Meet Rydell Visual Arts Fellows

Four local visual artists have been selected by Community Foundation Santa Cruz County to receive Rydell Visual Arts Fellowship awards for 2024 and 2025.

Each fellowship recipient receives a $20,000 award to further their artistic career along with an exhibition of their work at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History.

The fellowships help individual visual artists pursue their creative work and are made solely on the merits of their artistry and not tied to the completion of any specific projects. The awardees are Christian Rex van Minnen, Louise Leong, Maria Isabel LeBlanc, and Shirin Towfiq.

Christian Rex van Minnen lives and works in Santa Cruz with wife Ashley Muse and two children. He received a bachelor’s degree from Regis University, Denver, in 2002. His oil paintings have been exhibited worldwide and are in prominent public and private collections throughout the world.

He also leads Western Biological, any experimental oil painting workshop whose focus is recreating an old masters workshop intent on rediscovery of indirect painting techniques and close attention to flora and fauna of the Monterey Bay.

Louise Leong is a cultural worker, printmaker, and illustrator from the San Francisco Bay Area. She creates work that draws attention to things that are overlooked, inspiring levity and connection through nostalgia and humor. In 2018 she co-founded Little Giant Collective, a printmaking studio and community hub in downtown Santa Cruz.

Her work has been exhibited at Chinese Culture Center of San Francisco, Incline Gallery, Silver Sprocket, Legion Projects (San Francisco), Radius Gallery, R. Blitzer Gallery (Santa Cruz), Pajaro Valley Arts (Watsonville), and in Macau at Fundação Rui Cunha. She is head of exhibitions at the UC Santa Cruz Institute of Arts and Sciences. She has taught artmaking workshops for UCSC Porter College and community organizations, and for the Prison Arts Project in the Santa Cruz County Jail through the William James Association. She has a bachelor’s degree from UC Santa Cruz in studio art and education.

María Isabel LeBlanc was born in New Orleans. She is a first-generation American and daughter to Colombian and Cuban parents. Her practice investigates her relationship with the landscape, both as a documentarian and as a humanist. Her projects concentrate on a specific geographical region of California’s Central Coast, where the land provides markers of time and history. Her current project, De la Luz, documents her ongoing exploration of the agricultural area south of Santa Cruz, just off Highway 1.

De la Luz was photographed in film, primarily with a 4×5 view camera. She works as sole craftsman, from the moment the negative is exposed to the creation of the final silver gelatin print.

She has a bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Georgia, Athens. She also pursued photographic studies at the Atlanta College of Art. Her work has been exhibited at Light Art Space (Silver City, New Mexico), Sparks Gallery (San Diego), Stonehenge Gallery (Montgomery, Alabama), Center for Photographic Art (Carmel), and Atlanta Legal Aid (Atlanta, Georgia).

Her work has been featured in Lenscratch Magazine, Analog Forever Magazine, PDN Photo, and Rfotofolio. She has given artist talks at Open Show Santa Cruz and Open Show San Diego. She is a member of Diversify Photo.

Shirin Towfiq is an interdisciplinary artist with an emphasis on installation, sculptural photography, textiles, and printmaking. Drawing from her heritage as a second-generation Iranian refugee, her artwork explores the complexities of belonging and placemaking through archival research and intergenerational communication with a diasporic lens.

She focuses on everyday practices of belonging and visual culture, as produced by migrants, and reflecting on the traces of diaspora to investigate cultural memory, history, and temporality.

•••

Roy and Frances Rydell established the Roy and Frances Rydell Visual Arts Fund at the Community Foundation in 1985 to promote Santa Cruz County artists and arts organizations.

Following their passing, their estate was bequeathed to the foundation. Their gift has generated more than $1.7 million in fellowships for artists and support for Santa Cruz County visual arts organizations.

The Rydell Visual Arts Fellowship program was developed with input from the local arts community to honor the wishes and intent of the Rydells in establishing the fund.

The fellowship program, now in its 18th year, has issued $20,000 awards to 38 artists. Gifts allow artists uninterrupted creative time to focus solely on their work and its impact on our local community and the larger world.

Susan True, CEO of the Community Foundation said, “Through their work, this new cohort of Fellows illustrate how artists help us understand and reflect on today’s issues.

From exploring personal identity and cultural heritage, to focusing on our relationship to land and our food systems, or finding beauty in the overlooked and the surreal, this group offers creative works that will be meaningful to a wide range of audiences. Roy and Frances Rydell understood the role artists play in helping us make sense of experiences we share, and we know they’d be pleased to see these artists’ visions supported.”

Sixty-nine artists applied for this round of fellowships from candidates nominated by 58 local and regional visual arts organizations and former Rydell Fellows. Nominees were limited to working artists, 25 years or older, who reside in Santa Cruz County and are not enrolled in a degree-granting program.

Nominating organizations were asked to consider the broad disciplines the Rydells thought of as part of the visual arts: Painting, drawing, printmaking, ceramics, sculpture, installation, mixed media, stage set design, photography, costume design, textiles, glass, film and video.

In October 2023, three nationally recognized arts professionals met at the Foundation to judge the artists’ works and select fellowship recipients. They are Dr. Rhea Combs, Director of Curatorial Affairs at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C.; Michael Chavez, Public Art Program Manager for the City & County of Denver; and Alison Burstein, Curator at The Kitchen, a celebrated artist-run space in New York City.

The $80,000 in new Rydell Fellowships were complemented by another $250,000 in unrestricted grants made to local arts organizations this spring.

“The strength of our local arts sector depends on the strength of artists and their ability to create here, and the health of institutions that support them,” said Kevin Heuer, Community Foundation director of engagement & impact. “Together, Christian, Louise, Maria Isabel, and Shirin showcase the diversity, depth of imagination, and vibrancy of what’s being created here in Santa Cruz County. The Rydell Fellowships and grants we make from the fund are all about celebrating the visual arts, advancing artistic achievement, and integrating art into civic life. We’re delighted these investments mean audiences around the county will get more opportunity to be inspired, challenged, and engaged.”

•••

The 2022-2023 Rydell Fellows (Kajahl Benes-Trapp, Anna Friz, Kristiana Chan, Janette Gross) will be featured in the Rydell Visual Arts Fellowship Exhibition at Museum of Art & History, 705 Front St., in downtown Santa Cruz from Jan. 19 to March 24. For information visit: www.santacruzmah.org/exhibitions/rydell-2024