2011 Summer Stipend Finalists Announced
Ann Marshall
My Tool: The Bic 4-Color Pen
I used to occasionally consult for retailers. Consultants tend to be heavy note takers (at least, they should be), especially when gathering data. After a while, note pads can become a mess. I love my little 4-color pen, which allows me to easily color code and organize data. Also, there are no lids to lose. It blots rarely. The line is thin and even. With three colors to back you up, running out of ink is rarely an issue. My only complaint is that green ink is rather week and hard to see. Bic should work on that.
My Project: Paper Reconstructions
For the past few years, I’ve been working as a portrait artist and have used a unique technique combining traditional mediums and paper collage. This summer, I want to turn away from more popular subject matter to a rediscovered interest in the natural world. I plan to construct a series of large scale paintings depicting the vanishing landscape entirely from our discarded paper products and oil paint.
Since discarded materials are free, the $500 will cover the remaining material, research, and exhibition costs.
For more information about myself or my work, please see my website at www.annmarshallart.com.
Mary Jeys
My Tool: The Action Method
Super great task management tool. I use it for all of my projects both at work and in the studio. It has great delegation capabilities if members of your team use it too. Visual, satisfying checkboxes that make tasks disappear, date/time assignment capabilities make the experience really engaging and nice- not to mention the mobile phone syncing. So good … transformed my task management, helps me stay on task, and less overwhelmed.
My Project: Instant Film Documentation of Brooklyn Torch exchanges
To document every monetary exchange I make with reverse engineered Polaroid film in a classic Business Edition Polaroid camera for 31 days representing one month.
On average, I participate in two to four cash-based monetary or service exchanges per day. This proposal is to document each exchange with a Polaroid camera at the point of purchase. The resulting photo document project will serve as evidence of my local exchanges within New York City. Each photograph will constitute a record of me using a Brooklyn Torch to attempt to purchase a good or service from my encounters during normal daily spending habits. These exchange encounters will be an opportunity for me put the local currency into goods and service providers’ minds.
About the Brooklyn Torch Project:
We are a local currency project aimed at providing a paper means of exchange in North Brooklyn that will circulate and support the resident community in North Brooklyn. The Brooklyn Torch will bring together both artist and immigrant communities living in our neighborhoods to improve integration of social groups and economies.
The Brooklyn Torch has received numerous press articles including, The New York Daily News, WNYC’s Brian Lehrer Show, NY Times Freakonomics Blog, American Banker, The Brooklyn Rail, and many more. For full press listing see: http://brooklyntorch.org/2009/11/were-in-the-news/
More about the Brooklyn Torch: http://www.brooklyntorch.org
What is a Local Currency?
A local currency is a method of trading goods and services meant to supplement other means of trade while improving the community wealth. Local currencies circulate in a defined region. Money does not leave the area because trade is restricted by the currency boundaries.
I will be using Impossible Project film because I feel that it is an apt medium to document this project. Like the Brooklyn Torch whose goal is to reverse engineer a new economy based on the US Dollar’s economy, the Impossible Project film has been reverse engineered since the Polaroid company closed its factory. There is a poetic resonance to rebuilding a local economy during a down economy that is repeated in the Impossible Project’s goal to build a new business from the photo science in instant film over again.
About the Instant Film:
In October 2008 The Impossible Project saved the last Polaroid production plant for integral instant film in Enschede (NL) and started to invent and produce totally new instant film materials for traditional Polaroid cameras. In 2010 Impossible saved analog instant photography from extinction by releasing various, brand new and unique instant films.
Therewith Impossible prevents more than 300,000,000 perfectly functioning Polaroid cameras from becoming obsolete, changes the world of photography and keeps variety, tangibility and analogue creativity and possibilities alive. http://www.the-impossible-project.com
Budget for the project:
With an average 3 exchanges per day, and 31 days requires 93 exposures. I estimate that $325 of the stipend will be used to purchase film from Impossible Project: $25 per impossible film pack x 13 packs = $325; 8 exposures per pack x 13 packs = 104 exposures.
The remaining money will be used for the monetary exchanges. This $175 divided between 93 exposures is an average of $2 to offset the cost of exchanges that I may make in order to target specific businesses that are not on my regular purchase circuit but would benefit the Brooklyn Torch system overall.
Nicole Kenney
My Tool: Yellow Paper Clips
You have a lot of yellow office supplies, but no paper clips. As everything becomes digital, I use less of them, but I still use them … like to keep receipts together.
My Project: black. white. 31.
Starting on my 31st birthday, July 29, 2011, I will begin Phase 2 of my autobiographical 365 project. I will post a photo-a-day on blackwhite31.com for the entirety that I’m 31-years-old.
Phase 1 is entitled Diary29 (www.diary29.com). I posted a photo each day for the last year of my twenties. The BBC reported on this project calling it “a fascinating travelogue through a year in someone’s life.”
This year, I will document my life again, but in black and white. If awarded the stipend, the funds will cover roughly 125 rolls of black and white film.
As in many of my projects (beforeidieiwantto.org, diary29.com, nicolekenney.com/boys.html, love and loss), black. white. 31. will explore universal themes such as the passage of time, impermanence, and intimacy.
Project website: www.blackwhite31.com
More on me: www.nicolekenney.com
Prin Limphongpand
My Tool: Globe
To remind ourselves of where we are in the world, where we come from, where we’re going, what can we do for the world — and occasionally, where places are when you read or hear the news.
My Project: Redisplaying Adverse Effects in Medications
Inspired by the international symbol for “man” used primarily in airport signage. I want to redesign the packaging of medicine to highlight the side effects. The goal of the project is to show that this information can be done in a visually informative manner as opposed to a text-heavy small print found on traditional medicine labels. With the “international man” as the core visual element used in this communication, the project will convey that the most important information when taking medication is to show the side effects, not what it cures, since that information is already given verbally by the doctor or pharmacist.
The Macktez Summer Stipend would be used for printing costs (the current paper stock used on the actual bottle is static paper — water proofed, but would be too fragile for actual production), research, and the testing of new material that will be used to finalize the look and feel of the label.
Additional project information: http://www.raxyl.com/#1387655/Thesis
Laurie Sumiye
My Tool: Project Box
I made several of these project boxes to keep my paper, folders, visual references, notes & printouts organized. A manila folder was not cutting it!! I made them out used USPS boxes and old calendars instead of buying pricey (and less interesting) off-the-shelf magazine holders.
My Project: Post-Ford
Post-Ford is a documentary project following the lives of four friends from the town of Dearborn, Michigan, where Ford Motor Company is based. Once upon a time, they worked at Ford and lived comfortably. In 2002 Ford began shedding its workforce to cut costs. Despite Ford’s return to solvency in 2011, many who formerly worked there haven’t yet found their footing in these uncertain times. The film is about what has happened to them and how they are trying to reshape their career paths and lives.
The media has covered recession stories about baby boomers worried about retirement, blue-collar factory workers, and newly minted college grads unemployed and living at home. The stories in Post-Ford are about “GenX-ers” (now in their 30s), and how they have dealt with financial, work and personal challenges since leaving Ford. Post-Ford questions the security of advanced education and experience, and considers the frayed economy of a town whose fortunes heavily depend on the auto industry.
The title “Post-Ford” references Post-Fordism, an economic term in which large-scale mass-production methods pioneered by Henry Ford have faded away, replaced by small, flexible manufacturing units. It now more widely encompasses cultural and social theories defining an emphasis on globalization, and a technology and service-based workforce. What is happening in Dearborn represents the extended recession happening in parts of America and the world, and the necessary paradigm shift towards new models of productivity and commerce.
I will be shooting in Michigan in early September for one week to create a short video of one character to present to fundraisers a taste of what the project will entail. Tom worked as a factory line electrician for over 10 years, and took the educational buyout in 2005 to attend Wayne State in downtown Detroit. He is now finishing his bachelor’s degree in urban planning, and I will follow him in his day to day activities; hanging out at his home, shopping at thrift stores, managing his resale business on eBay, playing poker at the local casinos to earn money, and drinking at the bar with his friends.
While this project is not in the “finishing” phase and rather the early production phase, the $500 will help defray production expenses as well as be the first development grant this project would receive and hopefully seed other grants and funding sources. Post-Ford hits close to home as these people are close friends of my husband, and his family in Dearborn are supporting us through this early push to help bring this project come to fruition.
