2023 Mature Women Grant Recipients
The NLAPW recently selected three outstanding women to receive the biannual Shirley Holden Helberg Grants for the Mature Women. Congratulations to the recipients!
Art: Nikki Painter
Nikki Painter is a Virginia artist inspired by the natural world. Currently she is working on a body of collaged drawings on paper portraying invented gardens. The body of work, titled “Night Gardens,” was born while Painter attended an artist residency, and continues to inspire her with its unique balance of colorful vibrancy grounded by dark, handdrawn patterns.
Throughout her career as an artist, Painter has attended a number of residencies, which she describes as important touchpoints in her career. She is using her NLAPW grant to attend a residency at Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She is hoping that the residency will result in forming relationships with other artists from across the country, fostering new conversations about art.
Painter’s work has been in numerous group exhibitions, including shows at the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art and at the Daegu Art Center in South Korea. She has had solo shows at Shockoe Artspace, COOP Gallery, and Purdue University’s Patti and Rusty Rueff Galleries. Her work is part of public and private collections, including the Capital One building in Richmond and the permanent collection of the American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center.
Letters: Kate McQuade
Kate McQuade is the author of the story collection “Tell Me Who We Were” (William Morrow/HarperCollins, 2019) and the novel “Two Harbors” (Harcourt, 2005). Her fiction, poetry, and nonfiction have appeared in Black Warrior Review, Harvard Review, Memorious, Shenandoah, TIME Magazine, and Verse Daily, among other publications.
Her work has been supported by the Sustainable Arts Foundation; the Mass Cultural Council; Best American Short Stories (2020 Distinguished Story); and fellowships from MacDowell, the Women’s International Study Center, and Yaddo.In 2023, McQuade was named a Jack Hazard Fellow by the New Literary Project, an award honoring writers who are also teachers.
McQuade’s work often explores the way trauma, gender, and the natural world interact. Her current novel, “Hollow Arts,” a loose retelling of the Frankenstein story, is about the ethics of making art and making children in a world that is ending. Born and raised in Minnesota, McQuade holds degrees from Princeton University and the Bread Loaf School of English. She teaches at Phillips Academy, Andover, where she lives on campus with her family.
Music: Michelle Green Willner
Michelle Green Willner’s evocative and award-winning works, “filled with story, emotion and humanity,” have been commissioned and performed internationally. Her pieces widely address abstract instrumental ideas, poetry, folklore, prayer, and Judaic historical subjects. She often collaborates with visual artists, dancers, poets, filmmakers, and writers in a variety of styles.
Green Willner’s accolades include 11 ASCAP Plus awards, two ASCAP Foundation Grants to Young Composers, Society for New Music’s Brian M. Israel Prize, SOCAN’s Serge Garant Award, Shalshelet’s 6th International Festival of New Jewish Liturgical Music, and the WORD Grant: The Bruce Geller Memorial Prize. She has also received various fellowships, including Max Helfman Music Fellow, Creative Inquiry Fellowships, June in Buffalo, Wellesley Composers Conference, ASCAP/Fred Karlin Film Scoring Workshop, Mellon Foundation, and Columbia University’s President’s Fellow.
Green Willner grew up in Toronto, Canada, and received her undergraduate degree from the University of Toronto and her Doctor of Musical Arts (DMA) from Columbia University. She always welcomes new projects, including speaking engagements, conducting, and collaborating with other artistic minds.