Fund for Artists

$1 Million Fund for Artists

Forging an innovative collaborative effort between four Bay Area Community Foundations and the Irvine, Hewlett, Surdna, and Ford Foundations, the Fund for Artists will support the endeavors of individual artists through commissions, artists' residencies, awards, advocacy, workshops, promotional instruction, and networking support.  The San Francisco Foundation strongly believes in the importance and value of our local artists and their work. We are dedicated to giving a voice to artists within our community. For more information on the Bay Area arts scene, please download this survey of local artists: Information for Artists III (PDF) by Joan Jeffri. For insight and perspective, read this in-depth interview with Bay Area choreographers Brenda Way and Alonzo King by our program officer for arts and culture, John Killacky.

Listen here as John Killacky gives a perspective on KQED explaining the value of local arts and artists in our community.

The Fund for Artists Arts Teacher Fellowship Program (FFAATF)

FFAATF is a regional initiative to support the artistic revitalization of outstanding arts teachers in Bay Area middle and high schools. Arts teachers often lack time and resources to reconnect with other arts professionals and with the artistic processes they teach. Through the FFAATF, fellows will design individualized courses of study that foster their own creative work and the opportunity to interact with other professional artists in their fields.

The Fund for Artists supports the endeavors of individual artists through commissions, artists' residencies, awards, advocacy, and promotional and networking support.

Modeled upon Surdna Foundation’s Artist Teacher Fellowship Program FFAATF approaches artistic development as a means to enhance arts teachers’ effectiveness and will directly benefit young people. We look forward to supporting arts educators in our community through this exciting fellowship. The next application deadline is January 10, 2008. To apply, please download an FFAATF application here (Word).

This program is part of the Fund for Artists partnership with the East Bay Community Foundation, Marin Community Foundation, Silicon Valley Community Foundation (formerly the Peninsula Community Foundation), and The San Francisco Foundation. The FFAATF is supported by the Surdna Foundation.  For the second year of these fellowships, six fellowships were awarded.

The San Francisco Foundation supported two fellowships:

Mary Estes (Ida B. Wells High School, San Francisco County, $5,000) will travel to Snowmass, Colorado, and attend the summer art program at Anderson Ranch Art Center to take a series of classes in painting with master artists. The classes will provide hands-on art making instruction while exploring cutting-edge theoretical questions that contemporary painters are addressing.

Dan Kryston (San Francisco High School of the Arts, San Francisco County, $5,000) will attend the Malta Festival in Warsaw, Poland, as both a participant and a contributor. He will visit various parts of the city to view original site-specific performances, train with two distinguished theater masters, Fundaja Akcja and Weronika Fibisch, and attend seminars and performances by Teatr Ruchu, the State Theatre School. Dan will also give a one-day seminar on the "Voice of American Musical Theatre."

East Bay Community Foundation supported three fellowships:

Katherine Beckner (Mt. Diablo High School, Contra Costa County, $5,000) will study techniques of mold making for pottery, sculptural forms, prototype models, fabric plaster molds, and one-of-a-kind tiles with Richard Notkin at the Archie Bray Foundation for Ceramics in Helena, Montana. She will also take a Salt Fire class at Walnut Creek Civic Arts Education, and become a member of the Berkeley Potters Studio where she will continue developing her portfolio in sculptural ceramics.

Miriam Stahl (Berkeley High School/Arts and Humanities Academy, Alameda County, $5,000) will study the digital printmaking process in a workshop that is a part of Kala's "6th Annual Summer Institute of Innovative Printmaking" at the Kala Art Institute in Berkeley. She will also rent studio time at Kala to develop and print a new body of work in preparation for an exhibition at the Berkeley Art Center in October 2007.

Larry Stefl (Berkeley Technical Academy, Alameda County, $5,000) will attend a two-week Summer Institute on Innovative Printmaking at Kala Art Institute and Trillium Press in the San Francisco Bay Area, purchase a printing press, and continue to develop his body of work, entitled "Brasilia Series."

Silicon Valley Community Foundation supported one fellowship:

Adelina Barros (Capuchino High School, San Mateo County, $1,124) will attend the Dance and Movement Workshop at Chapman University in Orange, California, to study with artist-in-residence Jenny Backhaus, attend dance concerts, and perform choreography developed during the workshops.

Fund for Artists Awardees

Visual and Media Arts
In 2007, Artadia will grant seven visual artists with awards in the amount of $1,500 or $15,000.  Below is a list of finalists:

2006-2007 Visual and Media Finalist Artists
Center for Tactical Magic
Sergio De La Torre
Andy Diaz Hope
Maria Forde
Rebecca Goldfarb
David Hevel
Desiree Holman
Jordan Kantor
Michael Light
Trevor Paglen
Chris Sollars
Hank Willis Thomas
Catherine Wagner
Amy Wilson Faville
Michael Zheng

2005-2006 Visual and Media Winning Artists
Enrique Chagoya
Adriane Colburn
Rosanna Castrillo Diaz
Kota Ezawa
Bill Fontana
Amy Franceschini
David Huffman
Mads Lynnerup
Shaun O'Dell
Clare Rojas

2007-2008 Composers and Music Ensembles
Three $5,000 awards given to outstanding composers working with music ensembles through American Composers Forum
Ellen Ruth Rose and Linda Bouchard
Kurt Rohde and the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra
Matt Small and the San Francisco Community Music Center

2007-2008 Playwrights and Theatre Ensembles
Two $10,000 awards given to outstanding playwrights working with theatre companies through Theatre Bay Area.
Philip Kan Gotanda and Asian American Theater Company
Peter Nachtrieb and Lobster Theater Company

2007-2008 Choreographer Awards
Three $5,000 awards given to outstanding choreographers through World Arts West
Zenón Barrón serves as the current artistic director of two well-established Mexican folkloric groups in Northern California: Ensambles Ballet Folklórico de San Francisco and Instituto Mazatlán Bellas Artes de Sacramento. Barrón trained in modern dance, classical ballet and Mexican folkloric dance and performed throughout the world with Mexico City's Ballet Folklorico de México.

Mythili Kumar is an exponent of three different Indian classical dance forms—Bharatanatyam, Kuchipudi, and Odissi.  Her gurus were Smt. Indra Rajan, Sri T. R. Devanathan, and Smt. Kalanidhi Narayanan for bharatanatyam, Sri Vedantam Jagannatha Sarma for kuchipudi, and Guru Srinath Raut and Guru Kelucharan Mohapatra for odissi. Kumar performed extensively in India before moving to the U.S. in 1978. In 1980, she founded the Abhinaya Dance Company of San Jose, where she is currently artistic director.

Rudi Soriano is artistic director of LIKHA Pilipino Folk Ensemble and was a former soloist of the acclaimed Bayanihan Philippine Dance Company. He received his training from a number of master dance artists, companies, and organizations including the Alice Reyes Cultural Center of the Philippines Dance Company.

Fund for Artists Matching Commissions for 2006-2007

Seeking to support the development of new work by Bay Area artist and at the same time help small to mid-sized arts groups diversify funding by attracting individual donors, The San Francisco Foundation sent out an RFP to more than 200 arts organizations with budgets under $2 million in San Francisco and San Mateo Counties (augmenting similar programs sponsored by Marin Community Foundation and East Bay Community Foundation in their respective counties).

Grants of up to $5,000 were offered to support the commissioning of new works by Bay Area artists, but had to be matched on a one-to-one basis with contributions from individuals. Seventy-three applications were received. With panel input, ten organizations received commissioning challenge grants:

Chitresh Das/Chitresh Das Dance Company
Eva Tam/Door Dog Music Productions
Taraneh Hemami/Intersection for the Arts
Donna Keiko Ozawa, Christine Wong Yap, and Bob Hsiang/Kearny Street Workshop
Eric Myers, Dawei Wang, and Bik Lee/Melody of China
Gyan Riley/Musical Traditions, Inc.
Patrick Makuakāne/Nā Lei Hulu I Ka Wēkiu
Julio Cesar Morales/New Langton Arts
Robert Moses/Robert Moses' Kin
Meklit Hadero, Prasant Radhakrishnan, Sameer Gupta, Eliyahu Sills, Gabriel Teodros, and Todd Brown/The Red Poppy Art House

Next Deadline:  No applications are yet available for the 2007-2008 Fund for Artists Matching Commission grants. Please check our website after January 15, 2008, for applications.