Among the 18 artists who were recently awarded a California Community Foundation (CCF) Fellowship for Visual Artists, three are CalArtians: Rosha Yaghmai (MFA 07 Art), Kang Seung Lee (MFA 15 Art) and Mara De Luca (MFA 04 Art).

The Fellowship for Visual Artists was launched with a large contribution from the J. Paul Getty Trust and is sustained by donors from across Los Angeles. Since 1988, CCF has awarded more than $5.5 million to more than 300 visual artists. This year, the fellowship’s unrestricted grants totaled $450,000 dollars.

Yaghmai is a sculptor whose practice is rooted in psychedelic concepts. “The artist uses foreignness and estrangement as a way to open up the possibility of a connection to other temporalities,” according to Yaghmai’s artist statement. Her show, Miraclegrow, is currently on view through March 30 at The Wattis Institute in San Francisco.

Originally from South Korea, Lee is a multidisciplinary artist living and working in Los Angeles.

From Lee’s artist statement:

For the past few years, the primary focus of my work has been the creation of critical/cross-cultural/queer histories by researching, excavating, and appropriating images/text from public and private archives (art/artifact collections, publications, libraries, etc.). This process allows alternative historical and personal voices, counter-narratives and strategies to emerge. It places emphasis on marginalized individual experiences and personal histories that disturb structure and order of the traditional archive and challenge singular mainstream knowledge/history.

He recently had a solo exhibition at One and J. Gallery in Seoul, South Korea. The show, Garden, featured drawings, archival installation and videos works on the late Derek Jarman and Joon-Soo Oh, both gay rights activists who died from AIDS complications in the 1990s.

De Luca is a Los Angeles-based abstract painter, whose work is “inspired by the city of Los Angeles: its aesthetic and conditional extremes – landscape, light and urban context as well as psychological, emotional and spiritual impact,” according to her artist statement.

De Luca’s show, Lightbridge, opened on Sunday, Feb. 3 at the Hunter Shaw Fine Art gallery in Los Angeles. Additionally, the artist has had exhibitions at the Irvine Fine Arts Center, the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Edward Cella Art + Architecture, Quint Contemporary Art, La Jolla, Otis in LA and the Palm Springs Art Museum.

Check out the CCF website for the complete list of this year’s Fellowship for Visual Artists recipients.