Arts at the Airport & Bonnaroo Works Fund Announce Winners of 4th Annual Bonnaroo-Themed Skylight Exhibition

By Shannon Sumrall, Arts at The Airport –

Metropolitan Nashville Airport Authority’s (MNAA) Arts at the Airport and the Bonnaroo Works Fund announce the five winning entries for the fourth annual Bonnaroo-themed artistic skylight exhibition at Nashville International Airport (BNA). Winners include: Leticia R. Bajuyo, Miho Ogai, Gianna Stewart, Mary Carter Taub and Hilary Zelson.

The winning entries represent the unique spirit of the Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival and will suspend from the airport ceiling in the five skylights located on each of the three concourses at BNA. The exhibit is on display now through Jan. 21, 2018. Each winning artist will receive a $2,000 honorarium.

“Congratulations to the winning entries,” said Rob Wigington, president and CEO of the Metropolitan Nashville Airport Authority. “The final installations reflect ourArts at the Airport program, showcase Bonnaroo’s impact on our statewide community and enhance the Nashville Airports Experience for our passengers, business partners and employees.”

The project is funded by Arts at the Airport and the Bonnaroo Works Fund, the charitable division of the internationally acclaimed Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival.

“Bonnaroo has always been committed to supporting the arts, which is why we established the Bonnaroo Works Fund,” said festival co-producer Ashley Capps. “Bonnaroo-Themed Skylights Exhibition at BNA encourages and supports arts and artists while underscoring our commitment to Bonnaroo’s home state. I cannot think of a better way to be welcomed to Nashville than with the outstanding installations that are selected each year.”

The five winning entries were selected by a jury comprised of representatives from Bonnaroo and Arts at the Airport and were selected based on artistic quality and communication of the Bonnaroo brand to both new and familiar audiences.

Below is a brief description on each of the winning artists:

Leticia R. Bajuyo
Madison, Ind.
“Lift”
Leticia Bajuyo was born in Paducah, Ky., in 1976 and grew up in Metropolis, Ill. Large-scale public art installations in 2016 include the Tony Hillerman Library in Albuquerque, N.M., the entrance of the Indiana State Museum in Indianapolis, and the Lyon Square outdoor plaza in Grand Rapids, Mich. Recent international exhibitions include “Frame of Mind” 2016, a Northern Mindanao Contemporary Art exhibit in Mindanao, Philippines and the 2015 IV International “From Waste to Art” Exhibition at the From Waste to Art Museum in Baku, Azerbaijan. In addition to exhibiting her individual artwork, Bajuyo is a member of Land Report Collective. This group of six artists in Wyoming, Tennessee, and Indiana create and exhibit artworks together as they deal with landscape in fundamental ways and as a foundational reference point. Bajuyo earned a Master of Fine Arts in 2001 from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1998 from the University of Notre Dame. Currently, Bajuyo resides, teaches and makes art in both southern and northern Indiana. Presently on leave from Hanover College where she is a professor of Art, Bajuyo has returned to the University of Notre Dame as a visiting faculty member until May 2017.

Miho Ogai
Long Island City, N.Y.
“Collective Momentum”
Miho Ogai is a native of Japan who lives and works in New York. Ogai earned a Master of Fine Arts from Rhode Island School of Design and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Ohio State University. Ogai has exhibited her artwork extensively in galleries and institutions such as UrbanGlass, N.Y.; International Print Center, N.Y.; TNC Gallery, N.Y.; SHO Gallery, N.Y.; Bridgewater State College, Mass.; Spaces Gallery, Ohio; and The Sculpture Center, Ohio. Ogai also incorporates contemporary dance in her works. Her works have shown in venues such as New Museum’s Festival of Ideas for the New City, Nuit Blanche Festival, Speyer Theater and The Tank Theater. Ogai is a former fellow at Creative Glass Center of America.

Gianna Stewart
Dorchester, Mass.
“Magical Amass”
Gianna Stewart is a multidisciplinary artist currently based in Boston, Mass., with a strong interest in public art. Her work is often inspired by a specific place, and she has experience creating installations in the public realm. “Toll With Me,” an 8,500 bell installation, was installed on a busy downtown street in Boston in 2015. “Capturing the Sunrise,” (2015), featured rear projected video of the sun rising through the nights. Her latest work, “Midden,” commissioned by the Rose Kennedy Greenway in 2016, is currently on view in downtown Boston, and features a dozen giant oysters cast in clear plastic. Stewart earned a Master of Fine Arts from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, at Tufts University and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Seton Hill University.

Mary Carter Taub
Chapel Hill, N.C.
“BSWAG”
Mary Carter Taub is a public artist living in Chapel Hill, N.C. She makes large-scale, site-based artwork that reflects modern existence. Her process-oriented work is heavily reliant on intuition. Carter Taub doesn’t begin with a preordained plan. She makes her first move and commits to it, and then she looks for happy accidents, detours, and opportunities of coincidence. Carter Taub trusts that the inevitable lemons (sometimes seen by others as mistakes) of an open creative process will eventually yield lemonade. In this way, her process reflects how we live our lives: we make a move, encounter a problem or a choice, we react and adapt, and move on to the next encounter. Carter Taub earned a Master of Fine Arts from the School of Visual Arts in New York, N.Y., in 1994, and a Master of Business Administration from Thunderbird, School of Global Management in Glendale, Ariz., in 2001. In summer 2016, Carter Taub created a site-based public artwork for the Bay Area Discovery Museum in Sausalito, Calif., and she worked with architectural glass fabricator Glasmalerie Peters in Paderborn, Germany, in an industry and arts collaboration. Next month, in partnership with Town of Chapel Hill and the Department of Transportation, Carter Taub’s UPC barcode designs will be installed in a series of crosswalks in Chapel Hill, N.C.

Hilary Zelson
Waltham, Mass.
“Spectacle Butterfly”
Hilary Zelson is a Boston-based artist with an interest in creating site-specific works for the public realm. She believes public art is a way to engage an everyday site with new meaning, allowing a passerby to make a new discovery, stimulating imaginative and reflective experiences, and giving a community creative ownership of a place. Zelson recently began working as the Interim Public Art Administrator for the City of Cambridge, Cambridge Arts Council, coordinating logistics, education, and outreach for numerous public projects. In August 2016, Zelson earned a Master of Fine Arts from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston at Tufts University, and she also received a Certificate in Museum Studies from Tufts University. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in Studio Arts at Union College. In 2015, Zelson displayed “Who Wears Wool,” a temporary public project in downtown Boston, and exhibited “Elemental,” a yearlong community art project at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Recently, Zelson has implemented projects for the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Cambridge Ellis Preschool, Fort Point Arts Community, Celebrity Series of Boston and Boston Children’s Museum, and was reviewed by The Boston Globe, Boston Magazine, Boston.com, The Jewish Advocate and The Improper Bostonian.

About Bonnaroo Works Fund

The Bonnaroo Works Fund was established in 2009 with a mission to make the world a better place through its support of nonprofit organizations that advance the arts, education and environmental sustainability, with a focus on local reinvestment and asset building in the communities where we work, live and play. Organizations interested in grants can apply on-line at http://www.bonnaroowoksfund.org/.

Bonnaroo Works Fund was created by the festival founders to foster a year-round philanthropic spirit – and to give back to the local communities.

Arts at the Airport

Working closely with the 15-member Arts at the Airport Foundation board, the Metropolitan Nashville Airport Authority showcases the region’s visual and performing arts through its Arts at the Airport program, which receives some funding from the Tennessee Arts Commission. The award-winning Arts at the Airport program reviews and presents works by local, regional and national artists for the enjoyment and enrichment of Nashville International Airport and John C. Tune Airport’s passengers and visitors. In addition to visual art, Arts at the Airport includes music since it is an integral part of Nashville. The arts come alive with musical performances on stages throughout BNA’s passenger terminal.