FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

FORTY-SIX ARTISTS NATIONWIDE AWARDED GRANTS BY CREATIVE CAPITAL FOUNDATION

Initial grants totaling nearly $400,000 are given to artist projects in the visual arts and film/video

NEW YORK, NY (February 2, 2005) – Creative Capital Foundation, the national arts organization that supports individual artists, announces the recipients of its 2005 grants. Forty-six artists representing 41 projects in the visual arts and film/video received initial awards of $5,000 to $10,000. As the projects develop, the foundation offers additional funds; projects may receive as much as $50,000 each through the tenure of the multi-year grant and at least $1 million has been committed to the 41 projects.

The award also includes enrollment in Creative Capital’s distinctive Artist Services Program. Now the signature trademark for the foundation’s “soup to nuts” funding approach, this program offers grantees assistance in fundraising, networking, marketing, and strategic planning to advance both their projects and their careers. So far Creative Capital has devoted more than $3 million to the Artists Services Program.

About the projects
Themes represented in this year’s funded projects run the gamut, from quiet “slice of life” stories to epic transnational journeys. Creative Capital has been there before in terms of work dealing with border-crossing, popular culture, or the changing urban landscape, but, according to Creative Capital President Ruby Lerner, “we’re seeing nuances in artistic expression that reflect how U.S.-based artists are positioning themselves as citizens of the world.” Indeed issues such as shifts in the environment and political exile and corruption exhibit artistic concerns on a global scale, and continue to inspire work that speaks to this particular moment in time.

Foundation update
This year Creative Capital implemented a new selection process in considering the 3,286 submissions that arrived online, by mail, and by hand at its New York office; the updated process enabled more work samples to be reviewed in a preliminary round. As a result, evaluators and panelists nationwide were able to view the work of more than 700 artists collectively.

Now in its fourth grant cycle, Creative Capital has supported the work of 199 artists since its start in 1999. The foundation recently announced the March 14 deadline for proposals for 2006 grants in the performing arts and emerging fields/innovative literature. Those grant recipients will be selected by late December. By 2006 Creative Capital will have an estimated 240 projects from across the country on the roster.

About Creative Capital
Founded in January 1999, Creative Capital Foundation is a national nonprofit organization that supports individual artists pursuing innovative approaches to form and content in the visual and performing arts, film/video, and in emerging fields/innovative literature. A complete list of grantees, profiles of funded projects, and up-to-date grant cycle information can be found online at the foundation’s website at www.creative-capital.org.

CREATIVE CAPITAL FOUNDATION 2005 GRANTEE PROJECTS

Visual Arts

Edgar Arcenaux, Vincent Galen Johnson, Olga Koumoundouros, Matthew Sloly and Rodney McMillan (Pasadena, CA)
Sculpture & Installation
A Philosophy of Time Travel - A collaborative sculptural installation, in conjunction with the Studio Museum of Harlem, referencing Brancusi’s Endless Column, the music of African composer Sun Ra, and the architecture of the Egyptian pyramids

James Bidgood (New York, NY) Photography
Checking the Plumbline - A series of staged photo-based works that will be a statement on reactionary politics, sexuality, and religion

Max King Cap (Chicago, IL) Interdisciplinary
God’s Punk – An operetta-style video and performance work examining the formal garden and the forest as metaphors for the sacred and profane

Bruce Chao (Rehoboth, MA) Sculpture
Sculpture in Trees – A series of outdoor sculptural works sited in trees and the forest canopy, evoking a synthesis and harmony between living trees and a 19th century glass house

Liz Cohen (San Francisco, CA) Interdisciplinary
Bodywork – A performance and sculpture project in which the artist investigates the desire for social acceptance and identity transformation by converting/customizing both an automobile and her own body

Nancy Davidson (New York, NY) Sculpture
Let ‘er Buck – A series of large, inflatable outdoor “cowgirl” sculptures offering a humorous, absurd critique of popular culture from a feminist perspective

Peggy Diggs (Williamstown, MA) Interdisciplinary
Work Out – A collaborative community-based art project with incarcerated men and women who will design industrial and residential objects for small spaces

Jeffrey Gibson (Jersey City, NJ) Painting
Infinite Anomaly: Tahlequah, Oklahoma – A series of paintings documenting the artist’s relationship to a plot of land in Oklahoma that his family has inherited through The Federal Indian Allotment Act of the late 1800s

Pablo Helguera (New York, NY) Installation
The School of Panamerican Unrest – A transportable museum that will travel the U.S. and Latin America with material and programs exploring the history of utopian thought and political ideas of freedom

Caroline Lathan-Stiefel (Atlanta, GA) Installation
New Installation – A room-sized installation consisting of multiple, connected forms made of fabric, pipe cleaners, yarn, pins, and thread which is a play on traditional architectural, technological, and organic systems

Deborah F. Lawrence (Seattle, WA) Works on paper
Dee Dee Does Utopia – A series of collage-like works inspired by the instigations, visual puns, and political aesthetics of the Dadaists and Surrealists with references to traditions such as American quilting and stitching

Annie Han & Daniel Mihalyo (Seattle, WA) Installation
Maryhill Double – A collaborative site-specific installation involving a full-scale replication of the Maryhill Museum on Oregon’s Columbia River Gorge and utilizing building scaffolding and nylon construction netting

Mark Newport (Mesa, AZ) Interdisciplinary
Ready for Action – A series of digital images documenting the artist performing in self-made superhero costumes and examining the theme of protection

Ruben Ochoa (Los Angeles, CA) Interdisciplinary
Freeway Extractions – A two-part photomural project to be mounted on freeway walls throughout Southern California as a way to engage spaces where class, sculpture, and art can intersect

Karyn Olivier (Houston, TX) Installation
59 South (Texas) Billboard Project – A series of photomurals designed for billboards near an exit ramp on the 59 South freeway in Texas and meant to pay homage to Magritte’s Surrealist painting The Human Condition

Susanne Cockrell and Ted Purves (Oakland, CA) Interdisciplinary
Temescal Amity Works – A social sculpture project sited in the Temescal neighborhood of Oakland involving the exchange of produce yielded from the backyards of this community

Artemio Rodriguez (Los Angeles, CA) Works on paper
Woodcut Mural, Urban Landscape – An over-sized mural using traditional Mexican woodcut techniques and addressing border politics and urban development

Joseph Schneider (Corbett, OR) Sculpture
The Doll Cathedral – A monument-like public sculpture using Barbie, Ken, G.I. Joe and other action figure dolls to create a Gothic cathedral symbolizing the intersection of consumer culture, spirituality, and idol worship

Kerry Skarbakka (Brooklyn, NY) Photography
Fluid – A series of large format, performative underwater photographs investigating themes of suffocation, panic and loss of control

Noelle Tan (Washington, D.C.) Photography
Untitled – A series of black-and-white landscape photographs of desert areas in Nevada, Utah and Arizona processed using techniques that nearly obliterate the images, leaving only a hint and subtle marks of the original scenes


Film/Video Projects 2005


Natalia Almada (Brooklyn, NY) Experimental documentary
El General – A feature-length documentary on the artist’s ancestors in Mexico that compares personal and family historical accounts with the published history of the country

Usama Alshaibi (Chicago, IL) Experimental documentary
Nice Bombs – A diaristic home-movie chronicling the filmmaker’s recent pilgrimage with his father to their Iraqi homeland after living in exile in the U.S. for the past 24 years

Ina Archer (Brooklyn, NY) Film/video installation
The London Film Conspiracy (LFC) – A 30-minute film and a six-minute multi-screen installation that combines archival film footage, new video segments and digital image to address the practice of film preservation and archiving in a humorous way

Bill Daniel (Shreveport, LA) Film/video installation & experimental documentary
The Drift – A documentary installation series and 50-minute video that explores the unseen consequences of ecological change through portraits of societal outsiders

Paula Durette (Baltimore, MD) Animation
Long Pink Coats and Harleys – A Czech-influenced puppet animation presenting the difficulties associated with being part of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender youth community

Edgar Endress & Lori Lee (Pottsboro, TX) Experimental documentary
Carry On – A short film about the search for an illegal Haitian immigrant, using an abandoned backpack as the primary clue

James Fotopoulos (Chicago, IL) Interdisciplinary
Richard Nixon – An experimental visual and audio study of the life of the former President, utilizing animation, installation, documentary and narrative approaches

Jennifer Fox (New York, NY) Experimental documentary
Women & I – A feature-length documentary in which the filmmaker’s life serves as a vehicle for investigating female identity across countries, cultures, ages and sexual orientations

Jacqueline Goss (Tivoli, NY) Animation
Precisely – An animated documentary investigating the history of measurement systems, particularly the technologies used to measure and map the human body

Brent Green (Cressona, PA) Animation
Paulina Holler – An animated Appalachian folk tale of grief created with stop-motion rabbit bones, hand carved wooden angels, and a hand-drawn hell

Cristina Ibarra (Los Angeles, CA) Experimental narrative
Love & Monster Trucks – A live-action narrative interspersed with freeze frames and animated sequences that reference the comic book series Love & Rockets and life in the U.S./Mexico border town of the main character

Braden King (New York, NY) Experimental narrative
Here – An experimental road movie about a satellite-mapping engineer working and traveling in Armenia and presented as a meditation on landscape, time, place and orientation

James Lyons (New York, NY) Experimental narrative
A Short Film About Andy Warhol – A six-minute fictional film, surreal in style, that follows the famous artist home after an imagined night on the town

Jake Mahaffy (Roanoke, VA) Experimental narrative
Free In Deed – A narrative feature about a young man’s existential quest to reclaim his spiritual autonomy while on a return trip to his hometown

Peter Sillen (Jersey City, NJ) Experimental documentary
Free and Accepted – A feature-length documentary that explores the history and future of the Masonic Order in the U.S. as well as some of the issues brought about by the cloistered fraternal order such as group exclusion/inclusion and brotherhood

Alex Stikich (Brooklyn, NY) Experimental documentary
Honesto – Corrupt Politician – A three-part short video that humorously portrays the effects of governmental corruption around the world, particularly in Latin America

Naomi Uman (Newhall, CA) Experimental documentary
Untitled – A personal, anecdotal documentary on 16mm film, based on the filmmaker’s trip to the Ukraine to live with a family of dairy farmers

Edin Velez (Brooklyn, NY) Experimental narrative
Delirio Tropical – A 90-minute video set in Puerto Rico in the 1980s interweaving a romance story with the 1978 Cerro Maravilla assassinations, the most controversial political event in the country’s history

Glenda Wharton (Winston-Salem, NC) Animation
The Zo and the Invisible Friend – A hand-drawn animation using experimental fine art techniques to show how a child uses imagination to escape a nightmarish reality

Christopher Wilcha (Brooklyn, NY) Experimental documentary
Garden State – A first-person essay film documenting the filmmaker’s return to his home state of New Jersey, recording observations and memories of the local landscape, much of which has been designated as a toxic waste site

Eric Wolf (New York, NY) Experimental documentary
Outpost – A black-and-white Super-8 film set in Iceland and touring the landscape through the imagined memories of a sailor who was aboard a sinking ship in the North Atlantic in 1984


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Creative Capital Foundation
65 Bleecker Street, 7th floor
New York, NY 10012
http://creative-capital.org
212 598 9900