New Orleans Career-Opportunity Grant Recipients, Fall/Winter 2008-2009

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE November 1, 2008

The Joan Mitchell Foundation
545 West 25th Street, 15th Floor
New York, NY 10001
212 524 0100

The Joan Mitchell Foundation presents:
New Orleans Career-Opportunity Grant Recipients
Fall/Winter 2008-2009 across New Orleans

The Joan Mitchell Foundation, Inc., is pleased to announce the twelve recipients of its first open application Career Opportunity Grant for New Orleans artists and projects. Finalists were selected by an independent panel of jurors from the arts community, based on submitted materials, the uniqueness and ambition of their proposed projects, and then reviewed for financial need. As a new program for the Foundation, our goal is to provide Gulf Coast area artists with financial and supplementary assistance necessary to take advantage of New Orleans based opportunities that will have a significant positive impact on their artistic careers. Recipients were awarded specific amounts based on their project budgets, up to $5000.

Supported artists’ projects are:

David Borgerding is a sculptor who works in metal. The grant will go towards the creation of his first public sculpture to be constructed this fall. The grant will allow him to explore scale and material on a new level, and he hopes to leverage this project into future outdoor works.
Location and unveiling TBA
www.borgerdingsculpture.net

Ralph Bourque is an artist who lives in Lafayette, Louisiana. The grant will support living expenses and materials so that he may take advantage of a residency offered at Louisiana Artworks in New Orleans during the fall/winter. He will be creating new large-scale drawing installations and exploring alternative exhibition spaces in the city.
November 22 – December 7, 2008
Louisiana Artworks, 725 Howard Avenue, New Orleans 70130
www.ralphbourque.com

Club S + S are NOLA-based Stephen Paul Day and Cologne, Germany-native Sibylle Peretti. They have been awarded a grant toward the development of their proposed project, as yet untitled, which takes the form of a French Quarter souvenir shop. The “shop” life-size diorama populated with unique “souvenir” mixed-media art objects that engage the overpopulation of mass-market souvenir shops at the expense of the unique history of New Orleans and also focus on Prospect 1.
Winter 2008 – 2009

The Deluge Group is creating a mobile sculpture trailer, which serves as a place of production and vehicle for the exhibition and sale of a wide range of art objects, trash constructions and objects of social parody, and other creative forms of exchange. The grant award is going to the production, sustainability and promotion of The Deluge Group and the trailer will be moving throughout locations in the city of New Orleans over the Fall and Winter.
November 2008 – January 2009

The Front is a co-operative gallery project of emerging contemporary visual arts comprising of NOLA artists Kyle Bravo, Andrea Ferguson, Rachel Jones, Morgana King, Jenny LeBlanc, Michelle Levine, Jennifer Odem, Stephanie Patton, Julie Pieri, Claire Rau, Jeff Rinehart, Megan Roniger, Natalie Sciortino-Rinehart and Jonathan Traviesa. The Front has been awarded a grant towards the expanded production of three exhibitions of four artists each, titled Another Prospect.
November 1, 2008– January 18, 2009.
The Front, 4100 St. Claude Avenue, New Orleans 70117
www.nolafront.org

Shawne Major lives and works in Opelousas, Louisiana, and makes mixed media tapestries, works on paper, sculptures and installations out of materials such as clocks, small toys, figurines and beads, and is an exhibiting artist in Prospect:1. She has been awarded a grant to expand her initial concept of a promotional brochure and create a complete catalogue with essay to contextualize her place within New Orleans and broaden her exposure to the national level.
Catalogue available this fall.
www.shawnemajor.com

Malcolm McClay is assistant professor of sculpture at LSU. His work is in sculpture, installation, video and new media. His grant award is toward the fabrication of the sculptural aspects of his new installation, Watchtower, at the Universal Furniture Building. Built into the storefront windows, the piece is an interactive structure that invites the audience to question ideas about detention and surveillance, and is the artist’s first non-storm related work since Katrina.
Universal Furniture Building, 2372 St. Claude Ave, New Orleans 70117
November 1 – January 7, 2009

Joseph Anthony Moran is an artist returning to his creative practice after 12 years hiatus in his 45 years as an artist. The personal and local upheaval of Hurricane Katrina inspired him to take the opportunity to return to art making. The grant will assist in the exhibition and promotion of his new series of drawings at Studio 527 in a group exhibition curated by Bob Tannen. Studio 527, 527 Julia Street, New Orleans 70130
November 1, 2008 – January 18, 2009

Jennifer Odem is a sculptor who often works site-specifically. Her grant award is for the execution of her proposed project, Blue Fence, a new public work to be installed in the Upper Ninth Ward this fall. The public intervention will transform a large, vacant traffic island at France St, N.Miro and Poland Avenue with a bright blue structure/fence that questions the nature and use of the site, which once served as a playground for local kids before Hurricane Katrina.
France St, N.Miro and Poland Avenue, New Orleans 70117
Unveiling Saturday, December 13, 2 – 5pm
www.jenniferodem.com
www.aortaprojects.blogspot.com

Dona Simons paints Louisiana musicians. Just prior to Katrina she painted them in undersea settings. In her project, Art as Artifact, the artist presents her oil paintings as prescient relics of Hurricane Katrina in the open skeleton of her flooded home, where paintings of musicians underwater and undersea subjects transformed by stains, tears and the mark of the waterline caused by the deluge hang on exposed beams. The grant award will be used to host and promote the opening and public exhibition of this in-site installation and a documentary video to be created about the event by Jeremy Stilb.
November 1 + 2, 2008
6151 Milne Boulevard, New Orleans 70124
www.donasimons.com/artifact.html

Tchoupitoulas Studio Group is composed of artists Teresa Cole, Aaron Collier, Sharon Jacques, and Robin Levy. They have proposed to transform their studios into an ongoing open studio and exhibition program, coinciding with Prospect:1. Each artist will be presenting a new installation open to the public. The grant will allow the artists to invest in improvements to their studios and in promotion for their project.
1119 Tchoupitoulas St, New Orleans 70130
November 1, 2008 - January 19, 2009

Jonathan Traviesa works in sculpture, installation and photography. With the grant award Traviesa intends to expand further into the realm of community oriented projects with Native & Contemporary, an organic land-based installation comprised of flora native to the area, landscaped to spell out “NATIVE & CONTEMPORARY.” The public garden will also include a bat roost for native species and educational information to engage the community and raise awareness about the local ecology.
www.aortaprojects.blogspot.com