The Trawick Prize

The Trawick Prize

Finalist Exhibition September 3 – 27, 2026
Gallery B, 7700 Wisconsin Avenue, Suite E

The Trawick Prize: Bethesda Contemporary Art Awards produced by the Bethesda Arts & Entertainment District honors artists from Maryland, Washington, D.C. & Virginia.

Eight finalists will be selected for consideration for Trawick Prize. The exhibition of finalists will be held at Gallery B from Sept. 3 – 27, 2026, and the opening reception will be held on Friday, Sept. 4th from 6-8pm.

Application

The Trawick Prize: Bethesda Contemporary Art Awards was established by Carol Trawick in 2003. Ms. Trawick has served as a community activist for more than 25 years in downtown Bethesda. She is past Chair of the Bethesda Arts & Entertainment District, past Chair of the Bethesda Urban Partnership, Inc. and Founder of The Trawick Prize. Additionally, the Jim and Carol Trawick Foundation was established in 2007 after the Trawicks sold their successful information technology company. Catriona Fraser, award-winning photographer, curator and juror is the nonvoting Chair of the The Trawick Prize. Ms. Fraser is the owner of the Fraser Gallery.

Awards

Best in Show – $10,000
Second Place – $2,000
Third Place – $1,000
Young Artist* – $1,000
*Young Artist whose birthday is after April 30, 1995 may be awarded this prize.

The Jurors will select up to 8 finalists who will be invited to display their work in a group exhibition at Gallery B in downtown Bethesda in September 2026.

Eligibility

The Bethesda Arts & Entertainment District invites eligible artists to enter The Trawick Prize: Bethesda Contemporary Art Awards. Artists must be 18 years of age or older and permanent, full-time residents of Maryland, Virginia or Washington, D.C. The selected artwork will be on exhibit in September 2026 at Gallery B in downtown Bethesda, MD.

All original 2-D and 3-D fine art including painting, drawing, photography, sculpture, fiber art, digital, mixed media and video will be accepted. The maximum dimensions should not exceed 96 inches in any direction. No reproductions. Artwork must have been completed within the last two years and must be available for the duration of the exhibition. Artwork does not have to be for sale at the exhibition. Selected artists must deliver and pick up artwork to and from Gallery B. All works on paper must be framed to full conservation standards

Important Dates

Deadline for application:
April 24, 2026

Notification Emailed:
June 2026

Exhibition Date:
September 3-27, 2026

Questions?

Contact Emma Zanello at ezanello@bethesda.org.

Online Application

Apply Online

Create a an account and user login. Upload images and pay $25 entry fee via major credit card. 

2026 Jury

Mollye Bendell

Assistant Professor of Art at University of Maryland

Mollye Bendell is an interdisciplinary artist with a focus in electronic and immersive media.  She has developed augmented and virtual reality projects as a resident of Harvestworks Digital Media Arts Center and the Tides Institute and Museum of Art. She is a founding member of media arts collective strikeWare, which uses new technologies to expose the faultlines in our collective history. In 2020, strikeWare were named Janet + Walter Sondheim Artscape Prize finalists.  Mollye has exhibited at CURRENTS New Media Festival, the Lindemann Performing Arts Center at Brown University and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. She is an Assistant Professor of Art at the University of Maryland. Mollye holds a Bachelor of Arts in Sculpture from the Glasgow School of Art and a Master of Arts in Intermedia and Digital Arts from University of Maryland Baltimore County.

Alanna Fields

Photography Lecturer at Howard University

Alanna Fields is a mixed-media artist and archivist whose work both deconstructs and reconstructs Black queer memory and history through a multidisciplinary engagement with photographic archives. Fields received her Master of Fine Art in Photography from the Pratt Institute.  She has given lectures at Penumbra Foundation, Aperture, Light Work, NYU Tisch School of the Arts, Parsons School of Design at The New School, Syracuse University and Stanford University. Fields is a Gordon Parks Foundation Scholar and Pollock Krasner Foundation grant recipient, and has participated in residencies at Silver Arts Projects, Light Work, Baxter St. CCNY, Fountainhead Arts, among others.  Her work has been commissioned by and featured in major publications, including The New York Times, The Atlantic, Aperture Magazine and FOAM Magazine. Fields is currently at Howard University teaching Photography.  In 2025, Fields released her first monograph, “Unveiling,” which spans years of her work on Black queer photographic archives.

Michael Jones McKean

Associate Professor of Sculpture + Extended Media at Virginia Commonwealth University

Michael Jones McKean’s artwork explores objects in relation to folklore, technology, anthropology and mysticism. His work engages an interest in deep time, timescales and their collapse, in the process decentering anthropocentric registrations of events and meaning. He is the recipient of numerous awards including a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Nancy Graves Foundation Award and an Artadia Award. McKean has also been awarded fellowships and residencies at The Core Program at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; The MacDowell Colony, The International Studio and Curatorial Program in New York City; The Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, The Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, and the Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program in New York City. McKean is a contributing editor for Art Papers, the artist-in-residence of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory. He has been an Associate Professor at Virginia Commonwealth University in the Sculpture and Extended Media Department since 2006.

Exhibition

Selected finalists will have their work on display September 3 – September 27, 2026 in downtown Bethesda at Gallery B, located at 7700 Wisconsin Avenue, Suite E. The Gallery is located just two blocks from the Bethesda Metro station and parking is available in the public lot on Woodmont Avenue.

Trawick Prize Gallery Hours:
Thursday – Saturday, 12 – 5pm; Sundays, 11am-4pm

Opening Reception:
Friday, Sept. 4, 6-8pm

2025 Winners

Danni O’Brien, Best In Show ($10,000)
Tara Youngborg, Second Place ($2,000)
Bria Sterling-Wilson, Third Place ($1,000)

Pictured to the left are: Trawick Prize founder Carol Trawick, Best in Show winner Danni O’Brien, and Trawick Prize jury members Shannon Collis and Andy Holtin.

2025 Finalists

Sam Blanchard, Blacksburg, VA

Sam Blanchard received his Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2002 from Ohio University and Master of Fine Art in Sculpture with honors from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2004. He has an active group exhibition record, and has been featured in solo exhibitions at the Las Vegas Contemporary Art Center, The Delaware Contemporary, The Indianapolis Art Center, The Munson Museum in Utica, NY and The Sculpture Center in Cleveland, OH. Blanchard is interested in the role that unseen, unchecked, and seemingly unstoppable forces play in shaping our collective consciousness. He is an Associate Professor of Sculpture and Chair of Studio Art within the School of Visual Arts at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, VA. Most recently he was awarded a 2025/26 Professional Fellowship from the Virginia Museum of Fine Art in Richmond, VA.

Hyunsuk Erickson, Brandywine, MD

Hyunsuk Erickson is a multidisciplinary artist and educator whose work is deeply shaped by her early life on her family’s farm in South Korea. Erickson formally studied fine art at Chungju University in Korea. She immigrated to the United States in 2001 and earned a second Bachelor of Fine Arts in Studio Art from the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. She completed her Master of Fine Arts in Studio Art at American University in 2022. Featured exhibitions include The Kreeger Museum, Washington, D.C.; Sandy Spring Museum, Olney, MD; Creative Alliance, Baltimore, MD; Burlington City Arts, VT and 636 Art Gallery, Seoul, Korea. Erickson is the recipient of several prestigious residencies, including Anderson Ranch Arts Center, Vermont Studio Center, and the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity.

Roxana Alger Geffen, Washington, D.C.

Roxana Alger Geffen is a textile artist and sculptor. For more than two decades she has exhibited her work nationally and internationally, including solo shows at the Museum of Contemporary Art Arlington, The Woodlawn & Pope-Leighey House, Alexandria, VA and Flashpoint Gallery, Washington, D.C. Her work has also been featured in group exhibitions at The Kreeger Museum, Washington, D.C.; Museum of Design Atlanta; A.I.R Gallery, New York City and startgallery, New Zealand.  She has also received awards from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities and has been selected for artist residencies at the Vermont Studio School and the Museum of Contemporary Art Arlington. Geffen earned her Bachelor of Arts in Visual Art at Columbia University and received her Master of Fine Arts in Painting from Boston University.

Nate Larson, Baltimore, MD

Nate Larson is a contemporary artist and documentarian working with photographic media, artist books and time-based media. His projects have been widely exhibited across the United States and internationally, as well as featured in Wired, The Guardian, NPR’s The Picture Show, Slate and CNN. His artwork is included in the permanent collections of the George Eastman Museum, High Museum, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, the Orlando Museum of Art, Portland Art Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, and the Museum of Contemporary Photography Chicago. Nate Larson is the Photography Area Head at MICA (Maryland Institute College of Art) in Baltimore. He has served as a Rubys Artist Fellow with the Robert W. Deutsch Foundation, the McCullough Research Fellow at Marietta College, the Diamonstein-Spielvogel Visiting Artist Fellow at Duke University, and was an artist-in-residence with the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation in Florida. 

Danni O’Brien, Baltimore, MD

Danni O’Brien is a sculptor whose practice is rooted in tinkering, irreverence and embraced queerness. O’Brien scavenges and collects discarded materials, creating enigmatic assemblages through continuous acts of deconstruction and reconstruction. Her work incorporates assemblage, gardening, paper-making, ceramic hand building, woodworking, and casting. Their work has been featured in solo exhibitions atOrtega y Gasset Projects, The Museum of Contemporary Art Arlington, and Tephra ICA. They have exhibited in group exhibitions with Asya Geisberg, Pazo Fine Art, Belger Arts Center and Hamiltonian Gallery. O’Brien is a 2024 Maryland State Arts Council Grant recipient and a 2022 Belle Foundation Grant winner. They are an artist-in-residence at Byrdcliffe Colony to work towards an upcoming solo exhibition with VisArts this fall.

Bria Sterling-Wilson, Owings Mills, MD

Bria Sterling-Wilson is a photographer and collage artist. In 2021, she earned her Bachelor of Arts in Photography and Digital Arts from Towson University in Towson, Maryland. Sterling-Wilson’s work utilizes found imagery, magazines, newspapers, and fabrics to create captivating scenes, portraits, and interiors that explore the Black experience. Her work has been exhibited internationally and across the U.S., including in Sanquhar, Scotland; Brooklyn, New York; Los Angeles, California; Atlanta, Georgia; Washington, D.C. and Baltimore, Maryland. She has been featured in publications such as BmoreArt, Contemporary Collage, EBONY Magazine, and Black Collagists: The Book. Sterling-Wilson is currently an artist-in-residence at the Creative Alliance in Baltimore.

Tara Youngborg, Elkridge, MD

Tara Youngborg is an artist, educator, curator and arts administrator. She has a Bachelor of  Arts in Art and Art History from St Mary’s College of Maryland a Master of Fine Arts in Studio Art from Towson University. Her work uses digital media to create immersive video and audio installations that explore place, memory and technology. She is also the manager of the Stamp Gallery at the University of Maryland, College Park, where she directs the exhibition programming and advises the Contemporary Art Purchase Program. She has presented her work in solo exhibitions at the George Washington Carver Center for the Arts and the University of Mary Washington Media Wall, in group exhibitions in the United States and abroad, and always on the web at tarayoungborg.com.

Ju Yun, Chantilly, VA

Ju Yun received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting from the Corcoran College of Art and Design. She has exhibited in the United States and abroad including recent solo exhibits at Art Expo in New York, NY; the Museum of Contemporary Art Arlington and the Susquehanna Art Museum, Harrisburg, PA. Recently she had a six month-long solo exhibition at Springfield Museum of Art in Ohio.  She has participated in a numerous group shows and juried museum exhibitions at the Marin Museum of Contemporary of Art, Marin, CA; Taubman Museum of Art, Roanoke, VA; William King Museum of Art, Abingdon, VA; and CICA Museum in South Korea. Recently she selected for Made in VA Biennial 2024 at Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art.

Founder & Chair

Founder, Carol Trawick

The Trawick Prize: Bethesda Contemporary Art Awards was established by Carol Trawick in 2003. Trawick has served as a community activist for more than 25 years in downtown Bethesda. She currently serves as Chair of the Maryland State Arts Council. Trawick formally served as Chair of the Bethesda Arts & Entertainment District, Chair of the Bethesda Urban Partnership, Inc., Chair of Strathmore Music Center, President of Bethesda Chevy Chase Rotary Club and Vice Chair of the Montgomery County Parks Foundation. She was honored as the 2010 Montgomery County Philanthropist of the Year and named Washingtonian of the Year by Washingtonian Magazine. She was elected to the Montgomery County Business Hall of Fame in 2012. Also in 2012, Trawick created the 10th Anniversary Sapphire Award to honor the 10 Trawick Prize winners from 2003-2012. The Jim and Carol Trawick Foundation was established in 2007 after the Trawicks sold their successful information technology company. She also established the now annual Bethesda Painting Awards.

Chair, Catriona Fraser

Catriona Fraser, award-winning photographer, curator and juror is the non-voting Chair of The Trawick Prize. Fraser has directed the Fraser Gallery since 2002 and also serves on the Washington ASchool of Photography Advisory Board and Washington Art Works Board. Her work has been exhibited in the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburg, PA; the Otero Museum in Colorado, and throughout Europe and Latin America. Additionally, she has organized, curated and juroies more than 100 fine art exhibits, She remains actively engaged in supporting the careers of local, emerging artists and teaches an intensive six hour business and marketing seminar, “Success as an Artist.” Fraser serves as Chair of the Bethesda Painting Awards and is the Director of the Bethesda Fine Arts Festival.

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