2015 McKnight Visual Artist Fellowship Recipients Announced

The Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD), on behalf of the The McKnight Foundation, is proud to announce the eight recipients of the 2015 McKnight Fellowships for Visual Artists: Gregory Euclide from Le Sueur, Kristina Estell from Duluth, and Luis Fitch, Tracy Krumm, Alexandros Lindsay, Scott Nedrelow, Kelly O'Brien and Selma Fernandez Richter, all of the Twin Cities.

Designed to identify and support outstanding mid-career Minnesota artists, the McKnight Fellowships for Visual Artists provide recipients with $25,000 stipends, public recognition, professional encouragement from national visiting critics, and an opportunity to participate in a speaker series. The fellowships are funded by a generous grant from The McKnight Foundation and administered by MCAD.

The 2015 McKnight fellows were selected from a group of 270 applicants by a panel of arts professionals of varying backgrounds whose careers intersect with the visual arts in different ways. This year’s jurors were Steven Matijcio, curator at the Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati; Russell Lord, curator of photography at the New Orleans Museum of Art; and Kellie Jones, professor of contemporary art at Columbia University, NYC.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Kristina Estell is a Duluth-based visual artist who is interested in the function of the human gesture within the complex environment of natural and built structures. Using a wide variety of processes and materials, she creates sculptural installations, found object and two-dimensional works that create uniquely sensitive material experiences. Estell has exhibited nationally and internationally as well as attended artist residencies within the US, Germany, Japan and Hungary.

Gregory Euclide is an artist and educator living in the Minnesota River Valley. Through sculptures, paintings and installations Euclide’s works both celebrate and critique the way we view and use land. The juxtaposition of representational modes and materials create a hybrid space where the romanticized and actual intermingle. Euclide’s works have been exhibited at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, Museum of Arts and Design, the Nevada Museum of Art and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts among others. Euclide has been awarded three Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grants, a Jerome Foundation Residency through the Blacklock Nature Sanctuary, as well as a Jerome Foundation Fellowship for Emerging Artists. Euclide obtained an MFA from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design.

Luis Fitch is an international artist, designer and mentor and the founder of UNO Branding, a strategic cross-cultural visual communication agency. Raised in Tijuana, Mexico, Fitch moved to the U.S. in 1985. There he attended the prestigious Art Center College of Design at Pasadena, California, and graduated in 1990 with a BFA degree. While he has enjoyed great success with commercial art through his agency UNO, his artwork has been presented nationally and internationally and is in more than 100 collections in Latin America and the U.S. With the accelerated growth of the Hispanic population in the U.S., Fitch is anxious to insure this community is served.

Tracy Krumm is an artist and educator whose sculptures integrate hand-constructed processes with found materials and forged steel to comment on labor, identity, human connectivity and cultural production. Her current work investigates the intersection of creative experience, simultaneous occurrence, mimicry and mutation. The manipulation of form through low tech and high tech processes, along with explorations in material studies, are presently at the core of her research. Krumm has exhibited, taught and lectured nationally and internationally for over 25 years and has received two grants from the International Folk Art Foundation for public projects at the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her work is included in numerous collections including the Museum of Fine Art in Houston, the Denver Art Museum and the U.S. Embassy in Djibouti. Krumm received her BFA from the California College of the Arts and her MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She is currently a lecturer in the Art Department at the University of Wisconsin in River Falls.

Alexandros Lindsay is a sculptor who uses mixed media to explore subjects that are overlooked in American society. He moves these cultural symbols in to different contexts to free them from their pre-existing meanings and to open them up for new interpretation. Lindsay was awarded second place in the Installation Category at the 2011 Florence Biennale and was a 2013 Jerome Fellow at Franconia Sculpture Park. He has exhibited in numerous shows both nationally and internationally including a solo show at the Casket Arts Building, Minneapolis. He has a BFA from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills. Lindsay is currently working on a sculpture for the Weisman Art Museum that is to be installed spring, 2015.

Scott Nedrelow received his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He has recently exhibited at David Petersen Gallery in Minneapolis, Halsey McKay Gallery, and Kate Werble Gallery in New York City. Other recent exhibitions include The Nature of Nature at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and 75 Gifts for 75 Years at the Walker Art Center.

Kelly O'Brien is originally from Buffalo, NY. She received her BFA in sculpture at Buffalo State College and her MFA in sculpture at Georgia State University in Atlanta. She currently lives and works out of Minneapolis, and is Assistant Professor of Sculpture at the University of Wisconsin-Stout, as well as acting as a MFA mentor at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. O’Brien’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at venues such as TED x Talks, the AQUA Art Fair during Miami Basel, Pedvale Sculpture Park in Sabile, Latvia and an iron casting symposium in Pirkkala, Finland. She has also had solo exhibitions at the Greer Museum, Vermont Studio Center and Soo Visual Arts Center.

Selma Fernandez Richter, originally from Mexico, has been documenting recent immigrants to the Twin Cities who have been displaced from their country of origin by war, violence and famine. Her project The Ache for Home is a meditation on her own experience of adapting to a new life and home in Minnesota. Fernandez Richter has received numerous awards including a Forca Noreste artist residency in Mexico and a Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grant. She has exhibited nationally and internationally at venues such as Centro de la Imagen and the Cultural Center of Spain in Mexico City, the New York Academy of Art, and the Minnesota Museum of American Art. Her work is represented in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston; the Nuevo Leon Center for the Arts in Monterrey, Mexico; and the Manuel Alvarez Bravo Photography Center in Oaxaca, Mexico. A selection of her photographs was featured in the exhibition and book Women Behind the Lens: 100 Years of Photographic Creation in Mexico, 1920-2010.

ABOUT THE McKNIGHT ARTIST FELLOWSHIPS
The McKnight Artist Fellowship program is one of the oldest and largest of its kind in the country. Established in 1981, the fellowship program provides annual, unrestricted cash awards to outstanding mid-career Minnesota artists in ten areas, totaling nearly $1 million each year. Non-profit arts organizations oversee the administration of the fellowships and structure their own programs to respond to the unique opportunities and challenges of different creative disciplines.

ABOUT THE McKNIGHT FOUNDATION
The McKnight Foundation seeks to improve the quality of life for present and future generations through grant-making, coalition-building and the encouragement of strategic policy reform. Founded in 1953 and independently endowed by William and Maude McKnight, the Minnesota-based foundation had assets of approximately $2.2 billion and granted about $88 million in 2014.

ABOUT THE MINNEAPOLIS COLLEGE OF ART AND DESIGN
Recognized nationally and internationally for its innovative and interdisciplinary approaches to visual arts education, the Minneapolis College of Art and Design is home to more than 700 students and offers professional certificates, bachelor of fine arts and bachelor of science degrees, and graduate degrees