Each year, as a way of supporting visual arts in the community, the Allied Arts Association awards an annual scholarship to a Columbia Basin College student and to a student working towards a master’s degree in fine arts.
This year’s scholarships went to Cheyenne Storer, a student attending CBC, and Aunde Cornely, an MFA student attending Goddard College.
Inspired by a simple fascination with the human form, Cheyenne Storer began drawing at a young age. She often tried to recreate people she had seen, finding that every person has an irreplicable individuality. Storer’s penchant for finding the beauty in those around her eventually spread to other organic life, such as foliage and florals.
Storer also states, however, that while she is always able to find beauty in others, she struggles to find it in herself. She uses art to explore her own vulnerability and to attempt to find the beauty she sees in others in herself. Art allows Storer to express herself, but she also hopes to use her art to reach out and connect with others. Through art, she can normalize and destigmatize mental illness, and she can let others know they are not alone.
Aunde Cornely, the MFA scholarship recipient, is earning her degree in interdisciplinary arts with a decolonial arts praxis concentration. For the past 13 years, she has lived on an island in the Salish Sea. Her work is inspired by the shifting nature of land, sea and sky, both in her current home of Washington and in her ancestral home of Ireland. Cornely is interested in the relationships between people, places and plants, as well as how these relationships reflect identity and embody culture.
Cornerly’s photography has been displayed regionally around the Pacific Northwest. Currently, she is creating new photographic work from Ireland and developing a short animation inspired by Irish myth, folklore, geology and archaeology.
The Allied Arts Association’s scholarship exhibition will be on display at the Gallery at the Park from April 6 through April 30.
