The Ford Family Foundation today named its 2015 Hallie Ford Fellows in the Visual Arts, recognizing five Oregon visual artists for demonstrated excellence of their work and potential for significant advancement in their practices of art. A jury of arts professionals from within and outside Oregon selected 5 artists including Tom Prochaska from a diverse pool of 172 applicants. Each Fellow will receive a $25,000 unrestricted award and will join 15 of their peers selected over the last five years as Hallie Ford Fellows.
The 2015 recipients were selected based on the following criteria:
- Quality of their work: artistic excellence/exemplary talent and depth of sophisticated exploration evidenced in past work,
- Evolution of their work: whether the individual is poised at a pivotal point in his or her practice and would benefit from a Fellowship at this time of career, and
- Effect of the Fellowship on their work: how the Fellowship goals are consistent with the artist's goals, potential for future accomplishment and capacity both to improve individual work and contribute significantly to Oregon's visual arts ecology.
"Working without obvious intention is my avenue of exploration. My concern is to discover something, surprise myself, touch or reveal some magic through the process of simply working. So I put down paint with a brush or pallet knife, some black and some white, and the process begins. At this point the painting maintains an ambiguity and remains very open to the viewer's interpretation. My current large works have combined my painting voice with my printmaking sensibilities and taken me to a place that holds a new found content and magic." -Tom Prochaska.
The Ford Family Foundation was established in 1957 by Kenneth W. and Hallie E. Ford. Its Mission is "successful citizens and vital rural communities" in Oregon and Siskiyou County, California. The Foundation is located in Roseburg, Oregon, with a Scholarship office in Eugene. For more information about the Foundation and its Visual Arts Program please visit www.tfff.org.
