Rhode Island Cultural Anchor: Meredith Stern

Meredith Stern is a ceramicist and printmaker living in Providence. She is a member of the international group The Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative. She is RISCA’s 2019 drawing & printmaking fellow.

We asked her a few questions about her life and art-making in Rhode Island for our series, Rhode Island Cultural Anchors.

RISCA: Give us a brief overview of your day yesterday- what did you do in both your personal and professional life.

MS: My typical work day in the winter begins by bringing wood inside for our woodstove and drinking coffee. I usually spend some time answering emails and managing other administrative issues. I’ll cook a lunch at home and then work on creating new work. Sometimes this means cutting up old prints and creating collages from them, other times it means drawing a new print onto a slab of linoleum or printing an image onto paper. I pick up our child from daycare in the afternoon and I often invite one of his friends over. Once my husband finishes work at 6, we have dinner as a family – usually cooking at home- and sometimes go on an adventure together. A walk outside, going to the playground, or when the weather is lovely, working in our backyard garden.

RISCA: How did you end up in Rhode Island?

MS: I visited Rhode Island in August of 2005 to visit some friends and we drove to the beach and I fell in love with the salty air and the feel of the sand between my toes. I had been living in New Orleans for 7 years and there were no nearby places to swim in clean water. I was enthralled with the fact that we could get to the ocean in Rhode Island in less than one hour, so I decided to move in with my friends for a couple months. That visit turned into me now living her for 14 years.

RISCA: Why do you do what you do? What inspires you, drives you, to create or enable the creation of art?

MS: I am inspired by people and our need to communicate and to connect with each other. Artistic expression can allow people to connect through non-word based language which allows for subtlety, for emotions, for dreams to be shared through sound, texture, color, or touch. I think art can be many things to many people – it can communicate what is present but also who and what we can be. Art can allow us to think differently, to explore different possibilities, and to explore how our society can change and how we can be better. Much of my art explores history, social movements, family connections, and mutual aid and cooperation.

RISCA: What is one thing you think the art community in Rhode Island needs?

MS: I think our society as a whole needs to work to undo institutional inequality, specifically racism, sexism, transphobia; which means so does the arts communities. Nationally, white men have been over represented, celebrated, and rewarded in museums, galleries, etc. It’s essential that we acknowledge our historic biases, and work to correct it. This can include many efforts, including retelling art history from the perspective of those who have historically been marginalized or ignored. We can highlight artists and hire administrators in our museums, galleries, and other cultural centers who reflects the diversity of perspectives of people living in our city of various ethnicities and genders.  Another example is a custom that has been being adopted by cultural and educational institutions of land acknowledgements of the indigenous inhabitants of the land. I’ve seen this done in the University of Connecticut, and I’d like to see institutions in Rhode Island adopting this practice as well. There’s a lot of work to do to address systemic inequality, these are just a couple examples.

RISCA: What is the biggest challenge for you in your art life?

MF: Time. I used to spend 10 – 12 hours locked in my studio 5-6 days a week. Now we have a three-year-old and I have less time and need to budget my time better. I have less time to wander through the stacks at the library or get lost in the woods by myself. I think I am more efficient with my time, but sometimes miss the ability to lose myself in a book or random adventure for a day or two.

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Rhode Island Cultural Anchor: Harrison Grigsby

Harrison Grigsby, aka Jon Hope, is a multidisciplinary hip hop artist and educator. He teaches at Roger Williams University, focusing on hip hop and urban culture and art, and the intersection with community development. He is the 2019 RISCA Fellow in Music Composition.

We asked him a few questions about his life and art-making in Rhode Island for our series, Rhode Island Cultural Anchors.

RISCA: What do you love about the art community/scene in Rhode Island?

HG: I love the counter stories and the counterculture here that is slowly but surely getting louder with their voice. There are so many stories that weren’t being heard and now we are creating our own outlets, spaces, and opportunities for those stories to be told. That’s a dope feeling.

RISCA: Why do you make Rhode Island your home, and how did you end up here?

HG: I was born and raised in Providence. I’ve had the opportunity to live in other major cities (ATL, Brooklyn, Richmond) but there is something about the cultural melting pot that is Providence and the niche things that you can engage in in short proximity. The Liberians, Dominicans, Haitians, Southeast Asians, Nigerians, and more communities are all neighbors with something to contribute – especially food!

RISCA: What is one thing, personal or professional, that you or (if applicable) your organization want to accomplish in the next year?

HG: I want to share my art and my voice on a larger scale. Rhode Island has given me the support and confidence to scale up and share it with the world. Furthermore, I would like Hip Hop culture to have a stronger presence in the academic space. This is why I started the Hope Scholars Initiative – to leverage Hip Hop’s impact to engage students in a much more sensible way when it comes education.

RISCA: What is one thing you think the art community in Rhode Island needs?

HG: We need to invest in our own. I see so many events being curated under the guise of Rhode Island/Providence centric art but it’s out of towners or transplants who are predominantly featured. Furthermore, we need to properly compensate and value the homegrown artistry and artists. The more that we celebrate HOMEGROWN through adequate showcasing and compensation, the more we will truly thrive.

RISCA: What is the biggest challenge for you in your art life?

HG: The biggest challenge is honestly securing adequate funding. I want to increase visibility and continue to connect with allies and organizations who value the impact of Hip Hop culture. There’s still a community of people who see Hip Hop still as a novelty or other. They’re in for an enlightenment because Hip Hop is going to be here whether they accept it or not. That’s always the spirit and energy that we rely on.

You can follow Jon Hope on instagram, twitter, and facebook. Check out his single, Eat!

Rhode Island Cultural Anchor: Veronica Mays

Veronica Mays began quilting in 2004, and got serious quilt fever in 2015. She is based in Portsmouth, RI and works to preserve African-American heritage and history, as well as her family’s history, through her quilts. She received a Project Grant for Individuals last year to create quilts celebrating African American history, as well as demonstrations, classes, and public showings of these pieces.

We asked her a few questions about her life and art making in Rhode Island for our new series, Rhode Island Cultural Anchors.

RISCA: Give us a brief overview of your day yesterday – what did you do in both your personal and professional life.

VM: Yesterday I went to church, then entertained my Aunt Marsha who is visiting from California – I took her out for a lobster roll. After that, I prepared lessons for my week as an English teacher and got my clothes, lunches and thoughts together. I took a long leisurely nap, which I regretted because I woke up at four in the morning – tossing and turning for an hour. I woke up and cooked three nights worth of dinner – baked chicken wings, steak and onions, a big pot of yellow eyed-beans, oven fries, broccoli, and fried monk fish. When I was done with these obligations, I returned to the love of my art life – quilting. I prepped three quilted post cards, created a Barack Obama quilt pattern, and continued to spread material all over the living room, two bedrooms, and the dining room table.

RISCA: Why do you make Rhode Island your home, and how did you end up here?

VM: I was born and raised in Newport in 1961. I have lived in three far away places – Long Beach, California, Fairbanks, Alaska, and Naples, Italy – but I always return home.

RISCA: What are you the most excited about right now in your art practice?

VM: When it comes to quilting I am like a kid in a candy store! This year I learned several new (to me) techniques including multi-media collage, fabric painting, quilted post cards, bottles and blooms, and accidental landscapes. However, the quilted post cards have taken on a life of their own.

RISCA: What is the biggest challenge for you in your art life?

VM: The biggest challenge is having to put my supplies away so that my family can have the space to use for its original intended purpose! This creates a wrinkle in my fluidity.

RISCA:What Rhode Island artists and/or arts organizations most inspire you and why?

VM: I am inspired by URI Professor Robert Dilworth. He is an art professor, painter, and has recently become an incredible quilter. In addition, I love two organizations I am a part of: Quilter’s By the Sea and Studio Art Quilt Associates (SAQA). Both of these organizations expose me to artists and techniques that enhance my skills and creativity.

See more of Veronica’s work on facebook or instagram, and catch her at the Broadway Street Fair in Newport on October 6th.

Rhode Island Cultural Anchor: Eric Bennett

Eric Bennett is a Providence based writer and Associate Professor of English at Providence College. He is this year’s fiction fellowship recipient, for his novel Make Yourself Decent.

We asked him a few questions about his life and art making in Rhode Island for our new series, Rhode Island Cultural Anchors.

 

RISCA: Give us a brief overview of your day yesterday – what did you do in both your personal and professional life.

EB: After dinner I polished a 250-word endorsement of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man for the student newspaper at Providence College; googled clips of the Chinese internet celebrity HoneyCC; read about Meitu apps that transform Shanghai selfies into universal fantasies of perfection and drive the booming business in plastic surgery in Chengdu; kept trying to record a MIDI part for “Broke My Heart on You” for the forthcoming Hopper album, Hopperesque; and typed up some notes on William F. Buckley’s God and Man at Yale.

RISCA: What Rhode Island artist or arts organization most inspires you?

EB: The painter Todd Ingham, now in exile in Oregon City, was an undervalued civic marvel throughout the years he roved the streets sorting plastic, gluing memory boards, painting the beauty in defunct bridges and saggy wires, and postulating how the divine delight of numbers, coursing invisibly all around us, structured reality, including the street plan of Elmwood.

RISCA: What do you love about the art community/scene in Rhode Island?

EB: On Monday and Thursday nights you can walk from your apartment in the West End to band practice at the Wurks. On Tuesday night you can walk an even shorter distance to your writing group, comprised of brilliant, serious writers, meeting just off Dexter Field. On Wednesday night you can drive down to Cranston and drink a beer with Andy Davis at subModern Studios as he runs punk vocals through a wurlitzer and humors your affection for Bob Seger’s “Fire Lake.” On Friday, at Ada Books (also a short walk) you can browse comics drawn by locals, then head over to an opening at RISD or a play at The Players on Benefit Street. On Saturday afternoon you can chat with Mike Samos at Empire Guitar about what the band Geraldine’s up to. Do I sound like a promotional magazine? Who cares? This place is the best!

RISCA: What is one thing you think the art community in Rhode Island needs?

EB: Authentic German rouladen.

You can read more about Eric at ericbennett.org, and catch him at Writers Night during the Fellowship Exhibition at the Warwick Center for the Arts in March 2019!

Meet Keith Munslow and Mandy Howe

Twice a year RISCA awards grants in a number of categories. Over the course of a few months, we will be profiling the amazing artists and organizations that received grants at our April 1, 2017 deadline, two at a time.

Project Grants for Individuals
Artist: Keith Munslow
Project: Keith Munslow curates, produces, directs, and performs in the Empire Revue, a monthly variety show. This show provides work and a performance showcase for 9-12 comedic actors/writers every month, as well as a performance showcase for 4-6 guest acts of many performance varieties. His focus is on local performers and often local topics. It has been going on at AS220’s mainstage for over 11 years.
Each month the show revolves around a different theme, decided upon by me with the input of the Sparkling Beatniks. These themes are designed to create a central focus for the writing of each show; I will be asking the group to brainstorm ideas on the basis of this theme, and to deeply explore the different interpretations of that theme, in order to achieve a true variety of material. In addition, I focus on pushing each writer/performer to explore different modes of comedic expression, to create a variety not only in topics but also in their presentation. Each show may include several traditional sketches (several characters acting and speaking), but I will also strive to inspire the group to create pieces based more in movement, song, puppetry, or other presentations.
The outcome of this project is that, each month, a high quality show will be presented at an affordable price for audience members. It provides a showcase for the writing and performance skills of each of the Beatniks, as well as a showcase for the local guest acts. It is my intention to provide a stipend to all performers (actors, guest acts, and house band), as well, in appreciation for the time and energy they will be devoting to ensuring the ongoing quality of the show, and to acknowledge the value of their work and creativity.
Artist Bio: Keith is an award-winning performer who combines music, storytelling, comedy, visual art, and improvisation. He began the Empire Revue in 2006 after talking with the founding Artistic Director, Burt Crenca, about ways that he could become more involved with the organization. Burt identified a cabaret-style variety show as programming that would benefit the community, and Keith took that suggestion and ran with it. As of this writing, the Revue has produced 128 shows since its inception; many times over the years, the show has been sold out as its popularity has grown.
In addition to the Revue, Keith performs hundreds of shows annually, for children and adults at festivals, concerts, schools and libraries throughout New England and beyond. His music for children has earned him three Parents Choice Awards, an American Library Association Notable Recordings Award, and a NAPPA Award, and can be heard on Sirius XM Kidsplace Live. He is a founding member of The Providence Improv Guild, for whom he currently teaches musical improv, and leads the house musical improv team. He also performs with the New Orleans-flavored blues band, Superchief Trio, and in a duo show with musician/storyteller Bill Harley. He recently released “Big Buncha Buddies,” his eighth album of music for children and families, with fellow songwriter Bridget Brewer. Keith has composed music for Perishable Theatre, Manton Avenue Project, and Elemental Theatre, and created an original score and libretto for an adaptation of Lysistrada at Providence College. A dedicated teaching artist, he currently teaches theatre arts at Moses Brown School, and is the Artist-In-Residence at Paul Cuffee School.

Teaching Artist Roster
Artist: Mandy Howe
Discipline: Visual Art
Artist Bio: Mandy Howe is an artist and art teacher from Rhode Island. Her paintings reflect her connection to the natural world and her concerns for the environment. She uses  both natural and man made objects to describe the landscapes and shorelines of Aquidneck Island, exploring the influence of the environment on the art of different cultures.

Students will explore their own environment and make art about where they live.  Art projects will be inspired by Navajo sand art, Tlingit button blankets, Kente cloth patterns and El Anatsui sculptures; as well as Australian Aborigine song lines, Marshall Island stick maps and navigational charts of local waters.  The curriculum is designed to meet the needs of any age and can be integrated with any subject:  Social Studies, World Cultures, Literacy, Natural History, Science, etc. Visiting artists and field trips will be included.  Collaborations will generate a culminating project such as scrapbooks, an exhibition, a mural or a site-specific installation.

Meet Wakefield Elementary and Michael Gore

Twice a year RISCA awards grants in a number of categories. Over the course of a few months, we will be profiling the amazing artists and organizations that received grants at our April 1, 2017 deadline, two at a time.

Project Grants in Education
Applicant Organization: South Kingstown School- Wakefield Elementary
Participating Artists: Beth Hettrick Berry, Issa Colibaly, Thaun Harris, Hannah Beakman, Mich Muller
Project: UPBEAT is a multi-arts theater production that would involve upwards of 200 elementary school students and 75 adults. The theme will revolve around the cross cultural understanding and personal exploration. The script was written by playwright Beth Berry, in collaboration with music faculty and the classroom teachers. It is flexible to allow for maximum participation by the student body. It will be aligned with the Arts Grade Span Expectations.
Our goals for this project are to enhance understanding and appreciation of the arts, and to demonstrate how the arts support the internalization of information from other core subjects, in this case geography, and social studies, both for the students and for the adults who will work with them.
There are no “try-outs”. Basically, a flexible, adaptive script is written. Participants are then told the “story” of the drama, until they are familiar with all the characters and plot. Students and adults then cast themselves into various roles, and any necessary adaptations are made to the script. When a participant chooses what role he or she would like to play, the experience becomes a highly personal expression of self. This connection continues to develop during the rehearsals, as students discover kindred spirits of all ages who felt drawn to that same role. During the final performances, their artistic selves and accomplishments are applauded and appreciated by peers, family, and community.
About the Organization: ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ The mission of the South Kingstown School Department, in partnership with families and the entire educational community, is to educate ALL of our students in the knowledge and skills necessary to ensure readiness and success in college and career.

Project Grants for Individuals
Artist: Michael Gore
Project: Supported by members of the Extraordinary Rendition Band Michael Gore will continue to organize the work of the EYE: supporting the landscape of creative arts education in Providence through free youth instruction in music and activism. It explores activism through music and includes free programming for PPSD students in the forms of individual lessons in brass instruments and percussion, group ensemble rehearsal with select public performances, and after school percussion ensembles.

The Extraordinary Youth Ensemble is the educational outreach project of the Extraordinary Rendition Band, which has conducted music activism education, through groups of individual members, for 4 years. Since March 2013, we have partnered with Vartan Gregorian, Reservoir Ave and Pleasant View Elementary Schools, The Met High School, and Trinity Academy for the Performing Arts.

This Spring of 2017, finds us continuing to build on our previous efforts in music activism education, sharing the ERB’s model of public performance, shared-leadership and public service with a younger generation of musicians. The explicit goal is to help our students build skills in instrumentation, band leading, music composition, and develop ideas about what “playing an active role in their community through music” means to them.

RISCA funds are supplemented by donations from the Extraordinary Rendition Band (ERB donates 25% of its annual earnings from gigs to this outreach work) and donations from community partners.  Michael Gore currently manages the RISCA Individual Artist Grant and overall EYE programming, but that role has been shared in the past by other ERB members and former members including Avi David and Josh Lantzy.

Programming from the previous year that will be continued in the current one includes:
Hope Academy EYE Percussion Ensemble

Entering its second year run by ERB Bass Drummer and the Musician in Residence of Trinity Academy for the Performing Arts, Avi David.  It has also been Co-Instructed by EYE Student Interns from Trinity Academy for the Performing Arts, including Odyssey Scott, Shelby Hopkins, Jamie Cores, and Ariel Cruz.
Reservoir Elementary EYE Percussion Ensemble

Has been run for 3+ years by ERB Percussionist and Photographer David Lee Black.  It has also been Co-Instructed by EYE Student Interns from Trinity Academy for the Performing Arts, Orianda Rodriguez, Shelby Hopkins and Jessica Michocoj.

Description of School-Based EYE Percussion Ensemble Programs:

Typical workshops are 60-75 minutes in length and occur once a week for ten weeks. The curriculum has focused on music education, with a heavy emphasis on exploring the role arts can play in community engagement, development and activism. Students have been introduced to beat, rhythm, musical notation, and are learning complex drumming sequences.

What separates our approach from traditional music education programs is our focus on creating a democratic citizenry through music. In this program, students will generally work together to develop a communal list of social causes that they would like to support and will research local events at which they may provide musical support.

Trinity Academy for the Performing Arts EYE Instrument, Composition, and Group Ensemble

For the past three years high school students at TAPA have participated in individual brass instruction and group ensemble rehearsal, as well as music composition support.  They have learned trumpet with Michael Gore, saxophone (alto and tenor) with Keyla Hamilton, trombone with Joey Distefano, and group rehearsal with multiple ERB instructors including Tristan Holbrook.

Exciting developments include:

-The formalization of both volunteer and paid intern positions for high school student members of the EYE to co-teach EYE Percussion Ensembles in our elementary school programs.
-EYE and TAPA Percussion Ensemble students performing in Daniel Bernard Romain’s “En Masse” performance at the Dexter Training Ground during PVD Fest.
-Last school-year we graduated our first multi-year group brass musicians from the EYE.  This included one trumpet player, three trombone players, and a percussion and bass player.  Not only did they get to perform at their own graduation at TAPA before they moved on to the University of Rhode Island and Rhode Island College.
-Since their graduation we have now had two of those members return as alumni-young adult musicians to join at ERB rehearsal and even perform during PRONK! (the Providence Honk Festival).

It is really amazing to see the first realization of what we have hoped for years would develop: a real community of musicians engaging with their community across age and other demographic factors.  To bring people together through community and music.

Artist Bio: Michael Gore is a founding member of the Extraordinary Rendition Band, a local, democratically run, activist oriented street band.  One concrete example of our activism is the dedication of our time, energy, and financial resources to help bring tuition-free music education back into our community.
The ERB is made up of many lifelong musicians, educators, organizers and social activists including Avi David, Musician in Residence, Trinity Academy for the Performing Arts (TAPA); Dana Borrelli-Murray, Executive Director, Highlander Institute; Michael Gore, English Language Arts Instructor and Department Lead at TAPA; Melanie Clark-Medyesy, Speech Pathologist, Woonsocket Education Dept.; Donna Okrasinski Ph.D, Aspiring Principal, Pleasant View Elementary; Meghan Kallman, Graduate Student and Instructor at Brown University; and Michael Urso, Adjunct Instructor at the Community College of Rhode Island.
The ERB has been directly involved with youth music programming at various levels, including Boys and Girls Club workshops, instrument making activities and instrument petting zoos. In the Spring of 2013, the ERB received a grant from the I WAS THERE Project, which gives residencies to writers, artists and oral historians to engage students of the Vartan Gregorian School in learning about the rich history of their school and the Fox Point community. The project culminated in a collaborative performance with the ERB and Vartan Gregorian student musicians through their school. Hundreds of families attended this historic event which showcased the school’s commitment to community, culture, family engagement and youth voice.
In previous years the youth band was approached by Holly Ewald and the Urban Pond Procession and asked to play in their yearly parade. The students voted in support of this cause and played in that year and in its most recent (and final year) Urban Pond Procession this past year.
The fall of 2014 saw the inauguration of ERB’s most recent youth music education project: The Extraordinary Youth Ensemble (EYE). With the funds made available by this grant over the previous year, we have been able to greatly expand our music education projects in Providence. Over the 2014-2015 school year, ERB members taught weekly music and bucket-drum classes with students at Reservoir Elementary. The EYE bucket-drum class performed at a number of community events, including informational events with the Urban Pond Procession and the annual Pronk Family Fun Day.

Meet Pronk and Lydia Perez

Twice a year RISCA awards grants in a number of categories. Over the course of a few months, we will be profiling the amazing artists and organizations that received grants at our April 1, 2017 deadline, two at a time.

Arts Access Grant
Applicant Organization: Providence HONK! Fest
Project: PRONK! is a free, family-friendly, outdoor music festival, featuring brass and drum-based street bands playing alongside local performance groups. For the past ten years the festival has brought between ten and fourteen internationally-performing bands to Providence while highlighting local talent, neighborhood flavor, and community accomplishments. This year’s festival took place on Indigenous People’s Day, Monday, October 9th, 2017 from 3:00 – 10:30pm in Burnside Park and the Fox Point neighborhood.
More specifically the festival day includes three distinct components: afternoon performances in Burnside Park by out of town bands and local non-brass band acts; a sunset parade that leads from Burnside Park down South Main Street to the Hurricane Barrier; and evening outdoor performances by PRONK! bands on South Water Street.
This year, our goal is to bring together artists and community groups to create visual pageantry for the PRONK festival parade, amplifying each group’s messaging in the context of vibrant street celebration.
About the Organization: PRONK! presents a heartfelt antidote to mainstream culture by inviting people from all walks of life to come together for a day set aside for the celebration of music. We aim to blur social boundaries between audience and performers as well as between musical genres, resulting in a joyous reclamation of public space.

Folk Arts Apprenticeship
Project: Afro-Puerto Rican Bomba Dance- Folk Arts Apprenticeship
Master: Lydia Pérez
Apprentice: Dorothy Rivera-Pérez
Artist Bio: As part of her Puerto Rican culture and identity, Lydia began learning Afro-Puerto Rican Music and Dance in Puerto Rico when she was a little girl. She has spent the last twenty-seven years as a performer and cultural educator/activist in the U.S. and Puerto Rico.
As a Traditional Artist in Rhode Island, she received the 1998 and 2010 Merit Fellowship from Rhode Island State Council on the Arts (RISCA), the 2000 Fellowship award from RISCA and the 2000 RI Foundation Fellowship award. At a national level, Lydia represented New England in the Southern Arts Federation and received the American Tradition Award in 1999 and 2000, sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts with the Traditional Artists Program. In March 2014, celebrating the Women’s History Month, she was recognized as a Rhode Island Woman of Distinction by the University of Rhode Island, and on October 19, 2014 she received the 2014-ETNIAS Business Award “Diversity Champion.”
Lydia’s performance group, YORUBA 2 was named in honor of Master Carlos Cruz. Yoruba 2 is an award-winning, nationally renowned traditional Afro-Puerto Rican music and dance. The group is known for playing genres of music including Bomba and Plena. Lydia established the Puerto Rican Institute for the Arts and Advocacy, Inc. (PRIAA) in 1994.  In 2007, She established the Caribbean Arts program in which she teach students about Puerto Rican History, rhythms, dance, mask making and carnival. She ran the program in Hartford, CT, Boston, Springfield and Rhode Island school districts.

Meet Oliver Arias and Maryann Ullman

Twice a year RISCA awards grants in a number of categories. Over the course of a few months, we will be profiling the amazing artists and organizations that received grants at our April 1, 2017 deadline, two at a time.

Project Grants for Individuals
Artist: Oliver Arias
Project: This project is an arts based 8 school educational tour of RI public middle and high schools that challenges our drastically different communities to think critically about our state’s history of immigration and segregation by using relevant artistic resources and encouraging youth artistic expression. I, along with my team, will be using a variety of nation wide and RI-specific primary and secondary resources, as well as framing many of the conversations through the lens of Hip Hop arts. Hip Hop’s literary canon addresses segregation and the inequitable distribution of resources in an accessible, relevant way that meets students where they are. We’ll visit each school at least twice in the 2017/18 school year, and create an arts based video curriculum to be used by all schools after the tour is finished.
Artist Bio: Oliver ‘SydeSho’ Arias is a Hip Hop performer/educator reigning out of Providence, RI. Engaged in the Hip Hop arts for about 6 years, SydeSho specializes in the arts of Emceein’ (Rapping) and Bboyin’ (BreakDancin’). He also is the Program/Performance Director of the Non-Profit, Pushed Learning & Media, where he travels to educate youth on the social injustice, racial injustice, and segregation in the USA while using the culture of Hip Hop to engage in these conversations. SydeSho’s goal is to utilize the culture of Hip Hop in it’s purest form to uplift communities and remain relevant in present day society.

Teaching Artist Roster
Artist: Maryann Ullman
Discipline: Literary Arts
Artist Bio: Maryann Ullmann is fond of blurring the boundaries of genre, mixing realism and fabulism, and encouraging voices that the world needs more of.
She writes mostly fiction but loves to explore genres and multimedia with all age groups, and explore interdisciplinary topics such as science, civics, and language. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Chatham University with emphases on Fiction and Pedagogy, and earned the program’s top fellowship for commitment to community leadership.

Meet the Peace Flag Project and Lucas Pralle

Twice a year RISCA awards grants in a number of categories. Over the course of a few months, we will be profiling the amazing artists and organizations that received grants at our April 1, 2017 deadline, two at a time.

Arts Access Grant
Project:  Artist Cathren Housley and the Peace Flag Project (PFP) are collaborating to create “The United American Peace Flag, a flag comprised of more than 300 Peace Flags (PF) made by Rhode Islanders of all ages and backgrounds. Peace Flags, originally inspired by Tibetan Prayer Flags, express deep wishes for peace, kindness, unity, generosity and a better world. The 20′ by 10′ flag will be exhibited in RI at galleries, museums, concerts, festivals and more.
The United American Peace Flag symbolizes and unites the richly diverse communities of RI. As Cathren has said, “We seek to strengthen the respect for all our citizens–both newly arrived and long-time residents. The flag represents all colors, nationalities, ethnicities, religions, and ages, and unites our visions for peace.”
The project is the inspiration of local artist Cathren Housley. In 2015 and 2016, PFP collaborated with Cathren to create “The Great American Peace Flag” (GAPF.) a flag of similar scale, constructed with Peace Flags made by adults and children all over RI. This flag has been displayed at concerts, festivals, graduation ceremonies, churches and Peace Fest 2016 and 2017. It has been well received as an American peace symbol as well as a spiritual one; it represents the collective expression of wishes for a better world by diverse communities in RI.
Some of the groups we are enlisting to make flags are: URI Center for Nonviolence and Peace Studies, Institute for the Study & Practice of Nonviolence; 3 Unitarian Churches; Jamestown Art Center; Farmers Markets; PACE Senior Center; Community Chorus members; Elementary, Middle and High school students. We are also making a special effort to engage prominent RI artists as well as lesser known visual artists. Our plan is to include at least 75 working artists in creating flags for this project.
About the Organization: The PFP philosophy is that we are all peacemakers. We believe that each of us can make the world more peaceful in significant ways by how we treat one another every day. Behaving in more caring, thoughtful ways can promote healthier, more stable communities and a more peaceful planet. We provide opportunities for people of all ages to create Peace Flags that reflect their positive wishes for the world. Our major event is honoring the UN Peace Day each September; over the years, we have expanded to a Month of Peace.

Project Grant for Individuals
Artist: Lucas Pralle and Carolyn Decker
Project: Lucas Pralle will hold a series of five Endless Beautiful Creativity Workshops in Rhode Island between July 2017 and June 2018. At workshops, participants use audio-based writing prompts to simultaneously listen and write.  Participants share their writing with the group for a discussion period. Workshops are recorded and posted as episodes of the Endless Beautiful podcast. For each Endless Beautiful Creativity Workshop, Lucas Pralle and Carolyn Decker guide participants through creative writing and public speaking exercises. We use a selection of audio clips as a 15-minute writing prompt during which participants simultaneously listen and write. The audio clips are sourced from our recordings of the natural environment and other settings. After the writing exercise, we ask participants to share their writing with the group for a discussion period. Participants read their work at the microphone and answer a few questions from the group about their experience and what inspired them in their creative work. We record the readings and post them with the audio sessions as episodes of our Endless Beautiful podcast. Details about our method and podcast episodes featuring our recent workshops are available on our website: http://www.endlessbeautiful.com.
The range of topics and styles showcased in our workshop exhibits the vibrancy of the varied cultures in our community, revealing “the endless beautiful”–the individual and communal powers of creativity that exist within our communities. Our desired and expected outcome is to reveal the creative potential in our participants to the greater community.
Artist Bio: Lucas Pralle is the Employment Specialist for Community Care Alliance, a large social services organization that has served Woonsocket and Northern Rhode Island for over a century. His business is to help people, and he is passionate about promoting the creative arts in our communities. Pralle has several years of experience building community through the arts. Here’s a link to a short documentary about one of the projects that he was a major part of in Madison, Wisconsin called Windows of Worlds: https://youtu.be/LXVnfz1QEg8.

Carolyn Decker is a poet and a wetland biologist with Natural Resource Services, a wetlands consulting company based in Burrillville and serving Southern New England. She was the recipient of a 2014 Thomas J. Watson Fellowship to study the relationship between creative writing and nature conservation in cultures and ecosystems around the world. She has led creative writing workshops in the United States, Dominica, and Australia.

Meet Luis Rodriguez and UPP Arts

Twice a year RISCA awards grants in a number of categories. Over the course of a few months, we will be profiling the amazing artists and organizations that received grants at our April 1, 2017 deadline, two at a time.

Project Grants for Individuals
Artist: Luis Rodriguez
Project: The Music Program IDLC plans to enable kids and young people in dangerous part of the city of Providence, to develop and interest and learn to play a musical instrument. The potential benefits to kids who participate in extracurricular activities are nearly as limitless as the list of activities open to them to try.
The Music Program IDLC emerged as a new alternative to help solve the problem of many of our children and young people, who after coming home from school, do not find healthy activities to perform or get involved. This need brings as a consequence the promotion of idleness and therefore possible motivation in their curiosity get involved in activities that are harmful to the mind and the heart, and can even be harmful for other people.
The music IDLC program , offers classes from 4:00-8:00 pm Friday and Saturday from 10:00 am-1:00 pm, to provide the opportunity to the parents to bring their kids and allow them to be part of the development of the arts through music, when they are out of school.
The mission is to provide qualified teachers, who are equipped to teach different ages according to the vision of the music program, providing a small class environment and providing opportunities where students can display their talents, including public concerts.
The music program has 3 years serving more than 300 young youth and kids. They have been inspired to develop their skills in the art of music, putting it into practice in front of family members, schools, concerts, and other institutions of the community. The program has develop several concerts.
Artist Bio: I am a musician for more than 40 years, I am been involve teaching music to kids, young people and adults, in Dominican Republic and here in USA. I teach piano, guitar, and bassguitar. It has been my passion to help the community and specially the young people to express their feelings and get new opportunities through music and other expressions of art. I also work with other young people that has been part of the music program in the past who now help me teaching music to the kids.

Project Grants in Education
Applicant Organization: UPP Arts
Participating Artists: Dan Butterworth, Sarah Cappelli, Anna Snyder, and Holly Ewald
Project: UPP Arts will facilitate a series of professional development workshops for teachers from 3 high schools–Central High School and Alvarez High School in Providence, and the Greene School in North Kingstown–to exchange ideas with teaching artists, community-based arts and environmental groups, and each other on how to build effective curricula using the lessons of Mashapaug Pond (MP) and/or place-based education across disciplines, including art.
These 3 schools all of which serve students from Providence and/or the surrounding urban area, have a history of engaging in project-based learning using MP resources gathered by UPP Arts over the last 10 years and an interest in continuing to utilize these resources. UPP Arts has worked with Central and Alvarez to fund and coordinate teaching artist workshop series in the past, but now UPP Arts is stepping back to focus on creating an archive and collaborative book to share its approach with others. As UPP thoughtfully transitions, these workshops will provide a practical way for teachers to continue to strengthen their place-based teaching through cross-fertilization of ideas and best practices between their respective schools, laying the groundwork for ongoing educational exchange and interdisciplinary curricular support over the coming years.
UPP Arts will hold a series of paid professional development workshops for teachers and teaching artists from July 2017 through June 2018. Two half-day workshops will take place in July at Alvarez High School. Currently, UPP’s Urban Pond Procession serves as the primary platform for students to bring their learning to the wider community. However, since UPP will not be hosting the procession in 2018, teachers and teaching artists can decide to celebrate student learning with the public in a new and different way. In November and February, they will check in, share, and plan the public event. In May, student work will be shared at the event. June will focus on evaluation
About the Organization: ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​UPP Arts mission is to engage artists and communities in public art-making for the purpose of celebrating and building stewardship of our shared environment. UPP Arts will be successful when public art-making is a catalyst for creating healthy places and communities throughout Rhode Island.