February 22, 2008 – The Foundation has announced the 2008-2009 recipients of the Rydell Visual Arts Fellowship.

Who Can Find a Virtuous Woman? 2007 archival ink jet print 28" x 20"

Terri Garland (2008) has pulled her images "from their final resting places of mud-caked pews and condemned church floors, from both the Central City and Lower Ninth Ward areas of New Orleans." Terri has photographed in the South since 1989 and has continued to investigate and pursue with curiosity the social landscape of the region. Among her awards are a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship and an Arts Silicon Valley photography fellowship. Her current work focuses on the Mississippi Delta.

Spintale 2004 Encaustic on Wood 12" x 12" x 2"

Daniella Woolf (2008) brings a "textile sensibility" to the ancient medium of encaustic*. "In merging these two disciplines along with my limited choice of materials, I create a newly formed language." Her work has been exhibited at the Cleveland Museum of Art, Pittsburg Center for the Arts and internationally at the British Craft Centre, London. Daniella teaches popular encaustic workshops and writes the blog, Encausticopolis, about all things wax. * Encaustic painting is the oldest known painting technique dating back over 2000 years. Beeswax is mixed with damar resin to harden the wax and pigment is then suspended in the wax medium. Each layer of an encaustic painting is fused to the layer beneath it with a heat source.

Rashoman fall 1997 Cabrillo Theatre Arts

William (Skip) Epperson (2009) says "the sketches, the drafting, the painter's renderings, and the models that I create as a designer, are a means to an end. They are utilized as an attempt to represent the ideas that are instilled in my heart and mind as the perfect environment for the 'world' of the play." Skip holds a MFA form the Virginia Commonwealth University. He has been teaching theatrical design and backstage theatre for the past sixteen years at Cabrillo College and currently serves as the Theatre Arts Program Chair.

Codex Espangliensis 1998 (performance text by Guillermo Gomez Peña, images by Enrique Chagoya) Letterpress photoengravings and acrylic 9" x 11.5", extends to 31'

Felicia Rice (2009) collaborates "with visual artists, performing artists and writers to create book structures in which typography and the visual arts meet and merge." She has published books, broadsides and prints under the Moving Parts Press imprint since 1977. Work from the press has been included in exhibitions and collections, from AIGA Annual Book Shows in New York and Frankfurt to the Victoria & Albert Museum.

Each of the four fellows will receive a $20,000 award, which are given to provide the artists with resources to pursue their creative work.

The fellowships are awarded solely on the merits of their individual artistic work and are not limited to specific projects. The prize does stipulate, however, that the artists remain in the County during the year of their award.

Forty-six artists applied for the fellowship this year from a candidate pool nominated by twenty-five local and regional visual arts organizations.

Nominees were limited to working artists, 25 years of age or older, who reside in Santa Cruz County and are not enrolled in a degree program.

In January, a panel of three nationally-recognized arts professionals judged the artists' works to select the four recipients. The panelists were: Elvis Fuentes, Curator, El Museo del Barrio, New York; Laurel Reuter, Director, North Dakota Museum of Art, Grand Forks, ND; and Elizabeth Thomas, the Phyllis Wattis MATRIX Curator, Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley, CA.

The Foundation is grateful to have its fellowship project directed by Jack Walsh.