The Artist in Residencey fund supports programs that emphasize long-term, in-depth interaction between professional artists and an on-going group of participants, in collaboration with a local non-profit arts organization which directly benefits the residents of Palm Beach County.
2008
Artist: Demetrius Klein
Host Organizations: Palm Beach Community College - Duncan Theatre
Project Title: Urban/Land/Scapes
Urban/Land/Scapes Project, is a series of site-specific dance events using five unique and intriguing locations in Palm Beach County
2007
Artist: Step Afrika! Dance Troupe
Host Organizations: Dolly Hand Cultural Arts Center
Project Title: Step Up to College
Workshops for eight after school step clubs serving approximately 260 elementary, middle and high school students.
Artist: Mari Omori, visual artist
Host Organization: Morikami Museum & Japanese Gardens
Project Title: The Culture of Tea: Shared Experiences, Individual Expressions
Using the serving of tea to teach artistic expression and appreciation of shared cultural values and perceptions among diverse local organizations and age groups.
2006
Artist: Doug Cooney, playwright/children's author
Host Organization: Florida Stage
Project Title: Long Story Short
Two community outreach projects resulting in staged readings of play scripts at Florida Stage.
Artists: Michiko Kurisu and Jerry Lower, photography, new media, foklore/storytelling
Host Organization: Touissant L'Ouverture High School for the Arts and Social Justice
Project Title: Haitians of Florida: The Hope and the Future
A photographic and multi-media documentary of the growing population of Haitian-Americans who have settled in South Florida and the contribution they make to culture in Palm Beach County.
Artist: Jeanne Hilary, photography, video installation
Host Organization: Boca Raton Museum of Art
Project Title: Eden
A small group of site-specific installations incorporating photography and commercial outdoor visual spaces. This included an exhibition and book/catalogue.
2005
Artist: Ellen Harvey and Mark Dean Veca, Visual Artists
Host Organization: Florida Atlantic University School of the Arts
Project Title: "Picturing Florida: Listening to the Generations"
Public Art Mural
Working in collaboration with Florida Atlantic University’s Schmidt School of the Arts, this New York-based artist and her partner Marc Dean Veca worked with FAU’s resident artists and members of the community (school-age youths, senior citizens, visitors) and created a major temporary mural on the campus of FAU which reflected “traditional and contemporary views” garnered through extensive workshops and meetings with the community.
Artist: Akin Babatunde
Host Organization: CORE Ensemble
Project: A Harvest of Voices
A multi-disciplinary project involving theater, creative writing, historical documentation, and music.
Working with CORE Ensemble, the goal of this residency was to create new dialogue and interaction between three generations of Lake Worth and other Palm Beach County residents who share common stories of resistance, resilience, and victory over discrimination or oppression. The universality of their experiences will be embodied in a full-length music theater piece and performed for the public and recorded as a CD. It blended storytelling, creative writing, movement, improvisation, and wasset to music performed by the CORE Ensemble musicians. Mr. Babatunde is a resident of Dallas, Texas who resided in Lake Worth throughout the four-month long residency.
Artist: Demetrius Klein
Host Organization: Grassy Waters Preserve, Inc.
Project: Boundary Waters
A Modern Dance
Boundary Waters was a five-month residency project led by choreographer Demetrius Klein working with community participants to develop and produce an original full-length work performed by professional dancers. Working with Grassy Water Preserve’s mission to “educate through experience,” the project brought new participants from underserved areas of the county to the Preserve to experience the natural beauty of the Preserve first-hand. The project sought to expand the participants understanding that they (and we) are all stakeholders and stewards of this extraordinary environmental resource—Grassy Water Preserve—the source of fresh drinking water to over 130,000 people. Through spoken-word workshops, choreographic labs, site-specific studies, and mini-performances of the work-in-progress the residency cuminated in a public performance at the Kravis Center’s Gossman Amphitheater. In addition, Grassy Water’s staff created written educational material based on Boundary Water connecting hands-on arts activities to weather, oceanography, environmental efforts, and social awareness.
2004
Artist: Michael LaFosse
Host Organization: Morikami Museum & Japanese Gardens
Project Title: “FLorigami: Folding Images of Florida’s Hidden Nature”
“FLorigami: Folding Images of Florida’s Hidden Nature” ties Japanese culture to the Florida environment and a critical national issue—the Everglades. Serving thousands of community participants (schools, nature and art centers) and museum visitors of all ages, the project provided a new way of looking at the broader environmental issues of Florida’s precious resources by creating an innovative exhibit using an ancient art form, origami. One of America’s most accomplished origami master artists, Boston-based Michael LaFosse, led production of community-based artworks and will produced new artworks specifically for The Morikami.
2003
The Think Tank: Imagining Howard Park. Professional artist Michael Singer was in residence at the Armory Art Center in West Palm Beach, working to engage regional artists, design and planning professionals, students, and the general public in a creative process to identify design and program opportunities for the revitalization of Howard Park in West Palm Beach. From the onset, the project addressed the needs of the surrounding community, historical and environmental concerns, urban planning and public art. The project began with a needs assessment and several meetings with local participants working with Singer’s team of professional designers to determine opportunities for the park. A public design charrette was held on March 13, 2003 to articulate and draft concepts. A guidelines document and a public exhibit of the participants and design teams work was presented at the Armory Art center in May 2003. Already community impact is being felt by this unique partnership between urban planners and a professional artist as some participants have adopted concepts acquired from the residency and integrated them into projects at other municipality levels.
Delray Beach Cultural Loop. Houston-based artist Rick Lowe created the philosophical direction, community participation, and physical implementation of the cultural loop. The “loop” is a thirty-minute walk that connects a traditional cultural zone of a south Florida town: railroad track commerce, main street, city hall, and several multicultural neighborhoods. Nothing except for the proximity of a concentrated number of cultural arts organizations and the civic priority for infrastructure and improvements in this district creates the potential for a national model in the realm of public art, urban design, and cultural relations. Working in collaboration with the public art organization, Pineapple Grove Main Street, the project funded through the grant has three phases: opening the imagination of local artists and hundreds of diverse community members through a series of workshops lead by Mr. Lowe; the display of eight artworks created by local artists to thousands of visitors and residents along the loop; and long-term implementation of the loop through new infrastructure projects inspired by Mr. Lowe’s vision.
The Graffiti Project: Write Fast, Write Large. Professional playwright Doug Cooney was in residence for a total of three months at a local theater, Florida Stage, leading a playwriting project with two Palm Beach County high schools (Forest Hill High School and Glades Central) targeted because of their deficient performance on the FCAT statewide literacy test and because both schools have seen their arts programming cut. Mr. Cooney led interactive workshops with the students, culminating in the completion of one play-script from each school. The goal was for the plays to be related in theme and to collectively comprise a single epic. They were produced for school audiences at the high schools and for the public as part of Florida Stage’s “Young Voices” program.
