Independents Day
As part of its mission to support and promote artists and the arts in Greater Cincinnati, Summerfair presented their Aid to Individual Artists awards (AIA) this past week. This annual juried award is designed to assist with funding classes to learn new ideas or techniques, purchasing materials for a new medium, or expanding a work area as well as other needs the applicant feels is necessary to further their artistic work.
This year’s AIA awards were presented to Ana England, Cynthia Lockhart, Lisa Merida-Paytes, and Mark Wiesner. Each selected received an award of $5,000. The awards were presented by Donna Binzer, Summerfair VP of awards.
England, who creates large-scale sculptures and installations, has had her work exhibited nationally, including a solo show at the Cincinnati Art Museum in 2017-18. Through the AIA funding she intends to “leave the wall” and begin to fabricate freestanding sculptures.
“This artistic investigation is large and complex, with the intended culmination to be a body of work appropriate for a solo exhibition,” says England.
Quiltmaker and fabric artist Cynthia Lockhart is familiar to local audiences. With this new funding, she anticipates upgrading the equipment and materials in her studio practice. This includes an industrial long arm sewing machine, which will allow her to create larger-scale artwork and installations.
“Whether my artwork is telling a story or depicting an abstract emotion, it conveys the qualities of joy, optimism, and transformation,” says Lockhart. “These are the factors that collectively create the inspirational and aspiration aesthetic within my fiber art quilts.”
As an artist living with disabilities, Merida-Paytes uses sculpture to explore material, challenge the pedestal, and give evidence to connection with the world around us.
Through the grant, she will be able to hire a part-time studio assistant to help throughout the construction /installation phases as she continues a series of bird portraits – to move, lift, climb a ladder that she is unable to do as a result of her physical limitations.
“I never tire of observing birds and expressing their individual spirts in my work,” says Merida-Paytes. “Crafting the elaborate backgrounds inspired by their unique characteristics is challenging and draws upon my extensive design background and continuing research.”
Wiesner creates in what he calls a universal medium – cardboard. With additional funding, he will be able me to purchase of tools and equipment used in plasma cutting and ARC welding.
“In an interest in expanding the direction of my work I have been led to take blacksmithing and steel fabrication classes at Blue Hell Studio,” says Wiesner. “In many ways changing the medium to a new range of metallic materials changes the grammar of manipulation, arrangement and assembley, yet the artistic process remains the same.”