Filmmaker Ericka Beckman, BFA ’74, and visual artist Ian Weaver, MFA ’08, are recipients of the inaugural Stone & DeGuire Contemporary Art Awards.
Established by the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis, the Stone & DeGuire Award is open to all alumni of the Sam Fox School’s bachelor of fine arts and master of fine arts programs (with the exception of full-time Sam Fox faculty). Recipients are chosen by faculty committee. Winners receive a $25,000 award to advance their studio practices.
The award honors artists Nancy Stone DeGuire (1947-2013) and Lawrence R. DeGuire, Jr. (1947-2006). The couple, who shared a lifelong studio practice, met and married as undergraduates in the BFA program. Their work frequently investigated alternatives to the traditional picture plane, coalescing around the ties that bind rather than those that separate.
“Stone and DeGuire were creative, collaborative, and adventurous in both their work and in their life together,” said Carmon Colangelo, the Ralph J. Nagel Dean. “Their generous gift, establishing this contemporary art award, ensures that our alumni will have the same opportunity to advance their own art practices.”
For more information, visit the Stone & DeGuire Contemporary Art Award page on the School’s website.
Ericka Beckmann, BFA ’74
A key figure in The Pictures Generation, Beckman is known for her formal sophistication and playful, punk-influenced DIY aesthetic. A four-time participant in the Whitney Biennial, the filmmaker has been featured in major exhibitions at MoMA, the Hirshhorn Museum, Walker Art Center, Metropolitan Museum of Art and Tate Modern, among others. Her work is in the collections of many of these institutions, as well as the Centre Pompidou, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Anthology Film Archives, the British Film Institute, Stiftung Kunsthalle Bern and The Zabludowicz Collection.
Beckman will use the Stone & DeGuire Contemporary Art Award to help underwrite the production of a film for the Public Art Fund in New York City in 2018.
Ian Weaver, MFA ’08
Weaver’s interdisciplinary work centers on the the “Black Bottom” section of Chicago — a large, multiethnic population whose community and history was largely destroyed to construct an expressway and a university. Weaver explores this loss through the fictional Black Knights, who use political, social and guerrilla tactics to fight for the survival of the community.
Weaver has been featured in solo exhibitions at the South Bend Museum of Art, Chicago Cultural Center, Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art, Saint Louis Art Museum and Packer Schopf Gallery in Chicago. He is currently an assistant professor of art at Saint Mary’s College in South Bend, Ind.
With the Stone & DeGuire Contemporary Art Award, Weaver will create new work for his ongoing Black Knights series and begin research and travel for his next series, tentatively titled “Occupation.”