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Cartoonist Lauren Weinstein and multimedia artist Paula Wilson have each won the 25,000 USD Stone & DeGuire Contemporary Art Award for 2021 to advance their studio practice.
Presented by the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis, the Stone & DeGuire awards are open to all alumni of the Sam Fox School’s Bachelor of Fine Arts and Master of Fine Arts programs. Recipients are chosen by a jury of faculty and alumni.
“Lauren and Paula are wonderful examples of the range of artists to emerge from our programs,” said Amy Hauft, director of the College of Art in the Sam Fox School. “Lauren’s comics and graphic novels provocatively work as social activism; bracingly honest and intimate, they grapple with pressing contemporary issues, personal and political. Paula’s monumental projects and idiosyncratic films embody complex personal and cultural histories from landscape to identity. The Sam Fox School is proud to support these strong, distinctive voices.”
The Stone & DeGuire Contemporary Art Award is named for the artist duo Nancy Stone DeGuire (1947–2013) and Lawrence R. DeGuire Jr. (1947–2006). The pair met as Washington University undergraduates and, beginning in the early 1970s, exhibited widely along the West Coast.
“Through their decades-long collaborative practice, Stone & DeGuire created a significant body of work that captures the synergy of their creativity and collective dialogue,” said Carmon Colangelo, the Ralph J. Nagel Dean of the Sam Fox School. “We are proud to honor their legacy by advancing the practices of our most active and creative Sam Fox School alumni.”
Lauren Weinstein, BFA ‘97
An acclaimed cartoonist and graphic journalist, Weinstein is known for comics and graphic novels addressing universal human issues such as mortality, time, and motherhood. Her short story Being an Artist and a Mother, which originally appeared in The New Yorker, won the Slate Cartoonist Prize and was anthologized in Best American Comics 2019. Other publications include Mother’s Walk (Youth in Decline, 2018), Goddess of War (Picturebox, 2008), Girl Stories (Henry Holt, 2006), Inside Vineyland (Alternative Comics, 2003), and Normel Person, the final weekly comic strip to run in The Village Voice, which was drawn in response to the tumultuous sociopolitical climate following the election of Donald Trump. Her numerous honors include two Ignatz Awards, a Sam Fox School Award for Distinction, and a Gold Medal from The Society of Illustrators. The Stone & DeGuire Award will support Weinstein’s creation of a new graphic novel—The Gift of Time—inspired by Town Clock, CDC, a New Jersey nonprofit that provides survivors of domestic abuse with affordable, permanent housing plus supportive services.
Paula Wilson, BFA ‘98
Characterized by their use of narrative, bold color, and pattern, Wilson’s extravagant paintings, prints, videos, and installations are simultaneously realistic and otherworldly. Her work often depicts interactions between monumental figures and highly detailed scenes of the natural environment, exploring issues of myth, race, and sexuality as well as real and invented cultural histories and identities. Wilson’s work has been featured in Hyperallergic, Artforum, The New York Times, The New York Observer, The Brooklyn Rail, and The New Yorker, among others. Recent solo exhibitions include shows at Locust Projects, Miami; 516 ARTS, Albuquerque; and the Denny Dimin Gallery, NYC. Her numerous honors include a Joan Mitchell Artist Grant, a Sam Fox School Award for Distinction, and grants and residencies from Princeton, Yale, and Columbia universities. She lives in Carrizozo, a high-desert railroad town in south-central New Mexico, where she co-founded the artist organizations MoMAZoZo and the Carrizozo Artist-in-Residence. The Stone & DeGuire Award will support a new body of work centering on the sacred datura, a flowering plant with medicinal and hallucinogenic effects, which thrives in the region.
Read the full Stone & DeGuire Award announcement here.
Learn more about the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis.
