Maggie Michael wins Trawick prize

Maggie Michael won this year's Trawick prize. Yay Maggie! Some props to her in yesterday's Washington Post.

"Start Here" won Washington artist Maggie Michael the annual Trawick Prize best-in-show award, an honor that's given to an area artist and comes with a $10,000 purse. To make the six-foot-wide canvas, Michael deployed her signature latter-day abstract expressionist moves, including graffiti-style spray painting, pours and drips. A wooden stirring stick from the hardware store joins the paint, nails and charcoal fizzing on the painting's surface; a tennis-ball-size hole pierces its center. As with much of Michael's work, "Start Here" embraces the tradition of abstract painting -- and then jabs it.

The title "Start Here" comes directly from a stir stick used to stir, scrape and pull paint. On the stick there is a TrueValue hardware logo and the words "Start Right. Start Here." Using text in my paintings connects to the proliferation of texting and instant messaging. I attached the stir stick to the upper left side, although the words could suggest that you start at the hole at the painting's center.

The hole in "Start Here" can be an escape or entry point, a philosophical ellipse. I have felt powerless, angry and destroyed when I read what is written in the papers -- about our country's war or other disasters that seem out of control. Drilling the hole was, on a small scale, a way of taking back, releasing and providing an escape. The hole is a reference to a Robert Gober sculpture of the Virgin Mary with a hole cored through her center. It's also a reference to Chris Marker's 1962 film, "La Jetée," because the hole is meant like an escape or entry, so a viewer could connect to the film where a man travels forwards and backwards through time.

Many of my paintings are like editing a dialogue and interpreting a world of information. There are references to art, wars, relationships, philosophy and the kinds of roles we enact, both private and public.

-- Interview conducted and condensed by Jessica Dawson

You know, maybe I am remembering this wrong, but I believe the first hole she ever drilled into a canvas was in the piece I bought from her solo show at G Fine art a couple years ago. I like where she's taken this concept. BTW, Maggie's husband Dan Steinhilber won 2nd prize in the contest! Keeping it in the family this year. Congrats to you both!