Brandon-based artist wins first-ever annual Vermont Prize

Will Kasso Condry, 44, is the first-ever winner of the Vermont Prize, created earlier this yr as a collaboration amongst 4 artwork teams: Burlington Metropolis Arts, The Brattleboro Museum & Artwork Middle, The Present and Corridor Artwork Basis. 

The prize carries a financial reward of $5,000, and Condry can be featured on the Vermont Prize web site and on social media. 

Condry is an Afro-futuristic-style visible artist, graffitist and artist educator with a profession spanning over 20 years. 

He says he creates fictional tales “based mostly in a really Black actuality,” and makes use of artwork as a type of self-expression and likewise as a solution to carry “the nice traditions of the griots of West Africa” to Vermont communities. A griot is a West African storyteller, singer, musician, and oral historian.

Though he utilized for the prize with out expectation of profitable, Condry says the award will encourage him to remain curious as an artist and can assist him flesh out new concepts. 

In creating the Vermont Prize, “what we wished to do was have fun the very best of artwork being made in Vermont at this time,” mentioned Rachel Moore, govt director of The Present, which is predicated in Stowe, and to focus on the significance of nationwide and international consciousness of the artwork that’s occurring in Vermont. 

The Vermont Prize obtained 250 functions from practically all components of the state, Erin Jenkins, gallery supervisor and advertising and marketing coordinator for Brattleboro Museum, mentioned in an emailed assertion. Artist functions have been reviewed for perceived creative excellence by a juried group of 5 folks — one consultant from every of the partnered artwork teams, and one visitor juror. 

“Will Kasso Condry impresses in each method,” Kelly Baum, this yr’s visitor juror and the Cynthia Hazen Polsky and Leon Polsky Curator of Modern Artwork at The Metropolitan Museum of Artwork, mentioned in a press launch. “For Condry, it’s abundantly clear that the shape and content material of his work issues simply as a lot as how, why, and for whom he makes that work.” 

Condry has taught programs on graffiti tradition, its politics and its relation to hip-hop at Middlebury School, and led elementary college classes on extra normal artwork types, in response to the announcement. He obtained an training in positive artwork and illustration at The School of New Jersey earlier than learning below graffiti artist Daniel “Pose 2” Hopkins and later Dave McShane at Mural Arts Philadelphia. 

“Condry makes use of acrylic, ink, and marker to conjure up new, extraordinary types of Black humanity,” Baum additionally wrote. “Adapting African traditions, his ‘greater than people’ are nearly all the time armored and ornamented and immersed in fantastical, otherworldly landscapes. Collectively they amaze and encourage. Condry is an distinctive artist doing distinctive work in and for Vermont.”

Condry’s submitted items could be seen in his artist profile on the Vermont Prize web site. 

“It is simply that I get pleasure from it. I get pleasure from making artwork,” Condry mentioned.