The Eben Demarest Trust advisors selected Rebecca Campbell of Los Angles, California as recipient of the 2011 grant to an individual artist or archaeologist. Campbell seeks to create a series of paintings and sculptures based on the environment and rituals that texture her Idahoan heritage. Campbell received the Master of Fine Arts in Painting and Drawing from the University of California, Los Angeles. She has had solo exhibitions at the Ameringer-McEnery-Yohe gallery in New York City, the LA Louver Gallery in Venice, California, and at the Cordell Taylor Gallery in Salt Lake City, Utah. Campbell will use the Trust’s grant to create a new series of paintings and sculptures entitled “The Potatoes Eaters.” With the series, she hopes to “dig for the root of identity.” In his letter of support for her application, Adam Price, Executive Director of the Salt Lake Art Center, described Campbell as “one of the brightest young American painters working today.” (To see more of Campbell’s work, visit: http://www.rebeccacampbell.net .)
 

The Eben Demarest Trust supports the work of independent creative artists and archeologists from across the United States. Each year, the Trust awards one grant in the amount of $13,000 to an artist or archeologist to support the creation of new work. The Trust was established by Miss Elizabeth B. Demarest in 1939 in the name of her father as an expression of their shared interest in the arts and world cultures. For many years, Miss Demarest taught a course on the History of Civilization at the institution that has become Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She envisioned the Trust as a means of providing financial freedom for individuals to devote themselves to work in the arts and archeology. Since its establishment, some forty-six individuals from diverse artistic disciplines and the field of archaeology have been supported by The Eben Demarest Trust. Past grantees include: painter Jackson Pollock (1948), poet Robert Duncan (1975), sculptor Carol Rubenstein (1979), painter Brendan O’Connell (2003), and dancer/choreographer Alex Ketley (2010). 
 

Eligibility: Recipients must have produced significant work in their chosen fields. The Trust does not consider unsolicited proposals; each year Trustees accept nominations from a rotating pool of nominators from established nonprofit arts and cultural organizations.