ArtsEZ 2014
The Northampton Arts Council is pleased to announce the awarding of 31 ArtsEZ 2014 grants totaling $12,500. We received 58 requests totalling $68,342. ArtsEZ grants are fund-raised by the Northampton Arts Council through event-programming such as Transperformance and Four Sundays in February.
Dance
$500 to Saliq Savage at Wire Monkey Dance for Embryolo, once a month on the second Fridays of October, November and December there will be 5, 20 minute showings at Studio Helix on the 3rd floor of Thornes Market. Starting at 5:30 and running every half hour, the last show at 7:30. These installation/gallery style performances of maximum 20 minute duration will involve dancers, video projection and shadow box story telling.
Film/Video
$500 to Nemo Allen for Farm Fable, a twelve-minute pilot episode to be premiered in Northampton, broadcast over NCTV, and uploaded to the web, "Fable Farm," will retell Aesop's Fables through a modern, fantastical lens, using Pioneer Valley bands as actors. The premiere would be sometime in September 2014 at the Parlor Room in Northampton.
$500 to Elizabeth Foley for Find Art Everywhere - Jim Mias at work, a video documentary about artist Jim Mias who works with objects that he finds, like pieces of river-tempered wood, shards of pottery from the old Mills, bottle tops, rocks, sticks, stones, paper, rusted metal, worn-down glass, anything that comes in his path as he makes his regular rounds of Leeds and Florence and Northampton on his bicycle. It would be shown in late October 2014 in three public screenings in the three communities that comprise Northampton. The first one will be at the Forbes library, the second in Florence at the Lilly library, and the final screening will be held at the Leeds Elementary school
$500 to Hannah Ray for The Making of Florence Village, Storied by Village Residents, the Making of Florence Village film will document the last 100 years in Florence, as told by families who have lived here their whole life. The film will be shown at the Florence Civic Center, free of charge, in May of 2015.
$250 to Otis Wheeler for PubX: A DIY Pop-Up Film Festival for Western Mass, the first iteration of a randomly recurring pop-up film festival and cinematheque, showing the best undistributed or under-seen micro-budget features from around the country. Pubx will be a three-day long event, tentatively scheduled for Sep. 26-28, 2014, and will be held in two locations: HeadQuarters, an experimental art space in Northampton, and Flying Object in Hadley.
Literature
$500 to Emily Wojcik at MA Review for MR's Night Out in Northampton: A Reading and Performance by Steve Davenport and Pete Duval, MR will present author Pete Duval (REAR VIEW) and writer/musician Steve Davenport (OVERPASS and UNCONTAINABLE NOISE), reading and performing in a rare local appearance. Duval, winner of the Bakeless Prize for Fiction and a three-time Pushcart nominee, lives and teaches in Philadelphia.The reading and performance is planned for the second week in September at Hinge on Main Street, Northampton. The show will be free and open to the public.
$250 to Susan Kan at Perugia Press for From Montana to MA: A Perugia Press Poetry Reading, this year, Perugia will bring together two Perugia Press Prize winners for a reading: local poet, Carol Edelstein, whose book, The Disappearing Letters, won in 2005, and our newest (2014) winner, Corrie Williamson, who will be coming from Montana, and whose book, Sweet Husk, is in production. This reading will showcase how a local nonprofit with a national reach can fulfill its tight mission while publishing books with range and variation. It will take place on the afternoon of December 7, 2014, in Neilson Browsing Room at Smith College.
Mixed Media
$500 to Elizabeth Stone for Diorama Show, for one month this fall an exhibit of dioramas will fill the A.P.E. gallery on Main Street, Northampton. Their proposed dioramas may include scenes of Utopian or dystopian reality or altered reality.
$500 to Amanda Herman at Live Art Magazine for Live Art Magazine, an annual one-night only performance event that features new work from regional artists, writers, musicians, filmmakers, and risk-takers. The evening unfolds within the structure of a magazine. Issue 2 will be held at the Academy of Music Theater with a confirmed date of Friday October 24.
$500 to Kate Richardson at Laurel Park Arts for Chautauqua Festival of Ideas, a robust and exciting Chautauqua Festival featuring local talent on the historic grounds of Laurel Park in Northampton this July. The festival, scheduled for July 18 & 19 and presented in collaboration with a number of other local nonprofits, will gather and connect members of our thriving arts, music and culture community to share work & celebrate.
Music
$550 to Dan Thomas at Llama Lasagne for Llama Lasagne Presents, a collaboration of regional musicians, artists, producers and businesses. Each bi-annual themed performance features a rotating cast of local musicians, entirely new set lists, props, and costumes. Llama is the co-operative effort of all those involved and owes its success largely to the time, energy, and materials donated by its members. With an eye towards community outreach, Llama strives to include socially aware, charitable components in its productions. This project will take place at the Florence VFW on Saturday, November 15th.
$250 to Mark Guglielmo at Young@Heart Chorus for Young@Heart Prison Project, W\working with prison staff, Young@Heart will work with inmates to rehearse songs with Y@H director Bob Cilman and a piano accompanist in the weeks leading up to the concert. The inmates will then join Y@H and perform the songs in front of their peers at the concert backed by the chorus. They will be provided a backing music track in advance that includes our musicians and the chorus singing back up. When we come to perform at the prison, the inmate soloists will be featured at our concert.
$250 to Katherine Jamieson at Coil Records, Inc. for Mister G's Halloween Fiesta, a bilingual, community concert for families in the Pioneer Valley and beyond. Children (and their parents) come dressed in costume to dance and sing in both English and Spanish with Mister G (aka Ben Gundersheimer), a leading figure in the children's music world and a Valley resident for 20 years. Each year, Mister G has invited prominent musicians to join him on stage, such as Senegalese musicians Bideew Bou Bess, Tony Vacca, Rani Arbo, Manuel Garcia, as well as hundreds of dancing children. The event will take place at the Academy of Music in Northampton on October 26, 2014 at 11:00 am.
$250 to Donald Freeman at Da Camera Singers for Alice Parker: New Music from the Pioneer Valley, the performance dates are January 16 and 18, 2015 in Helen Hills Hills Chapel, Smith College and Rhodes Arts Center, Northfield Mount Hermon School (Gill), respectively, under the direction of our conductor, Sheila Heffernon.
$250 to Roger Salloom for Roger Salloom Concert, a re-occurrence of the 31st annual Roger Salloom free concert in the Pines, Look Park, Northampton, MA, starting in 1983, skipping 1984 and then proceeding uninterrupted for now for 31 years. it is a non- political and non-profit 501 3c event created for the well being and betterment of the community. It is usually the largest free concert for Northampton and surrounding towns.
$750 to Steve Campbell at Northampton Jazz Festival, Inc. for 2014 Northampton Jazz Festival, a week of jazz events that will include a great kick off concert, a jazz themed film night, the 12 Mile Meal 2013 winner restaurant night, Friday night's expanded Jazz Strut Concert Series and finally, culminating on Saturday September 6, 2014, our free, tented, outdoor, full day concert featuring some of the world's best in jazz on our Main Stage located on Hampton Avenue behind Thornes Marketplace, along with a second stage at the A.P.E. gallery that will include promising young players from Pioneer Valley high schools, and colleges combined with established local artists.
Schools
$250 to Sheryl Jaffe at Northampton High School for Sharing Space: Childs Park, students will work with designers, horticulturists at Childs Park. Combining drawings, poetry, photography and their impressions they will create a clay tile mural that will be installed at 3 schools. Northampton High school, Jackson Street School and Bridge St. School.
$400 to Alpha Kabisko Kaba at PVPA Wofa African Drum & Dance Company & Jackson Street School for Wofa African Drum & Dance Interactive Performance, PVPA's Wofa Drum & Dance Company traveled to Guinea, West Africa in January 2014, where they participated in intensive drum and dance classes with professional Guinean artists. They also had the opportunity to tour the country and perform at several venues, including a local school, a community center and at the US Ambassador's Residence. They would like to share their cultural experience with local schools through an interactive performance, short videos and a question and answer period.
Theater
$400 to Sabrina Hamilton at Ko Theater Works, Inc. for KoFest's Fall Story Slam at the A.P.E. Gallery, like poetry slams, competitive poetry events, Ko is offering one for first person, true stories –told live and without notes. For our fall event, we will return to the A.P.E. Gallery on Main Street. We'd like to celebrate the run-up to either Halloween or Thanksgiving. If in October, we'd have an evening of true, scary, spooky or creepy stories; and if November turns out to be better for the A.P.E. Gallery schedule – we'd have stories about moments of thankfulness or gratitude.
$650 to Stephen Eldredge at Northampton High School for Expanded Artistic and Technical Support for Large-Scale Theater Production: The Skin of Our Teeth, Theater teacher Stephen Eldredge and Theater Artist Toby Bercovici have been developing a concept for a technically demanding, large-scale production of Thornton Wilder's "The Skin of Our Teeth" since August 2013. The production will involve extensive use of Multimedia, special effects, and advanced lighting and sound design. We plan to use the technology to immerse an audience in a 3-dimensional experience about humanity's propensity for self-destruction - to create as much of a "total theater" experience as possible.
$250 to Linda McInerney at Old Deerfield Productions for A Christmas Carol at the Academy of Music, Charles Dickens’ iconic story about the nature of the relationship between the individual and society will be performed at the Academy of Music December 18-21, 2014 with a full team of producers.
Visual Arts
$350 to Martha Ebner for Lightness of Bone: Works on Paper, exhibition will be on view at the Forbes Library from July 1, 2014 through July 30, 2014 with a public reception on Wednesday, July 2. This show will include approximately 15 works on paper and will demonstrate a continuing exploration of nature through the theme of bones.
$250 to Jieun Shin for Eccentric Abstraction Revisited, exhibition will take place during the month of February 2015, and will coincide with Northampton’s monthly art walk, Arts Night Out, on Friday, February 13th. The three artists, in his or her own way, explore the different types of patterns and motifs culled from their respective cultural backgrounds in Asian, South Asian, and Euro-American heritages, as well as popular cultural imagination.
$250 to Brantner DaAtley for Eccentric Abstraction Revisited, construction of a 72"x72" cradled resin panel that will be the center piece of my third of a group show. The piece will be the culmination of my last five years of painting exploration. The group show will take place in February 2015 at the A.P.E. in Northampton.
$500 to Mark Guglielmo for Window Portraits, a month-long exhibit of a new series of large-scale photographic collage installations entitled Window Portraits in spring 2015 at the Artifacts building in Florence.
$500 to David Teeple for Liquid Crystal, a large acrylic water filled sculpture (approximately 16" x 24" x 72") and place it in an urban garden in the center of town. The location will be the grassy plot to the West of the building owned by Smith Charities, 51 Main Street, Northampton, MA.
$500 to Jenna Weingarten at the HeadQuarters Exhibition Space for Enlargement Show, Part Dos: Enormous Edition, will feature the work of 15 artists who each submit a commissioned image that the HeadQuarters team will enlarge into mural sized images, to be printed on 8ft stretches of paper. The work will then be hung with unconventional methods that push the boundaries of how art is traditionally shown. The show will take place at 114 Main St at the new HeadQuarters Exhibition Space and there will be an opening and closing, as well as gallery hours, during the month of October 2014.
$250 to Stephanie Seldin for Living Context: Selected Work by Anna Bayles Arthur, Barry Febos, and Stephanie Seldin, a house show/art exhibition opening July 12th and running through July 19th. This would be one of a series of exhibitions held at the Northampton home and studio of local artist Anna Bayles Arthur. The house show/exhibition would include a selection of work by three local artists: Stephanie Seldin, Barry Febos, and Anna Bayles Arthur. Each room will be transformed into an exciting and non-traditional space for the viewer to engage and participate in a variety of different creative media.
$500 to Greta Svalberg for Gaskin, Moloney, Svalberg Painting Show, a three person painting, drawing, and print show at A.P.E Gallery scheduled for late July and early August 2014.
$400 to Liz Chalfin at Zea Mays Printmaking for Systems - a juried exhibition, Systems will be shown at A.P.E. Gallery from October 7 – November 2, 2014. The proposals for "Systems" are due on June 1st and Liz will be making selections during the month of June for the October exhibition.
$250 to Gineen Cooper for Play Days, a creativity tent (encompassing dance, theater, 2D art, poetry, music ) located on Main Street in front of First Churches/Urban Outfitters, that measures a maximum of 15'x15.’ The artist provides the facilitation, forum, materials and twelve weekly evolving projects (in singular or integrative media) to engage local residents and visitors. Those who are interested are offered the opportunity to express themselves via the project offered that day in the designated space. Starting the first Saturday in July and taking place 12 times on Saturdays from 9am-3pm during a 17 week period (July 5th, 14-October 25th, 14.)