Rachel Niffenegger, Jonathan Meyer, Michael Zapata, and Jon Siskel recognized for innovation, past achievements, and community contributions
The Helen Coburn Meier and Tim Meier Charitable Foundation for the Arts today released the names of their 18th Arts Achievement Awards. Their Foundation recognizes Chicago-based artists in mid-career who push the artistic envelope.
This year, the Foundation is giving out four awards to Chicago area artists in several genres, a total of $160,000 in awards. The 2023 awardees are visual artist Rachel Niffenegger, dancer and artistic director Jonathan Meyer, author Michael Zapata, and documentary filmmaker Jon Siskel.
Rachel Niffenegger uses curious and experimental media to create interior psychological portraits. Rooted in expanded painting her specters are pulled from the folds of psychedelic clay, spiraled through mirrored metal work and meticulously rendered in colored pencil from an archive of visions conjured in concert with generative technologies. Her work has been
included in museum shows in the Netherlands, Chicago, New York, Berlin, Liverpool, Denver, and Milwaukee, among others. Niffenegger, born in Evanston in 1985, received her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and her MFA from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. Rachel attended the de ateliers residency in Amsterdam NL in 2011. She is represented by Western Exhibitions in Chicago and lives and works in Chicago. Helen observes, “Rachel’s work elongates, distorts and ultimately reveals the truth she explores.” Learn more at Western Exhibitions.
Jonathan Meyer builds idiosyncratic movement palettes as crafts plying the waters of strange lands that can delight, baffle, and open new vistas. Jonathan Meyer discovered dance at Oberlin College with Nusha Martynuk and Ann Cooper Albright. After a capoeira immersion in Brazil with Maestre Medicina, they completed a Cunningham-focused program at UNC Greensboro. Meyer has danced with The High Risk Group, Pierre-Paul Savoie, Asimina Chremos, and The Seldoms. In 2002 Meyer created Khecari in Taos, New Mexico. In 2006, they moved to Chicago, and re-launched Khecari with co-director Julia Rae Antonick. Meyer has been a CDF Lab Artist and RDDI participant, and an artist in residence at Djerassi, Ragdale, Hambidge, Abigail, The Kohler Art Center, Links Hall, The Chicago Cultural Center, and The Chicago Park District. Khecari means, “In a given moment, there is an
infinite empty field rife with possibility. Movement limits the limitless and makes nothingness something; it creates.” Helen says, “Jonathan’s work reveals the world we can experience in the voids of living.” Learn more at Khecari.org.
Michael Zapata’s fiction, which is formed from stories of exile and unstable realities, has been described in the New York Times as “hypnotizing” and in Axios as an important “part of the growing Latinofuturism movement.” He is a founding editor of MAKE Literary Magazine and the author of the novel The Lost Book of Adana Moreau, winner of the 2020 Chicago Review of Books Award for Fiction, finalist for the 2020 Heartland Booksellers Award in Fiction, and a Best Book of the Year for NPR, the A.V. Club, Los Angeles Public Library, and BookPage, among others. He is on the faculty of StoryStudio Chicago and the MFA faculty of Northwestern University. He also currently serves on the boards of Stories Matter Foundation and MAKE Literary Productions. As a public-school educator, he taught literature and writing in high schools servicing drop out students. He currently lives in Chicago with his family. Helen observes, “magic, soul and love permeate Michael’s work.” Learn more at michaelzapata.com.
Jon Siskel is a documentary filmmaker committed to telling stories that have entertained and inspired audiences since he and Greg Jacobs co-founded Siskel/Jacobs Productions in 2005. Siskel has produced and directed documentaries that have played across the United States and around the world. Siskel’s films have showcased subjects as disparate as a high school poetry slam competition (Louder Than a Bomb) a biography of Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens (Unexpected Justice), and have explored issues at the intersection of education and social justice (No Small Matter). Jon is an Emmy award winner for 102 Minutes that Changed America, a documentary about the events of September 11, 2001, produced for the History Channel. Siskel’s work has also been featured on Discovery, A&E, OWN, PBS and National Geographic. Jon’s latest film is the short documentary, MEMORIAL, about the July 4th mass shooting and one of the memorials that reflected the power of healing through art, love and community in his hometown, Highland Park, Illinois. Helen praises Jon, saying, “He brings a gift of vision and empathy to the discovery of truth.” Learn more at siskeljacobs.com.