Six members of the SVA community have been named recipients of 2016 Creative Capital Awards, which support projects in the arts that are “bold, innovative and genre-stretching.” Each awardee receives up to $50,000 in direct funding as well as access to professional workshops and expertise valued at an additional $45,000. Only 46 projects were chosen from a nationwide pool of 2,500 proposals.
In the Emerging Fields category:
Melanie Crean (MFA 1998 Computer Art), along with Shaun Leonardo and Sable Elyse Smith, were awarded for their project Mirror / Echo / Tilt, a collaboration with formerly incarcerated people that uses magical realism to investigate representations of criminalized black and brown bodies.
MFA Fine Arts faculty members Eva and Franco Mattes for Fukushima Texture Pack, a publicly-accessible collection of surface textures based on photographs taken in the radioactive Fukushima Exclusion Zone.
Irvin Morazan (BFA 2013 Photography) for Silent Zoomorph, a performance series consisting of fictionalized rituals and wearable sculptures that will be activated in art galleries, burial sites, temples, places of natural phenomenon and a radioactive desert.
MFA Photography, Video and Related Media faculty member Laura Parnes for Tour Without End, a multi-platform project resulting in a film, video installation and web-based archive of local musicians and venues in New York City.
In the Performing Arts category:
James Scruggs (BFA 1979 Film and Video) for 3/5, an immersive performance that explores the residual effects of the discriminatory “Three-Fifths Compromise” of 1787 and tracks racial tension between black and white men.
For more information about Creative Capital and the full list of 2016 awardees, click here.