The Center for Craft, Creativity & Design awarded $150,000 to 10 graduating seniors from university art programs through its annual Windgate Fellowship Award program.

“We are honored to provide another class of grantees with this distinguished award,” executive director Stephanie Moore said in a statement. “The Windgate Fellowship allows us a glimpse of the up-and-coming talent in the field emerging from the best craft programs in the country. These artists are sincere in their efforts to explore and thinking about the materials in their practice and what it means for the future.”

Four panelists reviewed 95 applicants on the basis of artistic merit. They also discerned the potential of each applicant to make significant contributions to the field of craft.

The 2016 selection panel included Cora Fisher, curator of contemporary art for Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art in Winston-Salem; Andrea Donnelly, 2007 Windgate Fellow and fiber artist; Christopher Taylor, president of The Clay Studio in Philadelphia, and Giselle Huberman, president of the James Renwick Alliance. 

This year’s Windgate Fellows in the wood/furniture categories are Anna Clark of Herron School of Art and Design in Indianapolis; Stacy Motte of California College of the Arts in Oakland, Calif.; and Brandon Kento Saisho of Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, R.I.

The Windgate Fellowship program is administered by the center and supported by the Windgate Fund at the Community Foundation of Western North Carolina. The center is a national non-profit organization that advances the understanding of craft by encouraging and supporting research, critical dialogue and professional development in the United States.

For information, visit www.craftcreativitydesign.org.

This article originally appeared in the August 2016 issue.