PROVIDENCE, RI, May 4, 2020 [Brown University] - The Brown Arts Initiative (BAI) announced today that grants totaling $20,000 were awarded to 10 Rhode Island-resident practicing artists in support of project development for inclusion in the first year of programming for Remaking the Real, BAI’s three-year theme launching in September 2020.  

In response to the economic impact of the COVID-19 crisis, and realizing a need to support the local community, Brown Arts Initiative created an opportunity to support RI-based artists whose income has been severely impacted by the pandemic. With BAI’s support, grant recipients will work to continue developing their new or in-progress projects, which range from exhibitions to performances to installations. “Art reminds us that we are always in a process of remaking ourselves (and being remade) throughout, and despite, and owing to, the crises and blessings of place and time. At BAI, we are honored to share a path of creativity — right now — with such a tremendous assembly,” said Thalia Field, BAI Faculty Director. 

Projects will be included in the first year of programming for Remaking the Real, which focuses on historical revisionism, authorship, and persona. As a cohort, grant awardees will meet regularly to reflect on their projects and their process. Additionally, awardees will participate in student engagement opportunities at Brown University in conjunction with their project development.

BAI Community Development grant recipients are:

• Leland Baker, a musician from Providence;
• Laura Brown-Lavoie, a poet, performer, and musician from Providence;
• Joey ‘La Neve’ DeFrancesco, a performance artist from Providence;
• Orlando Hernández, a dancer from Providence;
• Jonathan Herrera Soto, a visual artist from Providence;
• Matthew Lawrence and Jason Tranchida, curatorial artists from Providence;
• Jazzmen Lee-Johnson, a transdisciplinary artist from Providence;
• Xander Marro, a visual artist and writer from Providence; 
• Shey 'Rí Acu' Rivera Ríos, a multidisciplinary artist from Providence; and
• Amy Walsh, an interdisciplinary artist from Providence

Learn more about the artists here.

About Remaking the Real
Remaking the Real is a three-year series of programs considering the ways in which artists, media-makers, and art and media theorists engage with the real - envisioning, re-envisioning, and aesthetically remaking images and narratives of reality so as to bring new possibilities into existence.  Programming will address subjects as diverse as imagining and re-imagining "real stories" in the creative space of documentary practice; mapping and shaping the both persistent and changing realities of marginalized cultures; artistic connections and corrections to historical records and archives; constructing personae as strategies of artistic, authorial, and performative creation; finding "the real" in mixed, "virtual," and immersive realities; and engaging with the fantastical, the dreamlike, the "unreal"

About Brown Arts Initiative
The Brown Arts Initiative (BAI) at Brown University seeks to cultivate creative expression and foster an interdisciplinary environment where faculty and students learn from one another and from artists and scholars in a wide range of fields across the campus and around the world. A consortium of six arts departments and two programs that encompass the performing, literary and visual arts, the BAI works collaboratively to enhance curricular and co-curricular offerings, directly engage students with prominent artists working in all genres and media, and supports a diverse program of concerts, performances, exhibitions, screenings, lectures, and symposia each year. The BAI takes full advantage of the University’s Open Curriculum and builds on Brown’s reputation as a destination for arts exploration, contributing to cultural enterprise through the integration of theory, practice, and scholarship with an emphasis on innovation and discovery that results from rigorous artmaking and experimentation.

The BAI comprises and integrates History of Art and Architecture; Literary Arts; Modern Culture and Media; Music; Theatre Arts and Performance Studies; Visual Art; the David Winton Bell Gallery; and Rites and Reason Theatre/Africana Studies.  

Media Contact:
For additional information, contact Chira_DelSesto@brown.edu