Past Awardees – Hadley Prize for Visual Art

The Community Foundation of Louisville, in partnership with Louisville Visual Art,
is pleased to announce that Louisville-based multi-media artist

KCJ Szwedzinski

is the winner of the 2018 Mary Alice Hadley Prize for Visual Art.

Louisville Visual Art will honor KCJ Szwedzinski on Thursday, June 21, from 5:30-7:00 p.m. in their
Portland gallery at 1538 Lytle Street, 40203. The reception is free and open to the public.

“My most recent body work has been on Jewish memory, identity and legacy," said Szwedzinski. "As an artist, I am continually mindful of who I intend as my audience. I question why it is important for me to make work about Judaism and how my work connects to contemporary issues.”

Szwedzinski will use the award to visit the Jewish Contemporary Museum and the Holocaust Center in San Francisco, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and Archives in Washington, D.C., and the Genealogy Center in Fort Wayne, Indiana, as well as to take a course at the Rare Book School in Philadelphia.

Szwedzinski's itinerary has been designed to fuse personal history and artistic inspiration, "to synthesize seemingly disparate bodies of knowledge - archival practices for historical information and my personal inherited legacies." 

“This experience will broaden my ability to make work that is rooted in my own Judaic heritage,” said Szwedzinski, “while facilitating engagement of a more universal audience.”

2017 Mary Alice Hadley Prize for Visual Art
Adrienne Miller

The Community Foundation of Louisville, in partnership with Louisville Visual Art, presented Louisville-based artist and printmaker Adrienne Miller with the fifth annual Mary Alice Hadley Prize for Visual Art

Miller will use the prize to research the landscape and art historical influence of the Four Corners area of the American Southwest. The two-week trip will cover close to 2,000 miles in a loop through the Four Corners region and will include a variety of stops, including several different pueblo ruin sites, printmaking studios in Albuquerque, the Georgia O’Keefe museum and archives, several National Parks, energy vortexes in Sedona, and several large earthworks in the region.

“I want the experience to be transformative and immersive so that I come away feeling as though the experience really was a tipping point for me,” said Miller of the Hadley Prize enrichment experience. “I want to return to Louisville renewed to create a whole new body of work.”

“The selection committee was very impressed with Adrienne’s clear artistic vision and the unique nature of her enrichment experience,” said LVA director Lindy Casebier. “Her focus on landscape, both as a part of the American identity and as a driver of her own work, really stood out.”

“The local artists competing for the Hadley Prize continue to impress us with their originality and passion,” said Susan Barry, President and CEO of the Community Foundation of Louisville. “While this award focuses on a single artist and a single project, it has the potential to make a much greater impact. By helping Adrienne develop professionally to realize her full potential, she will be empowered to share her gifts with other artists and the Louisville community.”

2016 M.A. Hadley Prize Winner
Rebecca Norton

2015 M.A. Hadley Prize Winner
Julie Leidner

"The Hadley Prize enabled me and my collaborator Katy Delahanty to travel to Brooklyn to attend the 2015 New York Art Book Fair and Conferences at P.S.1 MoMA. There we engaged in discussions with notable art book scholars, and immersed ourselves in panels about the way that books function in the 21st century--particularly through the lens of visual art--and how books can become art exhibitions in and of themselves. We visited relevant art exhibitions all around New York City, and made connections with other artists and book publishers. This experience opened our eyes to the complex history of art books—from the legacy of Olympia Press in Paris in the 1950’s, to the present-day Badlands Unlimited book series created by artist/activist Paul Chan—and gave us a toolkit for developing our own forthcoming art book. Katy and I returned from our trip to New York with new perspectives on the relationship between text and image, and a galvanized concern for the way that art books can function as agents of social change."

— Julie Leidner, 2015 Hadley Recipient

2014 M.A. Hadley Prize Winner
Tracy Pennington

“Winning the Hadley Prize was a game-changer for me, both professionally and personally. With funds from the award I was able to attend a weeklong intensive mosaic course under a mosaic master in Ravenna, Italy. Ravenna is known as the city of mosaic – a place to eat, sleep and breathe mosaic, which I wholeheartedly welcomed! The course taught me new techniques and theory, and equally important, I gained confidence and skill. In addition to hands-on art-making activities, I visited mosaic museums where I saw and studied myriad mosaic pieces from ancient Turkish carpets to crazy modern designs.

I left Ravenna with inspiration and aspirations. Professionally, the Hadley Prize award has afforded me a new level of credibility and it continues to lead me to art-making opportunities that would not have been likely without winning the award. Personally, I now find myself approaching my art with less insecurity and more boldness. I hope the winner of the 2015 award will have an experience as equally transforming as the life-changing encounters I experienced at the mosaic course in Ravenna, Italy.

Many thanks to the Community Foundation of Louisville and Louisville Visual Art for sponsoring the M. A. Hadley Prize – a potential game-changer for local artists!”

— Tracy Pennington, Mosaic Artist, 2014 Hadley Recipient

2013 M.A. Hadley Prize Winner
Susana Crum

“My proposal included three opportunities that would have both short- and long-term benefits to my career and experience as an artist, and for the community print shop and gallery, Calliope Arts, that I am starting with collaborator Rudy Salgado Jr.

Because printmaking incorporates a wide range of equipment and a diverse community of artists, it is of utmost importance to create as many connections with fellow printmaking studios (and individual printmakers) as possible, and to bring these ideas and methods of artistic support to Louisville.

The application described the award as providing a “tipping point” for a visual artist in Louisville. The elements within my proposal… will enrich and expand my artistic career and goal to run a printmaking studio. It moves my work forward in a way that I couldn’t without the prize.”

— Susana Crum, Printmaker, 2013 Hadley Recipient