Priscilla Dobler Dzuls Dancing Jaguar with Cacao Tree which is composed of cotton threads infused with coffee, vanilla, chocolate, and lime oils
Priscilla Dobler Dzul's "Dancing Jaguar with Cacao Tree," composed of cotton threads infused with coffee, vanilla, chocolate, and lime oils Priscilla Dobler Dzul

Last week, Cornish College of the Arts announced the two 2022 Neddy Artist Awards Grand Prize recipients. Myron Curry won the Painting prize and Priscilla Dobler Dzul nabbed the Open Medium award.

Both artists take home $25,000 in unrestricted funds—one of the biggest awards in the city—and will show their work in an exhibition at the new Cornish Gallery opening in South Lake Union in September. Additionally, the six excellent finalists in the competition—Jeffrey Heiman, Soo Hong, C. Davida Ingram, Satpreet Kahlon, Holly Ballard Martz, and Tyna Ontko—will also show work alongside Curry and Dzul this fall.

Laura Mott, chief curator at Cranbrook Art Museum, served as the 2022 Neddy Artist Award National Juror and selected the two winners. Seattle-based Curry, a formerly incarcerated self-taught painter—is known for his vibrant murals around town that feature key Black figures from Seattle and popular culture. Here's a bit of what Mott had to say about his work:

Curry speaks openly about his years in incarceration, and during these formative years of developing his skill set, the subjects of his work were often the separated loved ones or departed family members of his fellow prisoners. These acts of care and memorialization are rarely given to that population of our society. The drawings were the result of shared personal exchanges in an often-inhumane system.

And Tacoma-based Dobler Dzul works in several different mediums: textile work, painting, sculpture, performance, ceramics, and the like. Born in Mexico, her work is rooted in the exploration of identity and "how architectural spaces represent gender roles and cultural structures in America," she says. Again, here's Mott on her reason for picking Dobler Dzul in the Open Medium category:

Both sides of her lineage in Mexico and Scotland have a relationship to weaving and she re-imagines “the loom” in dynamic sculptural iterations that foreground concept over function. Dobler Dzul often thinks cohesively in full-scale installations, including the creation of functional furniture that are homages to Latin American design history. Dobler Dzul is part of an important current trajectory that challenges the hierarchal relationship of fine art, craft, and design, in part, because such hierarchies lead to the exclusion of women and non-Western artists.

A very hardy congratulations to both Curry and Dobler Dzul!