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International Association of Blacks in Dance seeks CEO

APPLICATION DEADLINE: Thursday, March 31, 2022

IABD's next President and CEO will be the 4th leader in the organization's 30-year history.

They will have the opportunity to be at the forefront of activating change that sustains the future of Black dance.  This leader will build consensus informed by new and varied perspectives. They will partner with all staff to oversee the implementation of our leadership development programs, funding opportunities, and annual conferences. As the most public-facing ambassador of the organization, the right candidate will have the opportunity to represent IABD in the dance community and the broader performing arts and philanthropic communities nationally and internationally.

The president and CEO will report to and be championed by a 21-person Board of Directors representing an intergenerational mix of artistic voices and leaders in the dance world. In this partnership, the President and CEO will strategize and collaborate to establish vivid goals to advance the organization's mission. They will work with and oversee a full-time staff of 7 employees. As President and CEO, they will have operational responsibility and oversight of IABD's programs, membership, fundraising, events, finances, and staff. IABD projects revenue for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2022, at $3 million. The association's diverse revenue platform includes programming, membership dues, sponsorships, grants, and a fiscal sponsorship program.

Key roles and responsibilities

The president and CEO will focus their efforts on four primary areas: strategic leadership and advocacy, fiscal management, capacity building and sustainability, and staff engagement. In this capacity, this leader will establish internal and operational priorities, cultivate meaningful and impactful relationships, and advance strategic partnerships to elevate IABD's impact and initiatives. This person will develop new and unique opportunities to serve the mission and bring innovation to spark organizational growth. They will be an assertive advocate for Black dance and effectively represent all dance professionals irrespective of the size, tenure and genre of the organization. The next president and CEO will understand the importance, potential, and plurality of ways that art and dance can connect, engage, and transform individuals and communities alike. The new president and CEO will understand and advocate for the organization's vision, history, and philosophy supporting its mission.

Learn more an apply by clicking here.

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Tuning Up: Senate confirms new NEA chair + Black music

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...
Dr. Maria Rosario Jackson to head NEA. On Saturday, the U.S. Senate confirmed President Joe Biden's nominee to chair the National Endowment for the Arts. Jackson is a 2013 appointee to the National Council on the Arts and is a tenured Institute Professor in the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts (HIDA) at Arizona State University where she also holds an appointment in the Watts College of Public Service and Community Solutions. A full bio is here. S.C. art museums take up Black music:
  • In conjunction with its Romare Bearden: Abstraction exhibition, Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston is set to present Improvised: A Hip Hop Experience. "Many artists are influenced by the music of their time. In the case of the abstract expressionists of the mid 20th century that music was Jazz. Improvisational and expressive, it inspired Jackson Pollack and Romare Bearden alike. At the Gibbes, we see Hip Hop as an extension of that improvisational tradition and are excited to partner with on air personality Kris Kalyn to host Improvised: A Hip Hop Experience that will have local and emerging Hip Hop artists responding to works in Romare Bearden: Abstraction." Tickets are available now. $35. Student pricing available.
  • Later in the month, Columbia Museum of Art will launch of More Than Rhythm: A Black Music Series, hosted by ethnomusicologist Dr. Birgitta Johnson on Saturday, Jan. 15, 2022, during the closing weekend of the 30 Americans exhibition. The series premieres (two additional dates are scheduled) with a sampling of diverse sacred choral textures that exist in the Black sacred music tradition. "Black music represents one of the oldest and broadest rivers that pours into America’s sonic ocean. Whether it be in pop or rock, classical or hip-hop, the history that the music of Black Americans affirms is key to its enduring popularity and influence across lines of race, gender, age, class, and even language," per a release.
The Hub is pleased to see leading arts institutions offering inclusive programming that further validates why they are both recipients of the Governor's Award for the Arts.

Jason Rapp

Launch party announced for new Jonathan Green book

Party with the artist Dec. 16

The Koger Center in Columbia announced plans to celebrate the launch of Jonathan Green's new book with a party on Thursday, Dec. 16 from 6-7:30 p.m.

Jonathan Green Spoleto 2016Green's depictions of the Gullah life and culture, established by descendants of enslaved Africans who settled between northern Florida and North Carolina during the nineteenth century have earned him considerable notoriety. The vividly colored paintings and prints have captured and preserved the daily rituals and Gullah traditions of his childhood in the Lowcountry marshes of South Carolina. In 2010, the South Carolina Arts Commission presented Green the Governor's Award for the Arts in lifetime achievement. From press materials about Gullah Spirit:

While his art continues to express the same energy, color, and deep respect for his ancestors, Green's techniques have evolved to feature bolder brush strokes and a use of depth and texture, all guided by his maturing artistic vision that is now more often about experiencing freedom and contentment through his art. This vision is reflected in the 179 new paintings featured in Gullah Spirit. His open and inviting images beckon the world to not only see this vanishing culture but also to embrace its truth and enduring spirit.

Using both the aesthetics of his heritage and the abstraction of the human figure, Green creates an almost mythological narrative from his everyday observations of rural and urban environments. Expressed through his mastery of color, Green illuminates the challenges and beauty of work, love, belonging, and the richness of community.

Angela D. Mack, executive director of the Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston, provides a foreword. The book also includes short essays by historian Walter B. Edgar, educator Kim Cliett Long, and curator Kevin Grogan.

Tickets for the event are $65 and available now by clicking here.

Jason Rapp

Deadlines nears for SCAiA survey

DEADLINE: Friday, December 10, 2020

The Hub would like its readers to know that the deadline for Black #SCartists to complete the survey from South Carolina Artists in Action is looming.

The South Carolina Arts Commission dropped the news on SCAiA recently (read the announcement here). The needs of the state's entrepreneurial Black artists are the focus of the new program. SCAiA released a survey to gather critical input. 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/

Jason Rapp

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).

[caption id="attachment_48308" align="alignright" width="225"] 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.

Jason Rapp

South Arts names 2021 State Fellows

[caption id="attachment_46889" align="aligncenter" width="600"]Fletcher Williams III stands in his art studio among works in progress. 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.
“The 2021 Southern Prize and State Fellowship recipients represent the amazing creativity of our region,” explained Susie Surkamer, President and CEO of South Arts. “Although they each speak with a unique voice through their work, their combined diversity is a great showcase of what it means to be an artist living, working, creating, and thriving in the South.” Launched in 2017, the Southern Prize and State Fellowships acknowledge, support, and celebrate the highest quality art being created in the South. More than 850 artists applied for consideration this past fall and winter, and jurors reviewed each application to recommend the State Fellowship recipients. Another national panel of jurors will review the State Fellows to determine the Southern Prize winner and finalist, both of whom will be named at a virtual ceremony in June 2021. Visual artists living in South Arts’ nine-state region and producing crafts, drawing, experimental, painting, photography, sculpture, mixed media, and multidisciplinary work were eligible to apply. To view work by the 2021 State Fellowship recipients and register to attend the June 17, 2021 Southern Prize ceremony, visit www.southarts.org. An exhibition featuring the 2021 Southern Prize and State Fellowship recipients will be open at the Bo Bartlett Center in Columbus, Georgia, from Aug. 20-Dec. 20, 2021.

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.

Jason Rapp

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.

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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.

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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)

Jason Rapp

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.

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