Two artists receive prestigious national awards

• “I needed it so bad emotionally,” said Gaela Erwin about the prestigious Joan Mitchell Foundation grant she received.
• “It’s given me a greater confidence and conviction in what I’m doing,” said Joyce Ogden about receiving a Joan Mitchell Foundation grant.
• “It’s a strong endorsement of an artist’s work,” said Speed Art Museum curator Miranda Lash.

Until her elderly mother’s death last July, Louisville artist Gaela Erwin had spent nearly five years dealing with her mother’s worsening dementia. She made monthly trips to her mother’s home that required an eight-hour drive each way, all while Erwin was also teaching part time and maintaining a home with pets. Even moving her mother to Louisville in early 2014 proved arduous.

“It was overwhelming,” Erwin said, “and she fought me every step of the way. She always knew who I was and knew enough to be angry with me.”

But in the midst of the struggles in late 2013, Erwin received a notice that she had won a $25,000 Painters and Sculptors Grant from the Joan Mitchell Foundation.

“I needed it so bad emotionally,” Erwin said. “It told me that my work was worthy.”

The foundation, established in 1993 according to artist Joan Mitchell’s will, has provided its Painters and Sculptors Grant to up to 25 artists annually for 20 years. Artists are put forward by anonymous nominators and chosen by a group of anonymous jurors. Those nominators and jurors are artists as well as arts administrators and curators working with nonprofit groups.

But late last year, Erwin could no longer hold the title of the area’s only recipient of the artist’s grant. That’s when sculptor and Spalding University art professor Joyce Ogden got a notice from the foundation that she had been chosen for one. She said it came at time when she was sensing a shift in her own work from the large sculptures she had been making that often employed elements water, sand, wind and gravity to demonstrate subtle changes in nature.

“I think it’s given me a greater confidence and conviction in what I’m doing,” said Ogden, emphasizing the weight that comes from getting such an award from a national organization.

Giving artists that kind of encouragement is what Mitchell, who died at 66, intended in her will, said Allison Hawkins, the director of the foundation’s grants program.

“That is the heart of what we do,” Hawkins said. “We’re interested in supporting artists throughout their lives, as well, and looking at all the different points at which they are growing and developing in their careers.”

Erwin and Ogden join a list of the foundation’s award winners that include many notable artists — many who have shown in Louisville and are part of local collections. They include Mel Chin (1997), Petah Coyne (1998) and Simone Leigh and Duke Riley (both in 2011).

“It’s a strong endorsement of an artist’s work,” said Miranda Lash, the Speed Art Museum’s curator of contemporary art.

Lash came to Louisville last year from the New Orleans Museum of Art, where she established the modern and contemporary art department in 2008 and curated more than 20 exhibits. Among them was the 2014 show “Mel Chin: Rematch,” a retrospective that has since traveled to The Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis and to Houston, where works were exhibited at four venues.

Lash and Chin got support in mounting “Rematch” from the Joan Mitchell Center, which the foundation set up in New Orleans following 2005’s Hurricane Katrina to help artists and art institutions in the recovery. Later, the center established artists’ retreats that allowed Lash to meet upcoming artists during residencies and supported Chin while he was working with Lash in New Orleans. The foundation, through another of its programs, also provided money and an archivist to help document Chin’s work in the retrospective.

“They really consider artists’ careers from beginning to end,” Lash said. “It caters to artists’ needs with a support network.”

Erwin and Ogden are learning that firsthand as both have had one-on-one consultations with consultants in the industry.

Ogden discussed her quandaries about getting studio time with Amy Whitaker, who has worked at museums as well as at investment and asset management firms.

Five years ago, Ogden and her partner moved from Louisville to rural Southern Indiana. At that time, she took on new responsibilities on top of teaching that she shoulders today: clearing and cultivating several acres of land and caring for chickens while also being involved in the university’s alliance with the Kentucky School of Art.

Her hectic schedule has cut into her studio time, but her work cultivating plants and raising chickens on the property of her new home has helped inspire her current work, which Ogden said has been developing very slowly.

“The consultation ended up being a conversation,” Ogden said. “She listened to me and my issues and turned my thinking around about getting my work out to be seen more. It was very liberating.”

The conversation also covered Ogden’s work in community art projects, which have included work with the Center for Woman and Families and Louisville Metro Department of Corrections.

“She told me to think about the work in my studio as a project and gave me a few ideas,” Ogden said.

Erwin has gotten input in prioritizing her professional needs from Almitra Stanley, an art consultant who also offers professional development advice. But she credits the grant money as important to her now as she is creating new work for a solo exhibit slated at the Speed Art Museum in 2016. That includes being able to hire photographers for images of herself and her sister to use for her new paintings.

“It’s a lot of small pieces that have to fit together,” Erwin said.

Unlike much of Erwin’s work — which has been self-portraits layered with symbolism that cast her in different roles and even worlds painted using pastels — these new works include images of herself and others. Despite this, they are like her previous work in that they resemble old masters’ paintings.

“Now, I’m just working nonstop, but it’s coming really slowly. Nothing comes easily. Everything is hard won,” she said.

That, Erwin said, makes receiving the Joan Mitchell Foundation grant so much sweeter — a gain that comes on top of others that both credit for helping them grow in their art-making and careers. Both mentioned that local and regional grants — including those from the Kentucky Foundation for Women and the Kentucky Arts Council’s Al Smith Individual Artist Fellowship — have helped get them where are.

“They’ve all been so important because as artists we work so much in isolation,” Erwin said.

Reporter Elizabeth Kramer can be reached at (502) 582-4682. Follow her on Twitter at @arts_bureau.