Greene County Council on the Arts, Promoting the Arts in Greene and Columbia Counties,NY

Greene County Council on the Arts - Catskill, New York

Individual Artist Award Announcements

For the first time in several years Columbia & Greene County Councils on the Arts were awarded $5,000 in regrant funds from New York State Council on the Arts to distribute to individual artists in our counties for the creation of new, original work. The $2500 awards are intended to engage or reflect the community in some way through the artist’s creative process and stimulate personal artistic growth. This year’s applicants possessed a range of experiences from the literary, performing and visual arts fields and top notch professionalism.

There were several excellent candidates with creative ideas, credentials & convincing support materials, making the panel process an extremely rigorous and difficult process. After much deliberation Kevin Hooyman of Climax in Greene County was awarded support for the creation of The Ghost I Came to Know: a fictional graphic novel & CD based on his experiences as a newcomer to our region. Kevin is an author illustrator of independently published art books. His work has recently been purchased for the permanent collection of MOMA and the Art Institute of Chicago and selected for exhibition in New York, Banff, Canada, Mexico City, Berlin & Benevento, Italy.

Printed Matter in NYC praised described Hooyman’s work as “Energized lines activate the all-over compositions, which show moxie in their layered foreground and background elements that draw the viewer into a deliberation of cultural forces at play in America.” In his application Hooyman explained, “This project will be my sixth self-published book but it is the first to explore the power of a commitment to narrative structure….I am excited and hopeful that this is the last step in my short migration as an artist from the gallery to the book. ”

Hudson based painter Phyllis Hjorth was selected as the Columbia County grant recipient, funded for Grid of the Community: a series of portraits & interviews with an economic & political cross section of local residents. Hjorth has been exhibiting her distinctive locally inspired work since 1995. “A community is a place to break bread and to share your visions with others,” Hjorth explained in a 2000 Hudson River Herald interview. Updates on the creative explorations of our award recipients will appear in upcoming Arts Alive issues as their new works begin to take shape.

A COLORFUL KALEIDOSCOPE OF 2007 DEC FUNDED ACTIVITIES!

Schoharie Creek Players theater, Tom Teich photo workshops at Greenville Library, Mountaintop Historical Society Rip Van Winkle puppet performances and more!