Finalists

2023 Trawick Prize Finalists

Rush Baker IV, Riverdale Park, MD
Rush Baker IV has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including solo exhibitions at Scaramouche Gallery and The Cooper Union in New York City, Hemphill Artworks in Washington, D.C., and group shows at The Third Line Gallery, Dubai; The Harvey B. Gantt Center, Charlotte, NC; Bowie State University; MOCADA, Brooklyn, NY; Koki Arts, Tokyo and Yale University. He received his Bachelor of Arts from The Cooper Union for Advancement of Science and Art in 2009, where he received the Jack Stewart Memorial Prize for Excellence in Painting. In 2012 Baker IV received his Master of Fine Arts from Yale University, where he was awarded the Elizabeth Canfield Hicks Award for outstanding achievement in drawing or painting from nature. He is currently a Lecturer of Fine Arts in the MFA program at American University, Katzen School of Art.

                 
Rex Delafkaran, Washington D.C.
Rex Delafkaran is an Iranian-American interdisciplinary artist and holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the San Francisco Art Institute. She uses movement and objects to explore ideas of failure and hybridity among bodies, objects, identities, and language. Delafkaran has exhibited and staged performances at the NARS Foundation, Brooklyn, NY; Smithsonian Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, D.C.; Panoply Performance Lab, Brooklyn, NY; Platform Art Fair, Athens, Greece; Satellite Art Fair Miami Miami; Southern Exposure Gallery, San Francisco, CA; and the Textile Museum, Washington, D.C., among others. She recently received a NARS Foundation International Artist Residency Fellowship and a Warhol Foundation Wherewithal Research Grant. She is also the co-founder and co-director of an artist-run project empowering artists to be both self-sustain and experimental through selling artist-made products and curating exhibitions.

Stephanie Garon, Clarksville, MD
Stephanie Garon received dual science degrees from Cornell University, then attended Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA). Her environmental art has been exhibited internationally in London, Colombia, South Korea, and across the United States. She’s been published in international literary journals for her writing on the critical aspects of her artistic process. Her poetry book, Acreage, was published by Akinoga Press in December 2021. Garon is a Hamiltonian Gallery Fellow, a National Park Service artist-in-residence in the Everglades, and a recipient of grants including The Foundation for Contemporary Art, The Puffin Foundation Environmental Art, The Lucid Foundation, and the Maryland State Arts Council. She currently has a residency at The Lucid Foundation.

Kei Ito, Baltimore, MD
Kei Ito received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Rochester Institute of Technology and his Master of Fine Arts from the Maryland Institute College of Art. His work has been included in major institutional collections such as the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, IL; Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, FL; Gregory Allicar Museum of Art, Fort Collins, CO; En Foco, New York City and Eskenazi Museum of Art, Bloomington, IN. The Washington Post Magazine, Hyperallergic, BBC Culture & Art, BmoreArt, ArtMaze Magazine, ESSE Magazine, and various newspapers worldwide recognized his solo and group international exhibitions. Ito’s notable upcoming solo exhibitions include the Hilliard Art Museum, Lafayette, LA (August 2023); VisArts, Rockville, MD (November 2023); and the Georgia Museum of Art, Athens, GA (February 2024).

Megan Koeppel, Hyattsville, MD
Megan Koeppel is a craft artist originally from Milwaukee, WI. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Maryland Institute College of Art, where she studied painting and curatorial practices. She uses her background in painting and craft to create contemporary fiber and textile works that explores natural dye and traditional quilting. She has exhibited in her home state and on the east coast in galleries and museums such as Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, MD; VisArts, Rockville, MD; Material Gallery + Studio, Milwaukee, WI and The Wisconsin Museum of Quilts and Fiber Arts, Cedarburg, WI. She was a 2022-2023 artist-in-residence at the Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts in East Tennessee and is a current Bresler Resident Artist at VisArts in Rockville, MD.

Giulia Livi, Baltimore, MD
Giulia Livi is an interdisciplinary artist working in painting and installation. Her immersive rooms employ hyper-cohesive color and abstract forms to work out ideas of multi-functional art objects and curated domesticity. She has exhibited both nationally and internationally with notable shows at the Delaware Contemporary Museum, Wilmington, DE; Museum of Contemporary Art Arlington; Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Brooklyn, NY; Governor’s Island Art Fair, NY, Mono Practice, Baltimore, MD; Guest Spot @ the REINSTITUTE, Baltimore, MD; Untitled Space, New York, NY; VAE Gallery, Raleigh, NC and Walter Otero Contemporary Art, San Juan, PR. She received an Individual Artist Award from the Maryland State Arts Council in 2019 and was featured in New American Paintings Issue No. 148. Giulia earned her Master of Fine Arts from the Maryland Institute College of Art and her Bachelor of Fine Arts From Penn State University.

Charles Mason III, Baltimore, MD
Charles Mason III is an artist and curator who creates abstractions around identity politics and the “performative act of blackness” experienced and manifested through physical materials. Solo exhibitions of his work include Screaming in Silence; My Salvation is Love (The End) at Anna Zorina Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; Goya Contemporary Gallery, Baltimore, MD and Spillway Collective, Philadelphia, PA. He has participated in group exhibitions including The Culture: Hip Hop and Contemporary Art in the 21st Century, as well as at The Studio Museum in Harlem, NY; Urban Institute for Contemporary Art, Grand Rapids, MI; and Kavi Gupta Gallery, Chicago, IL; among others. His work is in the permanent collections of the James E. Lewis Museum of Art in Baltimore, Whitney Museum of American Art in New York and Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. Mason III is a recipient of the Maurice Freed Memorial Prize from the Woodmere Art Museum in Philadelphia, and a 2023 JJC Summer Artists in Residence with the Maryland Institute College of Art at BMA. Mason received his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Graphic Design from the University of Maryland Baltimore County and his Master of Fine Arts in Studio Art from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

Fanxi Sun, Richmond, VA
Fanxi Sun is a Chinese artist working with moving and still images, sound and performance. In all forms of work, Sun creates a subjective, metaphoric reality where thoughts are transformed into senses, and objects are transformed back and forth among different states. Her works have been shown at various film festivals and exhibitions in China and the United States, including SPE Combined-Caucus Exhibition in Denver, CO, Three Shadows Photography Art Centre in Xiamen, China; Odds & Ends Experimental Film Festival in Charlottesville, VA and Los Angeles Asian Film Awards in Los Angeles, CA. Sun holds a Bachelor of Arts in Film Studies (Emphasis in Production) from the University of Missouri-Columbia and an Master of Fine Arts from Virginia Commonwealth University.