Four WashU alumni win $25,000 each to advance artistic practice
2026-04-09 • Sam Fox School
From left: Jakob Brugge, “Welcome to the Party,” 2019; Isaac Soh Fujita Howell, “Nec plus ultra, or my lonely particle,” 2025; Mariana Parisca, “En Funci?n del Inter?s Nacional,” 2022; Steph Zimmerman, “All hail the skunk oil queen,” 2023
The Sam Fox School has selected Jakob Brugge, BFA ’12; Isaac Soh Fujita Howell, BFA ’15; Mariana Parisca, BFA ’15; and Steph Zimmerman, BFA ’13, as winners of the 2026 Stone & DeGuire Contemporary Art Awards. This year’s awards mark the first time four alumni have been included, each of whom receive $25,000 to advance their artistic practice. The awards are open to WashU BFA and MFA alumni working in sculpture, painting, printmaking, photography, and time-based media, and winners are chosen by a faculty and alumni jury.
Jakob Brugge’s practice engages fabrication, materials, and forms in sculpture as a conversation about social, political and historical issues. His materially emphatic works ask questions about ideology and articulated shared values. He will be participating in an inaugural exhibition in fall 2026 at the KANAL Centre Pompidou museum in Brussels. In 2027, Brugge has a solo exhibition at the Art & History Museum in Brussels, curated by Fabian Flückiger. He plans to work with the museum’s plaster cast workshop, creating an exhibition that places historical plaster casts in contact with his own cast forms and molds.
Isaac Soh Fujita Howell’s intensely realized paintings are investigations into twenty-first century discontent, self-isolationism, and social-media malaise; exploring themes from post-apocalyptic fables and interstellar sci-fi narratives to critiquing socio-political torments. Howell plans to use the award to prepare for a group show in Shanghai and subsequent solo shows in China and Italy.
Mariana Parisca’s work investigates and transforms the relationship between belief and materiality within the context of globalized capitalism. She examines how abstract belief systems become materialized in bodies, economies, and objects through experimental photography, video and sculpture. Parisca plans to continue sharing her research of the Venezuelan economic crisis through the production of a new edition of her book, “Parakupa Vena” and a solo exhibition at River House Arts at Virreina Artist Residency in Bogota, Colombia.
Steph Zimmerman is an interdisciplinary artist working with mass-produced consumer materials and organic elements to explore material identity, instability, and transformation. The work examines how value is produced and withdrawn, and how consumables, like bodies, are shaped by the systems that circulate them. Zimmerman’s plans to create a new series of sculptural works inspired by a photograph of slapstick actor Buster Keaton. These works will be exhibited at Bushel Collective in New York in 2027.
Jakob Brugge, “Welcome to the Party,” 2019, Cotton, Variable Dimensions (75 x 160 x 10 cm per unit)
Isaac Soh Fujita Howell, “Nec plus ultra, or my lonely particle,” 2025, Acrylic on canvas, 72 x 84in
Mariana Parisca, “En Función del Interes Nacional,” 2022, 22 x 17 in each, made in collaboration with Luis Vasquez La Roche, archival cardstock, silkscreened, rideshare lights, wood, car battery
Steph Zimmerman, “All hail the skunk oil queen,” 2023, painted felt, paper, wood, foam, steel, rubber, paper clay, polyester, plastic, 32 x 25 x 11 in
About the Awards
Nancy Stone, BFA ’70, and Lawrence DeGuire, BFA ’70, met as undergraduate students at WashU. The husband-and-wife duo, who were married at Graham Chapel on campus, began their artistic collaboration in 1972. They enjoyed a long career as Stone & DeGuire, exhibiting widely along the West Coast. The annual awards honor that legacy while allowing recent and mid-career alumni to continue pushing forward their unique artistic practices. Learn more about the awardees and past recipients here.