Bush Artist 2004Fellows Bush Artist 2004Fellows 4 2004 Bush Artist Fellows CHOREOGRAPHY MULTIMEDIA PERFORMANCE ART STORYTELLING Danny Buraczeski Laurie Carlos Emily Johnson Gülgün Kayim Kari Margolis Danial Shapiro VISUAL ARTS: THREE DIMENSIONAL Amelia Biewald Gary Greff Amy Toscani VISUAL ARTS: TWO DIMENSIONAL Alexa Horochowski Faye Passow Jenny Schmid TRADITIONAL & FOLK ARTS Mary Louis Defender Wilson Gao Hong Douglas Trail-Johnson 2 Bush Artist Fellowships stablished in 1976, the purpose of the Bush Artist Fellows Program is to provide artists with signifi- E cant financial support that enables them to further their work and their contributions to their com- munities. An artist may use the fellowship in many ways: to engage in solitary work or reflection, for col- laborative or community projects, or for travel or research. No two fellowships are exactly alike. Eligible artists reside in Minnesota, North and South Dakota, and western Wisconsin. Artists may apply in any of these categories: VISUAL ARTS: TWO DIMENSIONAL VISUAL ARTS: THREE DIMENSIONAL LITERATURE Poetry, Fiction, Creative Nonfiction TRADITIONAL & FOLK ARTS SCRIPTWORKS Playwriting and Screenwriting MUSIC COMPOSITION FILM • VIDEO CHOREOGRAPHY • MULTIMEDIA PERFORMANCE ART/STORYTELLING Applications for all disciplines will be considered in alternating years. 3 2004 Panels PRELIMINARY PANEL Pepón Osorio Fred Nahwooksy CHOREOGRAPHY Visual artist Museum development and MULTIMEDIA Philadelphia, Pennsylvania arts consultant PERFORMANCE ART Eagle Point, Oregon STORYTELLING PRELIMINARY PANEL David Roche VISUAL ARTS: Brian Freeman Executive Director TWO DIMENSIONAL Playwright and director Old Town School of Folk Music Director, Blacksmyths Theatre Lab Chicago, Illinois Center Theatre Group/ Saralyn Reece Hardy Mark Taper Forum Director and curator FINAL PANEL Los Angeles, California Salina Art Center Salina, Kansas Sarah Skaggs Marsha MacDowell Choreographer and Artistic Director Duane Slick Folklorist and curator Sarah Skaggs Dance Visual artist and Associate Professor Michigan State University Museum New York, New York Rhode Island School of Design East Lansing, Michigan Providence, Rhode Island Theodora Skipitares Pepón Osorio Multimedia artist and director Barbara Earl Thomas Visual artist New York, New York Visual artist and writer Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Seattle, Washington Theodora Skipitares PRELIMINARY PANEL Richard Torchia Multimedia artist and director VISUAL ARTS: Visual artist and Director New York, New York Arcadia University Art Gallery THREE DIMENSIONAL Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Duane Slick Visual artist and Associate Professor Petah Coyne Rhode Island School of Design Visual artist PRELIMINARY PANEL Providence, Rhode Island New York, New York TRADITIONAL & FOLK ARTS Kay Turner Ron Meyers Folk Arts Director Ceramic artist Marsha MacDowell Brooklyn Arts Council Athens, Georgia Folklorist and curator Michigan State University Museum Brooklyn, New York Judy Moran East Lansing, Michigan Project Manager, Public Art Program San Francisco Arts Commission San Francisco, California 4 Bush Artist Fellowships he Bush Artist Fellows Program supports artists received fellowships in the past, we are pleased that Tof demonstrated ability who reflect any of the this new category not only has encouraged many region’s many cultural, geographic, racial and aes- other strong artists to apply for a Bush Artist thetic variations, and both its rural and urban char- Fellowship, but also has provided a more effective acter. Among the qualities the program seeks in an review process for their important work. artist are strong vision, creative energy and persever- Fellowships consist of stipends of up to $44,000 ance. Artists must be 25 or older to apply, and may for a 12- to 24-month period. In 2004, 15 artists be at any stage of career development, from emerg- were selected to receive Bush Artist Fellowships. ing through established. Up to 15 grants are made They were chosen from a total of 691 applicants, the each year. There is no requirement as to the number largest number we have received in a single year. of awards to be made in each discipline, and there- Grants are made through a two-part selection fore, that number may change annually. process. Separate preliminary panels for each catego- In 2004 traditional and folk artists applied in a ry review applications and work samples to select new category dedicated to those visual, craft and finalists. An interdisciplinary final panel then performing artists whose life and work is deeply reviews the pool of finalists and chooses those who rooted in and reflective of a community’s cultural receive fellowships. The final panel includes one life. A total of 103 artists submitted applications in member from each preliminary panel plus one addi- the traditional and folk arts category. They included tional panelist. All panel members are working dance and music artists, storytellers, woodcarvers, artists, curators or critics living outside Minnesota, basketmakers, and artists working in metals, beads, North Dakota, South Dakota and western quills and rosemaling. They represented many of the Wisconsin. diverse cultures of our four-state region – American This catalog introduces the 2004 Bush Artist Indian, German, Mexican, Irish, Russian, Middle Fellows and their work. We are very proud of them Eastern, Southeast Asian and African, to name a few. and wish them great satisfaction in pursuing their While folk and traditional artists have applied and individual visions. Julie Gordon Dalgleish, Program Director Kathi Polley, Program Assistant 5 Perspectives write this brief essay in days of continuing war, days flirted ideas with fine artists and vice versa. I after a Presidential election that has divided our Remarkably, this new inclusion proved invigorating, nation, in days that have once again seen art censored not to the prospect of defining and isolating discipli- and culture become a battleground. These are days nary concerns, but, rather, to the prospect of crossing that beg for restoration, days that require a strong through boundaries of category and class to reach commitment to dialogue with others, whoever “the that territory where we might give more insightful, other” might be. In traditional societies that task of generous consideration to the authority and inten- dialogue falls to the storyteller, the “singer of tales,” tion—yes, even the wisdom—of art and its creators. who blurs borders and lines of separation, who con- This is not to say that defining genres is empty of fronts dogma with a love of detail, difference and its benefits. In my line of work, folklore studies, it is ambiguity. Perhaps more than ever before, we need still quite useful to distinguish, for example, the dif- storytellers now. ferences between a religious myth and a secular folk- The few foundations in the United States whose tale; to know how types of stories serve varying social missions include support of individual artists have and cultural purposes. But to minimize the restraints always been a precious resource, but in these times we of evaluating art forms primarily on the basis of cate- feel especially their singular necessity as havens for gory avoids a view of artistic tradition as that which free artistic expression and the dialogue it inspires. houses essential fidelities. Too often, curator John This year the possibility of such dialogue was given Szarkowski suggests, artistic tradition is seen as “sim- new occasion by the Bush Foundation. For the first ilar to a fortress, within which eternal verity is pro- time in the history of its artist fellows program, an tected from the present. In fact it is something more application category for traditional and folk arts was useful and interesting, and less secure. It exists in the created to help insure greater participation of story- minds of artists, and consists of their collective mem- tellers and woodcarvers, among others, along with ory of what has been accomplished so far. Its function visual artists such as printmakers and sculptors, is to mark the starting point for each day’s work.” choreographers, and performance artists. On the Artistic tradition speaks not so much to category review panels, folklorists—also for the first time— as it does to lineage. It is a reminder to current artists 6 not only of what other artists have made, but who an ancient inheritance. Women have always told sto- other artists have been in their time, and what they ries—in words and song and in things made, such as intended in their historical moment. quilts and pots. In many cultures, the storytelling arts A significant number of this year’s grantees are are considered the province of women. And, through- women, and the idea of lineage is helpful in address- out history, in times of their persecution when few ing their achievement. Years ago I might have other means of expression were possible for them, invoked the category “women’s art”—once useful women used their narrative powers to subversively polemically and as a mode of discovery—to capture tell a different side of “the story.” In the Greek world something definitive about this group of artists. Yet, a storytelling’s icon was the Sibyl. Centuries ago Ovid sense of accord in their work, expressed in various ended his version of her story in the Sibyl’s own media, is not noteworthy purely as a fact of gender. It words: “...the fates will leave me my voice, and by my is, I think, additionally remarkable in terms of the voice I shall be known.” According to Marina way these women name a common intention: to Warner, “The Sibyl, as the figure of a storyteller, make art that reveals the power of story. Sounding bridges divisions in history as well as hierarchies of throughout their application statements, a distin- class. She offers the suggestion that sympathies can guishable note of purpose: the desire to “find new cross from different places and languages, different ways to tell stories” or to create “visual narratives” or peoples of varied status.” Her voice travels, even to to narrate “my own moralistic tales” or to claim “my the present day.