Salsa dancing in Pulaski Park. An intergenerational puppet and doll workshop. A zine dedicated to self-care. These are a few of the 27 projects that have been selected as recipients of the Northampton Arts Council’s 2018 ArtsEZ Grants, which total around $20,000 and support the plans of a variety of artists working in the areas of dance, film/video, literature, mixed media, music, theater and visual arts.
Since its inception in 1980, the Northampton Arts Council has granted over $500,000 to local artists, organizations and schools whose proposals also benefit the community. Indeed, the whole effort is something of a community affair. Every year, the Council raises money for the grants through its “signature events,” including the Silver Chord Bowl, Summer Concert Series in Downtown Northampton, Transperformance, RETROFaire, and First Night Northampton.
As for the application process, it’s involved: Artists must submit résumés, examples of past work, and written proposals for how they would spend the money.
“Something the board decides is important is to share the creative work in the community with the entire greater community,” said Brian Foote, executive director of the Northampton Arts Council, who notes the accountability factor and how grantees have to “follow through when you actually have a public component to deliver. By encouraging grantees to share, it will show the community where that money goes.”
This year, when the submission process was over, the Council had received 57 applications requesting almost $71,120.
One of the grant winners is Emily Wojcik, managing editor of The Massachusetts Review, who received $750 for her project, “A Pop-Up Reading (Un)Seen: Women, Art, Objectivity,” part of a larger series of events that will take place with the Academy of Music this fall. As Wojcik explained, the Review will be inviting three women whom they have published to read work that “deals with the representation of women, looking at how media represents womenand how women represent themselves, however defined, not just cis women.” While the Review doesn’t always have a theme, “The pieces do talk to each other, even if they aren’t directly related — there’s something in the air that seems to inspire a lot of the artists,” she said.
She says the grant money is particularly helpful for a small, nonprofit literary quarterly like the Review. Despite their location on the University of Massachusetts Amherst campus, the Review is an independent organization. They do receive some funding from the Five College Consortium, which enables them to host events that are free to the public. They also received a Northampton arts grant last year for a public lecture and reading.
“These grants make it possible to interact with the audience,” Wojcik said. “We have really been trying to make ourselves more visible on the other side of the river. We’re making a concerted effort to get ourselves over the bridge, to do some public events on the Northampton side… This is people’s art — we want to make sure they get the attention they deserve.”
Taylor Lopatofsky of Amherst will receive $500 towards publishing the fourth volume of Take Care Zine, a biannual booklet, featuring art, poetry and other writing, made by and for people “struggling or recovering from mental illness and addiction,” according to their website takecarezine.com.
In the music category, winners include Ruth Griggs, who will use the $1,000 in grant money toward the 2018 Northampton Jazz Festival; Marie Westburg of Northampton Senior Services/Senior Center, who will put the $500 toward participating in the Our Community Sing on the Forbes Library Lawn; and Alan Schneider of Panopera, who received $1,250 to put on Verdi’s “La Traviata.”
Jim Gipe, photographer and owner of Pivot Media in Florence, which provides scanning and restoration of photos and fine art, will use his $750 grant to create a new mural to span the side of his building. “We don’t yet have the design for the new mural complete,” he said, but the idea is that “the conflict between the characters in the current mural, a giant robin and three workers, will be resolved in the new mural, which will have a Florence history theme.” Foote expressed his appreciation for Gipe’s process: “He takes input from the community when he does a mural.”
Hampshire College film student and Northampton musician Gabriel “Gabe” Bernini has a rather unusual use for his grant — his thesis short film will be shot entirely on Super 8 film. For the unfamiliar, Super 8 cameras are no longer produced, and the film has a unique texture and feel. “I really love the aesthetic as well as the way it changes the shooting process,” Bernini said. “It’s pretty expensive, so you usually try to get the shot on the first take as opposed to being able to do as many as you want on digital.”
The premise of his short film is “a romantic comedy that takes place in a dystopic world of factories,” he said, and he will begin production this fall. When he’s done with the film, it will be submitted as his Div III project to Hampshire College as his last project before he graduates.
A Northampton native, Bernini is grateful to have received an arts grant for the second time.
“The Northampton Arts Council awarded me my first-ever film grant when I was 15,” he said. “I created a sketch-comedy series called ‘Special Events’ that is still one of my favorite projects.”
When he’s not studying or filming, he’s performing with “Gabe’s Band,” and he released his first album with this group in April of this year.
“The Arts Council and the projects and events that they support have had a huge effect on my life,” he said.
“Films grants are often overlooked, and Gabe’s sounds really interesting,” Foote said.
“I think of Northampton as a cinema community. Not having a cinema in town is a detriment,” he added, but being able to find projects like these “is a way to remedy that.”