The Baltimore Office of Promotion & The Arts (BOPA) is proud to announce that LaToya M. Hobbs is the winner of the 2020 Janet & Walter Sondheim Artscape Prize. The coveted $25,000 prize was presented at a virtual award ceremony on Saturday, July 25, streamed on BOPA’s YouTube and Facebook pages.
“I am so excited, so happy and just filled with so much gratitude,” said Hobbs during the award ceremony. “It is an honor to continue in the tradition of the Sondheim Award and an absolute pleasure to share my work with you.”
LaToya M. Hobbs (Baltimore, MD) is an artist, wife, and mother of two currently living and working in Baltimore, MD. She received her BA in Painting from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and MFA in Printmaking from Purdue University. Hobbs’ work deals with figurative imagery that addresses the ideas of beauty, cultural identity, and womanhood as they relate to women of the African Diaspora. She creates a fluid and symbiotic relationship between her printmaking and painting practice producing works that are marked by texture, color and bold patterns. Her exhibition record includes several national and international exhibits. Hobbs’ work has also been featured in Transition: An International Review, a publication of the W.E.B. Dubois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University. Other accomplishments include a 2019 Individual Artist Award in the Works on Paper category from the Maryland State Arts Council, a 2019 Artist Travel Grant awarded by the Municipal Art Society of Baltimore and she is the recipient of a 2020 Artist in Residence award at the Joan Mitchell Center in New Orleans, LA. Additionally, Hobbs devotes her time to teaching and inspiring young artists as a Professor at the Maryland Institute College of Art. Hobbs’ winning Sondheim Artscape Prize gallery is available for viewing here.
The five remaining finalists – Miguel Braceli, Hoesy Corona, Phylicia Ghee, Muriel Hasbun, and the artist group strikeWare, consisting of Mollye Bendell, Jeffrey Gangwisch, and Christopher Kojzar – each received an M&T Bank Finalist Award of $2,500. Semifinalists will be awarded a $500 honorarium, also partially financed by a gift from M&T Bank this year. Works of art by the winner and finalists are on view in a virtual exhibition available at www.promotionandarts.org through Monday, August 31, 2020.