September 20, 2024
As Trustee of the Ingrid Nickelsen Trust I am asked, “why would we build a website at this time 18 years into our work of fulfilling Ingrid’s last wishes of giving grants to women artists? Why now? Why at all?”
Good question, since Ingrid’s untimely death in 2005, when we started on this journey of administering the Trust, based on Ingrid’s wishes of having “Liz’s Painting Women disburse”, we have repeatedly returned to the simplicity of our mission: to give the remainder of Ingrid’s estate away. Not to advertise, build the fund, commission artworks, or buy paintings of Ingrid to be owned by the Trust.
For nearly two decades we have carried on quietly, discreetly, not taking applications nor accepting solicitations, but keeping our eyes, ears and hearts open to discovering women artists in our community who were deserving of an award. With our finger on the pulse we have discovered there is no shortage of qualifying women artists, and those awards have ranged from lifetime achievement recognition, to acknowledging and encouraging young, emerging artists; to annual awards to students represented at the College of the Redwoods Juried Art Exhibit and Cal Poly Humboldt Graduate Arts Exhibit, to assisting with the purchase of equipment and supplies, to Fire Arts Memberships, to easing the burden of medical emergency expenses, to supporting local art galleries and arts organizations during Covid, and to supporting women who need encouragement to get back to the studio after enduring a personal hardship.
Each year we review our list of new and past considerations and it's been painful at times to stay within our annual allotment of funds and not include everyone on the current list.
And then, the real joy and reward of facilitating Ingrid’s wishes come alive as we make the discretionary phone calls to unsuspecting women, announcing who we are, who Ingrid is, why we are calling, and ultimately the award we are offering. The call often goes the same way: the receiver has not heard of me, nor of Ingrid Nickelsen or the Trust and is clearly sending a vibe that she’d like to end this unprovoked solicitation and hang up. Until I mention the dollar amount.
As if on cue, our newest awardee gasps, asks, “Wait. What? Can you hold? I need to get a pen and paper. Who are you? Oh my god! Are you kidding? I can’t believe this!” And now the tears come as I, too, am grinning ear to ear. One call after another becomes the highlight of my day, too.
“Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh! I’m so flustered. I’m almost crying. Thank you so much! This is so fabulous. I’m very rarely speechless. WOW! Oh my gosh.”
“Oh my God (while crying)! That’s so cool – I’m so honored. I love you! I love everybody!”
“Oh my God – that is thrilling. Thank you so much! I am humbled by this – it comes at a really good time.”
“Oh my God (through tears)! Oh my! WOW! I’m just in shock. You’re so kind. I’m incredibly honored and humbled. There are so many women deserving of this award”.
“Are you kidding me? I wanna cry – this couldn’t have come at a better time.”
“Are you kidding me? Such great news. I’m shocked! I’m stunned. Thank you! Oh my God! I still stunned and SO grateful. Thank you again. This means more than words.”
“My art is keeping me alive. I started taking classes and it’s been my sanctuary. This will allow me to continue. Oh my God! I really needed that. I’m in class and I’m crying. Thank you.”
“Whoa… Gosh. What a huge honor. I thought you had to apply for a grant. I’m honored to be a part and to think of Ingrid.”
“Oh my God! I’m overwhelmed. This is probably one of the biggest moments in my career, with Ingrid involved. It’s already changed my life. A huge weight has been lifted. Now I’m on fire and ready to paint.”
“Thank you so much, thank you so much, thank you so much. So overwhelming to me. This is such a huge help. It’s a wonderful thing. It’s so much more than the money.”
“Woohoo! Thank you so much!”
“Thank you! I really, really, really appreciate this! I work A LOT and this acknowledgement means a lot to me. The significance of Ingrid’s Legacy is not lost on me.”
“You made my day and my year! Art saves my sanity. I’m 78 years old, single, with no family. I think about who to leave my home/studio/estate to and assumed I’d go through HAF but now I’m excited to learn of another possibility, like Ingrid’s will.”
“OH MY GOODNESS! I think I’m gonna fall over. I’ve been feeling discouraged, so this is really a boost!”
“I’m so surprised! I don’t know if you knew, but I got really, really sick and am dealing with cancer. I’ll be okay. This comes at a perfect time – to get back in the studio with inspiration.”
I never tire of making these joyous calls and making someone’s day miraculous, feeling Ingrid herself glowing with pride as her own goal – stated many times around the dining table with “Liz’s Painting Women” about the need to create a fund to support women artists – is at last, and again and again fulfilled.
But we still do not take solicitations, so back to the question, “why do we need a website?” Because after nearly two decades of giving over 150 awards totaling nearly $350,000, Ingrid’s story of ending in a tragic death has transformed to a growing, joyous, magnificent legacy. A legacy of awarding, supporting and validating women artists, just as Ingrid dreamed of last time we spoke.
We want to share not only the story of this legacy but also the astounding body of work, in the form of paintings, that Ingrid left behind. Paintings that were lovingly gifted by Ingrid to 39 recipients that she named in her handwritten will.
We also want to continue to support women artists already awarded by including links to their websites, so others can discover and support their work.
As we come to the sunset of the Ingrid Nickelsen Trust, for Ingrid’s money is finally running out, we want to insure that Ingrid’s story – and ours – is remembered, and ideally inspires others to pay it forward. We have witnessed first-hand the power of validating women artists, yes, with money, but I say ‘validation’ as the key word because it makes a difference when an artist is acknowledged, seen and encouraged to continue creating her art. Working as an artist can be, and usually is, a solitary pursuit, rife with self-doubt. Validation, particularly financial, can make the difference between giving up or returning to the studio, to – God forbid! – getting a ‘real job’ and abandoning the pursuit of art altogether.
It's been an incredible journey for us to implement and fulfill Ingrid’s last wishes, and a great honor for me to serve as Trustee. The struggle for me, if there is one, is seeing the lifespan of the Trust near its end, for in a few years’ time we will have given the entirety of the remainder of Ingrid’s estate in annual grants to women artists, just as directed on Ingrid’s handwritten will, using artists charcoal on a Six Rivers topographic map while unable to move herself to safety – and life – from the wilderness trail on which she had that fatal fall.
As we fulfill Ingrid’s wishes, my own creep in: to have the Ingrid Nickelsen Trust continue in perpetuity. If this does not happen during my time as Trustee, then I am inspired to include that simple sentence in my own final Will, “Give the remainder of my estate to women artists.” Then my dreams, like Ingrid’s, will be fulfilled.
Thank you, Ingrid, for the honor of serving you, and for the inspiration to pay it forward.
Carrie Grant
Trustee, Ingrid Nickelsen Trust
ART BEAT 2022: The late artist’s work and juried all-women show
By Tamar Burris (reprinted with the author’s permission)
Ingrid Nickelsen was not originally from Humboldt County but her legacy here is strong in her landscape paintings capturing the raw beauty of rivers, creeks and wilderness areas both familiar and remote. It is also alive in the estate Nickelsen bequeathed to help nurture local women artists after her death in 2005. Since 2007, the Ingrid Nickelsen Trust has gifted more than $300,000 dollars to women artists in the Humboldt area via annual grants.
To honor the 15th year of the organization this year, the group of women involved with the Trust (informally known as “Liz’s Painters,” thanks to comradery built during wilderness painting retreats held by Liz Harwood Pierson and Terry Oats in 2004 and 2005) sought to do something larger for the community. Teaming up with the Morris Graves Museum of Art, they laid the groundwork for a monthlong celebration of women artists and Nickelsen herself. The result is a pair of exhibitions, Ingrid Nickelsen Trust Juried Exhibition: Celebrating 15 Years of Ingrid Nickelsen’s Legacy and its companion show Use This Map to Help You Explore: The Landscapes of Ingrid Nickelsen. They are an ode to both a remarkable woman no longer with us and remarkable women artists working in Humboldt today.
The exhibit also marks the first time Nickelsen’s work has been on public display since 2006. Originally from the Boston area, the artist was a hiker and backpacking enthusiast who made her home in Eureka in the 1960s. Primarily a ceramicist, she took up landscape painting two decades later and used her treks into the wilderness to capture scenery in an extraordinarily unique fashion. She sometimes observed her chosen sites for several days at a stretch, painting the different conditions she saw with vivid hues and in translucent layers that made both water and earth seem to jump to life. A 2005 trek into the Siskiyou Wilderness proved her last when she injured herself from a fall. But even until her final moments, Nickelsen was dedicated to the local art community writing a will on the back of her trail map in which she detailed the use of her estate to fund women artists.
Since its beginnings, the Trust has been giving discretionary grants without solicitations for things like class fees, travel budgets, medical expenses, art supplies and the like. However, this is the first time the trust has organized a juried exhibition for money. “Each woman we have granted money to has a different need or reason for validation and financial recognition,” said trust spokesperson Carrie Grant. However, she said, “We have lost a few art galleries in the past several years and women have fewer places to show. We thought that an exhibit was a great way to allow all women artists in Humboldt County an opportunity to show their work.”
The juried show is also the first all-women art show at the museum. There was no entry fee for artwork and were shocked to receive 234 entries — more than double their expectation and the largest return on call for entries Humboldt Arts Council Executive Director-Curator Jemima Harr has seen in her 18 years with the museum. “To me, this is really uniting women artists in this community and that’s what it’s all about.” She added working with the trust on the exhibit has been an honor. “And to finally get artists and visitors coming in again the way we did before the pandemic is fabulous,” said Harr.
The exhibit’s call-for-entries drew works of art from all genres: paintings, textiles, ceramics, sculptures and more. The job of narrowing the field fell to judge and Humboldt-based abstract painter Joan Gold, herself a past grant recipient. “Joan is kind of the matriarch of women artists in Humboldt County,” said Grant, noting the museum staff and others working on the show are all women.
Gold walked slowly among them, considering and categorizing each piece with a sticky note. She knew what she was looking for but wanted to give each piece the study it was due. Color and use of paint and textures were priorities, and Gold was clear the winning pieces had to have intention and vision; they could not be “accidental” pieces. Additionally, they had to represent Nickelsen’s legacy in a way that felt fitting.
In the end, Gold selected 11 winners whose awards were presented during an Aug. 6 reception at the museum. The ten Ingrid Nickelsen Trust $500 award winners are: Trixie Galletti, Lori Goodman, Sherry Hazelton, Cheryl Peterson Rau, Laura Corsiglia, Anna Oneglia, Christy Tjaden, Shoshana McAvoy, Naomi Ruth Olsen and Carol Anderson. The winning pieces are all unique and represent different mediums – including Goodman’s hanging sculpture ‘knots, sticks, and stories” and Tjaden’s more abstract painting “Nostalgia as Landscape: Wandering in a Long Forgotten Love Song, She Found Two Snakes Where Once She Believed There Was A Road” – but each one exudes a richness of color and attention to detail reminiscent of Nickelsen.
The Juror’s Choice Award for $1,000 went to ceramicist Annakatrin Burnham, for her 2022 sculpture “Generations.” A complex cubic ceramic sculpture that hints of a crab pot in shape and nature, Generations is sublimely crafted with layers of texture and color that connect well to Nickelsen’s work. In expressing her gratitude, Burnham said the show “is a testament to our thriving community of women artists … I am both humbled and inspired even just sharing this vibrant space with so many of Humboldt’s talented women artists.”
The Morris Graves Museum of Art hosts Ingrid Nickelsen Trust Juried Exhibition: Celebrating 15 Years of Ingrid Nickelsen’s Legacy and Use This Map to Help You Explore: The Landscapes of Ingrid Nickelsen through Sept. 16, 2022.