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.

2026 Winners

Ciarra K. Walters, Best in Show, $10,000
Cindy Cheng, Second Place, $2,000
Anne Clare Rogers, Third Place, $1,000
Ayana Gordon, Young Artist Honoree, $1,000

Pictured are: Mollye Bendell, Juror from University of Maryland; Ciarra K. Walters, Best in Show Winner; Carol Trawick, The Trawick Prize Founder; and Alanna Fields, Juror from Howard University.

2026 Finalists

Cindy Cheng, Baltimore, MD

Cindy Cheng is a jeweler and sculptor. Before focusing completely on her studio practice, Cindy was a faculty member at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) where she taught in the Drawing and General Fine Arts Departments. She has been an artist resident at the Joan Mitchell Center NOLA, Anderson Ranch and the Vermont Studio Center. She is a recipient of a 2018 Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant and in 2017 she won the Sondheim Artscape Award. Cindy received her Bachelor of Arts from Mount Holyoke College. She received a Post-Baccalaureate Certificate from MICA in 2008, and then earned her Master of Fine Arts from MICA’s Mount Royal School of Art in 2011.  Cheng won the Sondheim Prize and placed second in The Trawick Prize in 2017.

Diana Derby, Cheverly, MD

Diana Derby has developed a distinctive body of work that ranges from mythological allegories and monumental animal paintings to examinations of war, political power and social injustice. Her work examines themes of history, justice, memory, and the human condition through richly layered narrative imagery. Derby’s recent solo exhibitions include Asylum Women at The Art League in Alexandria, Virginia (2025), India Crows at the Public Playhouse Gallery in Maryland, and Action Men exhibitions in Washington, D.C. and Baltimore. Her work has been recognized with Best in Show awards from both CITY Gallery in Washington, D.C., for Witness VI and The Art League for Baghdad Burning: Euphrates Harvest. Through her deeply personal and socially conscious paintings, Derby continues to create compelling visual narratives that connect individual stories to broader historical and cultural experiences.

Ayana Gordon, Baltimore, MD

Ayana Gordon is a self-taught Antiguan-Haitian photographer and multimedia artist. Working primarily with analog film and darkroom printing, she creates textured, immersive images that explore identity, heritage, and the spiritual connections between people and their environments. Rooted in Caribbean and Haitian lineages, her work honors ancestry through portraiture, landscape and image-making, weaving personal experience into collective remembrance.   She has been a finalist in the 2026 Homiens Award and 2024 LensCulture Portrait Awards, with features in Vogue Italia: Global Photovogue, Artsy and The Guardian. Her work has been exhibited at the 2026 SCOUT Art Fair and the 2024 LA Art Show, and has been presented publicly through LEDBaltimore’s citywide art initiative.

Leslie Holt, Takoma Park, MD

Leslie Holt is a mixed media artist whose current work explores memory and grief through combining paint, silkscreen and embroidery. Leslie earned a BFA from Washington University in St. Louis and an MFA from Washington State University. Her work is represented by David Lusk Gallery in Memphis and has been exhibited widely nationally and internationally, including solo shows in Amsterdam, Memphis, DC, College Park, Ashburn, and Minneapolis. She has completed residencies at Pyramid Atlantic, Montgomery College, and Paul Artspace and is the recipient of grants from the Maryland State Arts Council and the Prince Geroge’s Arts and Humanities Council. Most recently her work was selected for the Phillips Collection’s juried invitational exhibit, The Sun Will Rise Tomorrow.  For over 20 years Leslie has taught art on the college level and in community settings. She is co-director of Red Dirt Studio, a warehouse studio for artists and creative professionals in Mt. Rainier, MD.   

Madyha Leghari, Hyattsville, MD

Madyha J. Leghari’s artwork often revolves around the instability of language and the body. She earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the National College of Arts, Lahore, Pakistan; and a Master of Fine Arts from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design through a Fulbright Scholarship. Madyha has exhibited globally at prestigious venues including the Kreeger Museum, Pera Museum, Karachi Biennale, University of Colorado Boulder, Bennington College, Sea Foundation, The Institute for Experimental Arts, and others spanning the Americas, Asia and Europe. She has upcoming exhibitions at The Nicholson Project, VisArts and The Phillips Collection. Madyha has written on art for a number of publications including ArtNow Pakistan and the Dawn Newspaper. Additionally, she has taught at the National College of Arts, Massachusetts College of Art and Design and Beaconhouse National University.

Anne Clare Rogers, Baltimore, MD

Anne Clare Rogers earned her Master of Fine Arts from the University of Texas, and her Bachelor of Arts from Beloit College. Rogers recently completed a second-year Visual Arts Fellowship at Fine Arts Work Center, where, among other things, she explored the material potential of the seaweed Codium Fragile (dead man’s fingers). Rogers was a 2024 Rubys grant recipient through the Robert W. Deutsch foundation. She has been featured in solo exhibitions at the Hudson D. Walker Gallery in Provincetown, MA; Arlington Arts Center and Materials Lab in Austin, TX.  She has also participated in group exhibitions in New York City, Washington, D.C., Baltimore and Provincetown, MA.

Tony Shore, Baltimore, MD

Tony Shore received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Maryland Institute College of Art and his Master of Fine Arts from Yale University School of Art. He also studied at the prestigious Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. His awards include The Walter and Janet Sondheim Prize, Bethesda Painting Awards “Best in Show,” a Baltimore Artist Rubys Grant, a Franz and Virginia Bader Grant, and the Municipal Art Society of Baltimore Travel Prize. In 2025, Tony was one of five artists selected by curator Derrick Adams to create a light-based public art installation for Inviting Light Baltimore. His artwork has been exhibited at the Baltimore Museum of Art, The Delaware Art Museum, The Delaware Center for Contemporary Art, The Noyes Museum, Kunstalle Beacon, Anna Zorina Gallery, George Adams Gallery, C. Grimadis Gallery, Ethan Cohen Fine Arts, and numerous other galleries throughout the United States and internationally.

Ciarra K. Walters, Baltimore, MD

Ciarra K. Walters’ work has been featured in Culture Mag’s “6 Black Artists To Keep On Your Radar” and in Patron Magazine. Her work has been exhibited in the California African American Museum and galleries across the nation. Walters has been honored with a Maryland State Art Council’s Artist Grant, along with their Creativity Fund grant, the Manifest Freedom Foundation Award, the Leslie King Hammond Fellowship, the Bunting Award for Graduate Excellence, the Richard and Jean Coyne Family Foundation Award, and the AIGA Worldstudio Scholarship. She received her Master of Fine Arts from the Maryland Institute College of Art and her Bachelor of Science from Radford University. She is currently an artist-in-residence at Creative Alliance in Baltimore, MD.

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

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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