Arts Commission is reporting the recipients of the 2024 Merit Awards.
The Merit Award program recognizes outstanding local literary, performing and visual artists, rewarding the many hours and personal resources each artist dedicates to their artform. Four awards are given: one $3,000 award, one $2,500 award, one $2,000 award and one $1,500 award.
Recipients are selected by a panel of renowned artists and cultural leaders from around the midwest, with a range of expertise across artistic disciplines. The 2024 review panel included Aliyah Khan–associate professor of English, and Afroamerican and African studies, and director of the Global Islamic Studies Center (GISC) at the University of Michigan; Alfonso Cervera–assistant professor at the Ohio State University and a first-generation Queer Mexican American performer, educator, curator and activist, and Kes Wanogho–an interdisciplinary vocalist, producer and filmmaker. Wanogho also is a 2022 Kresge Arts in Detroit Fellow and toured Germany as the Musicboard Berlin and Detroit-Berlin Connection’s premier artist-in-residence.
Local artists selected as finalists for the program are highlighted below. The awards were announced at the December 10 Arts Commission holiday reception.
About the Artists
Amy Beeler | $3,000 Merit Award recipient.
Beeler has been a professional jewelry artist for more than 20 years, showing and selling her work at art fairs nationwide. She has won numerous awards at art fairs, including 16 best of shows in her career. She has been part of many group exhibitions. Still, she is proud of her two solo shows with jewelry, including the 2014 exhibition Passion and Adornment at the University of Maine Museum of Art. In 2022, Beeler decided to follow her dream of pursuing her Master of 3D Studio Art with a concentration in jewelry at Bowling Green State University. During this time, she created a new body of work that uses cotton clothesline sewn into innovative jewelry forms and found the confidence to branch out into sculptural forms and wood working.
Tom Marino | $2,500 Merit Award recipient.
Marino has worked in clay for more than 30 years, exploring techniques with a focus on high-fired (Cone 10) vessel forms. He has developed many of his own glazes and colors to create luminous and contrasting surface effects. Marino’s professional background in chemistry, and interest in science, contemporary art and personal studies, all inform his ceramic aesthetic.
Lou Krueger | $2,000 Merit Award Recipient Krueger is a Professor/Director Emeritus in the School of Art at BGSU. Prior, he taught at Syracuse University and served as Chair of Art Media Studies and Head of Photography. Krueger received his degrees from NIU (BFA Metals, 1970) (MFA Photography, 1976). Krueger is a recipient of Ohio Arts Council and New York State awards for individual excellence in art. His recent piece, “Moon Over Manhattan” was accepted /published in Corning Museum of Glass’, New Glass Review 43. Other glass exhibitions include: “Glass International Invitational 51,” Habatat Gallery, Detroit; Museum of Glass, Tacoma, Washington; “Emerging Glass,” Kent State University; “Embodiment,” Pittsburgh Glass Center; The Morgan Gallery of Contemporary Glass, Pittsburgh. He had solo exhibitions of his photography at the Soho Photo Gallery in New York City, and Los Angeles Center for Digital Art; other exhibitions venues: Nikon House and ICP in NYC, Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago.
Joan Brown | $1,500 Merit Award Recipient Brown is a ceramic artist from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, currently residing in Bowling Green. She received her BFA in ceramics from the University of the Arts in 2013, and her MFA in ceramics from Bowling Green State University in 2018. Brown primarily uses porcelain and creates small scale sculptures focusing on memories and the permanence of memories through the ceramic form.
The Arts Commission Merit Awards program is sponsored by the Ohio Arts Council, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Chapman Family and Margy Trumbull.
