ART GUMBO CALLS FOR SUBMISSIONS FROM INDIVIDUAL ARTISTS OR CREATIVES

[DUBUQUE, IA.] Art Gumbo, a quarterly soup dinner that supports local art projects with community-supported micro-funding, is now accepting applications from individual artists or individual creative ideas for the winter funding cycle.  Applications for Art Gumbo mini grants for the Summer funding cycle are available now through Thursday, June 14. Applications are available at artgumbodubuque.blogspot.com

Submission guidelines include the separation of individual artists and organizations or groups during funding cycles. Arts groups, organizations, or group creative projects are not eligible to apply during the winter funding cycle. The first seven eligible applications received by 11:59 p.m. on June 14 will qualify to compete for funding.

Since its launch in September 2010 ART GUMBO has funded 10 projects raising a total of $5,650 for Dubuque art projects.  Art Gumbo is an independent community-based initiative that funds local arts projects using money collected at quarterly soup dinners. During each Art Gumbo funding cycle, artists or arts organizations are invited to submit a brief project proposal that demonstrates an impact on the Dubuque community. The public is invited to attend and vote for their favorite proposal. A $10 donation at the door entitles the attendee to a locally prepared soup dinner and the opportunity to review all submitted proposals and to vote for their favorite. The Art Gumbo fund's nightly proceeds will be awarded to the proposal that gets the most votes. Art Gumbo sessions will be hosted at new locations each quarter featuring soup by a regional food source.

The next Art Gumbo Soup Dinner is scheduled for Thursday, June 21, 6-8 p.m., at St. Mark Community Center. The evening will feature soup and bread by L. May Eatery, micro brew beer tasting by the Dubuque Society of Brewers, and a progress report from March winners Dubuquefest Fine Arts Festival and Loras College Creatives.

For more information visit artgumbodubuque.blogspot.com or contact Paula Neuhaus or Megan Starr at art.gumbo.dbq@gmail.com.

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Maquoketa Art Experience announces a photography workshop for beginners led by MAE Affiliated Artist Sindi Mueller on January 21 and 22 for a two-day workshop exploring the fundamentals of photography in a hands-on environment. This workshop, held on Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., will cover the effects of shutter speed, aperture, and ISO (speed and sensitivity to light). Students will learn about shooting modes, auto focus, file-formats, depth-of-field, composition, quality-of-light, critique, and will receive tips a bout choosing equipment. Skills mastered in the workshop can be applied to any genre of photography including portraiture, landscape, abstract, photojournalism, and more.

Sindi Mueller is a Maquoketa Art Experience Affiliated Artist and has permanent gallery space at MAE. She also owns Luxe Photography portrait studio and is the only Certified Professional Photographer within 25 miles of Maquoketa and one of only 55 in the entire State of Iowa. Her love of photography led her to the Chicago Photography Academy where her mentor and teacher, William Benson, inspired her to create photographs that did not look like  photographs. This opened a whole new world of surrealism, abstraction and interpretation for her. She began exploring kinetic photography, which is photography in which the camera is moved while the shutter is open, and her collection of images began growing by leaps and bounds. You can often find Sindi huddled in a dark closet with a collection of lamps, lenses, lights and mirrors feeling her way to the next "perfect shot".

Sindi's kinetic images were featured in her first show, December 2010 in Chicago and unveiled her first collection at a solo exhibit at Maquoketa Art  Experience, Maquoketa, Iowa in April 2011.

In addition to her growing catalog of kinetic and abstract images, Sindi also appreciates the beauty of nature in her home state of Iowa, as well as the magnetism of the Chicago urban landscape. Sindi's landscape images have been published in the Maquoketa Sentinel Press and Bellevue Herald Leader.

Her fine art photography is currently represented by Maquoketa Art Experience.  The cost for the two-session workshop is $150 and is open to adults 18 or older. Registration materials are available at www.maquoketa-art.org. For more information contact Paula Neuhaus at
paula@maquoketa-art.org or call 563.652.9925.

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DubuqueFest Fine Arts Fair Call For Artists

[DUBUQUE, IA] DubuqueFest Fine Arts Festival is now accepting applications for the 34th annual juried fine art fair scheduled for May 19 & 20 in Dubuque, Iowa. All interested fine artists and fine craft artisans are encouraged to apply. The juried fine art fair features the work of 80 artists & artisans from across the region. $1000 cash prizes are awarded to Best in Show, Second Place, & Third Place during an artist's appreciation reception on Saturday, May 20 at the Dubuque Museum.

Dubuque is quickly building a reputation as an arts & culture destination in the Midwest. Through successful arts programming and dedicated city partnerships the DubuqueFest Fine Arts Festival grows along with it drawing lovers of fine art and history to the oldest festival in Iowa's first city.

IMPORTANT INFORMATION

Application deadline is February 15, 2012

Application fee: $110

Jury fee: $15

Two Emerging Artist Scholarships are available.

Applications are available on the DubuqueFest website: www.dubuquefest.org. To request one by mail contact Paula at 563.564.5290 or paula@dubuquefest.org.

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DubuqueFest Fine Arts Festival Awarded $2500 from Mediacom Arts & Culture Grant Program

[DUBUQUE, IA.] DubuqueFest Fine Arts Festival, scheduled for May 18-20, 2012 was awarded a $2500 Mediacom Arts & Culture Grant last month to fund the enhancement and growth of the festival's juried fine art fair. More than $33,000 in arts funding was awarded on October 19 to sixteen Dubuque arts groups at a luncheon held at The Grand River Center in the Port of Dubuque hosted by Kathy McMullen of Mediacom.

The DubuqueFest Fine Art Fair provides an opportunity for working artists to exhibit and viewers to experience art in an informal atmosphere. The Art Fair is free and offers hands-on interactive art activities and demonstrations that help broaden the knowledge base of the fair-goer and to promote investment and engagement in art by creating a culturally rich, non-intimidating environment that attracts people from all backgrounds. The Art Fair provides economic opportunites for cultural workers /working artists and artisans in order to aid them financially and help them become recognized as vital contributors to the economy.

"DubuqueFest's Fine Art Fair promotes a healthy buy local/buy original ethic that encourages shoppers to invest their money in regional art," said Art Fair Director, Paula Neuhaus. "Buying directly from the artists helps educate the general public about how to support
quality regional art and places value on the cultural traditions that go in to hand-crafted original work."

DubuqueFest Fine Arts Festival is Dubuque's longest-running festival and the only all-arts festival in the city. DubuqueFest celebrates its 34th year in 2012 and is an affiliate of the Dubuque County Fine Arts Society, a non-profits arts organization founded in 1977 whose mission is to provide the Dubuque community with free arts programming. Visit www.dubuquefes.org for more details.

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[MAQUOKETA, IA] Maquoketa Art Experience welcomes Iowa artists Peter Fraterdeus and Alice McMahon to Maquoketa on November 12 and 19 for a two-session workshop studying the art of book structures and sketching techniques. The workshop, held on two consecutive Saturdays, entitled "Travel Sketching Journals: Book Structures and Sketching Techniques" combines basic non-adhesive bookbinding techniques to create a four-signature journal with a folded paper cover with plein air sketching techniques including exploration of Maquoketa's built and natural environments.

Non-adhesive books are made without glue, and require no special equipment. Covers are made with folded and tabbed heavy paper, using principles discovered in 13th Century "limp vellum" bindings. Fraterdeus will use examples from his collection of fine-printed contemporary books as examples for the workshop.

"Travel Sketching Journals have a long history, long before the days of picture postcards or digital cameras," Fraterdeus explained, "Today they provide a record of a journey, and an opportunity to heighten our skills of observation. Travel sketches are both mnemonic and illustrative, whether quick or studied, they need not be more than a few lines and smudges, or may be as closely observed as a fine drawing"

No bookbinding or drawing experience is required for participation in this workshop, but some familiarity with paper folding and drawing tools will be helpful.

The book structures section will be taught by Peter Fraterdeus who has taught letterpress printing, calligraphy, book structures, and digital typography in a number of venues, both in the US and Europe, including the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and Columbia College's Center for Book and Paper Art. He is the owner/proprietor of Slow Print in Dubuque, an award-winning 'high-touch' 21st Century letterpress printing studio. In the 1981, he received a National Endowment for the Arts apprenticeship grant to study calligraphy and letter carving in Wales, and in 1986, received an NEA Design Projects grant for his first digital typeface, "Prospera".

The journal drawing section will be taught by Alice McMahon, an internationally exhibited figurative artist, specializing in pastel portraits and charcoal magic realist drawings in large formats. Her work has been shown at the Saatchi Gallery in London and featured in American Artist magazine. She is currently represented by the 33 Contemporary Gallery in Chicago. Recent work includes a 30"x50" drawing on MDF board exhibited during the 2011 Voices From The Warehouse District's Art in ReVolt exhibit at Voices Gallery in Dubuque, Iowa.

The cost for the two-session workshop is $125 plus a $20 materials fee and is open to adults 18 or older. Registration materials are available at www.maquoketa-art.org. For more information contact Paula Neuhaus at paula@maquoketa-art.org or call 563.652.9925.

 

 

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