Greene County Council On The Arts

398 Main Street
Catskill, NY 12414
518.943.3400
gcca@greenarts.org

Twin Counties Announce Individual Artist Awards

Greene County Council on the Arts and Columbia County Council on the Arts are pleased to announce the recipients of two Individual Artist regrant awards through the Twin Counties Cultural Fund Decentralization Program for Columbia and Greene Counties (DEC).

The Decentralization - Individual Artist Tier is funded by the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) to provide valuable opportunities for local artists to create new, original work. The awards are $2500 each and are intended to engage or reflect the community through the artist’s creative process and stimulate personal artistic growth. This year’s applicants represented the literary, performing and visual arts fields. There were several highly professional and qualified candidates with creative ideas, solid credentials & convincing support materials, making the panel process an extremely rigorous and difficult process. After much deliberation a combined panel of Columbia and Greene County reviewers recommended Eli Joseph Hunter of Cornwallville and Michael Chameides of Hudson as the 2008 Individual Artist Grant recipients.

Hunter is a photographer/filmmaker, graduate of Bard College, and the resident woody plant expert for the Phantom Gardener. He has exhibited in New York and Berlin and was commissioned by Bard to create a 30-minute time-lapse documentary of the construction of the Frank Gehry designed Avery Performing Arts Center. Hunter is also the founder of the Greene Arboretum, a planting initiated in 2000 that features over 500 trees and shrubs selected for their scientific as well as aesthetic and spatial characteristics. The $2500 award will enable him to undertake “A Year in Hand” a project Hunter explains will “marry the three main media of my creative practice: earthwork, photography, and the moving image.”

The second recipient, Michael Chameides of Hudson, has been involved with film, media and ethnology since 2002. The producer and director of “Young, Jewish, and Left: A Documentary” and independent film work in the US and India, he is perhaps best known to the Columbia County community as the Director of Programming & Publicity at Time and Space Limited. Chameides’ award will partially support the creation of “On Water’s Edge” a thought-provoking video on the Bangladeshi community’s use of Hudson’s Waterfront Park. His video exploration will “open up a greater understanding of both the Bangladeshi community and the ways that culture is produced, preserved, and expressed” using an experimental form that will “stylistically celebrate the beauty and complexity of the Waterfront activities.”

The Board and staff of GCCA and CCCA congratulate these two imaginative individuals and invite you to watch this space for updates on their projects as 2008 progresses.
For more information on the Twin Counties Cultural Fund Individual Artist grants program, contact our DEC Grants Coordinator at 518-943-3400.