The Idea Fund has announced it’s 2012 list of Texas-based artists and groups for it’s 2012 awards: Scott Gleeson & Dane Larsen, Carrie Schneider, Michelle Benaim Steiner, Lope Gutierrez Ruiz & Alexander Wright (Gopher Projects), Aaron Dubrow, Xochi Solis, Jules Buck Jones, Drew Liverman, Scott Eastwood, Margit Raczkowski, Timothy Schmidt & Carlos Rosales-Silva (The Alleycat Project); Alejandro Saenz Jr. (Kingspoint Crew), Lakes Were Rivers collective, Ariel Evans & Richard Yanas, Nestor Topchy & Robert Rosenberg, Lauren Woods, and Christina Sukhgian Houle will each receive $4000 to fund projects in the upcoming year.
Take minute and peruse the above links, because the Idea fund specializes in unfundable, odd ideas. Among sober, well intentioned projects about historical racism and exploited migrant workers, artist/visionary Nestor Topchy and chef Robert Rosenberg will use their grant money to to create edible art from aromatic gelatin; served from a roadside shipping container, the treats will affirm the universality of archetypal geometry. Christina Sukhgian Houle’s project will send a dozen people to camp in Big Bend inside a large soft sculpture costume made primarily out of stuffed animal pelts.
Jurors for the 2012 Idea Fund were Michelle White, Associate Curator, Menil Collection, Houston; Noah Simblist, artist, writer and curator, Dallas; Kate Hackman, Associate Director of Charlotte Street Foundation, Kansas City, MO; and sculptor J Hill, a 2008-2009 Idea Fund grantee.
The Idea Fund, a re-granting program administered through Aurora Picture Show, DiverseWorks ArtSpace and Project Row Houses, and funded by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, chose from among more than 170 applications the projects that most exemplify artistic practices that fall outside the traditional frameworks of support, one of the main requirements of the grant.