Idea Capital Funds 6 Artist Projects
Atlanta, GA—Idea Capital, a grassroots arts and culture support organization, announced today the winners of over $4000 for individual artist-initiated projects beginning immediately.
Fall 2009 grant winners are:
Artist |
Grant Amount |
Robert Cheatham |
$1500 |
Queen Sheba |
$1000 |
Patricia Henritze and Nicole Livieratos |
$750 |
Stefani Byrd and Wes Eastin |
$500 |
Joseph Wheeler III |
$500 |
Cecelia Kane |
$500 |
Robert Cheatham will use the unrestricted cash grant in the production of FORT!/da? Publications, a publishing imprint of art and philosophy books. New projects planned include books by local architect and builder Carlos Tardios and Atlanta artist Steve Seaberg. Mr. Cheatham was glad to receive the grant, not only for the print publications it would facilitate, but because the grant “means recognition for the years of effort that have gone into this project.” Cheatham added that “That in itself is above and beyond price.”
Bathsheba A. Rem (Queen Sheba) received $1000 to support her Rough Language quarterly poetry event, which brings 15 poets from around the country together in a poetry slam competition. Slam participants also engage in community service projects in the local area. According to Rem, the community projects give the participants “a sense of attachment to the demographic they will be speaking to at the poetry slam.”
Patricia Henritze and Nicole Livieratos will use their grant funds to shoot and edit a short film which will be an integral component of Proximity, an interdisciplinary dance and theater performance work. The grant will allow the two to make “a miniature movie to create a big group experience,” said Henritze.
Stephani Byrd and Wes Eastin plan to use their grant to create a monumental, temporary, media-based public art work. The pair envisions a freestanding, 12-foot mask servings as surface for projections in order to bring “art and music together in new ways through the use of technology.”
Joseph Wheeler III creator of Brutha YAMZ will use his grant to support ONYXCON 2010. The conference event, which will follow up on Wheeler’s 2009 event of the same name, will highlight the popular visual arts such as comic books, gaming, and children’s illustration created throughout the African Diaspora. Wheeler who called the award “an absolute honor” will return to the Southwest Arts Center for the 2010 event.
Cecelia Kane received $500 to self-publish a soft-cover catalog to document her Hand to Hand collaborative artist project. The multimedia project has used gloves to chronicle the Iraq war on a daily basis since the war’s start in 2003. Kane thanked not only Idea Capital for her grant but also “the nearly two hundred artists who are a part of the continuing Hand to Hand Project.”
Idea Capital is a grassroots initiative established in spring 2008 to help jump start Atlanta-based, artist-initiated projects that might not otherwise be supported through mainstream arts institutions. The organization and its grants are entirely supported by donations from artists and other peers throughout Atlanta’s arts communities. The most recent round of grant funding represents a nearly 10-fold increase over the inaugural funding level of $500 awarded in July 2008.
Idea Capital teamed up with the regional arts activist organization Alternate Roots, which allowed Idea Capital participants to make their investments tax-deductible. “Our partnership with Alternate Roots has opened up avenues to audiences and investors we never even anticipated,” said Louise Shaw, one of Idea Capital’s co-founders. Co-founder Stuart Keeler added that Alternate Roots gave the group access to a wider range of artists than has been represented in the past.
Keeler also cited the organization’s ongoing mission of reaching out to a wide variety of Atlanta’s arts constituencies, stating that although the choices were difficult, “we believe the range of winners reflects the wide range of entrants and talents we encountered.” The Idea Capital judging committee, which included co-founder Cinqué Hicks, new member Ben Grad, and guest panelist artist Lisa Tuttle considered 77 entries, from which the 6 winners were selected.
Grant recipient Joseph Wheeler added a hope for Idea Capital’s future, stating, “I hope that Idea Capital will continue to grow and support up and coming successful artists and art groups in addition to completely raw and untested ventures with potential to expand and evolve the arts in Atlanta!”
http://www.ideacapitalatlanta.org/prss_rls_winner_Fall_09_v2.pdf
About Idea Capital:
Idea Capital was founded in 2008 by Stuart Keeler, Pam Rogers, Louise Shaw, Susan Todd-Raque, and Cinqué Hicks. The group was founded to encourage experimentation and investigation with funds designed to give artists permission to pursue new ideas. Idea Capital encourages new members to join the organization.http://www.ideacapitalatlanta.org/prss_rls_winner_Fall_09_v2.pdf
About the Idea Capital Committee:
Stuart Keeler is an artist of public spaces with an interest in examining curatorial constructs in developing a stronger link to the production of art in the public realm. Recent projects include: Rauschenberg Foundation NYC; Service Works, Yerba Buena Center of the Arts, San Francisco; Interiority, Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago; i.e. 1A-Hong Kong, Republic of China; and A (new) Genre Landscape, Atlanta, GA.
Louise E. Shaw has been a cultural worker in Atlanta for over 30 years. She is currently the Curator of the Global Health Odyssey Museum at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Cinqué Hicks is a writer, artist, and cultural historian who relocated to Atlanta 4 years ago. He engages in independent curating projects and publications, and writes art criticism for Creative Loafing.
Ben Grad is is a photographer and writer deeply interested in the Atlanta dynamic. He is currently exploring documentary photography of pets being bathed as a metaphor for the relationship between "the citizen" and society.
http://www.ideacapitalatlanta.org/prss_rls_winner_Fall_09_v2.pdf
