The Cornell Council for the Arts (CCA) has awarded grants supporting 40 projects, many involving students and faculty in the College of Arts & Sciences, to be presented or performed during the 2016-17 academic year.
Through its Individual Grant Program, the CCA offered 15 grants of $2,500 each to Cornell faculty, departments and programs, and 25 grants of $1,000 each to students and student organizations. Proposals were reviewed and selected by a panel of arts faculty.
Applications came from faculty and students in art programs, and from science and engineering programs seeking support for multidisciplinary projects or to develop art projects beyond the boundaries of their field of study. Supported projects included individual student exhibitions and performances, and short-term residencies or on-campus collaborations with well-known artists.
The CCA helps sustain a thriving creative community on campus through support for student organizations, including the Cornell Taiko (Yamatai) drum ensemble, Cornell Fashion Collective, Association of Graduates in Theatre Lab, the Johnson Museum Club, Visual Culture Colloquium and a newly formed Curatorial Collective of history of art graduate students.
Among individual student grant winners, fiber science and apparel design (FSAD) major Mark Colbran ’18 will turn an art gallery into an artist’s studio in a public installation on display 24 hours a day for one month, beginning Nov. 13. Colbran says the project, “Studio Immersion,” will serve as “an adaptation of a professional model within a university setting,” with he and his collaborators living and working inside Jill Stuart Gallery in the Human Ecology Building.
The project will be observed by Cornell psychology and human development researchers for stress endurance, and transmitted live on the internet. Colbran seeks to counter societal stereotypes of artists as emotionally unstable through the display of the “rational, sober creative thought of young artists/designers.”
Individual undergraduate and graduate student grants also were awarded to Aleksej Aarsaether, Nicholas Fesette and Michael Kinsey, performing and media arts (PMA); Madeleine Cichy, Hee Sun Han, Jerry Lim, Na Chainkua Reindorf, Pauline Shongov and Yuxi Xiao, art; Shin Hwang, Charles Peck and Zoe Weiss, music (pictured here with her string ensemble LeStrange Viols).; Elie Boutros and Shining Sun, architecture; Kennedy Rauh, FSAD; Rosalie Purvis, PMA/music; and Sara Garzon, history of art and visual studies.
Faculty and departments primarily sought support for performances and exhibitions bringing visiting musicians, composers, playwrights, directors, writers, filmmakers, dancers and visual artists to campus to work with their students, as well as funds to further individual work and projects.
“Legocentrism: A Taxonomy of Serious Play,” a collaborative project by professors David LaRocca, English, and Mark Morris, architecture, aims to explore the relationship between education and play, through an interactive exhibit illuminating ways in which the kinds of play we undertake translate into grand scale, including in institutional architecture.
Individual faculty receiving grants also include Austin Bunn, PMA; Jack Elliot, design and environmental analysis; Xak Bjerken, Ariana Kim, Annie Lewandowski and David Yearsley, music; and Jolene Rickard, history of art/American Indian Program.
Supported projects by arts departments and programs include “Walking with ’Trane,’” a performance by Urban Bush Women based on music by John Coltrane, in late October at the Schwartz Center, presented by PMA. Also receiving grants: the South Asia Program, for a Strings Attached concert; FSAD, for “100 Years of Fashion Studies: Beluah Blackmore and the Cornell Costume & Textile Collection;” the Department of Music, for a “Technologies of Memory” concert and David Maslanka residency; Cornell Symphony Orchestra, for a “Year of the Women” concert, and the Department of Art for an MFA program exhibition in New York City.
CCA-supported projects and events will be presented starting in September and continuing through May 2017. Information, including dates and venues, for all events will be available online this summer.
