12 local artists selected to take part in the pilot year of the Artist Corps and to create projects that impact our community!
The Arts Council of Greater New Haven, with support from the National Endowment for the Arts, is pleased to announce that the following 12 local artists will be part of the pilot year of the Artists Corps and will receive a stipend of $10,417 to support their projects that will impact our community!
This is a total of just over $125,000 in vital support to individual artists across the towns of New Haven, Hamden, and Wallingford.
But, the Artist Corps is not just about receiving funding; it’s about building non-cash resources (such as connecting people across networks, identifying pipeline opportunities, and meeting more residents through the arts) in order to create a solid foundation for artists to be operationally sound and successful in seeing their art at the forefront of the community.
The Lead Facilitators: IfeMichelle Gardin, Frank Brady, and Annie Lin took their time to thoughtfully and thoroughly review all 63 applications to select the final 12 artists for the program. Here's what they had to say:
The applications stirred our hearts, our pasts, and pushed us to dream with each person. We looked to balance the enormous range of talent and skillset for this cohort to hope together, to activate others, and to turn our longings into expressions on the human condition. - Ife, Frank, & Annie
The selected artists will gather + work together as a cohort with support from our Lead Facilitators to help make their projects thrive! The program will begin in October and run through the end of September 2023.
Mindi R. Englart is a New Haven-based artist, author, and educator. She is the founder and CEO of the Single Mothers Discount Card, LLC.
Project: Revising Your Narrative for Single Moms: Making Art to Heal the Past is a series of workshops for single moms designed to help them reflect on their past and transform the story they tell about it. Participants will have time, materials, & support to process--reduce, reuse, and recycle symbolic elements of--their past into tangible art that can inspire them into an empowered future.
Ruby Gonzalez Hernandez is an indigenous Zapotec artist, educator, curator, and people-connecter born on Quinnipiac land. Ruby is interested in art based projects that center connecting artists directly with one another, and accessibility within the arts; in the past that includes projects such as Lunch Money Print, an international print exchange.
Project: Fair-Side is a seed rooted in the notion that art is for everyone. The implementation of this notion sprouts to financially compensate artists to have dedicated time to learn new skills in a 3 month period. Afterwards, artists will work together using the skills learned to host their own exhibition showcasing the work made during their time together.
Tyler Goldchain is a multi-instrumentalist artist, composer, and producer from New Haven, CT. His work allows him to perform around the country, work with major artists and score film and theater productions.
Project: The Uplift Program is a series of educational interactive workshops that inform the participants, primarily teens and young adults, on the current best practices of personal finance and artistic development. Workshops and sessions will be held in collaboration with community partners from the Greater New Haven area.
Alana Ladson is an artist from New Haven who loves to read, write, play video games, and draw. She creates both digital art and traditional paintings on canvas and paper. She has a passion for community building and artistry. Her experience is rooted in the arts, education, and advocacy – she loves working with youth, making art, and sharing what her students call “sage wisdom”. Alana particularly loves to draw women of color, nature, and mythical creatures. Additionally, she has a small business ‘Alana Ladson Art’ selling pins, stickers, and art prints.
Project: The Rooted Collective Fellowship is an exploratory artist collective that will bring a small group of BIPOC women and nonbinary folks together to create art and explore themselves and their practices.
Ashley LaRue, the founder of Qommunity, is a New Haven native and artrepreneur. Qommunity is a platform and incubator that celebrates art, cultivates healing projects, and encourages fellowship among and within the local queer community.
Project: Mend: A Wellness Festival & Exhibition isa curated creative healing project and accompanying wellness festival that serves to bring awareness to mental health and illness while reducing the stigma surrounding it.
Nadine Nelson is a career educator, chef, artist, activist, and owner of Global Local Gourmet. As an expert in interactive culinary education and experiential event production, she uses food as a catalyst and platform to build community, revitalize the neighborhood, preserve our cultural heritage, and empower people to lead healthier, happier, connected, and more prosperous lives by creating educational and recreational programming around cuisine from seed to waste.
Project: S.O.U.L. (Sustainable, organic, unprocessed and local) Food Griots brings people together to cook, cultivate community, and inspire activism through the act of preparing food.
Mitchell Rembert was born in Bridgeport and raised in New Haven. He is the son and apprentice of the late Winfred Rembert. Mitch has been practicing the leather art craft for the last 8 years and with a heavy heart he has taken on the mission of continuing his father's work telling their life experiences.
Project: Tribute to Winfred Rembert will be an art show in honor of well-known New Haven artist Winfred Rembert. Helping to preserve Winfred's legacy and uplift the community.
Jisu is a queer Korean American painter, poet, animator, web designer, and videographer in New Haven. She helped start an art and mental health collective in Connecticut called Places To Go and is one half of the duo Second Floor Hardware School with Kulimushi Barongozi, making a place for people who feel out of place.
Project: Second Floor Hardware School (2FHS) Folk Festival is a space to explore art that comes from the people, where anyone who walks by can get the chance to do magic for themselves. Welcoming people who might otherwise feel unwelcome or out of place in ‘art world’ spaces and instill in them the confidence that all they need are their own stories, their own intuitions and desires about what to create.
Snowprah is a first generation Jamaican American. Born in Bridgeport and raised in the Hill, New Haven. Snow is gods formula to put a city on the map.
Project: Through Her Eyes: A Docu-Series. The history of the broken home within Black and Brown communities has been a never ending story for decades. This project is the visual documentary that will focus on the relationships between parents battling drug addiction and their children. It will start by having a true heart to heart conversation between both parties. Artistic expression will begin the healing process to mending their relationship and finding a way to heal together as one.
Vanesa Suarez is a Peruvian-born immigrant and artist living on Quinnipiac Land, dedicated to the empowerment and liberation of women and girls. Vanesa uses art to create spaces where women and girls can recognize their power, beauty, greatness, and resiliency while also inspiring all of us to think more intentionally about the ways in which we are fighting against patriarchy.
Project: Reimagining Freedom for Women and Girls seeks to create communal spaces where women and girls can gather, be in the presence of each other and collectively find their power through art and storytelling.
Rashmi Talpade is Wallingford based professional artist with a Fine Arts degree in painting and photography. A recipient of the 2006 artists fellowship award from the Connecticut Commission of the Arts, her award-winning collages are in the permanent collection of the New Britain Museum of Art and the Roopankar Museum of Modern Art in India. She has received numerous grants from the State of Connecticut and the National Endowment for the Arts to support these collaborative community art projects.
Project: We Art No Different - A Public Art project by the Public is a public art project with the Spanish Community of Wallingford (SCOW), a non-profit organization that serves Latino and Asian immigrants who comprise 16% of the town population. The goal is to create 3 large photocollages depicting stories of newly arrived immigrants in Wallingford.
JoAnne Wilcox actively works to implement strategies in New Haven that reinforce connection through art, design, and restorative practices.
Project: The Elevator Service will consist of workshops, circles, and communities of healing, that are built in order to provide the maintenance needed to elevate our relationships, connections, and even our conflicts, in order to address our hurting community. Using journey mapping, photo voice, and large scale community maps, to identify what we already have available to us, what is working, what is in the way of working, and who the helpers are.
Congratulations to all the awardees!
We look forward to sharing the progress of this program and the vital community projects from our selected artists.
Megan Manton
Development Director
Arts Council of Greater New Haven
SUPPORT THE ARTIST CORPS
We have received an overwhelming amount of applications from artists who want to be part of the Artist Corps. Unfortunately, we only have enough funds to support 12 artists at this time. However, with your help, we can keep this vital initiative going and have an Artist Corps Round 2.
The Arts Council of Greater New Haven would like to thank the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) who awarded our organization a $500,000 American Rescue Plan grant to help the arts and cultural sector recover from the pandemic.
In total, the NEA has awarded grants totaling $20,200,000 to 66 local arts agencies nationwide for subgranting. For more information on the NEA’s American Rescue Plan grants, including the full list of local arts agencies funded in this announcement, visit arts.gov/COVID-19/the-american-rescue-plan.
Our sincerest thanks to our Artist Corps Lead Facilitators, IfeMichelle Gardin, Annie Lin, and Frank Brady shown below.
Ife, Annie, and Frank helped develop the program, conducted reviews of all submitted applications, and are facilitating/overseeing the Artist Corps program starting in October 2022 and running through the end of September 2023.
A special thanks to Gabrielle Fludd who designed the graphic for this grant!
The Arts Council maintains a comprehensive list of local grant opportunities and grantwriting resources.
If you ever have questions, don't hesitate to reach out to our Development Director, Megan Manton - Megan@NewHavenArts.org / 203 772 2788
The Arts Council champions a diverse, regional arts community where creativity thrives, believing that art, culture, and creative expression are fundamental human rights. A leading regional nonprofit arts agency, we provide leadership and advocacy for artists and cultural organizations throughout the Greater New Haven community. Publisher of The Arts Paper, the Arts Council provides critical support services, community programs, and learning opportunities to thousands of artists, creative organizations, and residents every year.
