Nohl: Suitcase Export Fund Winter & Summer Cycles 2019

In the first half of the seventeenth cycle, the Fund made twelve awards, providing assistance with shipping and travel to ten individual artists and two collectives (for a total of sixteen individuals). Of these projects, five were postponed or cancelled due to the pandemic). In the second half, the Fund made three mini-shipping awards, all to individuals. These artists—seven of them Nohl Fellows—work in a range of media. For those whose opportunities were not interrupted by the pandemic, exhibitions took them, or their work, to Wickenburg, Arizona; Los Gatos, California; Winchester, Massachusetts; Poplar Bluff, Missouri; Santa Fe, New Mexico; New York, New York; and Johnson, Vermont. Destinations abroad included Cernay-Lès-Reims, France; Bologna, Italy; and Mexico City, Mexico.

Peter Barrickman (Nohl 2003, 2009) travelled to New York City for a solo exhibition of paintings and drawings at the Nathalie Karg Gallery. It was an opportunity to strengthen his professional network by reconnecting with artists he had known in graduate school, and to make new connections with artists and curators.

Santiago Cucullu (Nohl 2006) was invited by Galeria Umberto Di Marino (Naples, Italy) to participate in Arte Fiera Bologna 2020. He traveled to Italy to install his work and meet collectors, gallerists, and artists at the fair—and was written up in Artribune. According to the artist, seeing his work installed in proximity with the works of Arte Povera and Italian contemporary artists “gave me a wonderful sense of context in a larger art historical field.”

Jon Horvath attended the opening for his first East Coast solo exhibition at the Griffin Museum of Photography in Winchester, Massachusetts. He showed his long-term transmedia project, This Is Bliss, originally supported by his Mary L. Nohl Fellowship in 2015. The large space enabled him to experiment with installation strategies and sequences for the work, and the increased national visibility led to a publishing agreement with Yoffy Press.

Shelby Keefe was invited to participate in the 15th annual Cowgirl Up! Art from the Other Half of the West exhibition at the Desert Caballeros Western Museum in Wickenburg, Arizona—one of the major national events for Western women artists. Her plans to attend the opening were thwarted by the pandemic, and the exhibition, though extended, was largely virtual.

Katie Avila Loughmiller used the exhibition at the start of her month-long Labor Residency at the Santa Fe Institute of Arts in New Mexico to showcase the work of LUNA, a Milwaukee Latinx artist collective she co-founded. The artist was able to talk about her own work as well as the work she has done with LUNA.

Molly Hassler drove to Johnson, Vermont for a month-long residency at the Vermont Studio Center. She exhibited work during two open studio events and was invited to participate in an exhibition in Gainesville, Florida. Hassler particularly appreciated the time to “do a lot of writing and planning for future projects…To come back with new work to make was really great.”

As part of a soft launch of the publication Open Recipe, published by sodA mundial in Mexico, Open Kitchen (Alyx Christensen and Rudy Medina) co-hosted a food exhibition/talk around the duo’s Open Recipe contribution at a communal space in Mexico City. Open Kitchen shared their artistic research on food, identity, and ecology with a Mexico City arts community, allowing the collective to see the relevance of their food and art practice to a broader/international community: “It strengthened our belief that food can act as a medium and mediator across cultures.”

Steven Burnham (Nohl 2004) shipped a painting to the inaugural group exhibition at La Grange Gallery in Cernay-Les-Reims, France.

Christine Buth Furness, a long-time award-winning member of the Watercolor USA Honor Society, was invited to send a painting to an exhibition of paintings of past award winners at the Margaret Harwell Art Museum in Poplar Bluff, Missouri.

Marsha McDonald had a piece juried into a group exhibition at the New Museum Los Gatos in Los Gatos, California. Art in the Time of Corona is the museum’s inaugural benefit auction exhibition of artwork created during and inspired by the massive social and political upheaval of the COVID-19 pandemic. The auction exhibition is on view both virtually and in the NUMU galleries.