Tracey Snelling Is Awarded a Prestigious Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant

Press Release • updated: Dec 22, 2015

Tracey Snelling, internationally exhibiting artist based in Oakland, CA, has received a 2015 Painters and Sculptors Grant in the amount of $25,000 from the Joan Mitchell Foundation. The Joan Mitchell Foundation strives to fulfill the ambitions of Joan Mitchell to assist the needs of contemporary artists and to demonstrate that painting and sculpture are significant cultural necessities.

New York, NY, December 22, 2015 (Newswire.com) - Tracey Snelling, internationally exhibiting artist based in Oakland, CA, has received a 2015 Painters and Sculptors Grant in the amount of $25,000 from the Joan Mitchell Foundation.

The Joan Mitchell Foundation strives to fulfill the ambitions of Joan Mitchell to assist the needs of contemporary artists and to demonstrate that painting and sculpture are significant cultural necessities. The Painters & Sculptors Grant Program was established in 1993 to assist individual artists. The grants are given to acknowledge painters and sculptors creating work of exceptional quality.

"I'm honored to receive this grant, to be part of the legacy of Joan Mitchell, and to follow in the footsteps of artists that have been an inspiration to me, such as Nick Cave and Kara Walker. This award will help aid in my further exploration of poverty, class struggle, and the effects of war on humanity."

Tracey Snelling, artist

“I’m honored to receive this grant, to be part of the legacy of Joan Mitchell, and to follow in the footsteps of artists that have been an inspiration to me, such as Nick Cave and Kara Walker. This award will help aid in my further exploration of poverty, class struggle, and the effects of war on humanity.”

Snelling’s newest installation One Thousand Shacks is a 17 foot x 10 foot wall of small scale shack sculptures with video, sound, and lights, meant to draw awareness to the issue of extreme global poverty. The installation was wait-listed for Art Miami Basel Positions 2015. A portion of the future sale of the installation will go to TECHO, a foundation seeking to overcome poverty in settlements in Latin America. In 2016/2017, Snelling will have a solo exhibition at Krupic Kersting Galerie in Cologne, a solo installation at New Image Art in Los Angeles, group exhibitions in the US, Brussels, Havana, and the Netherlands, a public art project in San Francisco, and a sculpture commission at the Historical Museum of Frankfurt.

Snelling’s work derives from sociological explorations of various cultures, voyeurism, film, and geographical and architectural location. Within this idea of location, themes develop of a particular locale’s inhabitants: Who are these people? What do they do and why do they do it? These questions transport observation into the realm of storytelling.

Her core skill as an artist is to capture the essence of time and place. Combining sculpture, video, lights, sound, and sometimes even water and smell, they capture a place and people at a specific time in history. Film, installation, and photography further aid in her cultural exploration, and are often combined to demonstrate this. The melding of the foreign with the familiar fuels her work and creates a rich and multi-layered experience.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Snelling earned a B.F.A. in studio art from the University of New Mexico, summa cum laude. She has shown work in museums such as Gemeentemuseum Helmond, the Netherlands; Shanghai Zendai MOMA, China; The Museum of Arts and Design, New York; Kunstmuseen Krefeld, Germany; El Museo de Arte de Banco de la Republica, Bogota; and Stenersen Museet, Oslo. She has had solo exhibitions throughout the US as well as in China, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, and London, and has been awarded residencies in Beijing at Galerie Urs Meile and in Shanghai at the Shanghai Zendai MOMA. Her large-scale installation Woman on the Run was originally commissioned by Selfridges, London during Frieze 2008, and has traveled to Smack Mellon, Brooklyn; 21c Museum, Louisville; Frist, Nashville; SECCA, Winston-Salem; and the Virginia MOCA, Virginia Beach. In 2010, Snelling was invited to exhibit her installation Border Town at the Sundance Film Festival. Her first short film Nothing premiered at the San Francisco International Film Festival 2012, and showed at the Thessaloniki Film Festival, and Circuito Off in Venice, among other places. Her newest film The Stranger, in collaboration with Idan Levin, screened at the Arquiteturas Film Festival Lisboa in Portugal. Her recent commissions include an installation for exhibit at the Negev Museum in Israel. Snelling was recently included in the Triennale Brugge 2015 and Expo 2050 at the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Brussels.