Emergency Working Artist Project Grant FY22

Funding my new project will help ARAC meet the state goal to "ensure sufficient resources to sustain the arts and artists" by supporting me at a time when parades, pageants, live art shows, and theatre events are struggling to come back as we tentatively overcome COVID-19 concerns. My options for paid work in the near future are not the way that I have sustained myself in the past. I urgently need immediate resources to acquire new equipment and skills that will transition me to post-pandemic requirements. ARAC should have great confidence that I can execute this project because of my past successes using arts funding. Within my extensive resume I have a proven record planning and carrying a variety of projects, personal and public. I have tested problem-solving skills, implementing the complicated needs of my large, unique, individual art pieces. I have also coordinated other performance artists in thirteen years of the popular annual public arts event, Duluth All Souls Night (DASN). In addition I have participated in many local and countrywide art shows, conferences, and agit prop theatre performances. I have degrees with honors in art and theatre and have worked with many groups and ethnicities over the years learning compelling storytelling with use of visuals, sound, and movement. I do most of my own photography and have extensive filmmaking training and experience as part of my degree work. I have wide network of global expert contacts that I can contact for help and advice. I will know the work is a success by testing our projections throughout a rigorous rehearsal process and by observing our first audiences' reception of it. We can count numbers of those physically present as spectators (and potential critics) and I will be able to actually measure audience by tracking the number of "hits" and review subsequent comments on various social media. I will upload documentation of the piece on my own web site as well as other art and tourism sites to increase visibility to myself, The Embassy and this city beyond this region. I will make a written survey available for anonymous feedback and position myself as available for those who would like to chat in person or on Zoom. I can use the inevitably spectacular photos and film in applications for impending grants and opportunities.