Spring 2002

Fellowship winners announced

Winners of the 2002 Fellowship Awards from the West Virginia Commission on the Arts were chosen in several aesthetic categories, including sculpture, installation, interdisciplinary performance art, children’s literature and biography and memoir. The commission awarded ten $3,500 fellowships.

Three fellowships in sculpture were approved by the Commission. Assistant professor of art Shaila Christofferson of West Virginia University was joined by Jonathan Cox and Whiney Eskew, both of Marshall University.

The Arts Commission for the first time awarded a fellowship in the category of installation art, the award going to Laleh Mehran of West Virginia University. Another first-time category was interdisciplinary performance; Margaret Baker of Pocahontas County won the award.

In the literary arts, fellowships for memoir went to Geoffrey Fuller and Sara Pritchard of Monongalia county and Grace Cavalieri of Berkeley County. Leslie Kenney of Putnam County and Zoe Ferraris of Cabell County won fellowships in the category of children’s literature.

Jurors for the 2002 Fellowships included: Ernesto Pujol, who has taught and exhibited at the Pratt, RISD, Cornell, Whitney and Parsons; John Benjamin, a theater specialist and director of arts education for the Kentucky Arts Council; Hillary Masters, a prolifically-published professor of creative writing at Carnegie Mellon; and celebrated children’s author Jerrie Oughton.

Fellowship awards for fiscal year 2003 will be in painting and works on paper (including printmaking); nonfiction; poetry; and film, video and audio media works. The application deadline is September 1, 2002.