Madison Artists Sandra Schoen and J. Myszka Lewis Win $10,000 Forward Art Prize

Madison Artists Secure $10,000 Forward Art Prize Amid Funding Shortfalls

Madison artists Sandra Schoen and J. Myszka Lewis have been named the 2026 recipients of the Forward Art Prize, a $10,000 unrestricted grant awarded to local visual artists. The selection, announced this November, comes at a time when the regional arts community continues to grapple with the realities of limited state-level financial support. As reported by The Cap Times, the prize serves as a direct intervention in an environment where artists often find themselves operating with little institutional backing.

The Forward Art Prize was established in 2019 to provide meaningful resources to local creators. This year’s cycle saw 81 applicants, an uptick from the 73 artists who applied in 2025. For winners like Schoen and Lewis, the funding is more than just a financial boost; it is a validation of the labor required to sustain a creative practice in Wisconsin.

“It’s so special that the prize is specific to this region, because the arts are not valued in Wisconsin,” Lewis noted. “If you look at state funding, it’s one of the lowest of all 50 states.”

The Human Stakes of Creative Labor

For Sandra Schoen, an art teacher in the McFarland School District, the prize offers a moment to pause and reflect on the evolution of her work. Schoen, who earned her BFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, spent years balancing the demands of motherhood, teaching, and her own artistic output. Her current work, featured in the “Women’s Work” exhibition at Giant Jones Brewing Co., explores the psychological transition from youth to midlife through architectural forms.

“I think people complain a lot about getting older, and there’s lots of things that are not great about it,” Schoen said. “But there’s some things that are wonderful about it too, like this confidence and courage to do other things.”

Schoen’s approach to her craft is deeply integrated into her professional life. By bringing her paintings into her middle school classroom, she bridges the gap between professional fine art and early education, fostering conversations about visual literacy with students as young as five. This commitment to community engagement is a recurring theme for the Women Artists Forward Fund, which was founded in 2017 by Bird Ross and Brenda Baker to address gender inequity in the contemporary art world.

Remixing Nature and Time

J. Myszka Lewis approaches her art through the lens of digital manipulation and historical reference. A curator at Tandem Press with an MFA from UW-Madison, Lewis creates large-scale, mixed-media paintings that deconstruct natural elements. By scanning textbook illustrations and layering them with adhesive vinyl stencils and semitranslucent acrylics, she creates compositions that feel both familiar and impossible—arrangements of flora and fauna that could never exist in the same space at the same time.

Beyond her physical canvases, Lewis has turned her attention to video work, which she describes as an intentional rejection of the rapid-fire consumption habits encouraged by social media platforms like Instagram. Her work demands a slower, more deliberate engagement from the viewer.

“It’s asking you to really slow down and spend time with it,” Lewis said. “It’s so against everything in our world where you just swipe past and look at the next thing in half a second.”

Community Strength in an Underfunded Sector

The selection process for the prize was overseen by a jury of regional art leaders, including representatives from the James Watrous Gallery, UW-Madison’s woodworking program, and the City of Madison’s arts administration. Karin Wolf, the city’s arts and culture administrator, observed that both winners share a preoccupation with the tension between structure and decomposition, a thematic choice that resonated with the jury during this current, often turbulent, historical moment.

The Women Artists Forward Fund has now distributed over $160,000 to artists in the region, with Dane Arts contributing $40,000 to that total. Beyond the two top prizes, the fund also recognized five finalists—Jennifer Bastian, Garit Grimm, Leslie Iwai, Sarah McRae, and Kelly Jean Ohl—with $1,000 awards each. These disbursements highlight a quiet but persistent effort to build a local infrastructure for artists who might otherwise remain isolated.

As Schoen pointed out, the prize does more than provide capital. It builds a network for those working outside of major commercial hubs. “One of the hardest things when I first started showing work is that I didn’t know anybody,” she said. “I think the Forward prize really brings a sense of community, and community brings strength.”

The “Women’s Work” exhibition, featuring the winning pieces and the work of other applicants, remains on display at Giant Jones Brewing Co. through Nov. 28, offering a rare, concentrated look at the state of contemporary art in Dane County.