Announcing 2017 Creative Stimulus Awardees!

Critical Mass for the Visual Arts Announces 2017 Creative Stimulus Awardees

Media Contact: Meridith McKinley, Critical Mass for the Visual Arts
mckinley@viapartnership.com, 314-735-9268 or 314-324-3278 (cell)

Complete Press Release: 2017 Creative Stimulus Winners Announcement

Critical Mass for the Visual Arts is pleased to announce the winners of the 9^th annual Creative Stimulus Award. This year’s selected artists are Kahlil Irving, Adrienne Outlaw, and Sage Dawson.

Kahlil Robert Irving is a multimedia artist whose practice, most recently, has involved making objects that are to challenge constructs around color and form. The installations Irving creates are intentional and are used as a way to force the viewer to navigate their own response to the bodily experience they are having in reference to the presented works of art. He wants to challenge realities of Racism, structural barriers that separate communities, and objects that exist within the history of decorative arts. Irving completed his BFA in art history and ceramics at the Kansas City Art Institute. In May of 2017, Irving earned his Master of Fine Arts at Washington University in St. Louis. At Washington University in St. Louis. Irving was a Chancellor’s Graduate Fellow. Recently, Irving was nominated and awarded the 2017 Alice C. Cole Fellowship from the studio art department at Wellesley College in Wellesley Massachusetts. His work is in the collections of the Riga Porcelain Museum, in Riga, Latvia; Foundation for Contemporary Ceramic Art in Kecskemet, Hungary; The Ken Ferguson Teaching Collection at the Kansas City Art Institute in Kansas City, Missouri.

Adrienne Outlaw is a socially engaged artist whose work addresses issues of individual and communal health. She has exhibited in galleries and museums across the United States and abroad in Italy, Hong Kong, South Korea and Nigeria. She’s shown in more than two dozen museums nationally including MASS MOCA, Islip Art Museum, MOCA Fort Collins, Cheekwood and the Tennessee State Museum. She’s had solo exhibitions in Wyoming, San Diego, Atlanta, North Carolina, Michigan, Tennessee and Chicago. A dozen exhibition catalogs and three art books feature her work, which has been reviewed in such publications as Art in America, Sculpture, Art Papers, and World Sculpture News. Outlaw is the recipient of grants, awards, and fellowships from organizations including the National Endowment for the Arts, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and the Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation. Her art is in such collections as the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria, the Public Library of Davidson County and Vanderbilt University. She holds a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a Master of Liberal Arts and Science degree from Vanderbilt University.

Sage Dawson – Sage Dawson is an artist, curator, and educator. Her work examines dwelling rights, land use, and the identity of spaces. Sage teaches at Washington University, and directs STNDRD–a gallery project that examines the power and potentiality of flags as cultural objects that abstract, encapsulate, and canonize. Sage has exhibited and lectured at various sites including the Center for Contemporary Printmaking – Norwalk, the Urban Institute for Contemporary Art, the Chicago Artists Coalition, the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, Boston University, the Saint Louis Art Museum, the City University of New York, the University of Pennsylvania, Loyola University, and the International Print Center New York. Her work has appeared in Elephant Magazine, From Here to There published by Princeton Architectural Press, Art in Print, and Hyperallergic.

Creative Stimulus awards unrestricted funding to support artists to pursue special projects, experiment with new techniques, and deepen their understanding of their working processes. Each artist will receive an award of $1,500 for their use as creative operating capital along with the opportunity to present their work in an exhibition in 2018.

The artists were selected by a jury from nearly 40 St. Louis-area visual artists who applied for this award, which recognizes artists for their outstanding work and commitment to developing their careers.

The Creative Stimulus Award is supported by the St. Louis Regional Arts Commission and individuals who believe that supporting and promoting local artists makes St. Louis a better place to live.

Critical Mass for the Visual Arts is a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting and initiating contemporary visual art in the St. Louis region.