Victoria Jorgensen, Paula Kramer, Cora Marshall and Tom Sivak are the 2018 ACT II grant recipients from Creative Pinellas. The Pinellas Community Foundation partnered with Creative Pinellas to give out four grants to four artists who are at least 60 years old. The artists chosen "embody the practice of aging in place and, through their creative work, inspire other artists and art lovers and help in the understanding of the aging process," Creative Pinellas write in a press release.
“Aging in place” says Leah Slavensky, Director of Community Impact for Pinellas Community Foundation, “is the ability to live out life in the home you choose. This requires local community support. We are honored to support these artists and are very excited about the projects they will be working on during the grant period.”
Why fund artists who are a full decade into marveling at how young the people on the cover of AARP magazine look? Well, first, why not fund them, but also, who better to artistically explore the idea of aging than artists who are really great at it? Look, millennials make some fantastic art, but we're thinking if you want art about aging, someone who may have seen The Beatles in concert, remembers Watergate and can tell you where they were when President Kennedy was shot might have more reflections on the topic. And that's what this art will do: It's going to explore aging from emotional, intellectual and physical points of view. The artists will exhibit their work resulting from this grant at a group exhibit at the Pinellas Community Foundation Annual Meeting in the winter of 2019.
In addition to funding, these grant recipients have a shot at getting professional support via Creative Pinellas' Arts Business Incubator programs. Plus, they'll have access to free and discounted tuition for Creative Pinellas development programs (and those of its program partners).
Wondering what each artist will make? So are we. We'll all gonna have to wait until next year, but until then, here's the genre for each artist: Victoria Jorgensen, media arts; Paula Kramer (pictured), choreography; Cora Marshall, visual arts, mixed media; and Tom Sivak, music composition.
This article appears in Jul 5-12, 2018.