PNCA Faculty and Alumna Chosen as 2012 Hallie Ford Fellows
May 28, 2012
PNCA is proud to announce that Faculty member Ellen Lesperance and alumna Michelle Ross ‘87 are two of three Oregon visual artists named 2012 Hallie Ford Fellows by The Ford Family Foundation. The recipients named are awarded $25,000 each for demonstrating excellence in their work and exhibiting significant potential for future accomplishments. This is the third year that The Ford Family Foundation has been awarding the Hallie Ford Fellowships and the second time PNCA faculty and alumni have been awarded the fellowship.
Faculty members Daniel Duford and David Eckard were part of the inaugural year for the Visual Arts Program and the Hallie Ford Fellowship.
The Museum of Contemporary Craft, in partnership with The Ford Family Foundation, will present an exhibition of the work of the Hallie Ford Fellows in Visual Arts. This exhibition is scheduled to open January 24th, 2013 and run through the Fall of 2012 at both Oregon and out-of-state museum.
About Ellen Lesperance
Ellen Lesperance is an Assistant Professor, teaching in Foundation, Intermedia, and Painting. Lesperance has exhibited her work in venues including The Seattle Art Museum; Monya Rowe Gallery, New York City; Ambach & Rice Gallery, Los Angeles; PS122, New York City; Artists Space, New York City; Elizabeth Leach Gallery, Portland; and Samson Projects, Boston. Her work has appeared in publications such as The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Tema Celeste, USArt, and Art Monthly. In 2010 she received The Betty Bowen Award and was a MacDowell Colony Artist-in-Residence. She is represented by Ambach & Rice Gallery, Los Angeles. In 2012 her work in memory of slain activist/artist Pippa Bacca was featured in a solo exhibition at Frieze New York.
About Michelle Ross
Michelle Ross mentors in the MFA in Applied Craft and Design program and teaches painting and drawing at Oregon College of Art and Craft. She was recently a visiting artist at the American Academy in Rome. In 2004 she received an Oregon Arts Commission Fellowship, and in 2003 her work was represented in the Portland Art Museum’s “Oregon Biennial”, “Ulterior Motives: Current NW Abstraction” at the Art Gym at Marylhurst University and the West Coast issue of New American Paintings. Her work traverses the history of abstraction, design, decoration and the love of language. She received her BFA from PNCA in 1987 and is represented locally by Elizabeth Leach Gallery.
About the Hallie Ford Fellows
Those eligible are practicing visual artists currently producing works of art; full-time residents of Oregon for at least 36 months prior to the application deadline who are legal residents of Oregon 30 years of age or older at the time of application who have evidenced, through appropriate documentation, seven (7) or more years of active professional participation in their medium and are not enrolled in a degree-seeking program, either part-time or full-time at the time of application or during the successive grant period.