The Tamarack Foundation announces its inaugural Emerging Artist Fellowship to support early-career West Virginian artists who demonstrate a superior level of mastery in their craft and an aptitude for professional success.
Two fellows participating in arts programs from the West Virginia college system will be selected in the pilot year of the program. Services, including professional development, mentoring, and training, will be administered with support from Generation West Virginia. The foundation intends to expand the services to a wider audience in subsequent years.
“This pilot fellowship presents an incredible opportunity to emerging college arts students to enhance their talents, broaden their business acumen, and develop into the creative professionals we know they can be,” Tamarack Foundation Executive Director Alissa Novoselick said. “It will be a bridge that allows them to translate their academic successes into real-world business advantages. In the process, these emerging artists contribute to the local economies and present a product that makes a community more desirable.”
Nominations will be accepted from faculty and administrators in leadership roles from arts programs at accredited colleges or universities based in West Virginia. The deadline for nominations is May 15, 2016. The winning fellows will be announced in June.
“We know that West Virginia’s population is shrinking, and that 72 percent of graduates from West Virginia University, for example, leave the state within five years of their graduation,” said Generation West Virginia Executive Director Natalie Roper. “With the additional support, connections and professional development offered through the Emerging Artist Fellowship, we hope more of our young artists will choose West Virginia as their place to create and innovate.”
Final selections will be made by the foundation’s independent Fellowship Committee, which consists of eight master-level artists and arts leaders from across West Virginia.
Fellows will take part in a mentoring program designed to help them on topics such as integrating into local and regional markets and developing business models and branding. In addition to training, they will have the opportunity to exhibit work at a West Virginia arts institution and will receive a $500 award plus a stipend to offset costs for travel, materials, and supplies for their exhibition.
The Emerging Artist Fellowship program is an outgrowth of the Tamarack Foundation’sEmerge exhibit, which showcased photography, paintings, drawings, sculptures and other creative art from eighteen college and university students and recent graduates across the state at the Robert C. Byrd U.S. Courthouse in Charleston earlier this year.
“West Virginia has a class of vibrant early career artists who contribute to our economy and communities in a manner that reaches beyond the scope of their individual bodies of work,” Novoselick said. “We need to do more to encourage them and help them to thrive. The Emerging Artist Fellowship will do this in a very substantive way.”
Details about qualifications may be found by visiting the Tamarack Foundation website at www.tamarackfoundation.org.
