Blog - 02-2022 Archive

Congratulations to the 2022 Artist Fellows!

In 2016, Erie Arts & Culture made a commitment to make a greater investment in the artists living and working in Erie County by establishing the annual Artist Fellowship program. The agency saw a need to provide artists with funding, specifically unrestricted funding, that could be used by artists to delve deeper into their creative processes and assist them in their pursuit of artistic development and growth.

In 2019, Erie Arts & Culture began awarding professional development grants to artists across three categories; emerging, mid-career, and established. Each category provided cash awards of $2000, $3500, and $5500 respectively.

Each year, applicants are reviewed by an independent panel of subject matter experts from outside of Erie County to reduce conflicts of interest. This year, applicants included a wide array of visual, performing, and literary artists, and panel members met virtually from Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Florida, and California.

Join Erie Arts & Culture on March 9 at 1 PM on Facebook live and zoom for an info session about one of our newest grant opportunities. This new program is designed to help creative entrepreneurs develop and grow their businesses and revenue.

The Creative Entrepreneur Accelerator Program advances our overarching values of diversity, equity, and inclusion. We are prioritizing investments for black, indigenous, or persons of color (BIPOC), and those who are located in and whose work benefits low-income communities as defined by the Small Business Administration (SBA).

The program provides funding to creative entrepreneurs who aspire to start their own for-profit business or who operate an existing for-profit micro business with access to existing small business consulting services and financial resources.

We are proud of our accomplishments this quarter, and we invite you to read and share our 2021 Q4 Impact Report! Please download the pdf to learn about our most recent programs, services, and impact on the community. We also welcome a conversation with you if you have questions about any of our programs and initiatives. You can reach our Executive Director at [email protected] if you have any questions. 

Your support helps us leverage the power of the arts and humanities to address the vital needs and interests of Erie. Together, we can make a positive impact in our community.

Please join EAC for a PRO Network webinar with host Spud Marshall on Feb 24 at 6 PM on Zoom! All those who register for the Zoom are automatically entered to win a free copy of Spud's book, "Designing Creative Communities: Your Community is Your Canvas: Learn How to Make Your Mark."

About:

We all want to be a part of a thriving community. But it can be challenging to meaningfully contribute to the places where we live, work, learn and play. Whether you dream of launching a community innovation center, want to enhance your town with colorful murals, or are simply looking to strengthen relationships with your neighbors, this presentation will introduce you to a simple process for how you can lead change from the bottom-up in your community. You'll learn about the CANVAS Framework which can serve as a simple guide on your own efforts for how to craft compelling visions, engage community members, and launch creative prototypes that lead to lasting change.

"Moving Forward" created by artists Shaddai Crosby, Jennifer Peters, Alex Staley, and Christina Wolfe is currently in-progress. It is their hope that the pieces with larger-than-life photographs of community members, symbols, and text will allow travelers on the 19th Street corridor to pause and consider multi-modal safety.

The Pennsylvania Council on the Arts partners with organizations across the Commonwealth to support traditional art and artists. Erie Arts and Culture is responsible for identifying artists and helping communities sustain and share cultural traditions in Erie, Warren, Crawford, Mercer, Lawrence, and Venango counties. As Erie Arts & Culture’s Folklorist-in-Residence, I keep a constant eye out for traditional practitioners of every sort. A big part of my job in Erie County is assisting former refugees in adapting and sustaining their traditions in a completely different culture. Another part of my job is field work. Last year I identified 20 tradition bearers in our six county region. 

It can be tricky to define folk arts, but you don’t usually find them on proscenium stages or gallery exhibits. Folk art has a function beyond aesthetic contemplation and much is based in specific ethnic groups like Pueblo pottery, Ukrainian pysanky eggs, or the spring ritual dance done by the Kirat people of Nepal. Folk arts can also live within occupational communities. Here are three tradition bearers I interviewed last year that are intimately connected to their community and the land. 

The 2020-2021 Fellowship recently concluded and as a result we checked in with the fellows to learn more about their experience over the last year. Fredy Huaman Mallqui, who was awarded the Established Artist Fellowship, believes that this fellowship opportunity has been instrumental in supporting the development and consolidation of his three professional realms: classical wood carving, large-scale sculptural creations and teaching wood carving.

We recently caught up with rostered teaching artist and ceramicist Jessie Simmons as she led a residency with the Art Club at Edison Elementary in Erie. Jessie worked one-on-one with 15 students in 3rd-5th grade. 

One of the primary goals of this special after-school programming is to offer students a chance to engage in art forms that they don’t have access to during their normal school day. As an experienced teaching artist, Jessie helped students to thoughtfully engage with a medium that was new to them - clay sculpting. Throughout the course of the program, students had the chance to create several new sculptures of their own all while learning more about the concepts of form, color, movement, and texture.  

We asked Jessie a few questions about the residency and what the process meant to her and the students.