HBU art student receives Jack Cowan Scholarship

10/27/2009

The Recreational Fishing Alliance (RFA) Foundation has awarded a $2,500 art scholarship to Houston Baptist University student Joel Stanulonis. The scholarship is named for famed outdoors and sporting artist John P. (Jack) Cowan, who passed away in 2008. For more than three decades, Cowan was Texas' preeminent outdoor and sporting artist, and his works are featured in major museums and private collections around the nation. The RFA Foundation established the scholarship to encourage art students who focus on outdoors and sporting art.

"Jack Cowan's ability to capture the spirit of Texas' vast wild areas and the Texas sportsmen and women who trek those areas has seldom been matched," noted Dan Bulla, RFA-Texas Board of Directors. "We intend to use the Jack Cowan Scholarship to encourage young artists-in-training to pursue outdoors art and continue Jack's tradition of immortalizing wild Texas."

Stanulonis, whose work was selected through a blind competition in which entries were not identified by artist name or university, is a sophomore art student in the Honors College at HBU. His landscapes caught the award committee's attention, particularly for his ability to capture the light and texture unique to wilderness areas.

"I would like to thank Mr. Bulla and the RFA Foundation for the honor of receiving this scholarship; it is a great blessing to my family and me, as well as an encouragement for me to continue developing my painting skills," said Stanulonis.

In addition to Stanulonis and Bulla, Kitty Allen, daughter of artist Jack Cowan; Michael Collins, director of the HBU School of Art; and Dr. Diane Lovell, dean of the HBU College of Arts and Humanities attended the award ceremony in the University Academic Center Gallery on the HBU campus.

Houston Baptist University is a Christian liberal arts university dedicated to the development of the intellect, the moral character, and the spiritual lives of its students. HBU offers what few other faith-based colleges or universities can - a dynamic learning environment on a diverse, real-world campus located in one of the nation's largest and most international cities.