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USC law professor Elyn Saks says she will use some of her prize money to continue her advocacy for the mentally ill. (Randi Lynn Beach / For The Times / August 19, 2007) |
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A Los Angeles artist who specializes in incorporating found objects into his pieces and a USC law professor whose own battle with schizophrenia has informed her advocacy for those suffering from mental illness are among the 24 winners of this year's "genius" grants from the MacArthur Foundation.
Mark Bradford, Elyn Saks and 22 other winners will each receive $500,000 over the next five years to spend any way they please.
FOR THE RECORD:
MacArthur 'genius' grants: An article in Tuesday's Section A on the awarding of the MacArthur "genius" grants said recipient Edwidge Danticat is 49. The novelist is 40. —
For Bradford, 47, the MacArthur award is the third major prize he has received in the last three years. In 2006, he received the $100,000 Bucksbaum Award from the Whitney Museum of American Art and the $50,000 United States Artists fellowship given by a consortium of foundations.
Bradford said Monday that he always has a moment of self-consciousness when he receives such an award, then realizes he got it for what he does -- not for himself specifically. "I say, 'Well, this is why I got the award, so I am just going to keep doing what I do.' "
What he does is construct massively scaled, abstract collages that he assemblesfrom signs and other materials collected mostly from his neighborhood in South Los Angeles.
Times art critic Christopher Knight said in an interview Monday: "Bradford has developed a marvelous method that fuses collage, which sticks together fragments of found images and signs, and decollage -- its opposite -- which tears images and signs asunder. His subjects are small, like daily life in an urban neighborhood, and monumental, like Hurricane Katrina and the trauma of an entire city. The work holds in tension a continuous cycle of society coming apart at the seams, patching itself back together and then coming apart again."
Among Bradford’s recent projects was a 22-foot-high, 64-foot-long ark constructed from salvaged plywood barricade fencing that he shipped to New Orleans last year for an exhibit commemorating Katrina. In April 2008, Bradford made a Katrina-themed installation on the roof of a gallery across the street from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The piece -- an enormous SOS sign visible only from the air -- said simply "Help us."
Saks, 53, suffered from schizophrenia all her life, but kept it hidden while excelling in her academic studies, receiving a philosophy degree from Oxford University and a law degree from Yale University before joining the faculty at USC. She is also an adjunct professor of psychiatry at UC San Diego, where she does research about society's rejection of the mentally ill and how high-functioning schizophrenics cope.
Saks came out of the mental health closet with her 2007 memoir, "The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness." The book described the night terrors she had suffered throughout her life, her earlier beliefs that she had mentally caused the deaths of thousands of people, and the often-inhumane treatment she had received at mental health facilities.
Saks said in an interview Monday that she would use at least some of the prize money to extend her memoir by interviewing other people with schizophrenia who are doing well.
"When I'm traveling, people always say, 'You're unique.' Well, I'm really not," she said. "I would just like to tell other people's stories as well to further give people hope and understanding. . . . Some of their stories are just so inspirational."
The awards have been given for nearly three decades by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation "to celebrate and support exceptional men and women of all ages and in all fields who dream, explore, take risks, invent, and build in new and unexpected ways in the interest of shaping a better future for us all."
Lynsey Addario
35, a photojournalist in Istanbul documenting humanitarian crises.
Maneesh Agrawala
37, a UC Berkeley computer vision technologist devising new ways to visualize complex information.
Timothy Barrett
59, a University of Iowa papermaker preserving traditional Western and Japanese techniques.
Mark Bradford, Elyn Saks and 22 other winners will each receive $500,000 over the next five years to spend any way they please.
FOR THE RECORD:
MacArthur 'genius' grants: An article in Tuesday's Section A on the awarding of the MacArthur "genius" grants said recipient Edwidge Danticat is 49. The novelist is 40. —
For Bradford, 47, the MacArthur award is the third major prize he has received in the last three years. In 2006, he received the $100,000 Bucksbaum Award from the Whitney Museum of American Art and the $50,000 United States Artists fellowship given by a consortium of foundations.
Bradford said Monday that he always has a moment of self-consciousness when he receives such an award, then realizes he got it for what he does -- not for himself specifically. "I say, 'Well, this is why I got the award, so I am just going to keep doing what I do.' "
What he does is construct massively scaled, abstract collages that he assemblesfrom signs and other materials collected mostly from his neighborhood in South Los Angeles.
Times art critic Christopher Knight said in an interview Monday: "Bradford has developed a marvelous method that fuses collage, which sticks together fragments of found images and signs, and decollage -- its opposite -- which tears images and signs asunder. His subjects are small, like daily life in an urban neighborhood, and monumental, like Hurricane Katrina and the trauma of an entire city. The work holds in tension a continuous cycle of society coming apart at the seams, patching itself back together and then coming apart again."
Among Bradford’s recent projects was a 22-foot-high, 64-foot-long ark constructed from salvaged plywood barricade fencing that he shipped to New Orleans last year for an exhibit commemorating Katrina. In April 2008, Bradford made a Katrina-themed installation on the roof of a gallery across the street from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The piece -- an enormous SOS sign visible only from the air -- said simply "Help us."
Saks, 53, suffered from schizophrenia all her life, but kept it hidden while excelling in her academic studies, receiving a philosophy degree from Oxford University and a law degree from Yale University before joining the faculty at USC. She is also an adjunct professor of psychiatry at UC San Diego, where she does research about society's rejection of the mentally ill and how high-functioning schizophrenics cope.
Saks came out of the mental health closet with her 2007 memoir, "The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness." The book described the night terrors she had suffered throughout her life, her earlier beliefs that she had mentally caused the deaths of thousands of people, and the often-inhumane treatment she had received at mental health facilities.
Saks said in an interview Monday that she would use at least some of the prize money to extend her memoir by interviewing other people with schizophrenia who are doing well.
"When I'm traveling, people always say, 'You're unique.' Well, I'm really not," she said. "I would just like to tell other people's stories as well to further give people hope and understanding. . . . Some of their stories are just so inspirational."
The awards have been given for nearly three decades by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation "to celebrate and support exceptional men and women of all ages and in all fields who dream, explore, take risks, invent, and build in new and unexpected ways in the interest of shaping a better future for us all."
Lynsey Addario
35, a photojournalist in Istanbul documenting humanitarian crises.
Maneesh Agrawala
37, a UC Berkeley computer vision technologist devising new ways to visualize complex information.
Timothy Barrett
59, a University of Iowa papermaker preserving traditional Western and Japanese techniques.
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