Curtis Bowman

Artist Opportunity Grantee Spotlight: Jennifer Perkins

January 2, 2024 By Curtis Bowman

Jen Perkins is a 2023 Artist Opportunity Grantee. The Artist Opportunity Grant is funded by the Montgomery County Arts and Cultural District (MCACD) and administered by Culture Works, the region’s United Arts Fund and Local Arts Agency. Her project sent her to Greece in the spring of 2023 to participate in a relief sculpture workshop. An encaustic artist, Jen blends media to build layers of colors, adding dimension and depth to her interpretations of the world, creating dreamlike landscapes and otherworldly dimensional forms. Encaustic is ancient art form, born in Greece, and Jen felt that traveling to the birthplace of encaustic painting would broaden her knowledge and enhance her creative practice.

Jen spent 10 days in Greece, the majority of which were on the Island of Naxos in the Cycladic Islands where she worked with her collaborator in an intense 10-day workshop marble relief carving. The workshop was documented in photos and videos to be shared in both Naxos and the United States. Maggie Ross, an American ex-pat and a recognized Naxian marble sculptor and instructor, created all the marble relief carvings from drawings created by Jen.

Magge and Jen worked with a master mold maker to create silicon molds from the marble sculptures. The creation of the “mother” silicon mold allowed Jen to create multiple plaster casts of the reliefs. In her studio in Dayton, Jen spent the summer casting multiples of each relief in the studio. Each plaster had to be unmolded and sanded in preparation for painting. The process was photographed for slide presentation and display.

An exhibition of plaster relief works, including photographs of the original marble, will be on display at the Dayton Metro Library Main Branch from January 7 until the end of February. On January 13, Jen and Maggie will simulcast artists’ talks in WebX, with Jen in Dayton and Maggie on Naxos, where she will be hosting an exhibition of the marble relief works with photographs of Jen’s plasters.

What are UAFs and LAAs?

June 18, 2023 By Curtis Bowman

There are 59 UAF’s and 4600 LAAs in the United States—Culture Works is one of only 28 agencies that are both a UAF and an LAA. Culture Works, our local United Arts Fund, raises money through the annual Campaign for the Arts. The campaign is more than just a fundraiser, it’s also a community engagement program. Collaborating with community businesses, artists, and arts organizations, Culture Works bring arts experiences into workplaces across the region, showcasing the richness and diversity of arts offerings in our region. The Campaign invites intentional investment by community stakeholders, people like you. Your gift makes it possible for Culture Works to offer general operating support grants to arts organizations in our region. Operating support is crucial to maintaining a vibrant arts community because no matter how much program funding an organization receives, one cannot run programs without staff, or lights.

The campaign provides community engagement in the workplace, but also on the grantmaking side of the program. Culture Works distributes campaign funds using an outcomes-based grants funding process, like those used by the Ohio Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts. Under this model, a panel of citizens evaluates applications in a public review, using an established scoring rubric. This process provides fairness, transparency, and accountability for the applicants and the community a voice in cultural investment. Panelists see firsthand the impact our community dollars have on our arts organizations and the impact the arts have on our community.

Culture Works, our Local Arts Agency, advocates for the arts in our region, representing arts organizations and artists on a local, state, and national level, asserting the importance of the arts in community development and economic growth. As our LAA, Culture Works forges partnerships that help to grow our creative economy. For example, Culture Works secured $500,000 in American Recovery Plan funds for regranting to arts organizations and artists in our region. Only 66 Local Arts Agencies were awarded such funding from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Edgemont Solar Garden

Culture Works has also received a National Endowment for the Arts Our Town Creative Placemaking grant. We’ve partnered with the Greater Edgemont Community Coalition to create a public artwork for the grounds of the Edgemont Solar Garden that articulates Edgemont’s community identity and brings attention to the Greater Edgemont Community Coalition’s mission to address food scarcity and nutritional education. The Edgemont Solar Garden invites participation from the wider community at events, like their “Spring into Summer” event on Saturday June 24, 2023. from 12-4.p.m. Artists from the Our Town project will be on site talking to members of the community about Edgemont and the Solar Garden to gather inspiration and members of the Edgemont Solar Garden leadership will be on hand to share and showcase their sustainability initiatives.

Culture Works believes we should support the arts because the arts support us. The arts are good for us—they enlighten, entertain, foster innovation, and generate income. The arts contribute 4.3% of the nation’s economy—a larger share of GDP than oft reported sectors such as agriculture, transportation, and construction. In our region, the arts generate 214 billion dollars annually. Culture Works, like UAFs and LAAs across the country, is working to bring the arts into bigger community conversations and undertaking bigger community challenges. We believe that our community benefits and will continue to benefit from exploring, planning, implementing, and integrating the arts into our region as a whole.

According to Americans for the Arts, seventy-four percent of people believe the arts unite us. Culture Works sees that impact in our community. Our region has many communities, like Edgemont, communities individual in character and diverse in culture, heritage, ethnicity, and experiences. The arts show us how we are connected, they reveal our shared humanity, celebrate our differences, and unite us, and change us from many communities into one. By supporting Culture Works, you support the arts, and person by person, community by community, gift by gift, the arts will change the world.

Culture Works Campaign for the Arts is running now through June 30. https://cultureworks.org/support-the-arts/ Thank you for supporting the arts.

Advice For Artists From A Grant Writer

February 4, 2023 By Curtis Bowman

This past year, I applied for an Ohio Arts Council Excellence Award in the visual arts category. I am a writer. “Why,” you say, “would you apply in an artists category that is not your discipline?”

Because I wanted to go through the process.

As an advocate for artists and the arts, I encourage application to grants and residencies. One of my visual artist friends said she doesn’t apply because the process is demoralizing. I wondered if the process is different for writing and the visual arts, so I applied in the painting category. You will not be surprised to hear I was not awarded excellence recognition in the painting category. It may surprise you, as it surprised me, that my score was not the lowest, and that the comments did not treat my works as abominations.

This fact answered my question about my artist friend’s reluctance to apply. It is not the judges’ opinion of the works that feels demoralizing, it is her own. The Ohio Arts Council, like many other grantors, asks artists to describe their works. As a writer, describing what the canvas was supposed to achieve was easier than making the canvas say that itself. For my friend, having to put into words that which is on the canvas is excruciating. There is a reason she chose to be a creative in a visual medium.

Still, I encourage her, and all artists in all disciplines to apply for grants and residencies. In my experience, the application process offers an opportunity to consider your creative practice from an intellectual distance. Even when in applying in a discipline that is not my primary creative field, the questions on the application forced me to consider my process. How had I created the paintings submitted with the application? How are they representative of my creative work, as a portion of a larger body of a creative work. What do the works represent? What was my inspiration? Why did I choose the medium I used to express that feeling or idea? This part of the application process is tough, and may be a struggle the first time, but like performance of any task, improves with practice.

In 1437 Cennino Cennini wrote in his Treatise on Painting, “what will happen if you practice drawing in pen? You will become expert, skilled, and able to draw from your imagination.” As artists, we’re all painfully aware of our first works, and many of us cringe over the technical errors and unoriginal ideas of those first efforts. The difference between those works and our current work is experience. The same is true of grant applications. So, practice. Approach grant applications as a practice prompt. Give yourself plenty of time to consider and answer the questions. Answer the questions for yourself, and don’t think about the panel. Then go back and read the application as if you were reviewing that of another artist. You are thinking “I am too busy to do that.” But, I promise, the process of applying will elevate your understanding of your art.

The work I did on the application for the Ohio Arts Council visual arts award has impacted my other creative work. The process has made me contemplate my creative drive: why I create and how I create. Answering the questions on the application made manifest for me that I must create. I am writing with a voice and a message. I am an artist. And the Ohio Arts Council awards? I intend to keep the application process as part of my creative practice, and I hope to see you at a panel review session in the future.