BRIDING THE RECOGNITION GAP
by Fionn Meade

(excerpted from the Artist Trust Journal, Winter 2003)

Choosing to apply for a competitive grant is, in an essential way, choosing to go public with your work; to submit a work sample for subjective evaluation and comparison is to step into an arena beyond the studio, writing desk, or rehearsal space that is inherently selective. So, what does it mean to be acknowledged by a group of peers for the artistic excellence of your work? Certainly, receiving a competitive grant brings with it recognition by our peers of artistic achievement. However, what that recognition means to artists on a more individual basis is not as easily grasped. In the first of a series of articles that will look, from various angles, at what ‘recognition’ means to individual artists, I checked in with some of Artist Trust’s GAP (Grants for Artist Projects) recipients from the past couple years about the impact of the award on their particular projects, but also, more generally, on their direction as artists.

While most applicants to the GAP program are well aware that the overriding intent of the program is to help artists develop specific projects, not as many may know that there doesn’t exist any built-in formal requirement for evaluating the projects funded through the GAP program. In other words, ‘checking up’ on artists and where their money goes is not part of the program. Artist Trust does, however, ask funded artists to voluntarily send updates about their ongoing projects and acknowledge Artist Trust’s support should the project be a public one. Similarly, while it is ultimately up to the individual artist how and when the funds are used, there is a general expectation that something close to the projects described will be undertaken. As you can imagine, we hear back from a majority but by no means all recipients about the projects funded each year. 

For Jason Puccinelli, receiving a 2003 GAP award proved both rewarding and challenging. “There was a sense of responsibility to the original pitch even though I knew there wasn’t any requirement to stick to the exact description,” says Puccinelli of the interactive installation Dazzle Camouflage (shown at Consolidated Works, Seattle, in October). “As I often change direction midstream, that was a real challenge, to keep it from wandering too far from the project as first conceived.” The installation consisted of five large set environments that are reminiscent of television soundstages or history museum dioramas. Each set deals with a provocative situation regarding power and asks the viewer to participate in morally and ethically confusing situations by stepping onto the set. The GAP funding allowed Puccinelli to rent a shop large enough to construct the pieces over the final three months leading up to exhibition. “It was the exact amount at the exact right time as those months were crucial to finishing the project,” observed Puccinelli. “Even so, the recognition was more important. It was a real lift to have a panel find the project worth funding.”

When 2002 GAP recipient Louise Freeman-Toole used her funding to travel to the annual Sitka Symposium in Southeast Alaska, she was seeking broader context to the area where her grandparents had lived in the 1960s. As part of an ongoing book project on her grandparents’ experience living on a remote island 45 miles from Ketchikan, Freeman-Toole attended the annual conference hosted by The Island Institute in order to better understand the issues facing local residents. “Attending the Sitka Symposium gave me a better understanding of the concerns of the people of Sitka, which, in turn, helped me to write about changes in the community since my grandmother lived there.” It also led to Freeman-Toole applying and being accepted as a month-long resident at the Island Institute the following winter. Additionally, she will continue to work on her book-length project as a resident with the Klondike Gold Rush National Historic Park (Skagway, Alaska) next summer. “The GAP award started a ball rolling for me that has been extremely beneficial for my writing career and given me the confidence to complete not only this research-heavy project but also to apply for other unrelated grants,” says Freeman-Toole.

In Jodi Rockwell’s case, her 2002 GAP award funded Spring Thaw, an installation at SOIL Art Gallery this last January, where a landscape of sugar was transformed as molasses gradually seeped from six melting ice spheres suspended above more than 3,000 lbs. of sugar. “This was the second effort made at this project. The support I got from Artist Trust gave me the motivation, confidence and belief that I should remake the project on a larger scale,” offered Rockwell. “I solved a lot of the problems I had with it the second time around, and believe it to be my most successful piece to date and a big addition to my portfolio.” For Rockwell, the satisfaction of successfully completing an ambitious project was complimented by the sense of impartial recognition. “It helps to validate the work on another level when there is outside support, especially support from people who do not know you, but are judging you on your work alone.”

Charlotte Meyer, a visual artist who works with glass and mixed media, has received two GAP awards (1997 and 2002) that directly helped complete very specific projects. Nevertheless, Meyer points to a sense of validation as the most lasting impact from the funding. “The greatest benefit I felt was the support from my community,” says Meyer. “Practically speaking, the money allowed me freedom and actually bought me time in the studio, but the recognition from peers felt like the biggest award.”

Ask musician Carolyn Graye about the impact of her 2003 GAP award and she says that it helped her re-commit to a recording project begun with poet Denise Levertov shortly before the poet’s death in 1997 due to cancer. “Following Denise’s passing, my own set of life obstacles intervened, including sickness and a death in my own family, but I came back to the project and decided it was important to continue.” Through a studio grant from Jack Straw Productions, Graye was able to record a demo of her jazz vocal arrangements for Levertov’s poems and, in part with GAP funds, expects to finish and release a record-length studio version of the recordings in the fall of next year. “The project is a real departure for me” adds Graye, “and maintains the excitement I first had when I heard Denise read her poems.”

Beyond funding for a specific project, a GAP award can be alternately experienced as validation, encouragement, catalyst, and, without exception in the case of these recipients, a bridge to future endeavors. In an effort to broaden the discussion of ‘recognition’ and what it can mean to artists and communities around the State, we’ll get some additional perspectives in upcoming issues of the Artist Trust Journal.

For more information on The Island Institute Sitka, Alaska visit www.islandinstitutealaska.org.