2011 Suitcase Export Fund Opens Dec. 1

November 28, 2011

For immediate release:     1 December 2011
For further information:    Polly Morris, (414) 446-8794
                                          pmorris@lyndensculpturegarden.org
                                          http://lyndensculpturegarden.org/nohl

THE GREATER MILWAUKEE FOUNDATION’S MARY L. NOHL FUND FOR INDIVIDUAL ARTISTS SUITCASE EXPORT FUND LAUNCHES NINTH FUNDING CYCLE

The Bradley Family Foundation, in collaboration with the Greater Milwaukee Foundation (GMF), announces the ninth funding cycle of the GMF’s Mary L. Nohl Fund Suitcase Export Fund for Individual Artists. Created to help visual artists with the cost of exhibiting their work outside the four-county area (Milwaukee, Waukesha, Ozaukee, Washington), the Fund is designed to provide greater visibility for individual artists and their work as well as for greater Milwaukee. To date, the Fund has supported a diverse group of 132 individual artists and six artist collectives exhibiting throughout North America, and in Europe, Africa, the former Soviet Union and Asia. The awardees, who have received a total of $82,500 in grants, work in a variety of media, from film to ceramics, and include well-established artists as well as those at the start of their careers. A special effort has been made to support Nohl Fellows as they exhibit work made during their fellowship year. (For a list of 2010 awardees, see below.)

Artist Mary L. Nohl of Fox Point, Wisconsin, died in December 2001 at the age of 87. Her $9.6 million bequest to the Greater Milwaukee Foundation is one of the largest gifts the Foundation has received from a single donor in its 96-year history. The Fund, by supporting local visual arts and arts education programs, keeps Nohl’s passion for the visual arts alive in the community.

The ninth cycle (December 2011-November 2012) has been divided into two parts to ensure that funds remain available to applicants throughout the year. In recent years, as the popularity of the Suitcase Export Fund has grown, all monies were disbursed rapidly, and eligible artists whose opportunities arose after the initial months were unable to apply for funding.

In 2011, the Suitcase Export Fund will operate on a semi-annual cycle, disbursing awards in response to demand until the funds for each part of the cycle are exhausted. The first part of cycle will begin on December 1, 2011. Requests will be considered periodically and funds disbursed until a total of $5,000 has been expended. The second half of the cycle will commence on June 1, 2012, when another $5,000 will become available. A total of $10,000 will be disbursed to visual artists in 2011-2012. Applications and guidelines are available at lyndensculpturegarden.org/nohl (click on “Suitcase Export Fund”) or from Polly Morris at pmorris@lyndensculpturegarden.org.

The Suitcase Export Fund is open to practicing artists residing within the four-county area who want to export their work beyond that area for public display. Priority is given to artists with exhibitions outside of Wisconsin. The Fund provides support in three areas: transportation of the work (packing/shipping/insurance); transportation of the artist; and promotion in those cases where the artist is required to provide their own promotion. The maximum grant available to an individual is $1,000. Funding is only provided for upcoming opportunities (exhibitions or screenings commencing between December 2011 and November 2012 in the first half of the cycle; similar opportunities commencing between June 2012 and November 2012 in the second half of the cycle).

Artists have responded very favorably to the Suitcase Export Fund and its simple application process. The Fund contributes to the creative health of the region by supporting local artists at all career stages, from the emerging to the established; alleviating some of the financial burden faced by artists who want to exhibit their work at a distance; and by getting the work of Milwaukee artists out into the world. The support provided for artist transportation has enabled artists to be on site to install work--important to most artists and indispensable to those working in the areas of installation and site-specific art. The opportunity to attend openings, where artists can meet with collectors and distributors and make critical connections with gallery owners, is consistently cited as a significant benefit. The Fund also creates opportunities to expose work in new regions and to new audiences, to meet other artists and see their work, to sell work, and to plan new projects. Although the Fund does not directly support residencies or ancillary activities, awardees have taken full advantage of opportunities to make new work, deliver gallery talks, and participate in symposia at their exhibition sites. In 2010, artists stretched their travel grants by arranging simultaneous exhibitions and screenings at other venues, and several worked actively to establish international exchanges that would bring artists to Milwaukee and create opportunities abroad for Milwaukee students and artists.

ABOUT THE 2010 AWARDEES

In its eighth cycle, the Fund provided assistance with shipping, travel and promotion to eighteen individual artists and one collaborative group. These artists—six of them past Nohl Fellows— work in a range of media. Their exhibitions took them to Arizona, Georgia, Illinois, Minnesota, Montana, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Oregon and Central Wisconsin, as well as to China, France, Italy, Korea, South Africa and Thailand.

Katherine A. Balsley took Anima Mundi, her experimental video, to the Rural Route Film Festival at the Museum of the Moving Image in New York where it received the award for Best Experimental Film. She also screened the film at Brooklyn Grange and met other filmmakers and environmental activists.

Peter Barrickman & Xav Leplae, both former Nohl fellows, bicycled with a group of artists from Milwaukee to the Poor Farm in Little Wolf, Wisconsin. Along the way, they created a collaborative painting project that they exhibited as part of the Great Poor Farm Experiment, an annual and inter- national gathering of artists.

Jordan Brethauer traveled to Beijing, China to participate in a Red Gate artist residency that culminated in an open studio event. He made many contacts with artists, curators and gallery owners based in Beijing and beyond, and was invited to participate in an exhibition in New Zealand in 2011.

Nicole Brown was able to screen her short documentary, A King in Milwaukee, at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival in Missoula, Montana.

Santiago Cucullu, a former Nohl Fellow, received funding for a solo exhibition at Galleria Umberto DiMarino in Naples, Italy. Cucullu showed several watercolors and two videos, and made a sculpture and wall piece while he was there.

Hans Gindlesberger was invited to exhibit his photographic works at the 2011 Voies Off Festival in Arles, France, part of the Rencontres d’Arles Photographie—one of Europe’s longest running photography festivals. It was a high-profile international outlet for the artist’s work, and he met many artists, curators and publishers informally and through portfolio reviews.

Yevgeniya Kaganovich traveled to Johannesburg, South Africa, to install “Falling Still,” a work she made with Nathaniel Stern. The installation was included in Drawbench, a group exhibition of three-dimensional sculptural objects at Gallery AOP.

Faythe Levine attended the first screening of Handmade Nation (a film completed while Levine was a Nohl Fellow) in Thailand at Free Size just outside Bangkok. This was Levine’s first appearance in southeast Asia, and the screening was followed by a discussion on the politics of the handmade. She also led a workshop on “any skill-level” embroidery and a roundtable discussion about craftivism.

Kim Miller offered two programs in conjunction with her residency at the ComPeung Artist-in- Residence Program in Doi Saket, Chiang Mai Province, Northern Thailand. The ComPeung Village of Creativity program brings together local and international artists and the rural community; the project team is made up of professional artists and local tribal people. Miller screened her latest work (much of it created while she was a 2009 Nohl Fellow) and at the end of the residency showed the live performance and videos she created with Thai artists.

Former Nohl Fellow Mark Mulhern shipped seven large paintings to the Riva Yares galleries in Scottsdale, Arizona and Santa Fe, New Mexico. He attended the opening of the Summer Group Show in Scottsdale where he hopes to develop a new audience for his work in a new region of the country.

Will Pergl participated in an exhibition at ATHICA: Athens Institute for Contemporary Art in Athens, Georgia, a non-profit art space. Pergl transported several elements required to install a large sculpture.

Kristopher Pollard traveled with five drawings to Portland, Oregon for Amalgamation, a group exhibition at Compound Gallery. He met patrons and artists at the opening, and took advantage of his first exhibition on the West Coast to visit other art venues to see work and to introduce himself to gallerists and curators.

John Ruebartsch took his solo exhibition of 33 recent photographs, Here, There and Elsewhere: Refugee Families in Milwaukee, to Bowling Green State University Student Union Art Gallery in Ohio. The exhibition, a photo-documentary of refugee households in Milwaukee, originated at Walker’s Point Center for the Arts. Ruebartsch participated in a panel discussion with local scholars sponsored by the Ethnic Cultural Arts Program and School of Education.

Valorie Schleicher exhibited two photographs in the juried group exhibition Fish & Fishing Art at the Coos Art Museum in Coos Bay, Oregon. The work, in all media, is exhibited alongside items from local tribes reflecting the long tradition of fishing on the Oregon coast.

Sonja Thomsen received funds to exhibit a twelve-panel photographic piece entitled “Petroleum” in the New Mexico Museum of Art’s survey, Earth Now: American Photographers and the Environment.

Melissa Wagner-Lawler was juried into MCAD Students and Alumni Explore Fiber Arts, an exhibition featuring 29 artists at the Minneapolis College of Art & Design Main Gallery. It ran in conjunction with Confluence, 2011 International Surface Design Association Conference and the opening coincided with Northern Spark, a local arts festival.

Christopher Willey had a solo exhibition at the Prairie Street Gallery in Rockford, Illinois, a gallery run by the Art Matters Co-op. The show included paintings, drawings, prints and an installation, and represented the culmination of three years’ work. Willey, who received a Suitcase award in 2006, noted that it “was a fantastic experience which propelled my career.”

Rina Yoon returned home for the first time since she left Korea 29 years ago to attend the opening of her invitational solo exhibition at the Gyo Dong Art Center in Jeonju. While in Korea, she also showed her work in Seoul at Gallery Two and Michael Schultz Gallery; secured two exhibition opportunities for next year; sold 17 prints; and “saw the potential to stay connected to the arts community in Korea.” Among the possibilities are a print exhibition organized by Milwaukee curators at Jeonbuk Art Museum and the involvement of Korean printmakers in the exhibition accompanying an international printmaking conference in Milwaukee in 2013.

Sarah Zamecnik took 20 photographs to the annual Syracuse University MFA alumni exhibition at the Dumbo Arts Center in New York. The show, installed by the Bard College curatorial team, brings together artists from across the country.

The Greater Milwaukee Foundation’s mission is to strengthen communities through effective partnerships. It is made up of over 1,000 charitable funds, each created by individual donors or families to serve the charitable causes of their choice. Grants from these funds serve people throughout Milwaukee, Waukesha, Ozaukee and Washington counties and beyond. Started in 1915, the Foundation is one of the oldest and largest community foundations in the U.S. and abroad.

lyndensculpturegarden.org/nohl.


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