MECA&D Faculty Receives 2016 Kindling Fund Grants
Maine College of Art & Design is excited to announce that three of our faculty members have been awarded Kindling Fund Grants: Elizabeth Jabar, Colleen Kinsella, and Julie Poitras-Santos.
The Kindling Fund, a funding program of SPACE, has awarded a total of $55,000 to 10 independent artist-organized projects. An awards reception celebrating the new grants as well as last year’s funded artists will be held Wednesday, March 9, 2015 at SPACE Gallery from 6:00–8:00pm.
SPACE Executive Director Nat May said that the Kindling Fund received 33 applications from across the state of Maine. “Artists from all over the state submitted their best and most innovative ideas,” he said. An outside panel reviewed all of the grants and selected the winning projects: Jenna Crowder, artist/past grantee and co-founder of The Chart, Cameron Shaw, Executive Director of Pelican Bomb in New Orleans (also a re-granting organization), and Sean Glover, a sculptor and professor of art at the Maine College of Art & Design and at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.
"We hear from lots of artists who are looking for support for their work, especially when it’s not geared toward sales or commissions. We created this grant opportunity to help respond to that need,” May said. The Kindling Fund is a part of the Regional Re-granting Program of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. This program connects Warhol Foundation support with localized partner organizations who value artist-driven contemporary and independent practices. Eight other re-granting projects around the United States fulfill a similar need.
Funded projects
Platform Projects/Walks, Julie Poitras-Santos
Platform Projects/Walks is a new social practice project; it engages the local arts community in a series of inter- and cross-disciplinary conversations and activities around the idea of walking as creative provocation, practice and product. In the summer of 2016, Platform Projects will offer the local community a series of readings, conversations, talks and group walks exploring the history and activity of walking as creative practice.
Amount awarded: $5000
Future Bridges, Future Mothers, Elizabeth Jabar and Colleen Kinsella
The Future Bridges project includes a mobile tent and a series of pop up events and participatory actions within the City of Portland. The project builds on the current work of Future Mothers in creating participatory structures and vehicles for socially engaged art and civic engagement. Future Mothers is a collective vision/structure/practice that takes the form of prints, installation, books, and performance. Using printmaking as a platform Future Mothers construct densely layered objects, structures, and environments for communicating diverse narratives and responding to social-political events.
Amount awarded: $5000