Create Baltimore on Thursday announced the five finalists for the 21st annual Janet & Walter Sondheim Art Prize, one of the most prestigious honors in Maryland’s art scene.
They are: Thea Canlas, Leigh Davis, Brandon Donahue-Shipp, Curran Hatleberg, and Danni O’Brien.
The prize is presented by Create Baltimore in partnership with the Walters Art Museum and with support from the Maryland State Arts Council.
The winner of this year’s $30,000 award will be announced at the museum in August.
The finalists will exhibit their work at the Walters from June 25 through Sept. 13. They will work with Walters curators to select and install their exhibition pieces over the coming months.
Ahead of the awards ceremony, jurors will meet with each artist for up to 45 minutes in their exhibition space for a final interview to help determine who will be the recipient of this year’s prize.
Create Baltimore has provided the following biographies for the five finalists:
Thea Canlas (she/her) is a Filipina American artist whose conceptual, research-driven work explores the entanglements of diasporic Philippine identity through craft and material histories, sculptural objects, and installations. Thea received her BFA in Fibers from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2006 and her MFA from Emily Carr University of Art and Design in 2023. In 2024, Thea was selected as a semifinalist for the Janet and Walter Sondheim Art Prize and as a Ruby’s Art Award grantee. Her work will be in upcoming group exhibitions in the Trout Museum of Art, The Philipps Collection, and The Colby College Museum of Art. She currently works as a studio artist, freelance designer, and educator. @theacanlas.art
Leigh Davis (she/her) creates interdisciplinary projects to explore themes of grief, memory, and storytelling. Delving into how these shared human experiences shape our understanding of identity, over the last decade she has archived end-of-life experiences, shaping them into a diverse body of work spanning lecture-performances, films, installations, and sculptures which aim to illuminate the emotional complexities of grief and the construction of beliefs regarding consciousness. Davis’s current project explores elements of mourning and the spaces we embody in bereavement, as evolving technologies such as “griefbots” shift how we hold on, let go, and transform grief in a world mediated by digital systems. @leighdavisprojects Brandon
Donahue-Shipp (he/him) is a visual artist working in painting, assemblage, and public art. Donahue-Shipp received his BS from Tennessee State University and MFA from The University of Tennessee in Knoxville. He has exhibited nationally and internationally including the 13th annual Havana Biennial in Matanzas, Cuba in 2019. His works are included in public and private collections such as the Cordish Collection, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts Museum of Arts, and the David C. Driskell Center. @bdonahueshipp
Curran Hatleberg (he/him) is a photographer based in Baltimore. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including recent exhibitions at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the High Museum, MASS MoCA, the International Center of Photography and Higher Pictures. In 2019, Hatleberg was featured in the Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art. His works are held in numerous public collections, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, SF MoMA, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the High Museum of Art, among others. Hatleberg is the recipient of a 2024 Ruby’s Artist Grant, a 2023 Guggenheim Fellowship, a 2020 Maryland State Arts Council Grant, a 2015 Magnum Emergency Fund grant, and a 2014 Aaron Siskind Foundation Individual Photographer’s Fellowship grant. Lost Coast, his first monograph, was released by TBW Books in fall 2016, and his second monograph, River’s Dream, was published by TBW Books in 2022. He holds a BA in painting from the University of Colorado, Boulder and an MFA in photography from Yale University.
@_suttree_ Danni O’Brien (they/she) is an interdisciplinary visual artist based in Baltimore, Maryland. Their practice spans drawing, sculpture, ceramics, and installation, and is rooted in tinkering and queerness, concocting cyborgian objects and worlds. O’Brien’s work has been featured in solo exhibitions with Visarts, Ortega y Gasset Projects, Stone House Art Gallery (SHAG), the Museum of Contemporary Art Arlington, and Tephra ICA. They have exhibited in small-group exhibitions with Cleo Gallery, Belger Arts Center, Grizzly Grizzly, PFA Gallery, and Red Giant. Recent honors include the 2025 Trawick Grand Prize, a nomination for the 2025 Joan Mitchell Fellowship, and the Windgate Fellowship with Vermont Studio Center. O’Brien has been awarded artist residencies with PLOP, Art Farm, Wassaic Project, Stove Works, Byrdcliffe Colony, and the Elizabeth Murray Artist Residency. They earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in sculpture with a minor in art history from James Madison University in 2014. @danni_obrien_art
