Seattle Art Museum Names '2017 Betty Bowen Award' Winner

SEATTLE, WA – The Seattle Art Museum and the Betty Bowen Committee announced that Jono Vaughan is the winner of the 2017 Betty Bowen Award, a grant given annually to one artist from the Northwest.

Vaughan’s current work of handmade garments memorializes transgender individuals whose lives were cut short by violence. The pieces then are used in collaborative public performances and will be featured at the Seattle Art Museum from April 21–Aug. 5, 2018. Her honor comes with comes with a cash award of $15,000.

Two Special Recognition winners also were selected: Deborah Faye Lawrence won the Special Recognition Award in the amount of $2,500; and Ko Kirk Yamahira won the Kayla Skinner Special Recognition Award in the amount of $2,500.

The artists will be honored Nov. 9 at a ceremony and reception, free and open to the public, at the Seattle Art Museum.

The museum further expanded on the artists and their works:

2017 BETTY BOWEN AWARD WINNER
Jono Vaughan – Seattle, WA

Jono Vaughan’s ongoing series Project 42 is named for the short life expectancy of transgender individuals in the United States. The project, begun in 2012, aims to raise awareness of a persistent pattern of extreme violence against trans people by commemorating 42 murdered individuals. For each work in the series, the artist designs a garment that begins with an image of a murder location, which is then digitally manipulated to create an abstract textile print. The garment is then worn by a collaborator in performance, as a form of memorialization and celebration of the victim. Vaughan hopes this accessible approach will provide an opportunity for engagement and discussion.

Vaughan holds a Bachelors of Fine Arts from the School of Visual Arts in New York City and a Masters of Fine Arts from the University of South Florida in Tampa. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally in both solo and group exhibitions, including the recent exhibitions MOTHA and Chris E. Vargas Present: Trans Hirstory in 99 Objects at The Henry Art Gallery at the University of Washington and We the People at the Minnesota Museum of American Art. Vaughan has received grants for a variety of visual art projects from The Arts Council of Hillsborough County, The National Performance Artist and Visual Artist Network, Art Matters Foundation, and the Pollination Project. She teaches Fine Art at Bellevue College and works in her studio in Seattle, WA.

SPECIAL RECOGNITION AWARD

Deborah Faye Lawrence – Seattle, WA

Deborah Faye Lawrence uses the medium of collage to analyze, categorize, and make meaning. She confronts and comments on social, emotional, historical, and current events through the process of cutting, manipulating, and composing found information. Her appropriation and re-contextualization of found images and other materials, including maps and flags, points to a tradition of politically engaged collage, while satirically and incisively addressing contemporary concerns.

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KAYLA SKINNER SPECIAL RECOGNITION AWARD

Ko Kirk Yamahira – Seattle, WA

Formally, Ko Kirk Yamahira’s work traverses the boundaries between painting and sculpture, composition and decomposition. Interested in notions of self that encompass diverse and contradictory elements, his compositions aim to visually articulate these themes in abstract terms.

ABOUT THE BETTY BOWEN AWARD
Betty Bowen (1918–1977) was a Washington native and enthusiastic supporter of Northwest artists. Her friends established the annual Betty Bowen Award as a celebration of her life and to honor and continue her efforts to provide financial support to the artists of the region. Since 1977, SAM has hosted the yearly grant application process by which the selection committee chooses one artist from the Northwest to receive an unrestricted cash award, eligible to visual artists living and working in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho.

Image credits: Jono Vaughan, Documentation of Project 42 performance by Anna Conner at the Henry Art Gallery, 2016, Commissioned by the Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, Washington, Photograph by Jonathan Vanderweit, Courtesy of the artist, ©Jono Vaughan. Deborah Lawrence, Eighty Words, 2014, paper and fabric collage, acrylic, varnish on canvas, 41.25 x 34.5 inches, Courtesy of the artist, ©Deborah Lawrence. Ko Kirk Yamahira, Untitled, 2017, acrylic, pencil, unweaved, deconstructed on canvas, 67" x 45.5" x 0", Courtesy of the artist, ©Ko Kirk Yamahira.

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