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2013 Grant Awards


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LCC Grants are awarded in seven disiplines (music, visual art, etc.) and three types: fellowships, projects, and education.  Below are the awards issued for 2013.  SAC looks forward to these engaging projects and is thrilled to be supporting individual artists through our fellowship grants. The list below is organized by discipline.

Cultural Heritage

Artist Fellowship
Michael Spencer:  To document Somerville's quickly shifting demographic through  photographs of street life, celebrations and art/cultural events in the reflections of recognizable community storefronts and buildings ( new & old).

Project Grant
Bimala Thapa:  To teach children from ages 6-12 years old the Nepali language with weekly afterschool classes that would be one hour in length for a 4 month period. Classes would be free and open to Somerville children and those from neighboring communities.

Education Grants
Arthur D. Healey School: To support literacy through a bookmaking workshop with guest artist Robert Shreefter. Teacher Eileen MacDonald will over see the project and collaborate with Prof Shreefter to design four workshops tailored to the students of the Healey School.

Somerville High School:  To support a residency with Marcus Santos' Grooversity that brings world drumming classes to students.
Dance/Theatre

Artist Fellowships
Callie Chapman:  To support Callie's work, which currently utilizes dance-theatre, improvisation and live video projection, focusing on many themes; love, etherealness, war, justice, children, etc. Her process involves working with a live production using delay and looping algorithms.

Jody Weber:  To support Weber's current, which explores a juxtaposition of history with mythological storytelling. A completed full length work of Weber's is titled "Synchronicity and the Sacred Space"-- a collaboration with expedition kayaker/storyteller, Jon Turk.

Projects
Richard Clark:  To support a two-person play A.R. Gurney's "Love Letters" performed for the Somerville Council on Aging.

Liza Kitchell:  To support Wild Tales, a free after-school program for children ages 5-12 that will explore Somerville's unique ecosystem. The program will culminate with an original musical play about our cityscape.
Film/Video

Project
Somerville Community Access T.V:  To support a eight-session summer narrative film-making workshop for Somerville teens in July and August.

Literature 

Artist Fellowships 
Eleanor Stafford: To support Stafford's work—a book in a potential series that features teen detective Roberta Robinson.

Elizabeth Stevens:  Stevens is a fiction writer and teacher studying Jim Henson's relationship with art and money as a way of exploring how an artist can stay true to their art and still make money at their craft.
 
John Thompson:  Thompson writes humanizing stories that focus on crime from a Somerville private investigator's perspective.
 
Becky Tuch:  Tuch is createing a collection of inter-linked short stories that explore themes of immigration, assimilation, Jewish identity and family loyalty.
 
Multidisipline
Artist Fellowships
Dirk Adams: Adams is creating audio walks that take participants on adventures through public spaces by examining the city as a living organism. Recent projects involve audio tours where people wear headphones to explore lesser known place of the Boston area.
 
Marissa Falco: Falco creates zines that explore themes of art, travel, and personal history. This project is currently being used as a model for future endeavors with the handemade zine format by creating content that reflects more of her background in research and journalism.
 
Projects
Jef Czekaj: Czekaj will create a series of programs around comic art and silk-screeneding posters.
 
Openair Circus:  To support a six week intensive circus training for children of all ages.
 
Outside the Lines Studio:  To produce a Photobooth Funhouse, an interactive, inclusive arts structure, bringing together artists with and without disabilities to collaborate on set design, puppet-making, sculpture, sound, and video.
 
College Ave UMC:  To bring West African drumming demo and workshop to the CDF Freedom School in Somerville. The project Rhythm and Rhymes combine drumming and cultural literacy workshops integrated into final performances in June.
 
Music 

Artist Fellowship
Oliver Caplan:  To support Caplan as a composer. Caplan writes music for chamber ensemble, orchestra, voice and concert band.

Education Grants
Argenziano School, Paul Barringer:  To support a  Malian drumming and dance residency for grades 6-8 at the Argenziano School. This three week program will provide 70 students with hands on experience learning and performing traditional songs from Mali.

Somerville Public Schools, Joanne Sadler:  To support Somerville String Camp a two week intensive summer music program for string instrument instruction that offers classes in violin, viola, cello, and bass as well as music theory, improvisation, chamber music, etc.

East Somerville School, El Sistema:  To support a free monthly workshop and concert series in East Somerville. The concerts are to be held at various East Somerville Schools as well the East Somerville Public Library.
 
East Somerville Community School, Adam Epstein: To bring a professional dulcimer player to present 6 sessions to middle grades music students at ESCS.

Projects 
Boston Opera Collaborative/Erika Mitchell: The Collaborative will perform the New England premiere of Jake Heggie's opera "Dead Man Walking" at the Somerville Theatre in March 2013.

Cambridge Symphony Orchestra: To support the CSO presentation of two free concerts at the Somerville Public Library.
 
Helios Early Opera: To support the presentation of the American premiere of Francesco Cavalli's 1657 comic opera, "Artemisia," at the Armory in Somerville.
 
Mystic Learning Center, Inc: To support an after-school chorus program for the Mystic Learning Center Youth Chorus for ages 5-15.
Visual Arts

Artist Fellowships 
Benjamin Evans:  Evans creates narrative-based installations that use domestic products and environments. His concepts involve relationships, love, masculinity, and identity using multi-media techniques.

Danielle Festa:  Festa incorporates fabrics into oils portraits, calling attention to the subject's attire using multimedia.
 
Ariel Freiberg:  Freiberg creates paintings that explore narrative and literary based female-centric mythologies.
 
Nancy Hall Brooks: Brooks creates figurative paintings that depict gatherings of people in cities and layers personal imagery with reflections on global events.
 
Sharon Lacey:  Translucent paintings on vellum depicting groups of human figures. These works include multi-figure compositions and echo art historical works found in medieval manuscripts.
 
Lauren Leone:  Embroidery, drawing, encaustic, and stenciling that explores communication and connection.
 
Carolyn Muskat:  Muskat is working on a series of prints and dimensional work that examine identity through a sense of place and location.
 
Ted Ollier:  Ollier creates overlaying data into impressionistic and multi­layered visual and conceptual work that involves video, images and installations using various technological processes.

Education Grants
Julie Peck:  To support a residency with High school students who will sculpt their interpretations of folktales in clay. Teacher May Chau and artist Julie Peck will team teach a lesson connecting the visual arts and literature.

Somerville High School John Oteri:  To support a residency with David Fichter and students in the Mae Chau's art classes to draw deigns and create a glass mosaic, which will be permanently installed on an interior wall in the foyer.

Projects  
 Arts Somerville/Nave Gallery:  To support a two-part public art project to raise awareness of homelessness in Somerville as a component of "The Wrap Around Project", a yearlong campaign in collaboration with the Somerville Homeless Coalition (SHC).

Somerville Council on Aging:  COA will bring a glass artist, Emily Bhargava, to create mosaics with older adults in the community for two workshops in 2013, allowing clients to design and create a large mosaic to be hung on the COA wall.