ArtSake

The 2011 MCC Artist Fellowship awards have been announced for Music Composition, Playwriting, and Sculpture/Installation. Applications for the MCC’s Artist Fellowship Program were open to all eligible Massachusetts artists.

A total number of 416 eligible applications were received; 86 in Music Composition, 124 in Playwriting, and 207 in Sculpture/Installation. See a complete list of this year’s fellows and finalists.

Read profiles of the fellows/finalists on Gallery@MCC.

Images: Elizabeth Alexander (Sculpture/Installation Fellow ’11), KEEPING UP APPEARANCES NO. 2 (2009), mixed media installation, variable dimensions; promotional image for PHOOLAN DEVI: THE BANDIT QUEEN by Shirish Korde (Music Composition Fellow ’11); Hannah Verlin (Sculpture/Installation Fellow ’11), BUSS (2010), Plastic tubes, glass beakers, cotton string, colored water, 16 ft high x 2 ft wide x 12 ft long (photos by Andy Pickering); Luke O’Sullivan (Sculpture/Installation Fellow ’11), LANDSCAPE XI (2008), screenprint on wood and steel, 51x41x82 in (photos by Tucker Houlihan).

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Cambridge Artists Visual & performing artists working in all media are encouraged to participate in the Cambridge Open Studios. Registration information.
Deadline: January 31, 2011

Film and Video Artists Central Productions has announced its annual open call for submissions to the 10th Annual Boston Cinema Census (BCC) hosted by the Brattle Theatre. The BCC is a curated showcase of the most interesting and innovative works produced by local emerging filmmakers, whether they are students, professionals, artists, or enthusiasts.
Deadline: February 15, 2011

Call to Artists Mobius is now accepting submissions for their second annual alternative experimental flower show, Knitted Flowers. Though the theme implies knitted media it is not limited to knits. It is open to all interpretations of “knit” or “knitted” and “flowers.” Contact cathy@mobius.org.
Deadline: February 20, 2011

Newton Artists Registration has begun for Newton Open Studios 2011 taking place May 14-15. Learn more.
Deadline: March 1, 2011

Artists and Curators The New Art Center in Newton is accepting proposals for group exhibitions. No restrictions on content, medium, or theme. Exhibition space is a converted church of approximately 1,800 square feet. Selected curators receive $1,000, promotional mailing and press.
Deadline: April 11, 2011

Call to Artists The Pawtucket Foundation Prize Juried Exhibition is now accepting submissions. Jurors will be Mim Fawcett, Executive Director of the Attleboro Arts Museum & Kenn Speiser, sculptor. The exhibit runs May 1-June 24. All media welcome. Open to all artists.
Deadline: April 13, 2011

Free Business Program Entrepreneurship for Artists is a free resource for artists working in any media funded by the Small Business Administration. The class offers training, coaching, and business support services. It is a 20-hour class held over 6 evenings, from 6–9 PM, at the International Institute of Boston beginning on 4/20/2011. The program will include one-to-one business and market planning assistance and referrals for additional auxiliary business services including graphic design, website design, marketing and business legal services. Contact Ryan Scott McDonnell at  rmcdonnell@iiboston.org.

Image credit: Image from the Walter Havighurst Special Collections Library at Miami University, Oxford, Ohio.

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The deadline for applications to the 2011 Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Fellowships Program in Crafts, Film & Video, and Photography is almost here: Monday, January 24, 2011.

If you are a Massachusetts crafts, film & video, or photography artist who meets the eligibility requirements, apply! If you know of anyone who fits said description, vigorously urge them to do the same.

The fellowships are anonymously-judged competitive grants for Massachusetts artists. Fellowships of $7,500 and finalist awards of $500 are awarded based solely on the artistic excellence of the work submitted. Check out our tips on applying.

Read full program guidelines, eligibility requirements, and application instructions and apply online.

Images: Tricia Lachowiec Harding (Crafts Fellow ’09), PUNCTUS (2007), 1 1/2×1 1/8×3/8 in; Rebecca Meyers (Film & Video Fellow ’09), still from LIONS AND TIGERS AND BEARS (2006); Eirik Johnson (Photography Fellow ’09), THE ROAD TO FORKS, WASHINGTON (2006), archival pigment print, 24×30 in.

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Don’t be frightened. Feed the monster clown!

Documentary Filmmakers The LEF Foundation‘s Moving Image Fund supports independent New England film and video artists creating new documentaries. The program has deadlines throughout the year. The deadline for Letters of Inquiry for the program’s Production and Post-Production grants is approaching. For Production, competitive grants of $15,000 support shooting picture and sound, equipment costs, materials, travel, and staffing (creative, technical, or otherwise). For Post-Production, competitive grants of $25,000 each support editing costs, rights, online, sound mix, color correction, transfers, and distribution strategy. Note: Applicants for Post-Production funding must be previous recipients of LEF support. Learn how to apply.
Deadline: Letters of Inquiry must be received by 5pm on Friday, January 28, 2011.

Call to Artists The Cape Cod Art Association is looking for artists to submit to their upcoming show 2011 Breath of Spring. Categories include oil/acrylic; pastel painting; watermedia; printmaking; mixed media; drawing; fine art photography and sculpture. Prospectus available here.
Deadline: February 6, 2011

Ceramic Artists The Greenwich House Pottery in New York City has a call out for artists for their national juried exhibition YUNOMI (The Other Tea Vessel) to take place in the Jane Hartsook Gallery during summer, 2011. Sam Chung is the juror.
Deadline: February 21, 2011

Summer Residencies for Time-Based Performance Groups White Pines Productions has created a new summer artist residency program at the Elkins Estate in PA. Three one-week sessions are available for ensemble groups. All meals are included. Travel expenses are not included. The ensemble has to be some kind of time based performance group (of any kind) between 3-10 people.
Deadline: March 1, 2011

Film/Video and Visual Artists Creative Capital’s next grant round will open February 1, 2011. To be eligible to apply, an artist must be A U.S. citizen or permanent legal resident, at least 25 years old, a working artist with at least five years of professional experience, and not a full-time student. To apply, an artist must first submit an online Inquiry Form regarding his or her project. Forms will be available on Creative Capital’s site February 1, 2011.
Deadline for Inquiry Forms: March 1, 2011

Image credit: Clown-topped garbage can is used at an ice cream stand in inlet to encourage its use and cut down on litter in the Adirondack Forest Preserve, 08/1973 ARC Identifier 554615 / Local Identifier 412-DA-12163 Item from Record Group 412: Records of the Environmental Protection Agency, 1944 – 2006.

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This is what happens when interesting ideas get together and make interesting idea babies.

In the past, we’ve talked about The DocYard; it’s a documentary film screening/networking series based at the Brattle Theatre in Harvard Square, designed to foster the Boston-area filmmaking community. Among the films screened in DocYard’s first season was Today the Hawk Takes One Chick, a moving documentary by past MCC Fellow Jane Gillooly.

And we’ve discussed Kickstarter, a crowd-funding website that allows projects to offer creative rewards to reach fundraising goals.

Sensing the model was a good fit with their project, the founders of DocYard – Sara Archambault of the LEF Foundation, Sean Flynn of Principle Pictures, and Ben Fowlie of the Camden International Film Festival – are using Kickstarter to support the DocYard’s second season.

In the Kickstarter model, if a project falls short of its fundraising goal, none of the donations are collected. Will this one reach its mark? (The suspense! This is like a movie unto itself.)

For more info, check out the project’s Kickstarter page, or The DocYard website.

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In November, we held a celebratory breakfast at the Massachusetts State House for the 2010 awardees from our Artist Fellowships Program. It was a chance for state-recognized artists to meet one another as well as some of the legislators who keep programs like this going through their support of the MCC. Will it surprise anyone to hear it was – always is – a blast to visit with a group of exceptional artists from a wide range of disciplines? The poets sipped coffee with the choreographers, the painters buttered croissants with the folk artists; a good, art-loving time was had by all.

One attendee, Rachel Mello, whose intriguing hand-cut silhouette paintings garnered her a Finalist award in Painting, made a point of sharing with us the impact of her $500 award. Along with the validation of receiving a monetary award as an artist, she said the grant had a very practical value:

My work involves a lot of wood-cutting. I cut hardboard panels into complex silhouettes which I print and then paint. The hardboard is a resin-impregnated panel, which means when it’s cut the saw dust, which is an ultra-fine powder, contains unknown chemicals and compounds some of which have been changed by the heat of the saw blades into yet other unknown chemicals and compounds. I wore a respirator when working, which became uncomfortable after about an hour or two of work, and I went home at the end of the day with a headache and smelling of burning glue.

With my $500 grant I was able to purchase a Delta 50-760 dust collector with a 1-micron filter bag. This is, essentially, an extremely powerful vacuum-cleaner (it sucked in my work goggles when I took them off before shutting down the machine once). I can turn it on next to where I’m working, and no longer need to wear a respirator, and never carry potentially carcinogenic dusts home on my clothing and in my hair, nor do I now distribute a fine layer of dust all over my studio. I work longer and more efficiently and spend less time at clean up. And I’m far less likely to contract pulmonary diseases. All because of a $400 dust-collector and about $50 worth of hoses and accessories, which I purchased with my MCC Finalist award.

We know, of course, that funding exceptional artists, whether the $7500 fellowships or the $500 finalist awards, is worthwhile – heck, we think it’s flat-out spiffy, and it’s an honor for us to get to do it. But hearing Rachel’s story was really gratifying. It brings to mind the way awards like these can lead to other opportunities in an artists career, often in a non-linear way.

We heard from Eric Hofbauer recently; he won a Music Composition fellowship in 2009. Eric told us that in January 2010, at a recording session for a new project called Level with his quartet The Infrared Band, he discovered some of the musicians were not quite ready for the material. What’s more, he realized that some of the songs needed adjustment. Knowing he had some of his grant still in savings, he left the session without any recorded material and scheduled a future one. Had he not had the cushion the award had given him, he said he’d probably have had to make do with recorded material that wasn’t at the highest level – something he was determined to avoid.

To me, it’s the notion of working toward the highest level that really makes unrestricted funding for artists valuable. We recognize that a grant of $500 or even $7500 isn’t going to enable, say, a year in the salons of Paris. But perhaps it opens a door to that next level of new art-making, be it a new industrial dust collector, a higher quality performance, or whatever it is you as an artist need to get a little closer to your greatest work.

By the way, you can apply now for our Artist Fellowships in Crafts, Photography, or Film & Video. Deadline: January 24, 2011.

Images: Rachel Mello receives a citation of excellence from Rep. Denise Provost at a celebratory breakfast at the Massachusetts State House (see more photos on MCC’s Flickr page); cover art for Eric Hofbauer’s solo guitar CD AMERICAN FEAR! from Creative Nation Music (read a review by BBC).

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Applications are now available for 2011 Artist Fellowships in Crafts, Film & Video, and Photography from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Deadline: Monday, January 24, 2011.

The fellowships are anonymously-judged competitive grants for Massachusetts artists. Fellowships of $7,500 and finalist awards of $500 are awarded based solely on the artistic excellence of the work submitted. Check out our tips on applying.

Read full program guidelines, eligibility requirements, and application instructions.

Images and media: excerpt from NORA, a film by Alla Kovgan (Film & Video Fellow ’09); Heather White (Crafts Fellow ’05), MURMURING BROOCH (2006), cast sterling lips, gold, rubies, seed and cultured pearls, 4.75 x 4.75 x .75 in; Camilo Ramirez (Photography Fellow ’09), FLIGHT SUIT (2008), Archival Inkjet Print, 16 in x 20 in.

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Are you into scales?

Then put down your instrument and crawl on over to the The Passim Iguana Music Fund to fill out a grant application. All lizard kings and queens as well as musicians and bands and are eligible.
Deadline: November 15, 2010

Image credit: Photgraph of an iguana in Caribbean in 2009 by Bas Leenders.

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The Awesome Foundation, Boston chapter, just awarded musician and med student Tim Soo one of it’s $1000 grants. The foundation, which was launched in Boston and also has LA, Providence, New York City, San Francisco, and Washington D.C. chapters, gives no-strings-attached grants to “crazy brilliant” projects (such as a Cotton Candy Cannon or a Big Hammock in the Rose Kennedy Greenway).

Soo has built a number of Invisible Instruments, including the not-there violin in the video above and an unseen, iPod Touch-based guitar built for the recent Music Hack Day – Boston, an event at Microsoft NERD exploring new music software.

(More awesome: the piece Soo plays in this clip is the artist’s own composition.)

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The Provincetown Art Association and Museum announced the recipients of their inaugural Lillian Orlowsky and William Freed Foundation Grant designed to support American painters aged 45 or older who demonstrate financial need. This year’s painters receiving this awesome prize are Morgan Russell and Jo Hay. Congratulations! We like artists being recognized monetarily for their work. So without further ado, let’s take a peek into Morgan Russell’s studio(s) and see what he’s up to and what he has to say about his work.

I love nature. I’ve always been intrigued with the woods and natural settings in general. That’s where it begins for me; when I walk out of the house in the morning I have my camera, the early light really hits me.

In the Summer I paint in our family barn, the space and light are uplifting and I have the luxury of being able to get 20 or 30 feet back from a painting to get my bearings. I just moved into my Winter studio, as I call it, in Rockland, MA which I share with friend and fellow artist Mehmet Kraja.

Back in the studio there is a point at which observation stops and something else takes over. Once that threshold of abstraction is crossed a re-shaping of elements can begin. I am intrigued with pulling new situations of place from the painting process. In doing so I find myself cultivating a space that is fluid and plastic enough to navigate.

These paintings then are naturally aspirated abstract systems. Indeed there is a certain abstract power inherent in nature upon which their survival depends.

Learn more about Morgan Russell’s work.

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