GCAC Awards 2008 Individual Artists Fellowships

The Greater Columbus Arts Council awarded four local artists with a 2008 Individual Artists Fellowship.

The 2008 IAF recipients, chosen from 99 applicants, are: Janis Mars Wunderlich (Craft), Chris Mohler (three dimensional visual arts), Shauna Merriman (three dimensional visual arts) and Tariq Mohamed (photography). Each IAF recipient will receive $5,000. Awards were based on the artistic merit of works submitted in the disciplines of crafts, two- and three-dimensional visual arts and photography.

The Individual Artist Fellowships program, established in 1986, recognizes outstanding Franklin County artists. Since the inception of the program, more than 125 artists have received awards in a variety of disciplines, including visual arts, crafts, film and video, creative writing, music composition and choreography/movement arts. GCAC's program is one of the few local fellowship programs in the country.

The awards, recommended in an anonymous review process by panelists from outside central Ohio, assist recipients in any manner they choose to support the creation of new works and/or the advancement of their careers. Additionally, all fellowship recipients are eligible to apply for GCAC's Dresden/Saxony Residency, a two- to three-month residency in Dresden, Germany.

Members of the 2008 IAF panel, who reviewed all applications and recommended fellowships, were Angelica Pozo, Christopher West and Augusto Bordelois.

This year, one of the four fellowships will be made possible through the generosity of Annie's Fund - a foundation created in honor of surgeon, artist and arts patron Anne Miller. Until her untimely death in 1998, Miller was an established member of the medical community and a dedicated artist specializing in the hand-crafted arts - those created by people with little or no formal training and without regard to the mainstream art world's recognition or marketplace. This special award celebrates Miller's commitment to this art form's visionary quality and the recipient's work is meant to embody this bold concept. The jury panel recommended Chris Mohler for the Annie's Fund award.

Photo: The work of 2008 IAF winners (left) Tariq Mohamed, "Mohamud Isak" and (right) Shauna Merriman, "Untitled, 2 - Ceramic"