Each year, RISCA presents a fellowship and a merit award in 13 disciplines. These grants encourage the creative development of artists by enabling them to set aside time to pursue their creative work, and celebrate the amazing artists that make Rhode Island home. In the spring grant deadline, fellowship and merit award recipients are selected in 7 disciplines: crafts, film & video, fiction, poetry, play & screenwriting, photography, and three dimensional art. Over the next week or so, we are pleased to introduce you to the 14 award recipients.
David Katz
Fellowship in 3 Dimensional Art
David Katz is a sculptor working primarily with ceramics, found objects, and unfired clay. His work explores notions of existence within a fabricated reality of cultural space, human tendencies of expansion, and the fragility of social constructs. Katz received a BFA from University of Wisconsin in 2005 and an MFA from Indiana University in 2012. He has completed numerous short and long term residencies and his work has been widely exhibited throughout the US, Europe and Asia in both group and solo exhibitions as well as through commercial acquisitions. David joined the faculty at RISD in 2014 where he is
currently an Assistant Professor of Ceramics.
The panelists appreciated the contrast between ephemeral and organic and the geometric color in this work, while commenting that it all felt of the same world. They liked the use of existing space- each piece feels site specific and like they had been created in place.
Surrender, clay & reclaimed chair, 2016
Johnny Adimando
Merit Recipient in Three Dimensional Art
Adimando earned his BFA from the Tyler School of Art at Temple University (2005) and MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design (2009). He is the recipient of awards including a two-year fellowship at Bucknell University, Temple Rome Grant, Frogman’s Print and Paper Workshop scholarship, Professional Development Funding Grants from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2013, 2015, and 2016, Ruth Katzman Fellowship to the Art Students League Vytlacil residency, an individual artist fellowship to the Chulitna Lodge in Alaska, and a 2016 RISCA Fellowship in Drawing and Printmaking.
Adimando’s work is represented by Yellow Peril Gallery, and held by public and private collections including; The Philadelphia Free Library, Samek Art Gallery at Bucknell University, Tower Investments Gallery, Lyman Allan Museum, various print exchange projects and flat file collections, and has been exhibited nationally and internationally. He is currently part-time faculty in Painting and Printmaking at the Rhode Island School of Design, where he also manages all
printmaking studios.
Panelists described this work as charged, complex, and powerful, that it activates the imagination. The pieces have a magical quality, and the work feels like ritual.
The Night Carriers IV: Dredging of the Acolytes, Mixed media, 2016.