ArtSake

The 2009 Artist Fellowships in Crafts, Film & Video, Music Composition, Photography, Playwriting, and Sculpture/Installation have been announced.

MCC’s Artist Fellowships are anonymously judged and provide unrestricted grants (this year, $10,000 for fellows and $1,000 for finalists) to individual artists in recognition of artistic excellence. We profile awarded artists and share samples of their work on the Gallery @ MCC, and we share the current accomplishments of past fellows and finalists in Fellows Notes.

Here’s a full list of this year’s fellows/finalists and panelists.

Images (top to bottom): Janet Echelman (Crafts & Sculpture/Installation Fellow ‘09), SHE CHANGES, NET NO. 2 (2008), Polyester fiber, steel 50 x 150 x 150 meters; Patricia Shannon (Sculpture/Installation Fellow ‘09), OPEN HOUSE (2008), cut newspapers, acrylic gel, binder’s board 17 in x 24 in x 22 in; Camilo Ramirez (Photography Fellow ‘09), FLIGHT SUIT (2008), Archival Inkjet Print, 16 in x 20 in; Niho Kozuru (Sculpture/Installation Fellow ‘09), LIQUID SUNSHINE SERIES (2008), cast rubber, variable size (smallest, H 22 in to Largest, H 40 in); David Prifti (Photography Finalist ‘09), EMRYS AND MR. FRENCH (2007), Tintype 8 x 10 inches; Angela Cunningham, YELLOW NESTING SET (2007), Ceramics 6 in x 13.5 in x 13.5 in

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All women artists, curators and art professionals are invited to submit curatorial proposals for a one-month exhibit to be held at A.I.R. Gallery in 2010. Work in all media and materials may be submitted.
Deadline: July 1, 2009

En Foco’s New Works Photography Awards Fellowship is an annual program selecting three or more U.S. photographers of Latino, African, or Asian heritage and Native Peoples of the Americas and the Pacific. Three photographers will be selected from an open and national call for entries to receive a $1,000 honorarium, photo-related supplies, technical assistance, a photographer’s page on enfoco.org, an article in Nueva Luz, an En Foco membership, and a culminating group exhibition in New York.
Deadline: July 31, 2009.

The L.A. Center for Digital Art announces an international call to artists. All styles of artwork and photography where digital processes of any kind were integral to their creation are acceptable: digital art stills of any kind, digital photogaphy, short experimental time based video, video loops, mobile media, interactive media, and internet art.
Deadline: July 20, 2009.

Image Credit: New York Zamkin Press. 1939

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We’ve posted the July installment of Fellows Notes, a page that, like the space-saving desk pictured above, is densely packed with intriguing stuff.

This month’s current news from past MCC fellows and finalists includes Peggy Diggs, Colleen Kiely, and Lisa Olstein, plus info on group shows featuring an almost unfathomable number (well, 17) of past fellows/finalists.

And while you’re feeling newsy, check out the equally packed June Fellows Notes.

Image: Peggy Diggs (Drawing Fellow ‘02, Sculpture/Installation Fellow ‘07), WORKOUT (RED) (2006) cardboard, paint, hardware 31 in x 55 in x 15 1/2 in. Pieces from Peggy’s WorkOut series are featured in Gaia and Global Warming: Women Artists Champion Nature at the Center for the Arts in Jackson, Wyoming, through September 28.

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The Massachusetts Audubon Society’s original founders in 1896 set out to stop the slaughter of birds for use in women’s fashions. Fast forward to today; Mass Audubon is the largest conservation organization in New England, and because of its founders’ efforts, many a happy bird in Massachusetts continues to puff out its little chest and sing its delightful songs.

I suspect the founders would be delighted to know that tonight at the Mass Audubon’s Moose Hill Wildlife Gallery is an artist reception for the exhibit Spontaneous Synergy: Texture, Light and Color, featuring the art work of Sheila Pallay, Amanda Galvin-Johnston and Diane Chester-Demicco. The reception is from 6-8pm. The show runs through August 10, 2009. Moose Hill Sanctuary is located at 293 Moose Hill Street in Sharon, MA. For more information, call 781-784-5691.

Bonus points: guess the official state bird and you get an imaginary feather in your cap.

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In today’s New York Times you might have seen a piece about Patti LuPone and her response to audience rudeness. Well, la diva famously suffers no fools gladly and put her foot down. In today’s paper she issues a stern warning about the use of electronic devises by audience members during artists’ performances. Apparently the use of cameras, cell phones, videos, etc. during live performances have reached epic proportions despite the pleas of theaters before a performance begins.

ArtSake wants to know if you have experienced these issues either as an audience member or in presenting your own work, and more importantly, how did you deal with it?

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Once upon a time, before banana seats, playing cards jammed into wheel spokes, and U-shaped bike locks, there were two artists engaged in a fierce competition with one and other. And then, on a fine summer day, they both realized that life is not a race against each other; it’s a race to meet deadlines.

So here’s a few to drive by and see if one might rock your world:

The Salem Arts Association Gallery is inviting artists to submit work for their upcoming exhibition Blush.  All artists are invited to submit up to two (2) works. Works may be in any medium and include 2-D, 3-D, sculptural works, photography, mixed media, crafts and experimental works. Deadline: June 29, 2009

Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation has announced a new Guest Artist Initiative Program for American colleges and universities to encourage the hiring of professional stage directors and choreographers as guest artists. The SDCF Guest Artist Initiative Program will provide the selected school with funds of up to $5,000 to match the fee budgeted for the guest artist. A second grant of $1,000 will be awarded to the runner-up applicant school. Deadline: October 15, 2009

Hello, Berkshire County. The Boschen Fund For Artists is accepting grant applications from visual artists, writers, craftspeople, installation, new media and performance artists, as well as interpretive artists working in dance, music and other areas of performance. Applicants must live in the Berkshire County region and must have been full-time residents of the Berkshire Taconic region for two years prior to applying or demonstrate significant connection to the area. The Boschen Fund is a fund of Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation.  Deadline: July 1, 2009

The Cape Cod Chamber of Commerce, Coastal Community Capital, Homebuilders and Remodelers Association of Cape Cod, Cotuit Center for the Arts, and Cultural Center of Cape Cod are creating a Sourcebook of Handcrafted Items with Architectural Elements designed for architects, designers and builders.  Artists must live or have their main place of business on Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard, or Nantucket and be able to supply photographs of work installed in homes or businesses.  The photographer selected needs extensive experience in interior shots, with particular skills in lighting and staging. For full requests for proposals email clare@capecodchamber.org

Image above: The first gymnacyclidium for ladies and gentlemen : opening exhibition and hop at the grand velocipede academy, or gymnacyclidium, containing over 8,000 square feet for riding, with gallery and seats for about 1,500 people / by the Pearsall Brothers at the Apollo Building, corner Broadway & 28th Street on Monday evening, April 5th, 1869 … [New York, N.Y. : Pearsall Brothers, 1869]

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In the Mass Humanities Public Humanist blog, Massachusetts filmmaker Larry Hott talks about leaving the legal profession to become a filmmaker after seeing documentary films inspire meaningful change:

I returned to western Massachusetts to join Florentine Films, a documentary company that was just getting started and I plunged into my first film, “The Old Quabbin Valley,” about the battle over diverting sullied Connecticut River water into the pristine waters of the Quabbin Reservoir. It took me three years of fundraising, filming and editing to complete the production and when it was done it became an organizing tool, just as I had hoped. Eventually Massachusetts passed laws to prevent diversions of water from one region to another and I am proud to think the film had a little something to do with that. It was a while before I realized that the time necessary to produce and distribute the film was about the same, if not longer, than the length of a lawsuit. By then it was too late; I had been infected with the film disease and I’ve never been cured.

Later in the post, he does add some sobering perspective by observing that docs like “Sicko” and “An Inconvenient Truth,” while finding huge audiences, can’t yet claim to have solved the problems they address. Even so, his post is a great reminder of art’s potential to be (as he puts) “a tributary carrying water toward a river that needs an increase in flow.”

Here’s to those swelling rivers.

Read the full post.

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Lisa Olson, who recently became of member of the artists-run Bromfield Gallery in Boston, lets us peer into her studio, where various machineries (both mechanical and creative) produce enigmatic works of art.

Most of my current work is on paper: artists’ books, prints, drawings or collage. I often juxtapose text and image as parallel elements, allowing both to supply meaning. I began making books because of this interest in integrating text into visual art, but now find myself bringing text back out of the book–often incorporating it into collage or prints.

I believe that the best artwork comes from a combination of intuition and thoughtful direction, but I often find that the little critics who sit on my shoulder and ask “what does it mean?” or “why does this matter?” try to take charge. To compensate, several times a week I allow myself to work on quick unedited collaged projects, purely fluent and intuitive. This summer I have been making a series of small 3″ x 5″ collages which incorporate fragments of text and image and also simple 4-6 page collaged books with no or minimal text. The rules are simple: I am not allowed to spend more than a two or three hours on each and I am not allowed to think beyond the simple exercise of the small work–it often takes effort for me to accept that everything shouldn’t be better or bigger.

I have two letterpresses in my studio, a small tabletop Kelsey platen press and a larger Vandercook proofing press. The Kelsey dates from the 1940’s and came out of a commercial print shop on Cape Cod. I purchased it from John Barrett at his Letterpressthings resale shop in Chicopee.

The Vandercook is newer, it was made in 1969, and moved around among businesses in the Los Angeles area before winding up in a barn in northern California. The International Printing Museum in Carson, CA acquired it with other printing equipment and because this type of press was already represented in their collection, I was able to buy it. Both presses came to me encrusted with grease and soot and ink, and the countless hours that I spent cleaning them with a toothbrush, steel wool and WD40 not only taught me something about how they worked mechanically but also felt like a devotional act. These types of old presses are still around but becoming more difficult to find, and I am thrilled to have both of them in my studio.

I am currently working on a series of images, dark drawings and etchings of animal forms silhouetted on white paper. I’ve made dozen of these images in the last year and don’t seem anywhere near finished yet. I’m still considering what they might mean and why they have captured my attention. I think that there is something about the dual nature of the images — both monster and sweet thing — and about their formal properties, the shapes created and the lovely repeated graphite and ink marks that represent fur and make up the forms. I think they work as a grouping rather than as individual images and perhaps are also about quantity and accumulation, themes that I have frequently worked with in the past.

All images courtesy of Lisa Olson. You can see some of Lisa’s finished works at her Bromfield Gallery artist page.

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The Dance Complex has a call out to choreographers for their Shared Choreographers’ Concerts program. The guest mentors for this concert program are Brian Feigenbaum and Shawn Mahoney.  If you are looking to receive supportive feedback on your choreography as well as having the work produced in a concert, then shake a leg and apply. In addition, they offer a small honorarium for participation (unlike Google and their recent call to illustrators).

National Association of Latino Arts and Culture Fund for the Arts is now accepting applications from Latino artists. In order to apply, you must be a member of NALAC and be at least 18 years old. Whether working solo or in ensembles, Latino artists in the U.S. may apply for support for professional or career development, for creation, development, and presentation of work, and for research or general project needs. Grants range from $2,500 to $10,000 each. In addition, an established Latino artist will be awarded the Master Artist Grant of $20,000 for his/her work in the community and to provide support that enables the Master Artist to serve as a mentor to another artist in the community.  Deadline: July 13, 2009

Arts Exchange IndieArts Fest ‘09 is fast approaching. The Arts Exchange is a marketplace offering artwork, locally-designed jewelry, clothing, accessories, silk-screened posters and T-shirts, handmade crafts, cards, prints, vinyl records, compact discs, vintage clothing, eyeglasses, jewelry, books, etc. This is an open arts event; all art & craft work must be of your own creation, no mass-produced work will be accepted.  Download the IndieFest ‘09 vendor application. Deadline: July 15, 2009. For more information, please contact Rebecca Siemering at 401.621.6127 or email at rebecca@artsandbusinessri.org.

Riders on the Train, organized by Boston-based artist Nancy Davies, is an art project seeking your creative work made while [or in response to] riding on public transportation [subway train or bus]. The project will be shown at Axiom Gallery. Here is the information you’ll need to participate. Deadline: July 31, 2009.

Photo Credit: from Illustrated Portfolio of Artistic Dancing by Mrs. H.A. Foreman. Portland, Ore. : Peaslee Bros., c1894.

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Shh. People are trying to read around here.

The Newton Free Library is currently looking for artist submissions. Their art galleries present an opportunity for artists to exhibit their work and have their work seen by people who actively value reading and the importance of public libraries in civic life.  Be sure to check out their past shows to see if this is your cup of tea. And here are the specifics on the submission requirements.

Photo credit: Courtesy of the Newton Free Library.

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