4/7/04
On Friday, April 9, the West Virginia Commission on the Arts of the West Virginia Department of Arts, Culture and History will present $28,000 to a group of Mountain State artists who were selected as recipients of the 2004 West Virginia Artist Fellowship Grant Awards. The awards will be presented at a 5:30 p.m. ceremony in the West Virginia State Theater of the Cultural Center in the State Capitol Complex, Charleston. The program and the following reception are free and open to the public.
At the ceremony, eight Artist Fellowship Awards of $3,500 will be made to artists from Berkeley, Braxton, Cabell, Hampshire, Jefferson, Kanawha, Lincoln and Roane counties. Works were chosen in the categories of choreography, crafts, fiction, music composition, photography and playwriting. The judges included a graphic designer and photographer, a dancer and choreographer, an award-winning craftsperson, a writer and educator, and a musician and retired chair of the department of music theory.
Fellowship recipients are Joseph Lung of Spencer, crafts; Sean O’Leary of Harpers Ferry, playwriting; Ann Pancake of Romney, fiction; Elizabeth Parrish of Martinsburg, fiction; Kim Pauley of Charleston, choreography; Jim Probst of Hamlin, crafts; Betty Rivard of Duck, photography; and Mark Zanter of Huntington, music composition. Background information about each winner can be found at the end of this news release.
The fellowships are intended to support working artists for the purpose of artistic development. Use of funds is up to the recipients’ discretion including, but not limited to, creating new work, purchasing supplies and materials, travel, research, and defraying expenses incurred in the presentation of work or documentation.
The West Virginia Commission on the Arts of the West Virginia Department of Arts, Culture and History directs state policy and allocations for arts programs in West Virginia. For more information about the Fellowship Awards, call Gordon Simmons, individual artist services coordinator for the Division at (304) 558-0240, ext. 717, or contact him by e-mail at gordon.simmons@wvculture.org. Information and application forms for all available arts grants are posted on the Division’s website at www.wvculture.org/arts/.
The West Virginia Department of Arts, Culture and History, an agency of the West Virginia Department of Arts, Culture and History, brings together the state’s past, present and future through programs and services in the areas of archives and history, the arts, historic preservation and museums. The Cultural Center is West Virginia’s official showcase for the arts. Visit the Division’s website at www.wvculture.org for more information about programs of the Division. The Department of Arts, Culture and History is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer.
2004 Artist Fellowship Recipients
Born in Beijing, China, Joseph Lung (Roane County) came to the United States as a civil engineer, but soon took up the study of painting and ceramics, attending Missouri State University and West Virginia University. For the last three decades, he has earned a place as one of West Virginia’s most renowned and artistically distinctive potters. His award-winning work has been exhibited throughout the United States and is included in the Cincinnati Museum of Art collection. Using a style that exhibits both Chinese and Western influences, Lung attributes his incorporation of natural images to living in rural West Virginia.
Author of the short story collection, Given Ground, Anne Pancake (Hampshire County) has won many awards and grants including a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, the Thomas Wolfe Fiction Prize, the Bakeless Literary Publication Prize, and the Glasgow Prize from Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Va.
The stories and poetry of Elizabeth Parrish (Berkeley County) have been widely published in literary magazines such as Antietam Review and the Baltimore Review, as well as the anthology, Great Writers Great Stories. In 1996, she received the Artscape Literary Arts Award for a short story.
As both resident choreographer and principal dancer of the Charleston Ballet, Kim Pauley (Kanawha County) was mentored by the Ballet’s founder, Andre Van Damme, who served as director from 1956-1989. She also has studied at the Joffrey Ballet School in New York and with the Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre. Pauley’s wide range of performances in many styles, her numerous collaborations with other dance artists, and her creation of both classical and contemporary work have all won her repeated acclaim and recognition, including being named the 1993 Outstanding Artist by the Fund for the Arts. Under her direction, the Charleston Ballet was designated Outstanding Organization in 1998 by the Fund as well.
A furniture maker since 1987, Jim Probst’s (Lincoln County) homemade furniture is noted for its unique designs, and it is in the design process that his artistic originality first emerges. In addition to repeated inclusion in the West Virginia Juried Exhibition at the Cultural Center, his award-winning desks, tables and chairs can be found in homes and executive offices from West Virginia to Yale University.
Sean OLeary’s (Jefferson County) play in two acts, Pound, has been nominated by the Washington Stage Guild for the L. Arnold Weissberger Award at the Williamstown Theater Festival and selected for the Abingdon Theatre New Play Reading Series in New York. It also has been scheduled for first readings in St. Louis, New Jersey and the District of Columbia.
In addition to numerous awards and workshop presentations, including a Merit Award in the West Virginia Juried Exhibition 2003, Betty Rivard (Braxton County) has had her photography published in the Charleston Gazette and ArtWorks. After an apprenticeship under Jurgen Lorenzen, she has continued to develop her black and white photographic technique and to exhibit at shows throughout West Virginia.
An assistant professor of music at Marshall University, Mark Zanter (Cabell County) has a Composer Commissioning Grant from the American Composers Forum in 2001, a series of commissions and compositions dating from 1996, and his first recording, Composition 165, received special mention in Downbeat magazine.
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