Yes, it’s time to nominate candidates for Artist Trust’s annual Twining Humber Award for Artistic Achievement. ($10,000. Previous winners here.)
To win, you have to be female. (See Jerry Saltz for how well that’s working out, after 40 years of second-wave feminism. Here followed by here.)
You have to live in Washington State, that hotbed of visual art careerism.
You have to be 60 or older. (Old artists = forget about it.)
Yvonne Twining Humber was overlooked most of her life and distracted by the tasks that pull women away from being artists.
(Image: River Picnic, 1940. Click to enlarge.)
Yet she kept on. Relatively famous in Boston in her youth, she moved to the Northwest with her husband and promptly fell off the art map.
With the proceeds from the sale of her house, she set up this award as a shout out to other women in Washington state who find life getting in the way of art.
It was her way of saying, “You’re not alone; keep going.” Humber puts me in mind of Tillie Olson, whose stories of women buried alive under homemaking reflected her own life and meager art output.
A number of recomendations, although the output of none could be called meager. (NOTE: I deleted a few names from the original post for the excellent reason that the artists who answer to them are not yet 60.)
Gillian Theobald should be added to the list.
http://www.gilliantheobald.net/ghome.htm
Looks like the usual players are getting the awards judging from the past recipients and your list today.
Humber was a great artist who was forgotten–that’s the type of woman who should get the award rather than piling more money on those that have long been in the public eye.
ARTIST TRUST needs to beat the bushes.
Mike. You’re right. I didn’t think she was 60.
I would add Merrily Tompkins in Ellenburg- her sculpture is quite wonderful.
Great recommendations! Please make sure to make your suggestions official by completing the simple nomination form, located at: http://www.artisttrust.org/grants/THA