Grant Writing Workshop

Get your pencils sharpened: Intrepid BLAB liaison Nicole forwarded me this info about a grant writing workshop being held next week at the public library.

Here's the release:

The Indiana University Nonprofit Management Association (NMA) will be holding a free Grant Proposal Writing Workshop on Friday, April 17, 2009 from 9:30- 11:00am at the Monroe County Public Library, Room 1B.

This workshop is free and will be open to students and members of the Bloomington community.The event will be led by development consultant Jamie Levy, President of JDLevy and & Associates. Mr. Levy brings extensive research and consulting experience in the field of philanthropy to this workshop, as he teaches within graduate and professional programs to both domestic and international students. Mr. Levy serves as a faculty member at the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University and the School of Public and Environmental Affairs (SPEA) at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). He also teaches at The Fund Raising School where he has experience teaching professional courses on grant proposal writing. Through his teaching and consulting he has trained and developed nearly 9,000 professionals, and has become recognized for his expertise in the area of organizational development, especially as it relates to philanthropic sustainability and development.

The workshop will serve to educate both students and community members on:

• details of grant proposal development and what actually makes one successful in thisendeavor

• what a potential funder is interested in and critical keys to grant winning success

• researching and preparing for the grant writing process

• how to select the right funders to approach

The NMA serves to represent and organize graduate students studying or interested in Nonprofit Management at Indiana University’s School of Public and Environmental Affairs. The NMA provides students with the opportunity to share ideas and supplement their education by providing workshops, seminars, presentations, as well as facilitating connections between students of nonprofit management and local nonprofit organizations. The NMA helps students to access many tools, resources, and expertise that will prepare individuals to be successful nonprofit managers.

Please RSVP by April 15 to speanma@indiana.edu.For more information about JDLevy & Associates visit: http://www.jdlevyassociates.com/

FoA Collector's Group

Indiana University Friends of Art is in the process of organizing a new sub-group for the purposes of providing educational and social opportunities for budding as well as veteran collectors of art and objects. A to Z- you name it! As I'm serving on the organizational committee, I can say that we're hoping to generate interest amongst all collectors, old and new- no affiliation with IU necessary. The events being planned promise to have something of interest for just about everyone, from social meet-ups with show-and-tell opportunities to seminars geared to developing one's collecting skills, to regional trips.

More information to come shortly, as a meet and greet is being planned for mid-May.

Weird Fortune Cookie Collection

Betsy Stirratt at Packer Schopf Gallery

Packer Schopf Gallery in Chicago will be showing new work by local painter Betsy Stirratt in April. Quoting from the press release:

"Afterimage, a new series of paintings by Betsy Stirratt, engages the relationship between image and the natural and cultural world. In her third exhibit at Packer Schopf Gallery, Betsy Stirratt’s recent work draws upon the investigation of painting systems within these…
…two worlds. The works in Afterimage distill a basic accessible form of abstraction to its essence. The colors that appear in the paintings, the result of a variety of experiences, symbolize the idea of a moment in time to be captured and recorded. Not wholly symbolic, the color systems are meaningful for their connotations. The hues interact, vibrating and creating a distinct “optical” result.

The works contain a familiarity in composition, referring to fabric and surface design in mass produced, readily available pop culture goods. Color systems are drawn from sources as varied as natural settings, preset palettes, observation, color forecasting and predictions, events, and momentary experiences. These experiences can be banal and ordinary, exciting and stimulating, but the interaction of the colors allow for the possibilities of anxiety, happiness, calm, and foreboding.

"Sometimes these paintings soothe and sometimes they seethe, sometimes they keep their secrets and sometimes they tell their tales... They usually seem impassive, aloof, methodical, pursuing crisp procedures that appear to minimize expression and revelation. Stirratt’s achievement here is to offer all that tempered by nuance and her long practice of amassing more amorphic color shapes that do her will. She suggests here some meeting of the formal and the personal, of things seen and inventoried... to bring together the only seemingly irreconcilable zones of thinking and feeling. "

The exhibit will run from April 3 until May 9, 2009.

Sign of the Times?

First it was Prima Gallery closing at the end of '08, and then Tutto Bene restaurant/gallery at the end of last month. I've heard that the music store and gallery Sweet Hickory is now closing due to increased rental costs.
Rumor has it that the space previously occupied by Prima may re-open as some sort of art venture. We'll have to wait and see...and is there something opening on 6th Street just off the Square, selling hand-made furnishings and homewares?

Fuller Projects

Anne Roecklein, co-director, contacted me recently about The FULLER Projects exhibit space on the IU campus. To quote from their mission statement, "Fuller Projects is an exhibit venue with the primary mission of providing contemporary emerging artists with the opportunity to propose, create, and present new work. Established in 2002 by Indiana University School of Fine Arts students and located in the McCalla building, The FULLER Projects encourages dialogue on art within the university, the community of Bloomington, Indiana, and beyond."

They provide a great opportunuity for students to get a taste of curating a show as well as offering a second art venue on the IU campus. This Friday, a two-week run of Jeremy Kennedy's new work is on offer. Have a look at their Facebook page for further information and events scheduling.

oh- and the photo above is take from an exhibit of Megan Abajian's work!

Hiroshi Sugimoto at IUAM

Work of the New York-based photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto will be exhibited at the IU Art Museum in March.
The press release states "Drawn from four private collections, this exhibition of fourteen striking black-and-white photographs by the internationally recognized Japanese photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto highlights the elegance and simplicity that are hallmarks of his style. Sugimoto’s interest in time and space—as seen in his seascapes, theaters, architecture, and conceptual form series—transcends the physical limitations of a particular locale or subject matter to reveal a wider realm of ideas."
There are also a number of related events associated with the show, including a talk by his studio assistant and photographer Gen Aihara.

I saw Sugimoto's series of ocean-scapes a number of years ago at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh and was taken aback by the calm, meditative presence of them. On the technical side of things, the prints are phenomenal in their clarity and range of gray tones coaxed from emulsion and paper. Luscious blacks and luminescent whites. There's an uncanniness to the imagery- which I think stems a lot from his ability to understand light and the way it shapes and defines that which it falls upon. Apparently, Sugimoto is also an architect- he knows how to create and interpret spaces and objects within them through his photos and intallations.

I had a chance to visit Sanjusangen-do temple this past summer and saw the hall of one thousand Thousand Armed Kannon statues, the subject of the above photograph. In a strange way, the photograph seems to capture something greater than the hall itself. It has a radiance and emits something almost fictional I think.

Jennifer Peterson

I was looking through the art and craft sales platform Etsy recently for local Bloomington crafters and came across the work of Jennifer Peterson and her Sassafras Studio. Jennifer does both fibercraft (knitting and felting) and painting. Her work can be seen around town- at Tallent Restaurant for example- but she tells me she gets most of her business and commission traffic through Etsy. From what I've seen online, her work is colorful, but harmonious and reserved in its execution. She'll soon have another sales venue up on Etsy listing her paintings.