2009, Kong will be one of five participants in the Creative Artist Exchange Program, an initiative sponsored by the Japan-US Friendship Commission and the National Endowment for the Arts. Lilly McElroy was raised in a small town in Southern Arizona where she rode horses and spent time at rodeos. She won very few ribbons, but once sold a sheep for a decent price. She was formally educated at the University of Arizona, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and The Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. The time spent at those institutions lead to her unabashed interest in the cliche and the literal as well as her often misguided attempts at making authentic connections. It should be noted that Lilly has little to no interest in irony. Jason Mones explores various constructions of hyper-masculinity through painting. He received a B.F.A. at the Rhode Island School of Design and an M.F.A at Yale School of Art. This year he was a recipient of the Alice Kimball Foundation Travel Grant and recently completed a summer teaching fellowship in Pont-Aven, France. Leslie Murray, a painter, received her B.F.A. from Maine College of Art in Spring 2008. She has served internships at the Fine Arts Work Center and Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Snowmass Village, CO. She has studied with Honour Mack, Philip Brou and Gail Spaien. Her work is a combination of individual paintings and installation that create an imaginative space informed by ideas of shelter and play. Her work has been exhibited at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Portland and Anderson Ranch Arts Center. Born in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, Micha Patiniott received his BA at the Utrecht School of the Arts. In 2006 and 2007 he was invited as a resident artist at the international residency and research platform the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. Micha has shown in group shows in the Netherlands, Berlin and Xiamen City, China, and will have a solo show of his paintings in Rotterdam in 2009. Minako Shirakura studied glass at Edinburgh College of Art, in Scotland, where she received a BA as well as a postgraduate diploma in design and applied arts. She also holds an MFA in sculpture/dimensional studies from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University. She has exhibited her work in the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United States.