Amy Beth Wright Wins Inaugural Wendy Wagner Foundation Creative Award

by Christopher Blay

The Wendy Wagner Foundation for Funding Creativity has announced that its inaugural award, The Wendy Wagner Foundation Creative Award, will go to Amy Beth Wright. The non-profit foundation’s mission is to provide ongoing support to creative women. It was established in 2018 to preserve the spirit, vision and legacy of Houston-based artist Wendy Wagner, who died in 2014. The award is an unrestricted $2,500 grant given to one female visual artist within the greater Houston area who demonstrates original expressions of contemporary art. (Wright’s 2018 exhibition  sPrinGeeY was one of Glasstire’s May 3, 2018 Top Five picks.)

Upon accepting the award, Wright wrote: “When I first moved to Houston as a 22-year-old artist, I looked to Wendy as an active role model in the community. Her creativity in cross-disciplinary work stemming through painting continues to inspire me. I’m honored to (in whatever way I can) help keep the conversation going around her work and be associated with her name.”

Wright will use part of the grant for her project Calendear, 12 large and 12 small-scale paintings she plans to exhibit in the future. In the meantime, Wright’s Main Street Projects show in the organization’s downtown lobby space opened after the Pride Parade on June 22. “I like that this show is an opportunity to engage a more public audience passing by on the street and pay tribute to summer, the 1969 Pride theme and my friends of a very spirited LGBQTIA+ community here that I love, and my new sweet and curious baby boy,”she says.

The deadline to apply for the next round of the Wendy Wagner Creative Award is September 15, and  is open to female contemporary visual artists, 21 years or older living and working in the city of Houston/Harris County. Individual artists and collaboratives working in all visual media and at any stage in their career are encouraged to apply here.

“I embrace youthful innocence through complex and accomplished artistic methods, both hand-made and high-tech. This has become my distinctive make-believe world that I express in painting, drawing, ceramic, soft sculpture and animation.”
– Wendy Wagner

For further questions, please email us at grants@wendywagnerfoundation.org.

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