The Racine Art Museum Announces
2012 Artist Fellowship Winners

Sponsored by a grant from the Osborne and Scekic Family Foundation, the RAM Artist Fellowship Program aims to showcase the diversity and vitality of the Racine/Kenosha visual arts community by supporting the professional development of this region's artists. Based on the quality of the artwork submitted, four fellowship winners have been selected and represent a range of styles and media.

The Racine Art Museum is pleased to announce the first four recipients of the Artists Fellowships are awarded to:  

Jerrold Belland, Misplaced Poetry

Jerrold Belland, Racine

I make paintings that tell a story.....I have been told that there is a comic element in my work. If there is, then fine. Maybe it is my inner mind throwing water on the super-heated subject matter I often use. Beyond the absurdity, the Joker is at work.     

Doug DeVinny, Masks Unfolding

Doug DeVinny, Racine

Much of my technical work is based on the printmaking process, with great reverence to technique, process and craft of print's history, but I am very connected to print possibilities especially in regard to digital process. I have the understanding that the image and process are fluid and always changing. 

Kimberly Greene, Gravity Series

Kimberly Greene, Kenosha 

I respond to this space of life and history -- a space cycling in productive building, inevitable abandonment, decay and destruction, and ever-hopeful salvage -- by constructing.  

Kathleen Laybourn, The Three (Dis)Graces: Poverty

The garments speak of princesses, martyrs and myths. They are symbols of what was once valued, experienced or imagined, but now forgotten, discarded, replaced or reinterpreted. And all are created from materials commonly used by women.  

These juried-competition winners were selected from a pool of over 50 entries. Selections were made by Bruce W. Pepich, RAM Executive Director and Curator of Collections, Lena Vigna, RAM Curator of Exhibitions, Barbara Brown Lee, Chief Educator at the Milwaukee Art Museum and Robert Osborne and Vera Scekic representatives of the Osborne and Scekic Family Foundation.

Each of these four artists will be awarded $2,500 which may be used for any expenses that will assist in the development of new work and advance their artistic careers, e.g. equipment and supply purchases, studio rental, and travel.

Exhibitions for each recipient's work will be presented August 31 through November 30, 2013 at RAM's Wustum Museum of Fine Arts. A color brochure will accompany the fellowship show. By increasing critical attention and exposure for recipients, the program seeks to foster their continued creative and professional development. The Artist Fellowship application process will be repeated in 2014.