The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage
The Center Announces Upcoming Artist Residencies for Seven Pew Fellows in the Arts
The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage is pleased to announce that a group of recent Pew Fellows will take sojourns outside of the Philadelphia area next year for residencies that will push their artistic practice and expand their horizons. These Fellows will soon find themselves in new surroundings—creative communities that nurture artistic expression and exploration, located in California, Alberta, and under the big sky of Wyoming—thanks to a new residency partnership between Pew Fellowships in the Arts (PFA), the Alliance of Artists Communities, and four North American artist residency programs. An additional partnership with the MacDowell Colony will also give one Pew Fellow each year the opportunity to spend time as The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage Fellow in residence at one of the oldest and most prestigious residency programs in the country.
CAConrad (2011, Literature) – Ucross Foundation
Kara Crombie (2010, Visual Arts) – MacDowell Colony
Ken Kalfus (2009, Literature) – Ucross Foundation
Tina Morton (2010, Media) – The Banff Centre
Tim Portlock (2011, Visual Arts) – 18th Street Arts Center
Matthew Suib (2011, Visual Arts) – The Banff Centre
Jamaaladeen Tacuma (2011, Music) – Headlands Center for the Arts
In an effort to connect Pew Fellows with resources both inside and outside the region, PFA worked with Caitlin Strokosh, Executive Director of the Alliance of Artist Communities, to identify residency programs with interdisciplinary focuses and facilities. According to PFA Director Melissa Franklin, it was important to offer Pew Fellows a group of residencies that were all very different: "These residency programs accommodate artists practicing in all disciplines, in keeping with the multidisciplinary scope of the fellowships. They represent a diverse group of creative communities and the working environment each offers is very different, reflecting the wide variety of artists that we support." The resulting consortium is made up of the Banff Centre in Alberta, Canada; 18th Street Arts Center in Santa Monica, CA; Headlands Center for the Arts in Sausalito, CA; and the Ucross Foundation in northeast Wyoming.
Each residency program took applications from interested Pew Fellows who were awarded their fellowships through the newest iteration of the PFA application process, from 2009 through 2011. Fellows were asked their order of preference, as well as their equipment and resource needs, in order to facilitate the matches; every artist received his or her first choice. For Matthew Suib, a visual artist who works with video, film, sound, and installation, it will be a second go at an artist residency—one that he hopes will result in significant time spent making new work: “I had a fantastic residency at Atlantic Center for the Arts a few years ago. We spent much more time looking and talking than actually making, but it felt incredibly productive [and] had a huge impact on my practice. I'm excited about being 2,500 miles away from anyone who might ask me to do anything other than make art.” Poet CAConrad plans to spend his time at Ucross charting the night sky, taking inspiration from the stars and imagining new constellations. It will be his first artist residency. He writes, “My hope is to gather enough material from the star formations for the long, inconsolable American poem I've been feeling for years.”
PFA has also partnered this year with the MacDowell Colony, a renowned community and residency program rooted in artistic excellence, on a new initiative, The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage Fellowship at MacDowell. Visual artist Kara Crombie (2010 Pew Fellow) is the first Fellow to receive this opportunity. Crombie will head to MacDowell next month and the other six Fellows will complete their residencies throughout 2012.
PFA expects that these residencies will extend the program's relationship with Fellows beyond the given time period of their awards and will contribute to a long-term impact on their work. In addition, these Fellows will bring their individual experiences back to the region, which will hopefully translate to a widespread impact on local artistic communities and audiences. Next year, PFA will work with Fellows chosen between 2010 and 2012, and will explore the possibility of expanding the program with additional artist residencies.
Pictured above, clockwise from top left: Jamaaladeen Tacuma, Tina Morton, Ken Kalfus, Matthew Suib, Kara Crombie, CAConrad, Tim Portlock. Photos by Colin Lenton.
