Emergency Working Artist Project Grant FY21

The funding of this project will provide me paid work for the most difficult months of January and February when sales and commissions tend to dry up. As an artist, sustaining through this period and continuing to develop my practice can be a challenge financially. This year I will be going into this period with less money due to the cancellation of art fairs I normally participate in. This grant would offer me a paid project that I can use to develop new work and skills during this time thus contributing to the state goal of ensuring sufficient resources to sustain the arts and artists. Another goal during this project is to develop my skills and understanding of processing and testing wild clay. The grant would allow me to dedicate sufficient time to this development, ideally with the outcome of being able to share these skills in the form of workshops or as a part of the teen clay camps I teach at the Duluth Art Institute. Over the past few years I've been collecting and firing wild clay samples. I have learned things but it became clear that I needed more information and was surprised by how hard it was to find it, both in talking to people and researching online. When I learned about this clay processing workshop held by two Minnesotan artists, I was eager to participate and move forward in my ability to source local materials. With the workshop and the paid studio time from this grant I'm confident that I will develop skills to process clay and make a body of work inspired by our region's unique materials. Learning from past grants helped me to lay out a realistic project. Being a member of the Lake Superior Ceramics Guild and the Duluth Art Institute clay studio provides resources for executing the project as well as feedback from knowledgeable artists that I see regularly. This feedback will also help me assess the knowledge and skills that I have gained and want to use in teaching clay processing. To measure the state goal to ?ensure sufficient resources to sustain the arts and artists? I will assess my financial situation at the end of March 2021, comparing it to March 2020 when I went into the new year with more resources from holiday art fair sales. This will provide me with an understanding of how the grant has sustained me financially and allowed me to continue my studio practice. To measure my other goal of developing my skills and understanding of processing and testing wild clay, I will discuss the body of work I create and what I have learned with the Lake Superior Ceramics Guild, whom I meet with monthly and gage their reactions. I will also determine if my skills are sufficient enough to create a workshop proposal which I would then submit to the Duluth Art Institute or the MacRostie Art Center and gage their interest.