NEW HAMPSHIRE ARTS NEWS [ Volume XXXIV Number 3 Autumn 2008 ] ­ 2008 2009 Fellow Hideaki Miyamura’s carved vase with blue hare’s fur glaze. 18.5” x 7.5” Photo courtesy of the artist TABLE OFCont ents From the Director ..................................................1 FROM THE DIRECTOR Staff/Council News ................................................2 Director Meet the 2009 Fellows ..........................................4 Traditional Arts Apprenticeships ..........................15 Autumn at the State Arts Council feels watercolors and lively woodcuts and Surprised By Joy ....................................................20 like the start of a new school year, time engravings from two New Hampshire to put the energizing days of summer treasures, Nat Burwash and Herbert Captain Fiddle’s Festival Lessons ..........................21 site visits behind us and fill our days with Waters. Both artists were paid a weekly the busyness of meetings and reports. salary by the WPA to keep on working Dollars for the Arts ..............................................22 New Hampshire Arts News We are now working at getting and giving through the 1930s. (To see examples of Dobbs with Verse..................................................26 the monies that flow through our agency. their work, go to www.nh.gov/nharts/art- This means writing a new biennium sandartists/exhibitgallery/index.htm New Hampshire Arts News is published budget request for 2010-2011, reporting and click on the 2003 exhibition, quarterly. It reaches 6,500 people free of Around the State ..................................................27 to the National Endowment for the Arts Artists at Work.) charge. To change address information, on what we did with last year’s grant to please e-mail [email protected], or write From a Green-Thumbed Artist..............................31 us, and convening new applicants to So, we hope, when we request the to New Hampshire Arts News, State Arts Council Grant Deadlines ......................32 help them compete for State Arts Council restoration of these funds in FY2010- New Hampshire State Council on the grants for 2010. The cycle is as 2011, that those who have the power to 1 Arts, 2 ⁄2 Beacon Street, Suite 225, predictable as the seasons. appropriate funding to the State Arts Concord, NH 03301-4447. Council won’t just see dollar signs, they On the Cover What is not predictable is how much will see what they become and what State of New Hampshire money we will have to work with from they mean to New Hampshire citizens. Department of Cultural Resources Hideaki Miyamura, Kensington year to year. This year, for example, we These meager dollars become artists Division of the Arts thought we were going to have $43,000 teaching students in dozens of schools, © NH State Council on the Arts “Over the last few years, I have experimented to discover new more in grant money to award than we artists guiding elderly and ill patients to Concord, New Hampshire USA glazes which combine crystallization with iridescence,” Hideaki actually do. This reduction came about express their hopes and fears through Miyamura writes in his artist’s statement. “I have researched because of the bad economy and its artmaking, artists performing on stages crystal glaze techniques in the United States, Europe, Japan effect on state revenues, which are great and small, artists taking time in and China. In the long history of crystal glazes, I could find no heavily dependant on real estate transfer studios and studies to create new work, iridescent crystal glaze. This fueled my ten-year-long passion taxes and vacation dollars for rooms and artists passing on the skills honed and intent to create an iridescent crystal glaze which has never meals taxes. Staycation, anyone? through generations of artmaking to their been made anywhere, at anytime in history.” Hideaki is currently apprentices, and the work of artists of working with a glaze he calls “Yohen,” which means “Stars While we understand that state govern- this time and times past being exhibited Editor: Jane Eklund ment needed to cut back, we would like Production Manager: Julie Mento glistening in a night sky.” and performed throughout the state. to think that protecting the state’s All of this activity contributes to the Graphic Design: Brian Page, Read more about Hideaki and the other 2009 Artist Fellows, investment in the arts could have helped creative economy. Dharma Creative beginning on page 4. the economy. This is the argument we Contributors: Hetty Startup, Rachel Lehr, plan to make for restoring those funds in This issue of New Hampshire Arts News Sarah Haskell, Arts the next biennium budget. We see the focuses on some of the state’s artists Council Staff Correction arts not only as economic stimulus but who will be spinning fiscal 2009 dollars also as essential to the human spirit. into metaphoric gold, art for all. The Spring-Summer issue of New Hampshire Arts News What a two-for combination that is. contained an incorrect photo credit. The photo of Sylvia During the Great Depression, the arts Miskoe cutting cake at her retirement party was taken by kept hope alive, gave hints of better Evelyn Roberts. Apologies for the error. times ahead, and the federal and state Visit the State Arts government knew that paying artists to keep working through hard times was Council’s Facebook group. Rebecca L. Lawrence necessary. In this state, the League of Director, Division of the Arts This newsletter is available New Hampshire Craftsmen is a legacy from a public investment in 1932. The electronically or in alternative State Library has a collection of vibrant formats. Please call 603/271-2789 1 New Hampshire Arts News: Autumn 2008 Staff & Council News New on Staff The dynamo behind the success of Saint-Gaudens 2009 AVA Gallery is Bente Torjusen, Jane Eklund has joined the staff of the Sculptor-in-Residence whose vision and drive helped the New Hampshire State Council on the Leesa Haapapuro Arts. As Programs Information Officer, organization accomplish its capital works on a heroic- she’ll be working, in consultation with fundraising goals and the substantive scale clay figure. Director Rebecca Lawrence and other renovation of the building, which program coordinators, to get out the includes many “green” initiatives. word about opportunities available to artists, organizations, schools and com- Photos by Lynn Martin Graton munities through the State Arts Council. Jane’s role includes editing the agency’s Diora, by Gary Haven Smith, one of the quarterly newsletter and biennial report, Upper Valley Arts Staff Tour coordinating the Artist Fellowship fellows whose work is featured in the Sharon awards program and overseeing the Arts Center exhibit, was recently installed on August was the time, and the Upper Valley was the place for Percent for Art program, which selects the lawn of the State Library in Concord. the State Arts Council staff members’ annual site visits. artwork for state buildings. The sculpture was commissioned by the The visits provide a first-hand view of the successes of an arts State Arts Council. community and the challenges it faces. Typically, visits include A longtime journal- meetings with artists in their studios, tours of facilities, meetings The Upper Valley ist, Jane worked Photo by Julie Mento with board members and staff of grantee organizations, and a site visits included for 15 years at the performance or two. This year the packed two-day tour, organ- a stop at Northern Monadnock ized by Creative Communities Coordinator Judy Rigmont, Stage. The theater Ledger-Transcript A Decade of Fellows included the Enfield Shaker Museum, sculptor Emile Birch’s in Peterborough, company’s Project Here’s a great opportunity to see studio in Canaan, the Upper Valley Arts Alliance, the newly where she served Playwright what some of New Hampshire’s best renovated AVA Gallery in Lebanon, the Lebanon Farmer’s as arts writer and Market, Opera North (and a production of Mozart’s The Magic encourages and editor and helped contemporary visual artists are up to: a Peterborough gallery is hosting an Flute), Northern Stage, the Hood Museum, and the supports young develop, and then Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site. went on to edit, the exhibit of work by artists who received writers. paper’s monthly Individual Artist Fellowships from the magazine supple- State Arts Council during the last 10 years. New Programs ment, The Occasional Moose. She is also The Sharon Arts Center is showing Information Officer a poet and fiction writer who in 2000 “A Gathering of New Hampshire Visual earned an artist fellowship in poetry Jane Eklund Arts Fellows: The Last Decade” in its from the State Arts Council. In addition, Exhibition Gallery through November Photo by she’s received grants from the Iowa Arts 29. The 25 artists in this group show Marilyn Weir Council and the Astraea Foundation, work in a wide variety of mediums, and has won numerous awards from the including painting, photography, sculpture, New Hampshire Press Association, ceramics, installation art, and film. Opera North’s 2009 season included including being named Writer of the Year a production of Puccini’s Madame three times. Individual Artist Fellows have been recognized annually since 1981. Butterfly, requiring a number of Jane has a bachelor’s degree in English Fellowships are awarded in three cate- stylish wigs. from Colby College and a Master of Fine gories, Visual and Media Arts, Arts degree from the University of Iowa Performing Arts, and Literature, and are Writers’ Workshop. She lives in the highly competitive. Monadnock Region. AVA has a strong youth education program The Sharon Arts Center Exhibition One of the Enfield exhibits and, thanks to recent renovations, it has ample Gallery is located at 40 Grove Street in supported by the State Arts downtown Peterborough. For more studio space to hold classes. Council explored the tradition information, call 924-7676, or visit www.sharonarts.org.