Congratulations to the following Fine Arts faculty receiving external awards, grants and fellowships in 2014/15:

Kamrooz Aram was awarded an ART MATTERS grant  to support “Ancient Through Modern,” an ongoing project that intervenes in museum collections of Islamic Art.

Ancient Through Modern: A Collection of Uncertain Objects Part 1 , 2014, Kamrooz Aram, Mixed media installation (96 x 171 x 22 inches). Courtesy of the artist.

AK Burns and Jeanine Oleson were awarded Creative Capital grants.

A.K. Burns 
Funded Project: Negative Space, a multi-channel video installation that presents a surreal narrative of bodies in transition and their relationships to nature, technology, territories and resources. Negative Space blurs the lines between science fiction and documentary. See an excerpt of the video here. 

Still from “Negative Space” video.

Jeanine Oleson 
Funded Project: A human(e) orchestra, an ever-changing “orchestra” that uses a range of noises, from conventional music to speech acts, to produce compositions around agreed-upon issues or audiences in need of “music.”

“Hear, Here,” experimental opera at the New Museum on June 13-14, 2014, Writer/Director: Jeanine Oleson; Photo credit: Jeanine Oleson

Aziz + Cucher and Saya Woolfalk were awarded New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) grants in the Digital/Electronic Arts category.

Aziz + Cucher will use the award towards upgrading the computers in their studio, and currently, they are developing a new body of multi-channel video work that addresses the relationship between the economy and religion, as well as preparing for an exhibition of tapestries made on a digital loom that address issues relating to the on-going conflict in the Middle East.

“Some People (tapestry),” 2014, Aziz + Cucher

Saya Woolfalk plans to use the award to help produce her commissioned project for the Seattle Art Museum this summer. It is a new immersive multimedia installation that is a part of an exhibition called Disguise. The show will travel to the Brooklyn Museum and to the UCLA Fowler Museum.

AN EMPATHIC PREPARING TO PAINT IMAGES FROM THE BOOK EMPATHETIC PLANT ALCHEMY (JILLIAN), 2011, SAYA WOOLFALK, PHOTO © SAYA WOOLFALK.​

Neil Goldberg  received a Teaching Fellow for a Summer Residency at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.in Skowhegan, ME.

Neil Goldberg’s video “Wind Tunnel” shows subway riders being hit with a blast of air from approaching trains. Photo courtesy of the artist

Ward Shelley received a grant from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation for a collaboration with Parsons faculty Alex Schweder from School of Constructed Environments.

Ward Shelley and Alex Schweder – In Orbit (photo credit Double Cyclops), 2014

Shane Selzer will be an artist in residence at Triangle Arts Association in DUMBO during the summer of 2015. Selzer is a founding member and Co-Director of Global Crit Clinic, an international peer learning network for artists working to diversify the field by sharing tools for participation, and GCC is currently an artist in residence at Triangle Arts Association through a program titled, “Letters to the Art World.”

From Triangle Arts Association residency, Open Letters to the Art World.

Simone Douglas has received over $200,000 in in-kind support on her “Promise” project to build a massive ice boat sculpture in an Australian desert–a project instigated by a Parsons School Funds award. More about the project here.

Image of proposed installation via simonedouglas.com