Gulf Coast is proud to announce the winner of the 2022 Toni Beauchamp Prize in Critical Art Writing, Lauren Levato Coyne, for their essay "Queer Elegies and Climate Mourning: Marc Swanson's Memorial to Ice at the Dead Deer Disco" 

In its sixth year, the Toni Beauchamp Prize seeks to support young and mid-career art writers who combine scholarship and journalism, a unique voice, and literary excellence.

The two runners up include Daniel Gerwin for “The Myth About Having Children as an Artist" and Lisa Yin Zhang for "On the Asian Americanness of Paul Chan and Badlands Unlimited" 

Legacy Russell, on the winner:  
A thoughtful piece that embeds tender and timely questions on the intersections of mourning and desire, and where each finds its place through radical queer work. 

2022 Winner

“Queer Elegies and Climate Mourning: Marc Swanson's Memorial to Ice at the Dead Deer Disco" by Lauren Levato Coyne 

 

Lauren Levato Coyne (she/they) is a queer artist and writer whose transdisciplinary works focus on ecosystems, gardens, hybrid forms, and chimerism. She writes across forms of nonfiction and poetry and is the author of two poetry chapbooks, Marriage Bones (Fractal Edge Press) and at the hotel andromeda (dancing girl press), a collaborative art/writing folio project with Kristy Bowen. Her most recent art writing can be found in Sculpture and White Hot magazines. Levato Coyne's visual works include drawing, painting, costume making, photography, and sculpture. Her work is widely exhibited in galleries and museums.

Levato Coyne earned her MFA in painting from the Cranbrook Academy of Art. She holds a series of dual undergraduate degrees including writing & literature and gender & ethnic studies from Purdue University and political journalism from Georgetown University. She is currently a programming director at Ferrin Contemporary in North Adams, MA. 

2022 Honorable Mentions 

"The Myth About Having Children as an Artist" by Daniel Gerwin

Daniel Gerwin is an artist and writer based in Los Angeles. His 2019 solo show was reviewed in the LA Times, and his work has been written about in Frieze, ArtCritical, Hyperallergic, and other publications. He has curated three exhibitions in Los Angeles, taught painting, drawing, and theory, and writes regularly about contemporary art for Artforum and Hyperallergic, as well as catalog essays and other exhibition texts. He received his MFA from the University of Pennsylvania, his BA from Yale University, and taught at University of California Davis, University of the Arts, University of Iowa, and University of Pennsylvania. In 2004 he was awarded a residency at Blue Mountain Center, and in 2016 he was a Resident Fellow at the MacDowell Colony. 

 

“On the Asian Americanness of Paul Chan and Badlands Unlimited" by Lisa Yin Zhang  

Lisa Yin Zhang is an artist, curator, writer, and editor from Queens, New York. She is currently an assistant editor at frieze, and is working on a novel. 

 

 

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Thanks to everyone who entered the 2022 Toni Beauchamp Prize. The winning essays will be printed in the upcoming Spring 2023 issue of Gulf Coast, and online.