CHICAGO—The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), a leader in educating artists and designers, announced the recipients of its most prestigious awards: 2016 Claire Rosen and Samuel Edes Foundation Prize for Emerging Artists, Toby Devan Lewis Fellowship, James Nelson Raymond Fellowships, Municipal Art League Fellowship, Carrie Ellen Tuttle Fellowship, SAIC Berlin Residency and the Clay Morrison Scholarship. These awards, among SAIC’s highest honors, enable graduating students to continue their artistic growth after graduation through advanced independent study, art making, research and travel.
Claire Rosen and Samuel Edes Foundation Prize for Emerging Artists
The Edes Prize at SAIC provides a one-year, $30,000 award to a graduating Master of Fine Arts (MFA) student who has demonstrated exceptional merit and creative potential. This competitive award is meant to provide promising young artists and scholars the financial means to focus exclusively on their artistic work after graduation. The 2016 recipient of the Edes Prize is MFA student Norman Teague (Designed Objects). This year’s semifinalists, receiving $1,750 each, are MFA students Sandrine Schaefer (Low-Residency MFA) and Anna Orlikowska (Sound).
About Norman Teague
Norman Teague is a Chicago-based designer and educator who focuses on projects and pedagogy that address the complexity of urbanism and the history of communities. Specializing in custom furniture, objects, spaces and public art that delivers a personal touch and unique aesthetic detail. He works with common, locally sourced building materials and local fabricators to create objects and spaces that explore simplicity, honesty and cleverness that related to the culture of the client and/or community. Teague plans after graduation are to launch his studio on the South Side of Chicago.
In 2012 Teague worked with Theaster Gates and John Preus on 12 Ballads for Huguenot House at dOCUMENTA (13) in Kassel, Germany. He also served as lead craftsman and co-founder of the Design Apprenticeship Program at the University of Chicago’s Arts Incubator. Teague teamed up with local chef Matthias Merges of Yusho in the Chicago Architecture Biennial 2016 for “Design to Eat.” His retail ventures have included partnerships with Leaders1354, The Silver Room, Exchange Café and Redmoon Theater. Teague holds a BA in Product Design from Columbia College, Chicago and an MFA in Designed Objects from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
About Sandrine Schaefer
Sandrine Schaefer uses live action to explore the parameters and potential of
time in relation to corporeality. Her work often presents as durational performance art installations that intend to break traditional viewing behaviors by de-privileging sight as the primary sense to engage the work. Her work is inspired by the promise of collaborative imagination.
About Anna Orlikowska
Anna Orlikowska’s work involves the act of hearing. Inseparable from its physicality and the spatial context, she considers sound installations as a subtle form of sculpture. The form cannot be separated from the content: most of her works are about listening. Her works are performative, an intensified, three-dimensional form. The main part of her work is supposed to happen in the audience’s imagination.
The RumChata Foundation Fellowship
As part of SAIC's annual exhibition of undergraduate work from Fashion Design students, the School hosted ?a runway show for invited guests to see work from senior students in a professionally produced fashion event. During the runway show, the RumChata Foundation presented one Master of Design graduate student who is over the age of 21 with a $20,000 fellowship to continue their fashion design work beyond their graduate studies at SAIC. Benjamin Larose received this award, the first ever post-graduate fellowship presented by the department.
Toby Devan Lewis Fellowship
Philanthropist, art collector, author and curator Toby Devan Lewis established the Toby Fund in 2006 to foster creativity and encourage innovation in the arts, education and social services. The Toby Devan Lewis Fellowship at SAIC offers unrestricted support in the amount of $10,000 to a graduating MFA student of exceptional promise. This year’s recipient of the Lewis Fellowship is MFA student Lydia Pfeffer (Painting and Drawing).
About Lydia Pfeffer
Growing up in the tiny rural village of Annaberg, Austria, Lydia Pfeffer was surrounded by rugged mountains. Each year her sober village was transformed with the celebrations of two ancient, pre-Christian festivals, Fasching and Krampus. The events provided an escape from a restrictive small-town life. As an artist, Pfeffer values the complexities and symbolism of these celebrations. “I create worlds that a morally ambiguous,” says Pfeffer. “My paintings are a celebration of the absurdity of life, human behavior and desire. Informed by my life as a traveler, bartender, and artist, they are excavated from personal experiences.”
James Nelson Raymond Fellowships
Two $10,000 fellowships will be awarded to graduating master’s students of exceptional promise working in any studio or design discipline. These awards are to support the artist’s career and travel in the year following graduation. This year’s winners are Kaveri Raina (Painting and Drawing) and Daniel Woody (Writing).
About Kaveri Raina
Kaveri Raina’s artistic journey began as a response to an unfamiliar environment. She was born in New Delhi, India, and immigrated to the United States at age 11. Metaphorically, her work focuses on her need to explore the often-conflicting aspects of identity, and her paintings are influenced by “push and pull” of Western modernism. She navigates the social, cultural, and spiritual spheres of her life by relying deeply on the need to both assert herself as an individual and as part of a community.
About Daniel Woody
Daniel Woody views his process as an aesthetic collection; by building up a vocabulary of bizarre and pleasing moments of language, he has a well of raw material that he re-appropriates for his poetry. Additionally, he turns to the African American artists that have helped him along his path: James Baldwin, Richard Wright, Langston Hughes, Nina Simone, Caryl Phillips and Glenn Ligon. At times, he incorporates their ideas into a poem itself—disrupting the “natural” momentum of a poem to explicitly raise questions about form, race, sexuality and gender.
Municipal Art League Fellowship
Established in 2011 by Mohamed Drisi (BFA 1958), President of the Municipal Art League of Chicago, and Nanette Drisi (BA 1958), Secretary of the Municipal Art League of Chicago, this $4,000 fellowship is awarded to a graduate student of exceptional merit working in the discipline of painting, drawing, illustration or sculpture. Graduating MFA students working the discipline of painting, drawing, illustration or sculpture regardless of departmental affiliation may be nominated for The Municipal Art League Fellowship. This year’s winner is David Bermingham.
About David Bermingham
David Bermingham’s interdisciplinary practice invokes the surface language of domestic objects in order to create sculptures, actions, and texts that perform masculinity from a queer male perspective. They harness the shifting boundaries between contemporary art, craft, and design, while playing with ornamentation and aspirational décor. The works trace identity formation within larger critiques of democratic societies.
Carrie Ellen Tuttle Fellowship
Established in 2001 in memory of Carrie Ellen Tuttle, who received her MFA in Painting from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. This $1,900 fellowship is awarded to a graduate student of exceptional merit working in the discipline of painting. Graduating MFA students working in the discipline of painting regardless of departmental affiliation may be nominated for the Carrie Ellen Tuttle Fellowship. This year’s winner is Juan Guzman (Painting and Drawing).
About Juan Guzman
Juan Guzman is fascinated by the allure of imagery and objects, and is interested in production lines, the market, commodities, advertisements and all design and display decisions. His work will use what is attractive to the masses and himself as only part of its appeal.
SAIC Berlin Residency
Annually the Graduate Division partners with the Institute für Alles Mögliche to offer one two-month residency at its Kanzlei location in Berlin to a recently graduated MFA student from SAIC. The award includes all travel, accommodations and residency fees. MFA students in their final semester are eligible to apply if they have completed all degree requirements by Commencement. The 2016 recipient is Felipe Steinberg (Film, Video, New Media and Animation).
Clay Morrison Scholarship
The Clay Morrison Scholarship was established in 2010 in memory of SAIC alum Thomas Clay Morrison (1948–2007), who received his MFA in 1977. Morrison was deeply involved in studying art originating from beyond the academic mainstream and was an avid collector of folk and self-taught art and objects from popular culture. He was also a founding member of Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art. The scholarship is awarded annually to a graduate student studying the work of independent artists: self-taught artists, "outsider" art, popular culture and international Folk Art. This year’s recipient is Conor Stechschulte (Printmedia).
