ArtSake

We’re interested in Massachusetts arts organizations that identify a specific need for artists, then shape their organization to directly meet that need – in essence, match the right horse with the right course.

We contacted Mary Sherman about her thriving organization and its unique appeal to artists with global aspirations…

The course: artists may not have the time or resources to connect to a greater network of ideas and opportunities from the international community – such as international residencies or cross-cultural collaborations

The horse: TransCultural Exchange, a nonprofit organization that bridges cultural divides through the arts and supports artistic innovation through large-scale, cross-discipline, global art projects and programming

What we do: This year TransCultural Exchange celebrates its 20th Anniversary. Since 1989, TCE has worked directly with hundreds of artists, arts organizations, foundations, museums, and cultural centers in more than 60 countries, producing cultural exchange programs, educational workshops and critically acclaimed public art works and exhibitions, from Sarajevo to Sao Paulo, Berlin to Boston, Tel Aviv to Taipei, Mongolia to Mumbai. In 2002, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization awarded TCE sponsorship – the first US project to receive this honor since the US mission rejoined UNESCO.

Along with its large scale art projects – the most recent of which asked artists to collaborate with someone from another country, resulting in over 200 artists participating in 60 exhibitions and performances worldwide – TCE organizes a biennale Conference on International Opportunities in the Arts. This conference is “the” forum in the world bringing together artists, teachers, musicians, writers, museum and cultural administrators, and residency directors to network, showcase, support, and promote the vast array of programs for cultural administrators and practitioners to interact with their international peers. In the short period since the Conference’s launch in 2007, more than 70 US artists have been invited to attend all-expense-paid  exchange programs, 3 have received teaching positions, and over 75 have received invitations to exhibit. (Read about success stories from 2007 and 2009.)

These are just a few of the activities directly credited to TCE’s conferences. Many of the local schools also began exchange programs with the people they met at the conferences.

Already Massachusetts is seen as the nation’s educational hub, attracting people from every corner of the globe to its institutes of higher learning. TransCultural Exchange’s goals are no less than to 1. reinforce this international asset; 2. promote culture as a vehicle for diplomacy; and 3. complement the state’s already world-renowned cultural attractions to help position Massachusetts as a new, important, and vital international center for creativity and the important diplomatic role the arts – which transcend all political, social, and geographic borders – can play on today’s larger, global stage.

What’s up next: TCE is currently soliciting work for its next global project for which artists are asked to collaborate with people from different cultures and different disciplines – such as science, technology, and business – as a way to showcase the advantages of bringing multi-perspectives to bear on a task.

Any artist (including visual artists, writers, and musicians) looking for the time, space, and money to pursue their work, particularly in the International arts arena, should not miss the next Conference on International Opportunities in the Arts: The Interconnected World, April 8-10, 2011 at Boston’s Omni Parker House Hotel.

Also stay tuned: TransCultural Exchange is pleased to participated in the 2010 London Biennale as a satellite venue…

What artists interesting in working with us need to know: Anyone interested in being on our mailing list should add their name, by entering their email on the form at the bottom of this web page. Also, follow the TransCultural Exchange blog.

Mary Sherman is the founder of TransCultural Exchange. As an artist, she has exhibited widely in the U.S. and abroad, including New York, Seoul, Vienna, Chicago, London, and Venice. Read her guest blog about her Taiwan artist residency, summer 2008.

Image: Dana Prescott, Civitella Ranieri Foundation, from the Transcultural Exchange Conference, photo by Sophia Andrianopoulos

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Money Talks
MCLA’s Berkshire Cultural Resource Center, in collaboration
with Berkshire Creative, IS183 Art School, and Pittsfield Office of Cultural Development is offering Tricks of the Trade, a free professional development seminar series for artists. The next session focuses on pricing one’s artwork. Registration is required. Contact Jess Conzo, program coordinator for MCLA’s Berkshire Cultural Resource Center, at 413.663.5253.

Everybody’s rockin’; Everybody’s fruggin’
Opportunity available for choreographers at the Boston Center for the Arts. Movement at the Mills is a program designed for independent dance companies to showcase complete or in-progress work. For more information, contact Andrea Blesso Albuquerque, Boston Center for the Arts, or ablesso@bcaonline.org.
Deadline: Proposals due Friday, November 20

Behind the Curtain
Opportunity available for Playwrights from The Ensemble Studio Theatre.
They are accepting all one act plays which have not been reviewed in New York City. They recommend submissions not exceed 40 minutes in running time. Playwrights are welcome to submit up to two submissions.
Deadline: December 1, 2009

Kraftwerk
The Brookline Arts Center will host its 35th Annual Crafts Showcase December 2 – December 20, 2009 and is currently inviting artists to participate in a sale and exhibition.
Deadline: December 2, 2009

Fame is a bee. Fame is a bee. It has a song –
It has a sting — Ah, too, it has a wing. Emily Dickinson
Poetry Society of America offers annual awards for both emerging and established poets in recognition at all stages of their careers.
Deadline: December 22, 2009

Image Credit: Photo above from Liz Roncka, Real Time Perfomance Project, Boston Center for the Arts, Mills Gallery. For more on Liz, check out her blog (Was) Daily Dances, chronicling the creation of her work from the Movement at the Mills project.

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Wake up little Susie, wake up…

The Awesome Foundation for Arts and Sciences (isn’t that a great name?) is looking for artists to submit an awesome idea to them. If they pick your proposal, they will give you $1,000 in cash.

No time for dozing off because The Allied Artists of America has a call out to artists working in oil, watermedia, pastel, graphics, and sculpture for their 96th Annual National Exhibition. $23,000 in awards in cash and medals. Slide or jpeg entries accepted. For prospectus send SASE to Rhoda Yanow, 19 Springtown Road, White House Station , NJ 08889.
Deadline: Monday, September 14, 2009

The Multi-Arts Production (MAP) Fund, a program of Creative Capital supported by the Rockefeller Foundation and the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, supports original new work in all disciplines and traditions of the live performing arts. The goal of the MAP Fund is to assist artists who are exploring and challenging the dynamics of live performance within our changing society, thus reflecting our culture’s innovation and growing diversity. Applications for MAP support must come from U.S. nonprofit organizations; nonprofit artist-services organizations may apply as fiscal sponsors on behalf of artists or ensembles.
Deadline: Letter of inquiry due October 19, 2009

Way up north where the air gets cold…
The Denali National Park and Preserve in Alaska is now accepting applications for summer 2010. Open to visual artists except photographers (there is a separate program for photographers). Three or four artists accepted per summer, each for 10-day stays in East Fork Cabin. Ranger Station is 12 miles away; artists must be comfortable with wilderness setting (meaning flora and fauna, not the southeast expressway). Apply at www.callforentry.org. For more information contact Annie Duffy, Arts Coordinator, 907-474-8133, aduffy@alaskageographic.org
Deadline: Saturday, October 31, 2009

Image credit: Photo of sleeping kitten by Magnus Rosendahl.

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At Kino-Eye are nifty photos from the Berwick Research Institute’s recent Artist Encampment on Bumpkin Island. Ten groups of artists embarked to the Boston Harbor island with only the art supplies on their backs to “homestead” and adapt their creative ideas over five days. Berwick’s website called the project “part residency, part survivalist experiment, and fully impressionable, malleable, speculative and reflective.”

Recently, the Mellon Foundation announced it has awarded $10 million in organizational grants to support new plays. I’m amused by Culture Monster’s take on the announcement: “(With) state arts budgets being slashed as though they were screaming victims in a horror movie, every donated dollar helps.” Alas, no Massachusetts institutions were granted, but Massachusetts playwrights have been supported by some of the funded orgs recently, Sundance Institute named Kirsten Greenidge a Time Warner Storytelling Fellow, the Playwrights Center is currently hosting Monica Raymond as one of its Jerome Fellows, and Steppenwolf Theater Company produced Melinda Lopez’s play Sonya Flew in the 2006/07 season.

The theater world being an opinionated sort of place, it shouldn’t surprise you that not everyone was thrilled by Mellon’s move.

It appears that the worlds of Massachusetts photographer Sage Sohier are nearly perfect in the eyes of the We Can’t Paint photography blog.

Sly as ever, Alex Ross riffs on the intersection between contemporary composers and presidential politics, at The Rest Is Noise. (Don’t miss the YouTube clip; strictly on aesthetic, nonpartisan terms, the original jazz score accompanying Sarah Palin’s interview is too brilliant to miss.) Speaking of politics, the Globe’s Off the Shelf book blog shares how three publishers (including two from Massachusetts) are getting directly involved in campaign donations.

Good job, The Healing Arts: New Pathways to Health! The 2006 documentary was honored with a “Best of the Festival” award from the Focus Film Festival. And also, good job to director Benjamin Mayer, and also to Vermont Arts Exchange, who produced. Oh, and good job to us (MCC). Cuz we co-produced. So, an inclusive good job.

Rejoicing in fifth anniversary-hood, Chicks Make Flicks screens The Axe in the Attic, which takes documentary filmmakers Lucia Small and Ed Pincus on a 60-day road trip from New England to New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Thursday, October 30, 7 PM at MIT (77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge Room 6-120).

Exploring the indie film experience a little further… a California cinematographer discusses creative shooting and lighting decisions for an ultra-cheap indie shoot. (Props to the Filmmaker Magazine blog for linking to this first.)

Any arts administrators out there? Andrew Taylor has composed your theme song.

The old writing workshop chestnut “that’s dated” fails to hold up under poet and editor Elisa Gabbert’s scrutiny, at the Ploughshares blog.

(Did you catch the acrostic? Yipeee!!)

Image: Andrew Neumann, HAL (VERTICAL CONVERSATION) (2001), wood, motor, micro-processor, camera, LCD screen, 36 in x 12 in x 8 in. Andrew, a 2003 Sculpture/Installation finalist, exhibits kinetic sculptures in “The Last Picture Show” at AXIOM Center for New and Experimental Media in Boston, October 24-December 13. Opening reception Friday, October 24, 6 PM, artist talk Saturday, December 13, 3:30 PM.

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At the blog of the venerable literary journal Ploughshares, 2006 Poetry Fellow Simeon Berry calls our attention to, in his own droll and idiosyncratic way, a spirited discussion within the online poetry community about one poet’s disastrous experience with a poetry contest.

So you want to build yourself a super-duper artist’s website, and you want to do it free, gratis, and for nothin’? Over at the Technology in the Arts blog, Brad Stephenson wants to help you. Because as he puts it, “You’re cheap, and I love you.”

Art critic Sebastian Smee, recent emigre from The Australian to the Boston Globe, shares his first impressions on first impressions (oh, and on Massachusetts art museums).

Perhaps instead of Artist Fellowships, we should award Olympic medals in the arts.

MacDowell Colony doesn’t oppose Divine Mercy. But the isolated artists retreat (which has welcomed many Massachusetts artists over the years) would prefer the new church not be built quite so close to MacDowell’s, you know, isolation.

Where do the presidential candidates stand on the arts? Here, a couple of bloggers offer opinions on the arts policies of Obama and McCain. You can also investigate on your own at ArtsVote, a program of Americans for the Arts Action Fund. The site links to current and former presidential candidates’ arts policies, including Clinton, Richardson, and Huckabee (Did you know Mike Huckabee is a big supporter of arts and music in education, calling them “Weapons of Mass Instruction?”).

Disclaimer (spoken in robot voice): No candidate or opinion of same candidate being advocated for by ArtSake blog. Just sharing Internet data. Affirmative. End transmission.

Image: Sarah Slavick, TRANSMIT (2005), oil on wood, 36 in. X 36 in.

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Mary Sherman (Painting Finalist ’04) is currently a Fulbright Senior Scholar and artist-in-residence at the Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts in Taipei, Taiwan, and she sent us a fascinating update on her projects there. While in Taipei, Mary is running a workshop called “Here, There and Everywhere” collaborating with students and faculty from Taipei National University of the Arts, as well as local artists, to create an exhibition at the Kuandu Museum (running July 11 to August 31). Below are posts from Mary’s KdMoFa Collaborative Workshops blog, detailing projects by two of the artists teams participating in the workshop.

TEAM D

Mary Sherman / Pan Ping-Yu / Fujui Wang /Tao Ya-Lun/ Chang Ling/Josef Bares

Starry Night (on Mars)

When we were all showing each other our work, the idea of a shooting star came up; and everyone instantly locked onto it. Then, when we met again at the museum, we decided that we would create a sky – complete with shooting stars and a cosmic atmosphere. At the same time, we talked about how we all have the same sky above us; but we are culturally different and as such our myths and tales about the stars differ. However, what does seem universal in these stories is that they represent a projection of our desires, resulting in our interest to also make a star manual that would be open to everyone’s own cultural interpretation.

***

TEAM C

Chong Yi-Kei / Fan Sih-Ci / Ho Tsan-Wen / Lin Shin-Mei / Chang Feng-Shih / Huang Po-Chih

Crack Down 2.2

All our work, on some level, is an investigation of fragments of the human body or personality. Our investigation is undertaken to better understand the complexities of both these fragments and their role in understanding ourselves and those around us. For this exhibition we have decided to switch from our more usual visual format to focus on the sound of the human voice. We, thus, have created a dialog of disembodied voices so that the audience also can experience what we believe – that such a fragment of ourselves can convey a great deal.

See more images from the collaboration.

Here Comes the Sun

Along with her work in Taipei, Mary collaborated with Italian artist Rudi Punzo on another project, a massive public art performance in partnership with Shanghai’s Zendai Museum of Modern Art. Here Comes the Sun featured 800 hand-printed Kongming lanterns, launched into the sky in a carefully choreographed sequence to spell “here comes the sun” in ASCII programming code. A sound design accompanied each launch.

The text “here comes the sun” (along with its obvious debt to the Beatles) is a rough translation of a Chinese blessing, a tribute to Chinese citizens following the recent earthquake disaster. Mary and her collaborator invited the public to add their own messages being sent to the heavens.

Mary Sherman is the founder of TransCultural Exchange. As an artist, she has exhibited widely in the U.S. and abroad, including New York, Seoul, Vienna, Chicago, London, and Venice.

“Starry Night (on Mars)” by Team D, KdMoFa Collaborative Workshops, Taipei, Taiwan; “Crack Down 2.2″ by Team C, KdMoFa Collaborative Workshops, Taipei, Taiwan; Artists prepare to launch Kongming lanterns, “Here Comes the Sun,” Zendai MoMA, Shanghai, China; Mary Sherman works with artists to prepare lanterns for “Here Comes the Sun,” Shanghai, China; Another view of “Here Comes the Sun,” Zendai MoMA, Shanghai, China

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Picture this: no high definition television to watch, no tangled ipod headphone wires to unravel, no traffic to raise your blood pressure, just you and your imagination in a magnificent place to create your work.

Residencies for visual artists (one $500 fellowship), writers and the public are available in Provincetown’s historic dune shacks. The deadline to apply for a residency is fast approaching.

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