KO’D IMDA Award

The Kathy O’Dell IMDA Award for Outstanding MFA Written Thesis and Exhibition

Inspired by Dr. Mina Cheon (’02), who funded the IMDA Friends + Alumni MFA Award for the last five years, Dr. Kathy O’Dell, upon her retirement on August 1, 2022, established an endowment that will provide financial support for specific initiatives of the IMDA Program in perpetuity. One of the primary objectives of the fund is to award $1000 for the most outstanding MFA exhibition and written thesis. Each year a qualified arts professional will serve as a juror for the award. This award aims to boost the emerging career of promising IMDA alumni, especially impacting the transitional year following their MFA.

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2024 Winner: Kristin Putchinski

2024 Honorable Mention: Andrew Liang

Juror: Amy Raehse is Executive Director and Partner at Goya Contemporary Gallery which exhibits, represents and manages the careers of emerging and mid-career artists in a program focused on Contemporary Art in both primary and secondary markets. In her 25+ years in the field, Raehse has worked in the museum, gallery, not-for-profit, commercial, and academic sectors of the arts.  A writer, educator, independent curator, and primary specialist on the work of MacArthur Fellow Dr. Joyce J Scott, Raehse is a co-founding member of the activist group Artists For Truth and has authored catalog essays and scholarly articles in various publications.  Curating over 150 exhibitions, she has also served as a national juror for numerous open-call and prize-driven exhibitions and competitions. Raehse has taught at numerous Colleges and Universities, and lectures regularly on professional practices, ethics, artists rights, collection management, and legacy planning practices for artists. A consultant and advisor to many arts organizations in Baltimore, Raehse has served on the Board of Directors at The Creative Alliance of Baltimore (15 years), The Art Advisory Board at University of MD Global Campus, and the Programming Advisory at Maryland Art Place. She is also on the board of directors of the International Fine Print Dealers Association (IFPDA). Raehse has placed thousands of artworks in some of the top public and private collections worldwide including MoMA, The MET, the Smithsonian(s), Baltimore Museum, Philadelphia Museum , Chrysler Museum, Toledo Museum, National Museum of African American History and Culture, National Museum of American Art , Brooklyn Museum, Museum of Arts and Design, Montclair Art Museum, San Francisco Museum, Mint Museum, Philbrook Museum, Seattle Museum, Harvard Museum, Yale Museum, RISD Museum, Whitney Museum of American Art, Museum of Fine Art Boston, amid many others. Raehse holds an MFA, BFA, and a Degree in Arts Management.

2023 Winner: Anna Kroll

Anna Kroll Thesis image

“The Space is a Body and You Are In It”

The Space is a Body and You Are In It  is a collaborative world-building game played by two people. Together, you inhabit this imaginary space. This space and the events that take place inside will be devised and described through your game play. A sigh can cause a hurricane. A patch of moss can devour the whole space. The sun can deflate into a balloon you rest your head on. A tear can become a flood and suddenly you are an island.
IG: @krollercoasters

IMDA Friends + Alumni fund MFA Award

The IMDA Friends + Alumni fund MFA Award was founded and inspired by IMDA alumna Mina Cheon ’02. As of May 2023, this Award has now transitioned into the The Kathy O’Dell IMDA Award for Outstanding MFA Written Thesis and Exhibition. We are grateful to Mina Cheon, the founding alumna of this award.

 

MINA CHEON [ MFA, PhD ] is a Korean American global new media artist, scholar, and educator who divides her time between Korea and the United States. Cheon has exhibited her political pop art known as “Polipop” internationally and draws inspiration from global media and popular culture to produce work that intersects politics and pop art in subversive and provocative ways. In particular, Cheon has worked on North Korean awareness and global peace projects since 2004 and appeared to the world as a North Korean artist KIM IL SOON since 2013. While she creates work that ranges in medium from new media, video, installation, performance, and public projects to traditional media of painting and sculpture, the content of the work is in historical alignment with appropriation art and global activism art. Her work has been exhibited and | or is in the collection of the Sungkok Art Museum, Seoul Olympic Museum, Busan Biennale 2018, American University Museum, Smith College Museum of Art, Baltimore Museum of Art, Maryland Art Place Contemporary Art Center, Insa Art Space Korean Arts Council, C.Grimalis Gallery, Lance Fung Gallery, Trunk Gallery, and she is represented by Ethan Cohen Gallery in New York. Cheon is the author of Shamanism + Cyberspace  (Atropos Press, Dresden and New York, 2009), contributor for ArtUS, Wolgan Misool, New York Arts Magazine, and Artist Organized Art, member of the Board of Directors of the New Media Caucus of the College Art Association, and Associate Editor of the Media-N peer-review academic journal. She is also a full-time Professor at the Maryland Institute College of Art.

 

Past Winners:

 

2019 Winner: Dilay Kocogullari

“Dilay Kocogullari uses living organisms as art material to explore current health and social justice issues, ranging from nutrition to infant coronary disease and femicide. She was born in Turkey, where she received a B.A. in Biology from the University of Osmangazi a B.A. in Plastic Arts from Yeditepe University, and an M.A. in Painting from Onsekiz Mart University. After teaching art and art history at universities in Turkey for five years, she moved to the U.S., where she is currently pursuing an M.F.A. in Intermedia & Digital Arts at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC).⠀
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Dilay Kocogullari’s thesis installation “Toward the Healing of Souls: Crocheting, Collaborating, and Commemorating” comprises 300 ovary-shaped crocheted pouches, filled with living grass and hanging from the ceiling – is a memorial to the increasing number of women murdered in her home country, Turkey. On the walls appear videos of 70 participants living in America and Turkey who helped crochet the pouches in a collaborative act of resistance to femicide.”

Juror: Tiffany Holmes, 99‘ is the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Studies at MICA. Holmes worked for eighteen years at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she developed an honors program and professional practices curriculum as a full professor and Dean. She received her BA in Art History from Williams College, an MFA in Digital Arts from UMBC, and a PhD from the University of Plymouth in the UK. Holmes began her teaching career as a Teach for America corps member and worked in the Baltimore City Public Schools during the early 90s. Her studio practice explores the potential of art and design to promote environmental awareness and sensitivity to shifting ecologies on the planet. Projects include a commission for the National Center for Supercomputing Applications where sequences of experimental animations visualize real-time energy loads. Her paper detailing this work, “Eco-visualization: Combining art and technology to reduce energy consumption,” earned a Best Paper award at Creativity and Cognition 2007 and a doctoral degree. She has lectured and exhibited worldwide: Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, 01SJ Biennial, Siggraph 2000, Interaction ’01 in Japan, ISEA Nagoya, Microwave Festival, Hong Kong. A recipient of the Michigan Society of Fellows research fellowship in 1998, Holmes has earned the Illinois Arts Council individual grant, an Artists-in-Labs residency award in Switzerland, 2010 Rhizome Commission, and a 2016 Distinguished Alumni Award from the UMBC.

2018 Winner: PARASTOO ASLANBEIK

Winner of the Inaugural 2018 IMDA Friends & Alumni MFA Award
Parastoo Aslanbeik won the MFA Award for her mixed media installation and written thesis “Wispobish: Forest of Ghosts, Tower of Voices.”
“I believe the most precious thing about winning an award is that it makes you more determined in your life and toward your goal. This has happened to me.” 
Wispobish is a powerful tree in Persian mythology. The word “Wispobish”  in Persian refers to “the cure of every disease.”  Simurgh, a mythical phoenix-like bird representing benevolence, is  believed to nest in the Wispobish tree. In this artwork I employ the symbol of the Wispobish in response to the recent Executive Order # 13769 “Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry'”that attempts to ban Iranians and other Muslims from the United States. I utilize the old photographic technique of wet-plate collodion, in combination with tree branches, to create a ghostly forest. A fragile yet monumental structure constructed from white-washed cardboard boxes is inscribed with ancient Persian poems and silhouettes of branches. Amplified from inside the tower of boxes is a soundtrack of quiet songs and mumblings in various languages. Through my artwork I hope to evoke the voices of those who have been demonized and to offer healing through collective strength.

Juror: Cara Ober is an artist, arts writer, curator, and the Executive Director and Publisher at BmoreArt, Baltimore’s platform for art and culture, which includes web and print publishing, artist books, a gallery, and events series. She writes regularly about artist, museum, and material culture, with emphasis on context and subtext in the art world. In 2022, Ober was awarded the Sue Hess Legacy Arts Advocate of the Year Award in MD. In 2019, she was awarded a Rabkin Art Writers Grant and was commissioned by the Warhol Foundation to write “Artspeak and Audience” for Common Field’s Field Perspectives Series. In addition to her regular writing and editing for BmoreArt, Ober has published articles in New York Magazine, Hyperallergic, Burnaway, Art Papers, ARTnews, and currently writes a monthly art column at The Baltimore Banner. Cara has taught and lectured at MICA, Johns Hopkins, American University, UMBC, and Goucher College. She holds an MFA in painting from MICA and a degree in fine arts from American University.