BALTIMORE, MD (June 10, 2025)– The Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance (GBCA) and the William G. Baker, Jr. Memorial Fund (Baker Fund) are thrilled to announce the 2026 Baker Artist Awardees, recognizing six extraordinary artists or artist duos whose work exemplifies mastery of craft, depth of artistic exploration, and unique vision.
Erin Fostel (Visual Arts – 2D), McCormack and Figg (Visual Arts – 3D), Kei Ito (Interdisciplinary Art), Alex and Olmsted (Performing Arts), and Don Lee (Literary Arts) will each receive a $10,000 Mary Sawyers Baker Prize, while Lynn Tomlinson has been selected to receive the annual $40,000 Mary Sawyers Imboden Prize, the largest art prize in the region.
Tomlinson is an extraordinary voice in contemporary animation: a filmmaker who works by hand, building living oil paintings from modeling clay, frame by frame, to explore what it means to share a planet with non-human life. She received a Mary Sawyers Baker Prize in 2022.
“Lynn Tomlinson’s work reminds us that the most urgent stories are often told most quietly,” said Connie Imboden, President of the Baker Fund. “Through her singular clay-on-glass process, she creates films that are at once handmade and timeless, inviting us to see the natural world with fresh eyes and real care. We are honored to recognize her with the Mary Sawyers Imboden Prize.”
For the first time in the history of the Baker Artist Awards, two of the six prizes are being awarded to artistic duos, McCormack and Figg (Jenn Figg and Matthew McCormack) and Alex and Olmsted (Alex Vernon and Sarah Olmsted Thomas), both of whom are also life and creative partners. The Baker Artist Awards has long celebrated the unique vision of Baltimore’s artists, and this year’s cohort highlights the particular alchemy that can happen when two people build a life and a practice together.
“This year’s awardees reflect the creative breadth of the Greater Baltimore region,” said GBCA Executive Director Jeannie Howe. “People around the country are talking about artists in Baltimore and this talented group proves just why.”
All six Awardees were selected through a two-tiered juried process from artists who created a free, online Baker Artist Portfolio at bakerartist.org. The 2026 Second Round Jurors were Kerry
Brougher, David E. Little, Amy Stolls, and previous Baker Awardees: Jonathan Latiano (2013), Paul Rucker (2015), and Shodekeh Talifero (2011).
2026 BAKER ARTIST AWARDEES
$40,000 Mary Sawyers Imboden Prize
Lynn Tomlinson (Film & Photography) Lynn Tomlinson is internationally acclaimed for her films made through a unique clay on glass animation method. She smears, smudges, and alters colorful modeling clay frame-by-frame like a moving painting, a handcrafted approach that brings her stories of impermanence, memory, and the natural world to life through shifting perspectives and fluid transformations. Collaborating closely with musicians, Tomlinson treats music as a storytelling partner to create an immersive, lyrical experience that deepens her films’ themes and sense of movement.
Her work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Centre Pompidou. The Elephant’s Song was an official selection at Annecy International Animation Festival in 2019 and is featured on Short of the Week, and her music video for Johnny Flynn and Robert Macfarlane’s Ten Degrees of Strange won Best Commissioned Film at the Ottawa International Animation Festival in 2021. Her films have screened in prestigious film festivals around the world, and locally at Maryland Film Festival and Sweaty Eyeballs Animation Festival. She has just completed a new animated documentary short, A Black Rail’s Tale, narrated by MacArthur fellow J. Drew Lanham. Tomlinson’s expanded animation practice includes fulldome films that have shown in planetariums and immersive domes worldwide.
The recipient of many awards for her individual films and body of work, Tomlinson has been a three-time Baker Artist Awards finalist and the recipient of the 2022 Mary Sawyers Baker Prize for Film; a Saul Zaentz Innovation Fellow; and a two-time Maryland State Arts Council Independent Artist Award-winner. She has held prestigious artist residencies in the United States and Europe and presented master classes and invited lectures internationally. Tomlinson is Professor of Film, Audio and Media Arts at Towson University, and works at her studio in Woodberry, Baltimore.
View Lynn Tomlinson’s Baker Artist Portfolio at bakerartist.org/portfolios/lynntomlinson
$10,000 Mary Sawyers Baker Prizes
Erin Fostel (Visual Arts – 2D) Erin Fostel is a visual artist who invites us to consider our relationships to the spaces we occupy and the transient beauty of everyday life. Drawing in charcoal, she focuses on imagery of the personal and the shared, from intimate home interiors to landscapes found during meandering walks. She holds a BFA in Drawing and Art History from the Maryland Institute College of Art. She has exhibited throughout the United States and Europe, and her drawings are in both public and private collections. Her studio is based in her hometown of Baltimore, MD.
View Erin Fostel’s Baker Artist Portfolio at bakerartist.org/portfolios/erinfostel
McCormack and Figg (Visual Arts – 3D) Jenn Figg and Matthew McCormack are collaborative, interdisciplinary artist-researchers investigating light energy and universal geometries. Selected exhibition venues include The Peale Museum, the Johns Hopkins Eisenhower Library, the Arlington Art Center, The Print Center, the Toledo Museum of Art, and the Art House at the Jones Center. Selected residencies and awards include the Maryland State Art Council Artist Grant, the Centennial Acadia National Park Artist in Residence, the Toolmaker Residency at Signal Culture, the Mesaros Visiting Artist at Kenyon College, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Artist Residency, and the MacDowell Colony Artist Residency. They have multiple permanent installations nationally, including Seagrass, an 80-foot structural chandelier in the Baltimore Visitor Center, inspired by the aquatic grasses of the Chesapeake Bay.
View McCormack and Figg’s Baker Artist Portfolio at bakerartist.org/portfolios/mccfigg
Kei Ito (Interdisciplinary Art) Kei Ito is an interdisciplinary artist whose work uses the conceptual framework of photography to visualize the invisible. Through camera-less photographic techniques, performance, artifacts, and site-responsive interventions, he creates installations that excavate hidden histories. As a third-generation atomic bomb survivor living in the United States, Ito draws on personal and collective memory to address nuclear history, intergenerational trauma, and environmental concerns. Engaging the language of monuments and memorials, his work invites reflection, healing, and dialogue around difficult histories. His work is held in collections including the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Norton Museum of Art, and Royal Ontario Museum.
View Kei Ito’s Baker Artist Portfolio at bakerartist.org/portfolios/keiito
Alex and Olmsted (Performing Arts) Alex and Olmsted, composed of Alex Vernon and Sarah Olmsted Thomas, is an internationally acclaimed puppet theater and filmmaking duo based in Baltimore, Maryland. They have been recognized by The New York Times, The Washington Post, and awarded four Jim Henson Foundation grants, two UNIMA-USA Citations of Excellence, and the Maryland State Arts Council Independent Artist Award. Tour highlights include the Festival Mondial des Théâtres de Marionnettes in Charleville-Mézières, France, the Puppet Festival Chuncheon in South Korea, HERE Arts in New York City, and the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. Alex and Olmsted is a resident company at Baltimore Theatre Project.
View Alex and Olmsted’s Baker Artist Portfolio at bakerartist.org/portfolios/alexandolmsted
Don Lee (Literary Arts) Don Lee is the author of the collection Yellow and the novels Country of Origin, Wrack and Ruin, The Collective, and Lonesome Lies Before Us. His most recent book, the story collection The Partition, was longlisted for The Story Prize. He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, an American Book Award, the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature, a Pushcart Prize, an O. Henry Award, and the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction. His short stories have been published in One Story, The Sewanee Review, VQR, The Georgia Review, The Southern Review, and elsewhere. He lives in Baltimore with his wife, the writer Jane Delury.
View Don Lee’s Baker Artist Portfolio at bakerartist.org/portfolios/donlee
Learn more about the 2026 Awardees and view their portfolios at bakerartist.org/awardees
ABOUT THE BAKER ARTIST PORTFOLIOS & AWARDS
The Baker Artist Portfolios and Awards were established by the William G. Baker, Jr. Memorial Fund and are a program of the Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance.
Created to support artists and promote Greater Baltimore as a strong creative community, the Baker Artist Portfolios are open to artists working in all disciplines who live and work in Baltimore City and its five surrounding counties, and have been viewed by hundreds of thousands of art lovers, critics, gallery owners, academics, and leaders in creative business in nearly every country around the globe. Artists who create a Baker Artist Portfolio are automatically considered for one of six annual Baker Artist Awards.
Since 2009, the Baker Artist Awards has recognized more than 168 artists and awarded nearly $1.5 million directly to artists in the Baltimore region, making it one of the most sustained and significant direct-to-artist prize programs in the country. Each year, selected artists share a total of $90,000 in prize money, in addition to receiving exhibition and showcase opportunities at major Baltimore institutions, including the Baltimore Museum of Art, where The Baker Artist Awards Exhibition is a celebrated biennial event. Prizes are awarded based on mastery of craft, depth of artistic exploration, and unique vision.
ABOUT THE GREATER BALTIMORE CULTURAL ALLIANCE
The Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance (GBCA) creates equity and opportunity In, Through,
and For arts and culture in Greater Baltimore. A leading nonprofit provider of services to artists and cultural organizations in the region, GBCA believes in unifying and strengthening all members of the creative community. We do this through marketing, education, financial support, and developing innovative programs that increase equity in the cultural sector and beyond.
Learn more at baltimoreculture.org.
ABOUT THE WILLIAM G. BAKER, JR. MEMORIAL FUND
The William G. Baker, Jr. Memorial Fund commits its resources to enhance the region’s economy and quality of life through investments in arts and culture, supporting artistic and cultural organizations and their partners through initiatives that enhance individual wellbeing and make Baltimore a more attractive place to live and work.
ABOUT MARY SAWYERS BAKER PRIZE
Mary Sawyers Baker was one of Baltimore’s early philanthropists who studied voice as a young girl in Paris and embraced the arts throughout her life. She established the William G. Baker, Jr. Memorial Fund in 1964 to honor her husband, a well-known Baltimore civic leader.
ABOUT MARY SAWYERS IMBODEN PRIZE
Designed to be transformational to the life and career of one exemplary artist, the Mary Sawyers Imboden Prize was first awarded to Joyce J. Scott in 2016. Mary Sawyers Imboden was the beloved niece of Mary Sawyers Baker. She served on the Fund’s Board of Governors from 1976 to 1999 and was instrumental in shaping its guidelines to better reflect her aunt’s wishes and to ensure the Fund remained innovative and responsive to the needs of Baltimore.
