Rocio Rodriguez is a recipient of the 2022 Joan Mitchell Fellowship Award

We are thrilled to announce the 2022 recipients of the Joan Mitchell Fellowship, which annually awards 15 artists working in the evolving fields of painting and sculpture with $60,000 each in unrestricted funds, distributed over a five-year period. In addition to the monetary award, Fellows are invited to participate in one-on-one professional practice consultations; convenings that cultivate a peer learning community; and programs that focus on personal finance, legacy planning, and thought leadership, among other opportunities.

The 2022 Joan Mitchell Fellows are:
Teresa Baker
Los Angeles, CA

Drew Kahuʻāina Broderick
Mānoa, Oʻahu, Hawaiʻi

Dawn Cerny
Seattle, WA

Jonathan Lyndon Chase
Philadelphia, PA

Bethany Collins
Chicago, IL
Shane Darwent
Tulsa, OK

Amaryllis DeJesus Moleski
Brooklyn, NY

Luis Flores
Los Angeles, CA

Scott Hocking
Detroit, MI

Virginia Jaramillo
Southampton, NY
Henry Payer, Jr.
Sioux City, IA

Rocío Rodríguez
Atlanta, GA

Leslie Smith III
Madison, WI

Awilda Sterling
San Juan, Puerto Rico

Chiffon Thomas
Inglewood, CA

The 2022 Fellows represent a wide range and depth of artistic vision and approach and are of varied background, heritage, race, age, and gender. The 15 artists range in age from 31 to 83 years old. Within the group, 74 identify as artists of color, 47 identify as female, and 13% as non-binary. Their work engages with a breadth of themes and ideas, including explorations of public spaces and the natural landscape, the decolonizing of histories and places, the unpacking of trauma related to gender and sexuality, the limitations of language, and the power of myths.

Ensuring a strong and diverse pool of artists year-to-year is a significant priority for the Foundation, and is supported by our work to bring new voices and perspectives into the nominator and juror pools each year. To initiate the selection of the 2022 Joan Mitchell Fellows, we invited 77 artists, curators, educators, and arts administrators to serve as nominators. The nominators reflect broad geographic diversity—representing 42 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico—as well as racial, ethnic, gender, and age diversity. In this year's group, 48% of the nominators were themselves artists, and nearly half were participating in the process for the first time. They identified the 147 artists who were then invited to apply for Fellowships. A group of five jurors, who also rotate annually and represent voices from outside the Foundation, subsequently evaluated the submissions with an eye toward artistic achievement, the relationship between the artists' stated goals and their work, and the financial impact of the award, to arrive at a final group of 15 awardees.

More About the Fellowship

The Foundation launched the Joan Mitchell Fellowship in 2021, with a structure that recognizes and responds to artist feedback that inconsistent access to funding, creative community, and professional resources results in real and ongoing challenges to sustainability and career growth. Fellows will receive an initial $20,000 payment this year and annual installments of $10,000 for the subsequent four years. Among the Fellowship's professional development and network-building programs is an annual convening. 2021 Fellows were invited to participate in a three-day-long event in June 2022 at the Joan Mitchell Center in New Orleans. The attending Fellows participated in workshops on such topics as Mapping Your Practice, Financial Management, Budgeting for your Legacy, and Narrative & Legacy Framing, in addition to wellness, arts, and culture activities across New Orleans. The convening provided ample opportunities for cohort community building and dialogue, particularly around the process of creating a personal archive and budgeting for an artist's legacy goals. Feedback from participating Fellows will inform the direction and scope of the next convening.

About the Joan Mitchell Foundation

The Joan Mitchell Foundation cultivates the study and appreciation of artist Joan Mitchell's life and work, while fulfilling her wish to provide resources and opportunities for visual artists. As the chief steward of Joan Mitchell's legacy, the Foundation manages a collection of Mitchell's artwork and archives containing her personal papers, photographs, sketchbooks, and other historical materials. Fulfilling Mitchell's mandate to "aid and assist" living artists, over the past 29 years the Foundation has evolved a range of initiatives that have directly supported more than 1,000 visual artists at varying stages of their careers. The Joan Mitchell Fellowship gives annual unrestricted awards of $60,000 directly to artists, with funds distributed over a five-year period alongside dedicated and flexible professional development. The New Orleans-based Joan Mitchell Center hosts residencies for national and local artists, as well as artist talks, open studio events, and other public programs that encourage dialogue and exchange with the local community. The Creating a Living Legacy (CALL) initiative provides free and essential resources to help artists of all ages organize, document, and manage their artworks and careers. Together, these programs actively engage with working artists as they develop and expand their practices. Learn more at joanmitchellfoundation.org.