The Cornell Council for the Arts (CCA) is supporting 35 projects that will be presented on campus this academic year. Through its Individual Grant Program, the CCA awarded 15 grants of $2,500 each to Cornell faculty, departments and programs, and 20 grants of $1,000 each to undergraduate and graduate students and student organizations. Recipients were selected by a panel of faculty in the arts.
Proposals from faculty and students ranged from art and design projects to interdisciplinary projects linking science, engineering and the arts. Projects for 2017-18 include individual student exhibitions and performances, and short-term residencies or on-campus collaborations with guest artists.
The CCA is a supporter of student organizations that help sustain a thriving creative community on campus. Student groups receiving grants were: Cornell Taiko (Yamatai drum ensemble); Cornell Fashion Collective, affiliated with Fiber Science & Apparel Design (FSAD); the Cornell Chapter of the Society for the Promotion of Indian Classical Music and Culture Amongst Youth; Cornell Contemporary Chamber Players (Department of Music); and the History of Art Majors’ Society.
Among individual student projects, “Resistance Bands,” by art student Richard Zimmerman, MFA ’18, will connect different architectural spaces using simple sculptural forms made from materials associated with the built environment and the human body. It will be installed in early 2018 in Tjaden Hall’s Experimental Gallery. Zimmerman says the aim of the project “is to cause the viewers to question their understanding of the built environment while providing a playful sculptural environment.”
Grants to individual students also were awarded to Caitlin Kane, Jayme Kilburn and Erin Stoneking, doctoral students in performing and media arts; graduate student Kelsie Doty, fiber science and apparel design; Charisse Foo, B.Arch. ’18; Jingyang Liu, M.Arch.II ’15, M.S. ’19, and Bradley Nathanson, B.Arch. ’18, architecture; Sasha Phyars-Burgess and Gabriel Ramos, both MFA ’18, art; graduate student Yen Vu, Romance studies; doctoral student Mackenzie Pierce, music; graduate student Mariaenrica Giannuzzi, German studies; Dan Chamberlain ’18, interdisciplinary studies; and Sahana Natesan ’20, biological sciences.
Faculty members and academic departments and programs also seek CCA funds to further their individual work and projects, but primarily sought support for performances and exhibitions that will bring visiting musicians, composers, playwrights, directors, writers, filmmakers, dancers and visual artists to campus to work with their students and departments.
Assistant professor of performing and media arts Dehanza Rogers was awarded funds to support her collaborative project “From Land to Land,” a documentary/narrative video installation exploring the struggles of immigrants in the United States since the beginning of the Trump administration. Rogers envisions the project “will create a textured and complex look at what we’ve come to see as our new normal regarding immigration.”
Grants to individual faculty also were awarded to Michael Ashkin, Department of Art; Mary Woods, Department of Architecture; Denise Green, Fiber Science & Apparel Design; Annie Lewandowski, Xak Bjerken, James Spinazzola and Stephen Spinelli, Department of Music; and Jumay Chu, Bruce Levitt and Rebekah Maggor, Department of Performing and Media Arts.
Grant recipients also include the Departments of Performing and Media Arts, for “The Caucasian Chalk Circle,” Sept. 21-23; Art, for an annual MFA program student exhibition in New York City; and Music, for a “Klenèngan” gamelan concert and a performance of Bach’s “St. Matthew Passion.” The latter, coming in May to Bailey Hall, will be a collaboration with professional instrumentalists and vocal soloists.
“Often hailed as the greatest musical composition in the Western tradition, ‘St. Matthew Passion’ has not been performed at Cornell – or anywhere in Ithaca – in over 60 years,” said assistant professor of music Robert Isaacs.
For more information on grant opportunities or dates and venues for all CCA-supported events and projects, visit cca.cornell.edu, email Erin Emerson, program coordinator or call 607-255-7274.
This article originally appeared in the Cornell Chronicle.
