Community Partnership for Arts and Culture has just named the 40 local artists — visual artists, theater artists, dancers, musicians and others — who have received the Creative Workforce Fellowships for the next two-year period. Each was awarded $15,000 to further their work in their field.
There had been some concern that the individual grants would be eliminated due to decreasing funding from the cigarette-based arts tax as fewer people are smoking. Artists gave heated testimony at meetings about how these grants had benefited the arts community as a whole, and why the burden of cuts should not fall entirely on this arm of the three-pronged money distribution, which also includes operating support for arts organizations and special project grants for arts- and culture-related activities by non-arts organizations.
In the end, the artist grants were retained, with some changes. The amount of the grant was lowered from $20,000 to $15,000. And instead of awarding annual grants to 20 artists, with each discipline coming up every other year, it awarded grants in all disciplines for a two-year cycle.
Most of the artists awarded the fellowships are familiar to the local arts community from their ongoing contributions to the local creative scene. For instance, they include people like Alison Garrigan who founded Talespinner Children’s Theatre in 2011 to respond to the lack of a professional children’s theatre in northeast Ohio and Dana DePew, who ran Asterisk Gallery in Tremont for a decade and whose striking light sculptures (pictured) grace many area businesses and locations including the 78th Street Studios.
It includes three visual artists who primarily work in a comics format and a constellation of theater artists who have been involved with Cleveland Public Theater in some form. It ranges from printmaker Christi Birchfield who runs Zygote Press’ Ink House satellite location to Bob Drake, a pioneer in the local electronic music scene.
The list is a testament to the wide range of creative work being done in Cleveland — and it’s just the tip of the iceberg. Many of us know equally worthy artists who applied and did not win. The full list includes:
Julie Andrijeski (music/dance)
Christopher Auerbach-Brown (music)
John Backderf (comics art)
Simone Barros (film)
Christi Birchfield (visual arts)
Amy Breau
Kathy Buszkiewicz (visual arts)
Ray Caspio (theater)
Dana Depew (visual arts)
Bob Drake (sound)
Michael Garriga (creative writing)
Alison Garrigan (theater)
Eric Gonzales (music/theater)
John G (comics art)
Lauren Herzak-Bauman (visual arts)
Freddy Hill (furniture maker)
Jakob Hochendoner (film)
Holly Holsinger (theater)
Ryan Jaenke (video)
Sarah Kabot (visual arts)
Kevin Kautenberger (visual arts)
Irina Koukhanova (visual arts)
Jimmy Kuehnle (performance art/installation/video)
Rebecca Leuszler (dance)
Dave Lucas (creative writing)
Allison Lukacsy (visual arts/installation)
Darlene Montonaro (Poetry)
Jeremy Paul (theater)
Megan Pitcher (interactive multimedia)
Darice Polo (visual arts)
Imad Rahman (creative writing)
Pandora Robertson (theater)
Mary Robles (creative writing)
Renee Schilling (theater)
Annika Sheaff (dance)
Paul Sobota (photography)
Darius Steward (visual arts)
Nathan Ward (comics art)
Chris Webb (performance poetry)
Catherine Wing (poetry)
cultureforward.org/Our-Programs/Fellowship/2016