Periodically, we pose questions about issues artists face in their work and lives. This month, we decided to return to a question we first asked in Summer 2020: How has the pandemic impacted your creative practice? Dance artist Swati Biswas, visual artist Audrey Goldstein, composer Ryan Suleiman, and photographer Bruce Wilson reflect on the pandemic's impact, 2+ years after … [Read more...]
Artist Voices
Highlighting the work and voices of individual artists.
Leveraging Local Cultural Council Grants
Guest post by karen Krolak, co-Artistic Director of Monkeyhouse One of my canine collaborators is softly snoring in the predawn darkness as I wrestle with insomnia on the day that addenda: an exercise course from the Dictionary of Negative Space opens at Stove Works. In between obsessing over details that I can tweak in the next 12 hours, I return to reflecting on one … [Read more...]
Message to Yourself as a Younger Artist
Periodically, we pose questions about issues artists face in their work and lives. This month, we decided to return to a question we first asked in 2018: If you could deliver one message to yourself as a younger artist, what would it be? Photographer and writer David Bookbinder, writer Carin Clevidence, poet Wendy Drexler, painter Liang Guo, paper cutting artist Zhonghe … [Read more...]
Supporting Indigenous Artists: Who Defines Culture?
On Mass Cultural Council's Power of Culture blog, multimedia artist Erin Genia, an enrolled member of the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate and a Mass Cultural Council Outreach Coordinator, wrote an intriguing post about institutional barriers to supporting Native American and indigenous artists. One of the primary barriers is captured in this question: "How are arts and culture … [Read more...]
Learning to Be Auntie’s Baby
Artists Simone John (Poetry Fellow '20) (aka Simone Ivory) and flowerthief (one half of the music duo Optic Bloom) collaborated to create the audio poetry project, Auntie's Baby. Auntie's Baby draws on the artists' multidisciplinary background, using family phone calls, poetry, music, and sound to "open a portal into Black storytelling." Recently, Simone and flowerthief … [Read more...]