Portland-based 2016 Contemporary Northwest Art Awards winner Samantha Wall was awarded the Arlene Schnitzer Prize this past Friday night. Watch a video of Samantha talking about her practice.
Samantha Wall seeks to communicate the interior emotional state that separates one’s sense of self from their body. Growing up as an ethnically diverse child in South Korea and the American South, she learned to navigate between social and cultural boundaries. Her quietly powerful work utilizes modest materials, such as graphite or charcoal, to build a supple, interlaced texture of marks which are suspended on the surface of paper.
Wall received her BFA from University of Southern Carolina, Columbia, and an MFA from Pacific Northwest College of Art, Portland. She has had solo exhibitions at Fairbanks Gallery, Oregon State University, Corvallis; The Art Gym, Marylhurst University, Oregon; Worksound, Portland, Oregon; McMaster Gallery, University of South Carolina, Columbia; and Olive Hyde Art Center, Fremont, California. She has received grants, awards and residencies including an Individual Artist Fellowship from Oregon Arts Commission; Joan Mitchell Center Residency, New Orleans; and a Hallie Ford Fellowship in the Visual Arts, Roseburg, Oregon.