New grant supports graduates who bring the arts into their communities
PLAINFIELD, Vt.—Goddard College is proud to announce the recipients of the inaugural Alumni Arts Project Award, a new bi-annual grant that aims to bring the arts to communities by supporting new work by graduates of the MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts Program.
Five alumni artists producing collaborative community art projects received $500 each to produce work in contemporary dance, theater, class art, and multi-media productions. Honorees were selected by a committee of Goddard MFA faculty.
“We feel that the projects of these artists are the best fit for this award, which is designed to provide opportunities for graduates to bring their creative practices, developed during their MFA study, to their communities,” said Ruth Wallen, MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts faculty and committee member. “The winners represent diverse art forms, serve a variety of communities, and are geographically spaced. Many projects include collaborations with additional alumni.”
Recipients of the winter 2015 Goddard Alumni Arts Project Award are Heather Bryce, of Burlington, Vt., as artistic director of “The Montpelier Project;” Maggie Keenan-Bolger, of New York, N.Y., for producing and directing “The Birds and the Bees: Unabridged;” Jordana Korsen, of Harrisville, N.H., for establishing a new Hot Glass Art Center; David I. L. Poole, of Savannah, Ga., for a performance tour of the Marie Plays Part 1: When Marie Took the Power; and Christine Toth, of Portland, Ore., for producing “The New Western,” a dance.
The Goddard Alumni Arts Project Award is open to all graduates of Goddard’s MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts program. Ten awards per academic year will be granted.
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About the Winter 2015 Goddard Alumni Art Project Award Winners and Collaborators
Heather Bryce (Burlington, Vt.) of Bryce Dance Company, along with multiple community partners, will implement a month-long residency and culminating multi-media
Collaborators on “The Montpelier Project” include New Hampshire based guitarist, composer, producer, sound designer, and educator Jason Beaudreau, a D’addario sponsored artist with his B.S. in Jazz Studies and B.S. in Music Composition from SUNY New Paltz and an M.F.A. in Interdisciplinary Arts from Goddard College. Visual artist Maggie Neale will serve as Visual Arts Director.
Maggie Keenan-Bolger (New York, N.Y.) is a full-time teaching artist and professional actor. She has worked extensively with LGBTQIA populations, including LGBTQIA homeless youth, inter-generational groups of LGBTQIA teens and seniors, and GSAs in high schools. In 2012, Vice President Joe Biden appointed her an LGBT Leader of the Next Generation. Keenan-Bolger is also a two-time Point Foundation scholar. Other credits include devised theatre pieces Her Train of Thought and award-winning play From the Inside, Out, which had successful run at the Fringe Festival 2008 before completing an East Coast tour. Keenan-Bolger has worked as a teaching artist Urban Stages, The Creative Arts Team and The Leadership Program and is also a sex educator with the I Love Female Orgasm program. As an actor, she’s performed on Broadway, in Off-Broadway productions, on the small screen on CBS’s The Good Wife (starring Julianna Margulies) and in the 2013 film Admission (with Tina Fey and Paul Rudd). Maggie holds a B.A. in theatre, gender and women’s studies from Oberlin College, an M.A. in Applied Theater from the City University of New York, and an M.F.A in Interdisciplinary Arts from Goddard College.
Her collaborators on “The Birds and the Bees: Unabridged” include Ben Munisteri, Mellon Foundation Choreographer-in-Residence, Lafayette College (Easton, Pa.). He has an M.A. in Dance Education from New York University and an M.F.A. in Interdisciplinary Arts from Goddard College; Laura Di Piazza, M.F.A., an artist and teacher of calligraphy workshops for Dartmouth College’s Book Arts department who lives in New Hampshire and keeps a studio in White River Junction, Vermont; and Catherine Mueller, originally from Nashville, Tenn., who studied physical comedy, clown and its related forms since 1999 with many, many teachers, including Philippe Gaulier, Jane Nichols, Richard Crawford, Felix Ivanov, Per Brahe and most notably Christopher Bayes, currently Head of Physical Acting at Yale School of Drama, with whom she apprenticed. She is a former co-artistic director/performer with The Glass Contraption and an interdisciplinary artist, actor/creator and educator working in performance, image, language, movement and music, based in New York City. Mueller received her B.A. in Theater from Hofstra University, with minors in Dance and Creative Writing, and her M.F.A. in Interdisciplinary Arts from Goddard College.
Jordana Korsen (Harrisville, N.H.) Korsen is establishing the Hot Glass Art Center, a community center at which people take classes, rent shop time and share work in a gallery setting. Korsen raised $14,665 on Kickstarter (much more than her $10,000 goal), to set up the new community center. The Goddard grant will help fund the cost of essential equipment. Jordana Korsen is a glassblower and a teacher.
David I. L. Poole (Savannah, Ga.) is a professor of theatre at Savannah State University. He has directed more than 50 productions in New York and produced more than 45 works of theatre. His extensive background in theatre, film, television, and education has taken him to many new and experimental venues at which to showcase his directing, designing, and puppeteering. He is a founding member of The Collective Face Theatre Ensemble and has directed/designed several of their productions. Recent directed works in Savannah, Georgia include Grey Gardens; The Trip to Bountiful; Fool For Love; Bell, Book and Candle; Equus, Pride and Prejudice; Salome: Parlor Play; Suddenly Last Summer; What the Butler Saw, and Angels in America Part I, among many others. He is the recent recipient of the 2014 NEH Summer Fellow at Grambling State University’s Summer Institute in Greek Drama and was named Connect Savannah’s 2014 Best Director. Poole has a B.A. in drama studies from Purchase College and an M.F.A. Interdisciplinary Arts from Goddard College.
Poole’s collaborator on “Marie Plays Part 1: When Marie Took the Power” is Carolyn Nur Wistrand, a New Orleans based playwright whose plays have been developed and staged in New York City with The Castillo Theatre. She is the winner of the Mario Fratti-Fred Newman International Political Playwriting Contest and a MACAC/NEA Award. Her plays are published with Africa World Press, One Act Play Depot, Contemporary Drama Service, and Carmel Publishers. Wistrand is an Adjunct Professor in the English Program, School of Humanities at Dillard University, New Orleans and an online professor for the Dept. of Africana Studies, University of Michigan-Flint. She holds an M.F.A in Creative Writing/Playwriting from Goddard College in Vermont.
Christine Toth (Portland, Ore.) is an interdisciplinary artist, writer, and activist. Recent exhibits include Triage (2013), Mud and Other Accomplices (2012), and Oceans (2012). Current works include paintings on rice paper with horsehair and beeswax. Toth curated and juried shows for Gallery 114 in Portland, and currently works with Bark, an environmental watchdog for Mt. Hood National Forest. She received her M.F.A. in Interdisciplinary Arts from Goddard College.
Toth’s collaborators on “The New Western,” are: Emily Stone, a multidisciplinary artist whose work integrates contemporary dance, devised theater, and visual installation. Her collaborative performances have been produced by On the Boards, PICA’s Time Based Arts Festival, Velocity, and Performance Works Northwest, among others. Ongoing recent projects include “Dirt Stage,” “Local Culture,” and “Domestic/Wild.” Stone holds an M.F.A. in Interdisciplinary Arts from Goddard College and currently works as an arts integration coach and educator for The Right Brain Initiative in Portland, Ore.; Karin Bolender is an artist who practices barnyard and back-road ontological choreography to negotiate between human logos and other embodied ways of being and knowing. In this capacity, she has lived and traveled with a family of American Spotted Asses in the rural U.S.A since 2002. Major forays of the last decade include Little Pilgrim of Carcassonne (2002), The Dead-Car Crossing (2004), “Can We Sleep in your Barn Tonight?” MYSTERY TOUR (2006), the ongoing She-Haw Transhumance series, and Gut Sounds Lullaby (2012). Bolender has an M.F.A. in Interdisciplinary Arts from Goddard College and is presently a postgraduate research candidate in Environmental Humanities at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia.
