Query posts by Custom Meta (checkbox) & Genesis Grid Loop

Question

I've been trying tons of things for the last 2 days. I'm at a standstill now. I read a ton of posts here but nothing has worked yet.

I have a CPT 'artists'. This CPT contains a custom field checkbox called Featured Artists 'ecpt_featured_artist'. Within the Genesis Grid Loop on the Artists archive page 'artists-archive.php' I am able to target the Featured Artist like this:

$featuredartist = get_post_meta($post->ID, 'ecpt_featured_artist', true); ?>
<?php if( $featuredartist ) {
    echo '<div class="featured-ribbon"><a href="';
    echo get_permalink();
    echo '"><img src="image-link-here" alt="Featured Artist Ribbon"></a></div>';
}

I'm currently using Bill Erickson's code to put the artists-archive in a grid... like this:

    function be_archive_post_class( $classes ) {
    $classes[] = 'one-fourth';
    global $wp_query;
    if( 0 == $wp_query->current_post || 0 == $wp_query->current_post % 4 )
        $classes[] = 'first';
    return $classes;
}
add_filter( 'post_class', 'be_archive_post_class' );

What i'm trying to accomplish: I want to query ONLY post with the checkbox checked, and display them in the Genesis Grid, on a page called Featured Artists. Right now i'm attempting to do that via a page template. If there is a better way altogether to accomplish this, I'm open to suggestions.

Right now, I can't even query the posts properly. My last failed attempt looked like this:

add_action('genesis_loop', 'gt_custom_loop');
function gt_custom_loop() {
global $paged;

    $args = array(
    'post_type' => 'artists',
    'key' => 'ecpt_featured_artist',
    'compare' => '=',
    'type' => 'CHAR',
    'value' => 1,
    );
    // Accepts WP_Query args 
    // (http://codex.wordpress.org/Class_Reference/WP_Query)
    genesis_custom_loop( $args );

}

Any help appreciated!

EDIT: I've reduced it down to minimal code ONLY in my functions.php file, with the page using the default page template.

This code now 404's me on my 'page' Featured Artists:

add_action( 'pre_get_posts', 'pw_filter_query' );
function pw_filter_query ( $query ) {
    if( $query->is_page('featured-artists')) {
    $query->set('post_type', 'artists');
    }   
}

What is going on!?

Answer 1

Well I don't know anything about genesis, but if it does indeed use WP_Query args, then your args array should be something like:

 $args = array(
    'post_type' => 'artists',
    'meta_key' => 'ecpt_featured_artist',
    'meta_value' => 1,
    );