Idea Capital, the innovative arts funding group, has just announced 10 grants to Atlanta artists for 2015. Idea Capital raises money from individual donors in order to support experimental projects that are unlikely to receive funding from more traditional sources, like government and foundation grants. This cycle, more than 70 artists applied for funding from Idea Capital.
The group has also launched the Margaret Kargbo Artist as Activist Grant, given to artists whose work advances issues of social justice. Kargbo was an Idea Capital steering committee member and was well-known in Atlanta for her enthusiastic support of artists and involvement with organizations before her tragic death in May 2015.
Idea Capital is a group of private arts supporters that currently comprises Cinque Hicks, Cubby West, Felicia Feaster, Michael Gibson, Oronike Odeleye, Louise Shaw, and Mary Stanley. Jody Fausett was the guest adjudicator for this year’s awards.
Congratulations to all the grantees!
The Margaret Kargbo Artist as Activist Grant goes to Morgan Carlisle with Carlos Thompson
Using art as a tool to give voice to the marginalized and to help process and heal traumatic wounds, Left Out addresses the plight of physically and psychologically scarred veterans through performance, found art, testimonials and video.
The 2015 Idea Capital Travel Grant goes to Scott Daughtridge, cofounder of the Letters Festival
Writer Daughtridge will travel the Southeast in a Greyhound bus, which will serve as his writing lab, stopping at parks and nature preserves along the way, penning odes to nature’s bounty for a collection of short stories entitled Strange Temple.
Chanel Kim & Yanique Norman
Norman’s blog will be turned into a chapbook and sculptural object addressing the artist’s interest in how we have become alienated from our bodies and experience in the digital age.
Davion Alston
Troubled by the changes in an indigenous Southern community, Alston will use documentary photography and the personal stories of residents to show the impact of gentrification and displacement on the black residents of Sapelo Island.
Kalpana Narayanan
Drawing upon her experience growing up as the child of immigrants in the South, Narayanan will use her Idea Capital grant to complete her novel about a South Indian girl growing up in Atlanta.
Laura Noel
Photographer Noel will create an artist’s book, The Lookout, that combines photographs of discarded objects and snippets of overheard conversation to create a powerful meditation on the quiet poetry found in everyday life.
Fly on a Wall (Nicole Johnson, Kelly Tipton, Nathan Griswold, Sean Hilton)
Ideas of physical space and light, and how they impact our reception of a performance, will be examined through both dance and a gallery installation, in Prism Study No. 2.
Spencer Murrill
Taking the puppet shadow play in fresh directions, experimental puppeteer Murrill will create an innovative new work, Drop.
Tara Ochs
Inspired by her performance in the film Selma as a Detroit housewife and mother turned Civil Rights activist, Ochs will develop a one-woman play based on the experiences and violent death of Viola Liuzzo.
Tori Tinsley
Painter Tinsley will create a sthop-motion animated video work, Locating Barbara, about her mother’s battle with a degenerative brain disease
