For more than a decade, the Charlotte Street Foundation Awards have recognized outstanding visual artists, and since 2008, generative performing artists. The organization just announced this year's visual arts award winners, Jaimie Warren, Dylan Mortimer, and Andrzej Zielenski; each is slated to receive $10,000 in unrestricted funds.By Laura Spencer
Kansas City, MO – The three recipients include Jaimie Warren, Dylan Mortimer, and Andrzej Zielenski. Grand Arts Artistic Director Stacy Switzer was one of this year's artistic advisors and says the three artists are very different in their practices.
"Andrzej (Zielenski) is a painter, creates abstract paintings. Some of which are based on office equipment. The paintings we were looking at were a series based on paper shredders," says Switzer. "Dylan Mortimer is an artist who creates sculpture, installation, and large-scale work that look at religious themes, in particular Christianity, and popular perception of Christian ideas."
Switzer says that Mortimer translates some of those ideas into the language of hip hop. "And Jaimie Warren is an exciting artist who's been out on the wider art scene...and she's also becoming widely known for the performance series...called Whoop Dee Doo."
A curated exhibition of work by this year's visual arts award winners takes place in Fall 2009 at the H&R Block Artspace at the Kansas City Art Institute. Since the awards were established in 1997, the Charlotte Street Foundation has recognized 71 artists, including 68 visual and 3 performing artists, and distributed nearly $423,000.