The Palm Beach County Cultural Council Board of Directors awarded the Category A Artist-in-Residency grant to four artists who will create three diverse community cultural projects in Palm Beach County. The grantees reside in Paris, Los Angles, and Palm Beach County.
The Artist-in-Residency grant is offered to an individual or a group of artists collaborating with a host organization based in Palm Beach County. The grant is open to artists living anywhere who can be “in residence” in Palm Beach County while working on their projects. Grant programs must include hands-on experience for participants through activities such as workshops or classes culminating in original artworks and/or performances designed to have a significant impact on both community and culture.
The awarded projects are:
Doug Cooney, Playwright/children’s author, working with host organization Florida Stage
Project Title: Long Story Short
Award: $20,000
Mr. Doug Cooney will undertake two community outreach projects resulting in staged readings of two new play scripts at Florida Stage. First, Mr. Cooney will lead a component of The Graffiti Project, which is a series of writing workshops for students. In the fall of 2005 the students involved with The Graffiti Project will be young people enrolled in Planned Parenthood’s Teen Time after-school program in Lake Worth. A play script will be developed by Cooney and the students. The second initiative partners Mr. Cooney with The Lord’s Place and Joshua’s Café, where he will interview homeless children and adults. He will then write a play based on the interviews. Both scripts will be presented as staged readings at Florida Stage.
Mr. Cooney is based in Los Angeles. His works have been produced at the Kennedy Center, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, among others. He has been awarded grants, commissions and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the MacDowell Colony, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and many others. Long Story Short marks Mr. Cooney’s return to Palm Beach County where he initiated the The Graffiti Project: Write Fast, Write Large with Florida Stage through an Artist-in-Residency grant from the Cultural Council in 2003. The Graffiti Project produced two original plays that were staged in area high schools and through Florida Stage’s “Young Voices” program.
Michiko Kurisu and Jerry Lower, Photography, New Media, Folklore/Storytelling, working with host organization Toussaint L’Ouverture High School for the Arts and Social Justice
Project Title: Haitians of Florida: The Hope and the Future
Award: $25,000
Haitians of Florida: The Hope and the Future is a photographic and multi-media documentary of the growing population of Haitian-Americans who have settled in South Florida and the contribution they make to culture in Palm Beach County. Creative photography classes will be taught at Toussaint L’Ouverture High School and to adult community members. The project’s inaugural exhibition will be at Florida Atlantic University’s Ritter Gallery. Follow-up exhibitions are being planned at the new Delray Beach Library and other community venues. After its community tour, the presentation will be housed at the Haitian International Museum of Art and Culture, a project of the High School.
Mr. Lower is a career photojournalist who has worked in South Florida Since 1983. He currently lives in Ocean Ridge. His photography has garnered numerous awards and recognition.
Ms. Michiko Kurisu’s numerous photography projects include the “Children in the Wilderness Program” in Botswana and documenting the construction of Roji-en: Garden of the Drops of Dew, The George D. and Harriet W. Cornell Japanese Gardens in the Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens. Ms. Kurisu lives in Delray Beach.
Jeanne Hilary, photography, video installation, working with host organization the Boca Raton Museum of Art Project Title: Eden Award: $15,000
Eden is a small group of site-specific installations incorporating photography and commercial outdoor visual spaces. These installations are connected to each other via an interactive website, an exhibition, and a book/catalogue. Workshops and lectures will be coordinated by the Museum during the residency period. The workshops will focus on oral history of Palm Beach County combining short interviews and photography or video. An exhibition of the photographs and other imagery will be displayed at the Museum. Eden explores the idea of place. The video shot in Palm Beach County will be visible on commercial electronic billboards in urban areas such as New York, Chicago, and Paris.
Ms. Eden currently lives in Paris and divides her time between advertising, institutional and editorial clients, and personal projects. She studied photography and painting at the Chicago School of the Art Institute and the Boston Museum School of Fine Arts. Her work has appeared in numerous exhibitions around the world.
These three awarded projects were chosen by a community-based grant panel consisting of Katie Klein, Klein Dance Company; Steven E. McCraney, Cultural Council Board; Kara Walker Tome, Armory Art Center; Elayna Toby Singer, Art in Public Places; Charlotte Plotsky, Palm Beach Dramaworks Board; Victoria Skinner, Visual Artist; and Brandy Upright, Cultural Council Board. After reviewing the applications, the panel met on September 22, 2005 at the Armory Art Center in West Palm Beach to view slides and other work samples provided by the artists. Based on the criteria and the applications provided, of the eight proposals submitted and reviewed, these three were recommended for funding. The entire Cultural Council Board approved those recommendations on September 27.
The Category A grant program provides funding for community-based artist-in-residency projects that emphasize long-term, in-depth interaction between professional artists and an identified group of participants. The program’s mission is to forge partnerships between artists and host nonprofit cultural (arts, science, historical) organizations to benefit residents of Palm Beach County.
The $60,000 grant program began three years ago and is funded annually through the Cultural Council’s share of State of the Arts specialty license plate revenue.
The winning projects last year were A Harvest of Voices by Akin Babatunde in collaboration with CORE Ensemble; Picturing Florida: Listening to the Generations by Ellen Harvey in collaboration with Florida Atlantic University (FAU) Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters; and Boundary Waters by Demetrius Klein and the Grassy Water Preserve.
For additional information, please contact:
Larry Boytano
Public Relations Coordinator
Palm Beach County Cultural Council
1555 Palm Beach Lakes Blvd., Suite 300
West Palm Beach, FL 33401
Tel. (561) 471-1601
Fax (561) 687-9484
lboytano@pbccc.org
www.palmbeachculture.com
