Mid-America Arts Alliance has announced its recipients for its annual Artistic Innovations grants program. The total amount of the grants is $255,418 split between 19 grants, chosen from a pool over 100 candidates.
Three arts organizations have been chosen to receive monies from these grants: The Union for Contemporary Art in Omaha, the LUX Center for the Arts in Lincoln, and the Robert M. Merryman Performing Arts Center in Kearney.
The purpose of these grants is for the creation of artworks and creative projects by artists and nonprofit organizations across the M-AAA’s region of six states.
The Union for the Contemporary Arts will use the $15,000 it received to fund its inaugural Artist-In-Studio (A-I-S) Residency. They will host four regional artists who use their practice for social change for two-to-four week residencies at the Union’s Co-Op Studios. For the inaugural A-I-S Residency season running from Fall 2022 to Spring 2023, the four selected artists are Alex Ponca Stock (OK), Nathaniel Ruleaux, Nathan Murray, and Kaneem Smith (Texas).
The Lux Center will use its $6,000 award to fund the Nine Nebraska Artists: Woodcut Print Mural Project. This project is designed to highlight printmaking as an art form as well as each artist’s vision. Nine Nebraska artists were invited to design and carve a 24-by-36-inch woodblock to be printed at Constellation Studios to make nine composite murals.
And the Robert M. Merryman Performing Arts Center will use the $11,218 grant to commission Omaha-based artist Leslie Bruning to create a large, permanent, brass mobile called Tumbleweed Symphony for the entrance of the Center’s soaring lobby. The artist will draw inspiration from the tumbleweeds that roll across western and central Nebraska to create the suspended kinetic work of art.
This is the first Artistic Innovations grant for all three organizations.
Support for this grant program comes from the National Endowment of the Arts.