For Brooklyn-based installation artist Chris Doyle, even the Creative Capital application process helped him present his work more clearly. "Filling out the application forced me to be clear about my project right off the bat – that was a big step for me," Chris says. Through an initial grant and additional resources, Creative Capital helped Chris take numerous such steps. "I have had a close working relationship with the staff, and access to their advice and resources has been invaluable," he says.

Creative Capital funding supported Chris's video installation, Leap, which projected images of more than 400 New Yorkers onto the façade of Two Columbus Circle, as they jumped up and disappeared into the night sky. Leap was presented by Creative Time in April 2000, and the project exemplifies Chris's ongoing commitment to "multi-media projects that explore the dynamics of communities." Chris's aim with Leap was both to evoke the transcendent in the everyday act of jumping, and to involve New Yorkers who "may not often be at the center of city life." To accomplish this, Chris traveled to the ends of subway lines in all five boroughs, and filmed residents as they jumped as high as they could. He also interviewed each participant about their desires and aspirations, and those interviews became part of the materials distributed with the installation.

In 2000, Chris received an initial $10,000 grant from Creative Capital toward the presentation of Leap. Immediately after his first meeting with the staff, he was offered an exceptional opportunity ï the MTA Art for Transit program offered an in-kind donation of 1,000 advertising card slots in the New York City subway system (a $40,000 market value). But this opportunity brought with it an additional $4,000 in expense to print the subway cards, and Chris requested a Strategic Financial Support grant. In March 2000, he was approved for an additional $5,000, and was able to print 1,500 cards and display 1,000 of them on subways across the city. After the completion of Leap, Chris was awarded a $2,475 Special Opportunity grant to create a color brochure about the project, as a way to broaden the impact of the work after its completion.

A year after being funded by Creative Capital, Chris won two major New York State fellowships, from the New York Foundation for the Arts and The New York State Council on the Arts. In the last two years, Chris's work has also had major presentations at the University of Michigan, and more recently at the Queens Museum, P.S. 1, Smack Mellon Studios and Jessica Murray Gallery in Brooklyn.

Chris says the retreats, which he attended in 2000 and 2002 are exceptional community-building tools for grantees. "The whole point," he says, "is that you see all this work and meet everyone so intensely and quickly. It's like 'instant community.'" Chris has maintained lasting contacts with several other Creative Capital artists, including Shannon Kennedy and Portland-based artist Harrell Fletcher.

Chris also met with several consultants at the retreats, including Steve Henry of Paula Cooper Gallery, Wendy Olsoff of PPOW Gallery, a public relations consultant, and a representative of The Tate Gallery. In addition, a contact Chris made with Jan Aman of Sweden's Fargfarbriken at the 2002 retreat has led to a possible re-mounting of Leap in Stockholm, Sweden, for which negotiations are currently underway.

An unexpected benefit for Chris of Creative Capital's services has been his page on the Foundation's website, which he says has had "a profound impact" on his visibility as an artist. "Creative Capital put the catalog from my project at the University of Michigan up on their website ï and it was more accessible than Michigan's own site." A curator learned of Chris's work on the website and included him in a show at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in New York. Chris also says that Creative Capital funding has increased his credibility, as the Foundation's own reputation grows over the years. "I used to have to explain what it was, but now most people understand it," he says.