Forecast annouces 2009 grantees!

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Forecast Public Artworks, the 30-year-old independent public art agency, proudly announces its
19th round of grants to Minnesota artists for exploration of public art. Forecasts artist grants, funded by Jerome Foundation, annually support emerging and early career visual artists pursuing the public realm as a venue for creative expression. Funding was awarded to the following:

Category 1: Research & Development (2 @ $2,000)

Jane Powers
Jane Powers and Rita Davern will conduct research for their project Remember, a public art project to remember and honor Dakota people. Remember will provide a forum for reflection and dialog as we share our collective history.  The artists will identify Dakota artists to collaborate on the project, research the history of the Dakota people in MN, and locate sites throughout Minneapolis and St. Paul for thought provoking and interactive visual and sound site markers.

Chris Pennington
Chris would like to create a billboard that is primarily an art object, an architectural marrying of a billboard, an office, and a 3D gallery…on a stick.  Partnering with local architects he will explore all the various possibilities and applications of this idea and then create CAD drawings and a working model.

Category 2: Public Project (2 @ $7,000)

Anna Metcalfe
Anna Metcalfe and Grace Davitt will host weekly meals in the northside of Minneapolis using hand made plates and local produce. Expanding on weekly cookouts held at Redeemer Lutheran Church, Anna and Grace will infuse this tradition with locally grown, healthy foods and one of a kind, hand-made ceramic tableware.  The weekly cookouts will give participants a chance to form connections with one another, the artwork and local produce.

Therese Kunz
Therese will work with Susan Ugstad to create A Lasting Piece: A Collective Collage, a large installation utilizing collage, voice, and light to showcase a visual narrative that speaks to the collective heart of their rural community. This project will be installed in an historic train depot in Remer, MN. The whole installation, built to travel, will be offered to other communities for exhibition including the creation of their own community collage to be installed at a site of their choosing.

Billboard Project ($3,000 design fee + installation costs)

Kao Lee Thao
Kao Lee will create a painted billboard design that speaks to the injustices of the remaining Hmong soldiers called Freedom Fighters from the “Secret War.”  Her airy gouache paintings are a contemporary reference to Hmong story cloths.  Her design will be installed in mid summer on a billboard at University Avenue and Cleaveland Street in St. Paul.

Stay tuned for updates as these projects progress!

Art vs Audience

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After teaching a class on art and social change, I have held the belief that artists need to consider the responsibility they have to their audience when creating work in public. Taking the cue of what not to do from missionaries and service learning programs that tend to have a “drop in and fix the problem” approach, I always encouraged my students to think long and hard about their artistic presence in a community. To ask themselves a series of questions related to the relevance of their work. Why here? Why now? Why me? Am I assuming to know more than my audience? In short, what gives me the right? These become important questions when you attempt to expose unsuspecting and sometimes uninformed audiences to your work.

For the most part I stand by these beliefs, although a new thought process is beginning to take place in all of this. What about experimental public art? Art that is often being figured out as the the artists goes along (much like me with this blog). Art that sometimes is created as a testing of an artistic hypothesis on the part of the artist.

I do believe that the artist has every right to conduct these types of experiments but I sense some tension when the public becomes the petri dish. One can choose to partake in a concert of experimental music or improvised dance (which if not done well can border on the tenuous line of self indulgence on the part of the musician or dancer). But innocent bystanders in the public realm may not always have that choice. What if they are not in the mood to be accosted by a public performance piece in the name of art? Or try to negotiate the space around the Tilted Arch ?

I fully embrace artistic experimentation and love love love unanticipated artistic encounters for the unsuspecting public. The wackier the better as far as I am concerned and with the advent of new technologies the possibilities are endless. I believe these two methods of working in public can co-exist but I wonder if we should (and if so how?) apply a sort of artistic social code to artists working in public in order to address the difference of art for audience and art for the artists.

Perhaps I should hedge my bet on the notion that all artists drawn to work in public posses some kind of innate desire to share beauty and thought provoking experiences with the world.

Thoughts?