Guggenheim Awardees
Women & Their Work celebrates our artist alumnae who were recently awarded 2020 Guggenheim Fellowships. Congratulations to artist Suzanne Hitt Bocanegra (Woman In Sight, 1978; ReView 1988), composer Ellen Fullman (Longitudinal Variations, 1986; Suspended Music, 1994), and poet Lisa Olstein (Arcadian Jam, 2014; Book Launch, 2017)! Read on to learn more about these creative women and their past projects at Women & Their Work.
Suzanne Hitt Bocanegra
Suzanne Hitt Bocanegra employs theater to interrogate the history and practice of visual art, using large-scale video, performance and installation, as well as collage, sculpture and painting. Solo shows of Bocanegra’s work include Wardrobe Test, Artcake, Brooklyn (2019); Poorly Watched Girls, Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia (2018); and I Write the Songs, Tang Museum, Saratoga Springs, NY (2010; traveled to SITE Santa Fe, N.M. 2011). Her performances have been presented at the Museum of Modern Art (2010), Carnegie Museum of Art (2013), Hammer Museum (2013), Mitchell Center for the Arts, Houston (2011, 15, 17), UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance (2018), Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival (2013, 2017), Wexner Center, Ohio (2010, 17), Pulitzer Arts Foundation (2019), Fisher Center at Bard College (2018), Danspace Project (2014), Chicago Arts Club (2016), American Dance Institute (2016) among others. Bocanegra is the recipient of the Robert Rauschenberg Award from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts (2020), a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship (2013), a Danish Arts Council Fellowship (2007), the Rome Prize (1990), and grants from New York Foundation for the Arts (1989, 1993, 2001, 2005), Pollock-Krasner Foundation (1988, 1990, 2003), Joan Mitchell Foundation (2001), Tiffany Foundation (2001), National Endowment for the Arts (1994), and Sharpe Art Foundation (1993). Bocanegra’s work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art (New York), the Museum of Fine Arts (Houston) and the Museum of Fine Arts (Boston) among others.
Suzanne Hitt Bocanegra, Dress, Woman in Sight: New Art in Texas, 1979
Suzanne Hitt Bocanegra, Untitled, ReView: 10 years of Women & Their Work, 1988
Ellen Fullman
Ellen Fullman has been developing the Long String Instrument, an installation of dozens of wires fifty feet or more in length since the early 1980s. This project encompasses the study of Just Intonation tuning theory, a compositional practice centered on string harmonics, experiments with various wire alloys and gauges, the development of a tablature graphic notation system, and wooden resonator design and fabrication. The enveloping nature of the rich acoustic tones produced by The Long String Instrument evokes a sensation of being inside of a musical instrument. Visit her website for more information. Awards include: Foundation for Contemporary Arts “Grants to Artists” Award; DAAD “Artists-In-Berlin Program” residency; and Japan-US Friendship Commission/NEA “Creative Artist Exchange Fellowship for Japan”. Her recordings include: The Long String Instrument (Superior Viaduct, 2015) first issued on Apollo Records in 1985 and selected as the number one reissue for 2015 by the Wire; Ort (Choose Records, 2004) produced by Berlin based collaborator Konrad Sprenger; and Fluctuations (Deep Listening Institute, 2007) a collaboration with trombonist Monique Buzzarté that garnered an Aaron Copland Fund grant. Fullman’s work was cited by Alvin Lucier in his book Music 109: Notes on Experimental Music (Wesleyan University Press, 2012).
Heloise Gold: Further Adventures in the Palace: an Operetta, 1987
Ellen Fullman & Pauline Oliveros, Suspended Music, 1994
Lisa Olstein
Lisa Olstein is the author of four poetry collections, most recently Late Empire (Copper Canyon Press, 2017), and a book-length lyric essay, Pain Studies (Bellevue Literary Press, 2020). Her other books include: Radio Crackling, Radio Gone (Copper Canyon Press 2006), winner of the Hayden Carruth Award; Lost Alphabet (Copper Canyon Press 2009), a Library Journal best book of the year; and Little Stranger (Copper Canyon Press 2013), a Lannan Literary Selection. Lisa’s work has been recognized with a Pushcart Prize, Lannan Writing Residency, Essay Press chapbook prize, and fellowships from the Sustainable Arts Foundation, Massachusetts Cultural Council, and Centrum. She is a member of the poetry faculty at the University of Texas at Austin where she teaches in the New Writers Project and Michener Center for Writers MFA programs.
Lisa Olstein & Julie Carr, Book Launch, 2017