We’re proud to announce the recipients of the 2017 Alumni Microgrant Program! Through an initiative of our Alumni Council, the Alumni Microgrant Program awards six Alums monetary grants in the amount of $1,000 to help them pursue a creative endeavor.
Meet the 2017 Alumni Microgrant recipients:
Lee Conell (‘05)
Notes on Future Dioramas
Conell will travel to New York City to shadow her father in his day-to-day work and interview and observe building superintendents, contractors, exterminators, childcare providers, and elevator mechanics for her novel, Notes on Future Dioramas. Notes on Future Dioramas is loosely based around the socioeconomic, gender, and racial tensions she observed growing up in a basement apartment as the daughter of a superintendent.
Sasha de Koninck (‘09)
Impossible Textiles
Using 3D printing software and technology, de Koninck will research and explore and create textile structures impossible to weave outside of the computer code environment or any loom today. de Koninck uses her research-based practice to develop conductive material and sensors for use on and off the body, challenge the technology used to create textiles, and understand how this technology will impact the textile and fashion industries.
Katherine Dubbs (‘09)
The ASL Songbook: Opera for Everyone, by Everyone
Dubbs will create the American Sign Language (ASL) Songbook, a community-based performance project dedicated to voicing Deaf artists in new media. In collaboration with SIGN & SING, a collection of poetry composed and performed in ASL, sung in English, and performed on piano will travel the US promoting accessibility and understanding. Performances will be held at community centers and schools where the audience will contribute new material to be added to an ever-growing collection of poems and songs.
Alexandra Prince (‘05)
Bedwardism—It’s History and Lived Memory
Prince will travel to August Town, Jamaica to research the lived memory and history of Bedwardism, also known as the Jamaica Native Baptist Free Church, in pursuit of completing a dissertation and PhD program. Using audio and video to document oral histories and an annual parade commemorating the legacy of Bedwardism, the project will offer an academic and creative avenue for cultivating conversations of religious literacy and tolerance, resulting in a curated online exhibit.
Dillon Utter (‘12)
Unseen Lives: Untouched Power
Utter will create a painting series of interior and exterior spaces showing the living conditions of low income families and individuals in his hometown of Apalachin, NY to create a narrative that acts as a bridge between the individual and how they live. Utter’s goal is to create an explicit and concise example of the problems plaguing society and his community and increase the social impact for the viewers.
Yolanda Wisher (‘91)
Maple Street Rag
Wisher will conduct a comprehensive suite of DNA tests and research to inform the writing of poems for her manuscript, Maple Street Rag, documenting generations of her family as residents of Maple Street in Ambler, Pennsylvania, once known as the “asbestos capital of the world”. Maple Street Rag explores how poems, in their elasticity and imagination and willingness to confront truth, can tell family stories in ways that defy and amend the erasures, inaccuracies, and distortions found in Census records, oral histories, and environmental studies.