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For Immediate Release

Contact: Wendy Malloy, SAM Public Relations
(206) 654-3151; email: PR@SeattleArtMuseum.org

SAM ANNOUNCES SARAH BERGMANN AS 2012 BETTY BOWEN AWARD WINNER


SEATTLE, September 13, 2012 –

Today the Betty Bowen Committee announced that Sarah Bergmann is the winner of the 2012 Betty Bowen Award. The award comes with an unrestricted cash prize of $15,000. The Betty Bowen Committee, chaired by Gary Glant and administered through the Seattle Art Museum (SAM), has selected local artists to win cash prizes for 34 years.

Five finalists, including Mike Bray (Oregon); Claudia Fitch (Washington); Akihiko Miyoshi (Oregon) and Michelle Ross (Oregon) chosen from a pool of 294 applicants from Washington, Oregon and Idaho, competed for the $15,000 award..

Award Ceremony

Bergmann will receive her award and discuss her work on Thursday, October 25 at 5:30pm in the Nordstrom Lecture Hall at SAM Downtown. A reception in SAM’s Simons Board Room will immediately follow. Both the award ceremony and reception are free and open to the public. Sarah Bergmann, a Seattle-based artist and ecological designer, received her BFA from Cornish College of the Arts in 1999. Trained as a painter, Bergmann shifted her artistic practice, seven years ago, from traditional landscape paintings made in her studio to ecologically-charged public installations, following her determination to "respond to [today’s] profound planetary changes." Her most recent public project, The Pollinator Pathway, has transformed a mile-long segment of parking strips in Seattle’s Central District along Columbia Street into blooming habitats planted with native plants that encourage native pollinators to the region (such as bees, beetles, birds, butterflies, and even ants). Part renegade park and part educational platform, the Pollinator Pathway bridges science, art, systems-thinking, urban planning and landscape design. Bergmann’s project has been spotlighted with a temporary exhibition currently on view, "Portal to the Pollinator Pathway," outside the PACCAR Pavilion within the SAM’s Olympic Sculpture Park.

Her work has been part of recent group exhibitions including All Things Equal, Hedreen Gallery, Seattle, WA (2001); A Bell Is a Cup Until It Is Struck, Punch Gallery, Seattle, WA (2007); and Bashville, Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, WA (2005). She has been the recipient of the grants including The Northwest Horticulture Society Grant (2011); Neighborhood Matching Grant, City of Seattle (2010); Neighborhood Matching Grant, City of Seattle (2008); and a GAP Grant Recipient, Artist Trust, Seattle, WA (2004). In addition she has been nominated for the 2012 The Stranger Genius Awards.To learn more about Bergmann’s project go to: www.pollinatorpathway.com/

THE BETTY BOWEN AWARD

Betty Bowen (1918-1977) was a Washington native and enthusiastic supporter of Northwest artists. Her friends established the annual Betty Bowen Award as a celebration of her life and to honor and continue her efforts to provide financial support to artists of the region. Since 1977, SAM has hosted the yearly grant application process by which the selection committee chooses one artist living and working in the Northwest (Washington, Oregon and Idaho) to receive an unrestricted cash award.

In 2011, the Betty Bowen Committee granted the $15,000 prize to Jenny Heishman. SuttonBeresCuller (SBC) was awarded the Kayla Skinner Special Recognition Award in the amount of $2,500 and Lisa Liedgren was selected to receive the PONCHO Special Recognition award, also in the amount of $2,500.

2012 Betty Bowen Committee Members:

Jeffrey Bishop

Gary Glant (Chair)

Peggy Golberg

Anne Gould Hauberg

Mike Hess

Isaac Layman

Mark Levine

Catharina Manchanda (SAM’s Jon and Mary Shirley Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art)

Llewelyn Pritchard

Greg Robinson

Norie Sato

Bill True

Maggie Walker

Tom Wilson

Dan Webb

Merrill Wright

 

 
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