Artist Access Grant
Artist Access Grant
Portraits collection honoring nurses of the Intensive Care Unit.
Tara Makinen: executive director of Itasca Orchestra and Strings, musician; Moira Villiard: visual artist, cultural programming coordinator at American Indian Community Housing Organization; Amber Burns: choreographer, dancer, actor, middle school art teacher; Margaret Holmes: visual artist, poet, and former Children’s Theatre employee; Tammy Mattonen: visual artists, co-founder of Crescendo Youth Orchestra; Kayla Aubid: Native American craft artist, writer, employee at MacRostie Art Center; Ariana Daniel: mixed media artist, arts instructor; Kathy Neff: musician, Director, Fine Arts Academy at the University of Minnesota Duluth; Ron Piercy: jeweler, gallery owner; Emily Swanson: arts administrator at Oldenburg Arts and Cultural Community; Christina Nohre: writer and arts advocate.
Tara Makinen: executive director of Itasca Orchestra and Strings, musician; Amber Burns: choreographer, dancer, actor, middle school art teacher; Kayla Aubid: Native American craft artist, writer, employee at MacRostie Art Center; Kathy Neff: musician, director, Fine Arts Academy at the University of Minnesota Duluth; Ron Piercy: jeweler, gallery owner.
ACHF Arts Access ACHF Arts Education ACHF Cultural Heritage
The main goal of this project is to make the faces of the Intensive Care Unit nursing department recognizable to patients and visitors and to honor them for the very important work they do. The motivation for this series stems from my own experience in the Intensive Care Unit as a young adult I was struck by a public transit bus, I relied on them to get me stable and recover from this unexpected catastrophe. The work that these unsung heroes do is so important, I wanted to learn more about them and help others to connect with them as well. The second goal is to increase name recognition and gain new commission referrals. As a natural consequence of doing this project, more people will see this work including executive members of the hospital staff, the additional exposure will be measured by an increase in booking commission portraits and painting sales. After the project has been completed and a sufficient amount of time has passed, I will ask the nursing staff to fill out a survey which will help determine if the project goals were met. This survey will be provided to the department floor during the exhibit so they will have the proposed information gathering in mind until the end of the exhibit period when I do the impact assessment and final report. The survey will ask questions such as: *Have these portraits made it easier for visitors to identify who you are? *Do visitors connect with you more easily when they have seen your portrait? *On a scale of 1-5, how would you rate the artistic quality? *Do visitors ask who created the art? *What comments have you heard visitors say about this project *Would you recommend the artist if asked? In addition to a survey, the success of this project will be evaluated based on commissions booked; during consultation, I will be able to ask the customer where they heard of me. I will include contact information and an artist statement with the Portrait series.
I was not able to have a reception due to issues with social distancing and the mandated stay at home order. The hospital has postponed any kind of gatherings for the foreseeable future. The project is however ready for such a time that is more appropriate. However, during the year that I spent working on this project I developed a noticeable improvement in detail and skill level compared to before starting the project. I have also been able to gain new customers just from working on the portraits. I wanted to see if I could generate more work by doing something like this and it has created more leads. I picked up two big clients who have plenty of regular work for me; both are collectors who became familiar with my work and have contracted me to do restoration, pin striping, lettering, and logo painting.