FEAST #8
Borscht Film Festival | Borscht Bus
Borscht Bus is Borscht’s pilot program offering transportation to-and-from our festival and related screenings for children in South Florida’s culturally and economically underserved communities. The goal of this program is to provide students from under-resourced neighborhoods with access to high quality art that represents and reflects their diverse perspectives. In turn, Borscht Bus hopes to empower artists and creative individuals from these regions to continue to voice their stories and realize their potential as agents for community change.
Finalists
Radiant Finis by Gina Margillo and Vivian Marthell
Do You See Me? A Journey of Connection by Nzingah Oniwosan
ACT UP by Sandra Portal-Andreu, Loni Johnson, and Jon Kelly
FEAST #7
Tanya and Natsha Bravo | Medicine to Rock Your Soul Pt. 2
Medicine to Rock Your Soul Part 2 focuses on relieving the stress related to Alzheimer’s caregiving by immersing caregivers into the cultural heartbeat of Miami. Caregivers are teamed up with Art Ambassadors, including musicians, actors, writers, filmmakers and visual artists. The Ambassadors guide caregivers through Miami’s art world, granting them behind-the-scenes access to Living Room readings with actors, dance and band rehearsals, and shows at both small and large institutions. We will create a documentary and photography exhibit for the public, highlighting how access to the local arts community positively impacts caregivers’ lives. It will show all aspects of the experience, including interviews and group discussions with artists. This program will be free for all participants involved.
Finalists
Mon Amie Miami by Annik Babinski
PageSlayers Summer Camp by Dana De Greff
Battle for Freedom by Sandra Portal-Andreu, Loni Johnson, and Jon Kelly
Marine Stadium Floating Park and Mangrove Sanctuary by Fabiana Godoy
FEAST #6
Laurel Nakanishi and O, Miami Poetry Festival | Sunroom Poetry in Schools
We believe that poetry can play an important role in the education of a child. Through poetry children expand their ability to observe and comment on the world. They learn how to think critically and problem solve creatively.
Sunroom Poetry in Schools program will provide poetry instruction to 40-50 elementary school students (grades 3 and 4) in Liberty City. The goal of these poetry lessons is for students to develop a love for writing and reading while also developing their own creative expression. Our partnering public schools will set aside one hour a week for a professional poet to teach these lessons. The poet-teacher also provides resources that classroom teachers may use to teach district-wide learning goals through creative writing. The lessons will take place once or twice a week for a total of ten sessions, culminating with a community poetry reading and the publication of a limited edition chapbook. Students’ poems will also be featured in the O, Miami Poetry Festival.
We will be working in schools where we already have a connection: Orchard Villa Elementary School and Poinciana Park Elementary School. During our pilot program through O, Miami, both administrators and teachers have enthusiastically embraced the project. We are confident that, with the support of this grant, we will be able to grow this project and continue to make a difference in children’s lives.
Finalists
Biscayne Bay by Gustavo Oviedo
Miami Zine Fair 2016 by Lauren Monzon and Amanda Keeley of EXILE Books
Bold Beauty Project by Shelly Baer, Eva Ritvo, and Starr Sariego
Sprayskull CR3atures by Jay "Remote" Bellichi, Natalie Lewis Schere, and Seth "Brimstone" Schere
FEAST #5
Nathaniel Sandler | Bookleggers Bookbox Project
Bookleggers is a non-profit community mobile library based out of Miami, Florida. Nathaniel Sandler sets up at rotating venues once a month to give away free books to the public. For those who are new to Bookleggers, the rules are simple: 1) Everyone gets one book for free 2) Bookleggers accepts trades, a book for a book 3) Each additional book is $2. Bookleggers also has semi-permanent libraries set up throughout South Florida.
The intention is to build literary community, filling the hole that the vanishing bookstores and endangered libraries no longer always can. Bookleggers functions as a hybrid library/bookstore model, since access to free books is provided, but not all of the books are given away. Bookleggers often gets upwards of 200-400 people at their events and it's always a good time.
Enter the Bookleggers Bookbox Project. Bookleggers wants to continue building niche and small libraries that suit the specific needs of their immediate communities. They already have the crown jewel Bookbox on NW 2nd Ave on the side of Gallery Diet, which goes through approximately three linear feet of books every two days. Bookleggers just agreed to put libraries at Lotus House (a homeless women's center) and are in preliminary talks with Holtz Children's Hospital at Jackson Memorial. They recently installed (since de-installed) a Reading Room at the ArtCenter South Florida and have a Paperback Swap at the Freehand Miami, as well as a Floridiana Outpost in the Everglades National Park through AIRIE.
Finalists
Writing Class Radio by Allison Langer, Diego Saldana-Rojas, and Andrea Askowitz
This is Little Haiti by Jason Fitzroy Jeffers, Woosler Delisfort, Johanne Rahaman
Broken Free by Paola Rodriguez and Juan Alexander Caraballao
La Paloma Porch Concert Series by Fernando Landeros and Celeste Delgado Fraser
FEAST #4
Jonathan De Camps | Ghosts in America
Ghosts in America is an ongoing project that captures the societal dissonance of the ordinary working people in the United States who live among us as undocumented immigrants. They are mothers and fathers and students, small business owners, teachers and activists -- each one working toward a better life for themselves and their families. Officially, they don't exist. This project tells their stories of life amid the struggles of an uncertain immigration status. Their faces are painted with cultural symbols of the Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) tradition, which represent death and rebirth. Each subject is transformed into a character in their own world and is photographed in their home environment, where they nurture their dreams and goals. In these portraits, I use a cultural tradition common throughout Latin America -- and increasingly, in American pop culture -- to bring awareness to an important social issue that we in the United States have so far failed to reconcile. Undocumented immigrants are here, living, working and contributing to our community.
Finalists
El Gallo City by Dana de Greff
Message in a Bottle by Jayme Gershen and Leandro Vazquez
Low Tide by Gustavo Oviedo
FEAST #3
Marie Whitman | Eat Your Poem: Poetry With a Purpose
Marie Whitman’s Eat Your Poem will partner with a South Florida-based women’s shelter for Poetry With a Purpose. Poets/Writers who are also experienced Teaching Artists, will go into shelters providing uplifting poetry workshops/readings and guiding women to compose their own poetry. The resulting poems will be compiled into a paperback poetry book and 300-400 books will be professionally produced/printed. An allotment of books will be donated to the shelter so they may gift these books to future shelter residents as well as sell them as a fundraiser for shelter programs. Each participant will also receive an allotment that she may offer for sale/donation raising funds for her own transition out of the shelter. Because a basic tenet of Eat Your Poem is for Poets to write edifying poems for others, each woman will be gifted with a unique poem written specifically for her, composed to encourage and inspire. This project is exponential and expansive in its reach and effect on the community. It will directly impact participants by offering them the opportunity, in the midst of struggle, to transform through creative expression.
Finalists
Dwelling Projects by Sofia Bastidas
Traveling to Cuba? Send me a Postcard by Rosa Naday Garmendia
Artists Making Books by Leila A. Leder Kremer & Juana Meneses
TRIBE by Alexey Taran
FEAST #2
Katie Wiegman | On Board
Wiegman’s project is titled “On Board,” a site-specific, interactive series of dance pieces performed on the Miami Beach boardwalk in the heavily trafficked area between South Beach and Mid Beach. There will be 6-8 performance “stops” along the boardwalk, each at an intersection of a street. At each junction, there will be either a solo dancer or a pair of dancers creating performance in the moment with the audience as directors.
Each site will be designed to be activated by the audience and invented by their presence, and will incorporate different ways for the audience to interact with elements of dance. Some stops will allow audience members to determine the spatial patterns and flow of the dance, while other stops will ask observers to determine an evolving narrative for the dancers and watch their authorship unfold. As audience members encounter each ‘stop’, they will see written instructions for their roles, allowing them to choose how and when they might want to engage with the performance. This work seeks to engage audience members as artists themselves, inviting them to take ownership in the creation and experience of dance as a lived and felt art form, thus creating personal value and meaning for the observer/participant. Funding would be applied towards paying dancers and creating marketing materials.
Finalists
Sal Non Sal Miami by Lori Nozick
Buskerfest Miami 2014 by Justin Trieger
Speech Patterns: Tiles with Texts for Public Spaces by Michelle Weinberg
Miami Sites Project by Hattie Mae Williams
FEAST #1
Amanda Season Keeley | Exile Books
EXILE Books is a temporary installation of an artist’s bookstore that will migrate throughout several locations in Miami. At each venue, EXILE evolves by presenting a thematically curated selection of titles connected with public programing like lectures, performances, and events. The bookstore is dedicated to raising awareness about artist’s publications and will serve as a platform for exchange, grounded in the spirit of collaboration.
Amanda Season Keeley is a graduate of Parson’s School of Design in NYC, her work examines issues of art history—how it is constructed, preserved, shaped, and continues to inform us. Her affinity with the past continues to delineate, recasting the old and making it new, bringing its independent spirit back to life for us to experience its presence again and again. She believes that the past informs our future and is interested in maintaining a discourse with the past from the vantage point of her artistic interpretation.
Finalists
ReFemme: Social Interruptions by Cat Del Buono & Vivian Marthell
Southernmost Situations: Redacted Love by Liz Ferrer
Mobile Micro Theater Project by Heroes Unite
Shifting Nature: Audio Walks by Juan Carlos Zaldivar