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Vocational freedom granted to twenty-three MakeWork artists Wednesday, June 04, 2008
Across the street from the brick shell of the old Levin building on Main Street, one of CreateHere’s first MakeWork grant recipients is planning a mural. Shaun LaRose’s wall painting, which highlights Chattanooga’s environmental consciousness, will go up on the newly renovated building at the corner of Mitchell and Main. LaRose’s mural will help beautify the neighborhood surrounding some of Main Street’s most available spaces. LaRose is a good example of a community-centered artist, exactly the kind the MakeWork program seeks to foster.
CreateHere is pleased to announce the awarding of $150,000 in total funding to twenty-three such area artists as part of the 2008 MakeWork arts grants program. From cheese makers to a documentary videographer to sculptors who need financial help to rent their studio space, a huge variety of artists are benefiting from the first round of CreateHere grants.
Susan Seaton is a painter who will use her grant funding on a new project: capturing the world of a mentally challenged man in oils. “I feel incredibly grateful,” she says. “I feel a strange weight off my back, with this free space, unencumbered by the need to look for a job while I do my art. So I’m more focused. At the same time, I feel an awesome sense of responsibility to those who selected me, for the bigger picture of what this does for Chattanooga. This is for future artists too, and the longevity of the program.”
MakeWork is an arts grant program launched by CreateHere in January 2008. Artists within a 50-mile radius of Chattanooga were encouraged to apply for the grants in a variety of artistic endeavors divided into three categories of need: Studio Assistance, Career Advancement, and Projects. By mid-spring, over $878,000 in funding had been requested by 96 applicants. Beginning at the end of March, the proposals were submitted to juries of local and out-of-town experts in various fields of arts and culture.
“I was impressed by the high caliber of the grants,” said juror Ellen Simak, Chief Curator at the Hunter Museum of American Art. “That made the selection process very exciting but very difficult…What CreateHere is doing is valuable for…enlivening the arts community in Chattanooga.”
The MakeWork grants, ranging from $2,160 to $17,300, will be disbursed to the selected artists in installments over ten months, beginning in July. Grant recipients are urged to showcase their work in the community throughout the grant year and obligated to participate in CreateHere’s SpringBoard entrepreneurial program to explore the sustainability of their given disciplines.
A complete list of MakeWork grant recipients is attached.Posted by in Collective Rethink
