Deadlines nears for SCAiA survey
DEADLINE: Friday, December 10, 2020
Black artists focus of new SCAC program
for immediate release
COLUMBIA, S.C. – The needs of South Carolina’s entrepreneurial Black artists are the focus of a new program announced by the South Carolina Arts Commission (SCAC).
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The SCAiA logo, by Amiri Geuka Farris.[/caption]
Together, the SCAC and South Carolina Artists in Action (SCAiA) envision a South Carolina where Black artists have essential support for sustainable careers. The mission of SCAiA is to identify and implement best practices enabling Black artist to artist and Black artist to institutions to advance, support and sustain equitable, inclusive working relationships.
“The needs of Black artists are different in that they often require a targeted level of support to get started. SCAiA wants to help navigate access and other systemic challenges. It will also provide a network of peers with similar backgrounds and experiences who either overcame those challenges or are working through them,” SCAC Director of Artist Services Ce Scott-Fitts said.
Scott-Fitts is chairperson of the SCAiA committee, serving with Triza Cox, Michael Murray, and Kathryn Van Aernum.
SCAiA released a survey this week to gather critical input from Black South Carolina artists (#SCartists). The observations, thoughts, and feedback will help SCAiA’s committee set program goals. The survey can be accessed from the program’s SCAC webpage: https://www.southcarolinaarts.com/artist-development/programs/south-carolina-artists-in-action/
About the South Carolina Arts Commission
The mission of the South Carolina Arts Commission (SCAC) is to promote equitable access to the arts and support the cultivation of creativity in South Carolina. We envision a South Carolina where the arts are valued and all people benefit from a variety of creative experiences. A state agency created by the South Carolina General Assembly in 1967, the SCAC works to increase public participation in the arts by providing grants, direct programs, staff assistance and partnerships in three key areas: arts education, community arts development, and artist development. Headquartered in Columbia, S.C., the SCAC is funded by the state of South Carolina, by the federal government through the National Endowment for the Arts, and other sources. Visit SouthCarolinaArts.com or call 803.734.8696, and follow @scartscomm on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter for #Arts4SC and #SCartists content.
South Arts names 2021 State Fellows
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Fletcher Williams III (Photo by Andrew Cebulka)[/caption]
South Arts has named the ten visual artists (eight individual artists and one team) receiving the 2021 State Fellowship awards.
Each fellowship—one per state in the South Arts region—comes with a cash award of $5,000 and inclusion in an exhibition opening this fall at the Bo Bartlett Center in Columbus, Georgia.
The State Fellows are also now in consideration for the two larger Southern Prize awards. One fellowship recipient will be named the Southern Prize winner receiving an additional $25,000 cash award, and another fellow will be named the Southern Prize Finalist receiving an additional $10,000; both Southern Prize recipients will also receive a two-week residency at the Hambidge Center for the Creative Arts and Sciences. The two winners will be named at a virtual ceremony on June 17 celebrating the work of all ten State Fellows.
The 2021 State Fellowship recipients are:
- Tameca Cole. Mixed Media. Birmingham, Alabama.
- Marielle Plaisir. Mixed Media. Hollywood, Florida.
- Myra Greene. Craft. Atlanta, Georgia.
- Joyce Garner. Painting. Prospect, Kentucky.
- Chandra McCormick and Keith Calhoun. Photography. New Orleans, Louisiana.
- Ming Ying Hong. Drawing. Starkville, Mississippi.
- Jewel Ham. Painting. Huntersville, North Carolina.
- Fletcher Williams III. Mixed Media. North Charleston, South Carolina.
- Raheleh Filsoofi. Multidisciplinary. Nashville, Tennessee.
More about Fletcher Williams III
Bio
Fletcher Williams III (b. 1987) is a multidisciplinary artist working primarily in sculpture and painting. Williams received his BFA from The Cooper Union for the Advancement in Science and Art (2010). He maintained a studio practice in Long Island City, Queens, and later Crowns Heights, Brooklyn before returning to his hometown of Charleston, South Carolina, in 2013. Upon his return to Charleston, Williams remained an independent artist and began producing solo exhibitions throughout the City of Charleston and North Charleston, the latest being a site-wide solo exhibition, Promiseland (2020), at the Historic Aiken-Rhett House Museum.Artist statement
My work engages the rituals and traditions of the American South. My interest in the way we seek to establish place and identity has prompted a working methodology that utilizes found and natural materials and an exhibition practice that incorporates public and historic sites. I often paint with Spanish moss, builds house-like structures with salvaged wood and tin roof, and fashion delicate sculptures out of handwoven palmetto roses. My approach is architectural and figural, tactile, and multi-sensory and unveils my curiosity for both people and place, material, and process. To view selected artworks, visit his page on SouthArts.org.About South Arts
South Arts advances Southern vitality through the arts. The nonprofit regional arts organization was founded in 1975 to build on the South’s unique heritage and enhance the public value of the arts. South Arts’ work responds to the arts environment and cultural trends with a regional perspective. South Arts offers an annual portfolio of activities designed to support the success of artists and arts providers in the South, address the needs of Southern communities through impactful arts-based programs, and celebrate the excellence, innovation, value and power of the arts of the South. For more information, visit www.southarts.org.New Gullah Art Gallery opens in Beaufort
City welcomes only solo Black female Gullah art gallery
The ribbon's been cut at Legacy Art Gallery, LLC in Beaufort.
Owner and artist Lisa Rivers is on location painting and creating beautiful artwork. On this International Women's Day, The Hub notes that hers is the only solo Black female Gullah art gallery in Beaufort. Rivers says each piece is full of love and vivid colors. Find Legacy Art Gallery in Old Bay Marketplace, 917 Bay St., Suite C.Columbia dancers awarded NEA grant
Wideman Davis Dance of Columbia was approved for a $20,000 grant Arts Projects award from the National Endowment for the Arts to support the dance company's immersive and interactive Migratuse Ataraxia.
This project will fund a three-month residency, followed by four public performative installations. Wideman Davis Dance will use the residency and performative installations to develop and test a community-oriented residency curriculum that introduces, integrates, and expands the themes of “Migratuse Ataraxia.” Wideman Davis Dance’s project is among 1,073 projects across America totaling nearly $25 million that were selected during this first round of fiscal year 2021 funding in the Grants for Arts Projects funding category. “The National Endowment for the Arts is proud to support this project from Wideman Davis Dance,” said Arts Endowment Acting Chairman Ann Eilers. “Wideman Davis Dance is among the arts organizations across the country that have demonstrated creativity, excellence, and resilience during this very challenging year.” “The National Endowment for the Arts Grant not only supports a performative experience of “Migrartuse Ataraxia, but also residency activities and facilitated sessions with community groups, including students from Allen University and Benedict College and seniors from the Columbia Housing Authority residential programs. We are excited to receive NEA support to assist us in our art making and our efforts to engage the Columbia, SC community,” co-director, Tanya Wideman-Davis and Thaddeus Davis said in a statement.Project Description
The original performance, which was workshopped at Columbia’s Hampton-Preston Mansion and Gardens in April of 2019, centered on the humanity of enslaved Africans in antebellum homes despite the oppressive bondage under which they lived. In 2021 Migratuse Ataraxia intentionally shifts, exploring the journey from spaces of enslavement to those of Black liberation and empowerment through a mobile performative intervention that moves from the antebellum Hampton-Preston site to the former home of Modjeska Monteith Simkins, South Carolina’s most notable civil and human rights activist. Participants will travel a route where they will encounter the artists’ responses to historic structures through large scale projections, sonic environments, and live performances that speak to Black futurity. By focusing the energy on this temporal and physical migration, WDD reclaims the representation of Black bodies and narratives, creating new visual, emotional, and intellectual entry points in an immersive, interactive setting. In addition, the spatial shift will allow the artists to redirect the focus from the interior architecture of an antebellum site to an expanded exterior magnification of the physical labor of Black bodies – centering these performative practices on a celebration of radical Black female space. For more information on projects included in the Arts Endowment grant announcement, visit arts.gov/news.Tuning Up: An arts media coverage update
Good morning!
"Tuning Up" is a morning post series where The Hub delivers curated, quick-hit arts stories of interest to readers. Sometimes there will be one story, sometimes there will be several. Get in tune now, and have a masterpiece of a day. And now, in no particular order...
Arts coverage has been wonderfully prominent in South Carolina media in the past few days.
Let's take a stroll through ICYMI. Items appear in no particular order, and subscriptions could be required to read them. (Pssst: support local artists AND journalists. /soapbox)- How artists and arts institutions lead the conversation on race in America (Charleston Post & Courier)
- Columbia artist earns comic industry's highest honor (ColaDaily.com)
- The Art of Community: Rural SC continues to build arts connections across the state (Charleston City Paper, and also us, The Hub)
Virginia theatre makes call for Black playwrights
Barter Theatre, in Abingdon, Virginia, is located in the southwest corner of the commonwealth, in the heart of Appalachia.
One of Barter's core beliefs is service to our audience, and to that end, back in 2000, we created the Appalachian Festival of Plays and Playwrights (AFPP). The AFPP solicits plays that are either set in Appalachia, or plays from playwrights who live in Appalachia (as defined by this A.R.C. link).
Over the years we have not received many plays about the Black experience in Appalachia, and in an effort to address this, we have created our Black in Appalachia Initiative - a plan to actively seek out plays by Black Appalachian playwrights. Here's the link to information about the Festival: https://bartertheatre.com/playwriting-festivals/#AFPP
The AFPP Process
Plays are submitted to Barter and read blind. A panel picks the top 12, and from there another panel picks the top 6 or 7. At our festival in January, the plays are read in front of an audience by Barter's resident acting company, a panel gives feedback, the audience gives feedback, and one or two of the plays are chosen for further development - either another reading, or often a place in a future Barter season. For our Black in Appalachia Initiative, we are dedicating at LEAST one slot in the Festival to Black Appalachian playwrights, but we'd love it if there were even more.The show must go on – Charleston’s Colour of Music Festival to open as scheduled
Note: The Colour of Music Festival receives a General Operating Support grant from the South Carolina Arts Commission. Adieu, Matthew. Charleston's five-day Colour of Music Festival will open as scheduled Oct. 19, despite Hurricane Matthew's visit and the aftermath. The 2016 festival runs through October 23 at various venues throughout historic Charleston. “This is the second year the festival has opened two weeks after a tropical storm or hurricane, and our organizers, the City of Charleston’s Office of the Mayor, Office of Cultural Affairs, Charleston Area Visitor and Convention Bureau and Gaillard Center management are notifying locals and visitors alike that Charleston is ready to welcome them – we are very appreciative of how everyone is helping us get the word out,” says Lee Pringle, festival founder and producer. Now in its fourth year, the Colour of Music Festival presents a musical kaleidoscope of black classical composers, performers, and artists from across the globe and offers symposiums, organ and piano recitals, vocal recitals, a chamber series, an evening Masterworks series and a gala. Acclaimed black chamber ensemble players and artists from Canada, France, Britain, Colombia, the Caribbean and other locations form the Masterwork Series’ Colour of Music Festival Orchestra. Internationally renowned conductor Marlon Daniel will again serve as festival music director with leading black maestros serving as guest conductors to lead the orchestra. The festival's motif, All Things French (Toutes Les Choses Françaises) is highlighted with the début of African-French composer Chevalier de Saint Georges’ only discovered opera, The Anonymous Lover, featuring Magali Léger, native of Saint Georges' birthplace, the Isle of Guadeloupe. Find the complete schedule and ticket information online. About the Colour of Music Festival Based in Charleston, South Carolina and organized in 2013, the Colour of Music Festival, Inc. presents a diverse classical repertoire of baroque, classical and 20th century music at the highest of musical standards to diverse audiences throughout the Lowcountry, regionally and nationally. www.colourofmusic.org