Mai began this painting shortly after her sister Kelly passed: “As we’ve sat with refugee community members and their sons and their daughters to somehow help bring comfort to the families in this plight, these gatherings have incited an unceasing prayer for deliverance: Let our people go.”
The Arts Council for Long Beach has announced 32 grantees funded through its annual grant programs for Fiscal Year 2022. Supported through the City of Long Beach’s allocation for the arts, Percent for Arts Program and the National Endowment for the Arts, the artist and organization grantees represent the diversity and vibrancy of Long Beach.
Grant categories included, community project grants, professional artist fellowships and operating grants. Additional funding from the National Endowment for the Arts has allowed the Arts Council to fund an additional $20,000 in grants to artists and arts organizations in Long Beach.
The professional artist fellowships recognize Long Beach artists who live, work or actively create in Long Beach and demonstrate an exhibition or production record of at least three years. Awards are granted based on artistic merit and professional achievement. The 2022 fellows are: Jamil Austin, Ja’net Danielo, Betsy Hall, Vannia Ibarguen, Pamela Johnson, Cody Lusby, Trinh Mai, Elizabeth Munzon, Elyse Pignolet and Katie Stubblefield. Arts fellows will be honored with a year-long exhibition at the new Billie Jean King Main Library opening this summer.
The Community Project Grant program funds innovative programming and cultural projects that serve Long Beach communities. Nineteen organizations, all of which present rich programming and provide free events for the public were awarded: Act Out Theatre Company; Cambodia Town, Inc and Carolyn Campagna Kleefeld Contemporary Arts Museum; Carpenter Performing Arts Center; Dreamkreator Studio, Inc; The Garage Theatre; Infinite Stage; The Jazz Angels; Kontrapunktus; Literary Women of Long Beach; Loiter Galleries; Long Beach Blues Society; Long Beach Community Band; Long Beach Youth Chorus; LGBTQ Center of Long Beach; The Rock Club – Music is the Remedy; South Coast Chorale; South Coast Dance Arts Alliance and Up & Coming Actors.
“As a local arts agency and funder, our grants nurture and enliven the arts throughout the city,” said Griselda Suárez, Arts Council executive director. “We are glad to see a wide variety of expressions and cultural work being funded this year. I look forward to working with the city to continue building a robust arts and culture grant program as we all work to recover together.”
Operating Grants provide unrestricted support to arts and cultural organizations that collect, preserve, present or commission exemplary works of art (visual art exhibitions, theater, dance or musical performances). This year, the Arts Council awarded: Able ARTS Work; Art Theatre of Long Beach; and Historical Theater of Long Beach. The Arts Council press release noted it’s important to continue to offer this kind of support since there are a limited number of foundations that provide operational funds. Many grantees use these funds to offset costs for educational and community programs.
Lisa DeSmidt, Arts Council director of programs, told Random Lengths News with the combined funding from its annual grants contract with the city, percent for arts and NEA regranting, the total amount funding the annual grants comes to $145,000. “Fifteen thousand is coming from the NEA and $5,000 is coming from our micro grants program. The NEA funding is helping us fund an additional five artists for our fellowship,” DeSmidt said. “The 145,000 does not include the council’s micro-grant program which they will be giving out throughout the year. The next deadline for it is May 15 and people can still apply for that funding.
It’s a little bit more complicated this year than in past years DeSmidt said because of the additional funding. She estimated the Arts Council received nearly five times the normal applications it normally receives for its fellowships. She noted that a great pool of fellows applied.
“When the panel convened and we were only able to fund five at that time, the panel expressed disappointment in wanting to fund more,” DeSmidt said. “Then we found out about the NEA regranting funding and were able to fund an additional five fellows. That brought the total to 10 artist fellows this year.”
DeSmidt explained the process by which artists and organizations were chosen. After grant applications were submitted, the Arts Council convened a panel to score them and make recommendations for funding. Recommendations were based on artistic merit and community impact for artists. For organizations, the scoring process considers organization management. Funding is determined based on the scores. The panel reviews applications, artistic documentation, and for the organizations, it reviews their budget. For the community project grant, a specific project is submitted. For operating grants the panel reviews general operating funding for the organization.
The grant awards will culminate in a year-long exhibition for 10 of the artists at the Billie Jean King Library in June of 2020 with a date to be determined.
Fellows
“It’s always great to have a diverse group of fellows, especially who are connected to the artist community in Long Beach,” DeSmidt said. “All of these artists have been working for quite some time in Long Beach and it’s great to have their work recognized for what they have been doing in different genres of art and [the] different artist backgrounds. It’s a really good group of fellows.”
Eight of the 10 artist fellows are women and two of those include women artists who own gallery spaces in Long Beach, like Elizabeth Munzon of Flatline Gallery in North Long Beach and Betsy Hall who runs Flux art space.
Cody Lusby is a fellow and painter in Long Beach focused on contemporary realism. Divided into different series his bodies of work vary with ideas, with a focus to evolve painting forward. Lusby has several mural projects throughout downtown Long Beach, including Roses For Rose Park, a large-scale community mural of an ensemble of multi-colored roses (meant to represent the Rose Park area’s diversity). Lusby has shown works from his Arid West series at Michael Stearns Gallery in San Pedro in 2019. Arid West takes a surrealistic approach on the importance of water and how here in Los Angeles, water conservation is a way of life.
Fellow, Trinh Mai interprets the stories of humanity through her own ears, eyes and hands. She is a second-generation Vietnamese American visual artist who works with a vast breath of media – natural, foraged, and/or inherited.
She retells the stories of humanity, while focusing on the witnessing of war, the wounds people have survived, humanity’s collective need to heal and the custodial responsibility to which humans are heirs. Mai has partnered with Oceanside Museum of Art, MiraCosta College and Bowers Museum in developing projects that engage survivors of war. With San Diego Art Institute, she has produced interactive works that address the injustices that fuel fear and incite conflict within refugee communities, and worked with International Rescue Committee in providing arts education to refugee youth from Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Africa in honoring home, heritage, history and heroism.
DeSmidt noted the council partnered with the city last year and were able to award many artist relief grants and the CARES Community Development Block Grants for $450,000 in direct artist relief last year, and before that, a previous fund in 2020,
“The Arts Council has been able to give out a lot of direct artist funding during the pandemic,” DeSmidt said. The Long Beach Arts Council sees artists, including those in the organizations, as essential workers.”
Details: artslb.org/programs/grants/