The Ellis Beauregard Foundation, Rockland, Maine, is pleased to announce the 2023 Fellowship Awardee in the Visual Arts, Carlie Trosclair from New Orleans, Louisiana. This is the first year the Foundation has offered the award at the $50,000.00 level and received over 300 applications from across the country. The jurors were: Carol Eliel, Curator of Modern Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Jessica May, Managing Director, Art and Exhibitions and Artistic Director DeCordova Sculpture Park ad Museum, Boston, MA and Alison DeLima Greene, Isabel Brown Wilson Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Tx. After rigorous review and a spirited discussion all three jurors selected Trosclair’s work, noting it’s pertinence to the issues of the day as well as it’s sheer haunting beauty reflects Donna McNeil, Founding Executive Director, Ellis-Beauregard Foundation. The award is paired with a solo exhibit at the Center For Maine Contemporary Art in Rockland, Maine and we hope bringing this impactful work to Maine will inspire all who see it.
Carlie Trosclair writes, This level of financial support is an anchor that provides the security needed to dream beyond the scope of what’s right in front of me. At minimum, my next few years just expanded with possibility. I am so grateful to the Ellis Beauregard
Foundation for the gift to imagine new works without limitation (AND afford to store them afterward). I’m floating.
Carol Eliel, curator, LACMA adds, Carlie Trosclair’s work reflects her roots in New Orleans but speaks more broadly to human vulnerability. She has developed a distinctive vocabulary, translating robust architecture into thin latex skins and ghostlike forms. At the same time that they evoke the perils facing humanity, Trosclair’s sculptures are exquisitely beautiful and suggest the importance of taking care, both of others and ourselves. Juror Jessica May, Vice President, Art and Exhibitions, The Trustees Artistic Director, deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum found this work to be vibrantly attuned to this moment, both specific in its cultural references and profoundly universal. As climate change literally comes home for people around the globe, artists like Carlie Trosclair, whose work evokes the spaces of our lives with emotional and poetic depth, are more important than ever.” Further, juror Alison DeLima Green, Museum of Fine Art, Houston, expounds , It is a profound pleasure and privilege to be a part of the Ellis-Beauregard’s ongoing engagement with contemporary art, and to recognize Carlie Trosclair with this year’s Fellowship award. Her work immediately commanded our admiration for its fusion of historical memory and present urgencies as she addresses climate change and the precariousness of our built environments. A native of New Orleans, Trosclair has grounded her work in personal experience, as she came of age in the face of rising waters, and her sculptures and installations eloquently capture the manner in which that city’s urban fabric is under constant threat. However, we also took into account that as her practice has expanded, she has proved to bring an exceptional sensitivity to the conditions of other sites across America and we look forward to seeing where she takes her work in the year to come.