newslogo - new
RI State Council on the Arts Newsletter
March 2008
In This Issue
April 1 is application deadline
NEA Chair visits RI
Poetry Out Loud winner
Public art at new Training School
Sherlock Art Show opens
RISCA on Facebook
Quick Links
Join our list
Join Our Mailing List
Greetings!

Welcome to our March edition. Lots and lots of stuff going on, since in the arts council world, March comes in like a lion and continues acting like a lion through at least the month of June. 
 
Randy signature
April 1 Application Deadline
grant application deadline is April 1 In our office by 4:30pm on the deadline date! 

The next deadline for applications to The Rhode Island State Council on the Arts is Tuesday, April 1, 2008!  Applications for the Request for Proposals category (project support for individual artists, non-profit organizations and schools) as well as Fellowships (in the disciplines listed below) will be accepted by that date.
 
Fellowship disciplines for 4/1/08 deadline

Crafts, Film & Video, Folk Arts, Poetry, Fiction, Screen/Playwriting, Photography, Three-Dimensional Art

NEA Chair visits Rhode Island 
U.S. Senator Whitehouse and NEA Chairman Gioia visit Perishable Theatre and its director Vanessa Gilbert Conversation with Senator Whitehouse on arts issues 
 
National Endowment for the Arts Chairman Dana Gioia visited Rhode Island on a whirlwind tour of the state.  During his visit he had a conversation in front of a full house at Trinity Rep with U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, dropped in at AS220, Perishable Theatre and Providence Black Rep, met with Providence Mayor David Cicilline (they talked about design issues in Providence, part of the NEA-organized Mayor's Design Institute), and then went on to Newport for a visit to the Newport Art Museum and a poetry reading at the Redwood Library.
 
For fun the next morning, the Chairman took an H.P. Lovecraft walking tour in the Benefit Street area, courtesy of our friends at the Rhode Island Historical Society. 
 
Burrillville student wins Poetry Out Loud final
Poetry Out Loud 2008 Winner Over 400 students compete
 

Burrillville High School student Andrew Westlake took top honors at Tuesday evening's Poetry Out Loud state finals at Rhode Island College, sponsored locally by the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts and VSA arts of Rhode Island. As Rhode Island state winner, Westlake will go on to compete at the national finals in Washington, DC in April.

 

Poetry Out Loud is a program sponsored nationally by the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency, and The Poetry Foundation in Chicago. Organized along the lines of the national spelling bee, Poetry Out Loud promotes competitions at the high school level throughout the country, with local winners going on to state finals, and from there to the national championship competition.

 

In Rhode Island, the following schools participated in the state finals: Burrillville High School in Burrillville; Classical High School and Hope Arts High School in Providence; Portsmouth Abbey School in Portsmouth; Jacqueline M. Walsh School for the Performing and Visual Arts in Pawtucket; West Warwick High School in West Warwick; Coventry High School in Coventry; Providence Country Day School in East Providence; and Johnston High School in Johnston. Schools that participated in the program but not in the competition were North Providence High School in North Providence; The Bridge School and Central High School in Providence. In all, over 400 Rhode Island high school students participated in the program.

 
Local artists work with students at Training School
Artist Mika Seeger at the Training School construction site Public art program at new Youth Development Facility
 

Students from the Rhode Island Training School will participate in the creation of public art for the new Rhode Island Youth Detention Facility in Cranston. Through Rhode Island's Allocation for Art for Public Facilities Act, more commonly known at the 1% for Public Art Law, Rhode Island artists Peter Geisser and Mika Seeger were commissioned to create and install a handmade ceramic tile mural with the involvement of both teachers and students at the new Training School facility.

 

The artists have begun work on the mural already through initial meetings with Training School students and faculty and they are creating a format for each student to participate in making portions of the final piece. The themes of the mural include "parts and whole" - such as individuals and community - as well as more specific ideas of buildings, homes, and human hands. A structure for the mural has been completed and the tile making will begin with the students and teachers in March.

 
Sherlock Art Show features work by artists with disabilities
grant dropoff Annual show honors champion of people with disabilities 
 

The faces - and artwork - of Rhode Island's artists with disabilities are well represented at VSA arts of Rhode Island's 5th Annual Paul V. Sherlock Memorial Art Show held in collaboration with the RI State Council on the Arts at the Atrium Gallery, One Capitol Hill in Providence.

 

This exhibit honors Paul Sherlock, a man who has had a significant impact on the community of people with disabilities throughout RI, and celebrates his accomplishments by spotlighting the talents of adult RI artists with a wide range of physical, cognitive and mental health disabilities. During Paul Sherlock's career as teacher, legislator and Director of Special Education his commitment as an advocate for people with disabilities transformed Rhode Island into becoming a place where exhibits such as this - and the unseen work that takes place to assist the artist's creative process - are possible.

 

Over 80 artists are exhibiting their work in this show and works on display demonstrate a breadth of style and images. In addition to a powerful group of Coptic styled self-portraits, VSA arts is exhibiting art that is as varied in method and expression as the life experiences of the individual artists; artworks demonstrating a rich and diverse backdrop for appreciating that it is not preconceived notions of what "disability" is that defines these artists but their passion for creating art.

 
RISCA on FACEBOOK
Facebook logo State Arts Council has a presence on the popular social networking website 
 
RISCA now has a group page on Facebook, one of the most widely-subscribed social networking websites on the Internet. 
 
Why would a state agency set up its own Facebook page?  Randall Rosenbaum, RISCA's Executive Director, put it this way:  "As a state agency we need to communicate effectively with the artists of our state and the people that they serve.  A significant portion of the people we are trying to reach use Facebook and other social networking systems on a daily basis.  We need to be there as well."
 
RISCA is looking for "friends" to join its group page.  If you are a Facebook subscriber click here and join RISCA on Facebook.
 
For those of you who are Myspace subscribers, a Myspace page is in the works.