A fellowship of the Conru Art Foundation
Make the work
that endures.
The Seattle Prize gives a small number of invited artists what serious representational work actually requires: a private studio, months of uninterrupted time, peers who hold a high standard, and a public audience waiting at the end.
- By invitation
- A short list of artists, chosen for the work they are already reaching toward.
- Pioneer Square
- Studios above the galleries of the Occidental Fine Arts Center, in the oldest part of Seattle.
- Shown in public
- Finished work goes on the wall downstairs, in rooms the city walks through.
Why artists say yes
Four things ambition
cannot do without.
Most artists are not short on talent or ideas. They are short on uninterrupted time, a serious room to work in, and the certainty that someone will see the result.
I
A room of your own
A private studio at the Occidental Fine Arts Center, in a building full of artists holding themselves to the same standard.
II
Terms, not evenings
Time measured in months of uninterrupted work — long enough to attempt the painting you keep postponing.
III
One Signature Work
Not a body of small pieces. A single ambitious project with enough artistic and human weight to earn a year of attention.
IV
An audience waiting
Every term ends in a public exhibition. The work leaves the studio, goes on a gallery wall, and meets people.
The film · 17 minutes
Artists in their own words.
The inaugural fellows talk about the training, the doubt, and the stubbornness behind the work — and what a year of real studio time made possible. A documentary by Kelly Guenther.
The inaugural cohort
The company
you would keep.
Six artists set the studio culture at Occidental in the program's first year. Later fellows are named when the invitation is ready for the public.
Inaugural fellows
Emma GarayDiego GlazerNicholas EiseleJackson WredeDaniel ZallaLukas Freudenberg
The Signature Work
Not more work.
The work.
Each fellow proposes a Signature Work: the ambitious project they would attempt if time and doubt were not in the way.
Nobody assigns the subject. The artist brings the idea; the proposal process sharpens its purpose, its scale, and its path to a finished public presentation.
Beyond the fellowship
Your work joins
a public collection.
The Prize is one program inside the Occidental Fine Arts Center — a restored 1890s building in Pioneer Square with working studios upstairs and galleries, museum rooms, and public exhibitions downstairs.
A walk through the building with Andrew Conru, founder of the Conru Art Foundation
Finished fellowship work enters the foundation's collection and hangs in those public rooms, alongside exhibitions, workshops, and First Thursday crowds.
It is seen by visitors, school groups, collectors, and other artists — a real audience, in a real place, on an ordinary afternoon.
Studios, galleries, and museum rooms in a restored 1890s building on Occidental Square.
Exhibitions, workshops, artist talks, and First Thursday openings, season by season.
Where finished fellowship work goes on view for the public at the end of each term.
The foundation behind the building, the collection, and the programs that surround the Prize.
Rehumanism · an open framework
Begin with the
human question.
Rehumanism is an invitation, not a doctrine or a test of belief. It asks what a painting can offer another person — beauty, truth, recognition, repair, delight — and gives artists a shared language for examining their own answer.
Volume One is a six-workshop course and workbook. Volume Two is a studio reference of subjects, source stories, master paintings, examples, and exercises.
Two shapes of fellowship
The right amount of time for the work.
The fellowship is shaped around the project, not the calendar. Some work wants one concentrated push; some needs a year to find its footing.
Four months
One focused term for an invited artist to develop and complete a defined Signature Work, ending in public presentation.
Full year
Three connected terms for Senior Fellows whose project and practice call for a longer arc of research, making, and exhibition.
Details are settled privately with each invited artist.
For prospective fellows