R.I. Foundation awards $25K grants to visual artists

JORDAN SEABERRY, of Providence, is one of three visual artists who received a $25,000 grant through the Robert and Margaret MacColl Johnson Fellowship Fund, according to the Rhode Island Foundation. Pictured is Seaberry's "The Wanderer," an oil and mixed media collage on canvas. / COURTESY JORDAN SEABERRY
JORDAN SEABERRY, of Providence, is one of three visual artists who received a $25,000 grant through the Robert and Margaret MacColl Johnson Fellowship Fund, according to the Rhode Island Foundation. Pictured is Seaberry's "The Wanderer," an oil and mixed media collage on canvas. / COURTESY JORDAN SEABERRY

PROVIDENCE – In its 12th year, the Rhode Island Foundation has awarded three $25,000 grants to local visual artists RaMell Ross, Jordan Seaberry and Sheida Soleimani through the Robert and Margaret MacColl Johnson Fellowship Fund, according to a Sunday announcement by RIF.

More than 150 artists applied for the no-strings-attached grant, which is managed by the foundation and encourages concentration on the creative process, personal or professional development, and expansion of their portfolio through new directions.

A Providence-based documentarian and photographer, Ross is a professor of practice in Brown University’s visual arts department who earned a master’s in fine arts in photography at Rhode Island School of Design. He will use the funds provided through the fellowship to purchase additional camera equipment as well as film and underwrite the travel and production expenses associated with his next two projects.

In a prepared statement he said: “I’m interested in actively engaging the precedents of those markedly cast in the American imagination. From the South, I plan to expand my photographic and filmic language of inquiry into class and explore the text-based language determining further difference – both managing constructs of human potential.”

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Also based in Providence is painter Seaberry, who also serves as director of public policy at the Institute for the Study and Practice of Nonviolence. His previous work includes paintings completed in collaboration with families of Providence’s gun violence victims. He plans to use the grant funding to expand his repertoire through experimentation in sculpture, mixed media and larger, 3-D projects.

“This will give me the space to experiment, and find new ways to honor the voices of Providence’s marginalized families,” Seaberry explained in a prepared statement.

The third recipient of a 2017 fellowship is Cranston resident and Iranian native, Soleimani. The daughter of political refugees, she is a part-time professor at RISD and practices in sculpture, collage and photography to create art which references the past century of Iranian politics.

“My most recent works have been extremely expensive to make, from printing source images on paper and fabric, to fabricating and filling the forms of the executed women. This will make buying materials for experimentation possible,” she said in a prepared statement.

Of the fellowships, Daniel Kertzner, the foundation’s senior philanthropic adviser for funding partnerships, said in a prepared statement: “They give local artists the rare gift of time and money so they can invest in developing their craft.”

Since 2005, the foundation has awarded 36 composers, writers and visual artists $900,000 in grants from the Robert and Margaret MacColl Johnson Fellowship Fund.

Three visual artists from Providence were chosen by a panel of four out-of-state jurors: Raina Belleau, a sculptor who received an MFA from RISD in 2015; photographer Theresa Ganz who received an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2006; and interdisciplinary artist Jazzmen Johnson who received a master’s from Brown University in public humanities.

These honorees will receive $3,000 and the opportunity to participate in a residency at Ox-Bow School of Artist and Artists.

In addition, and for the first time, the panel also named semi-finalists who will receive $1,500 fellowships. All are from Providence. They are: Sculptor Taylor Baldwin, who received an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2007; Jungil Hong, a textile artist who received an MFA from RISD in 2014; and Alyson Ogasian, an interdisciplinary artist who received an MFA from RISD in 2015.

Named for Rhode Islanders Robert and Margaret MacColl Johnson, the fund awards three fellowships annually, rotating among composers, writers and visual artists on a three-year cycle.

Guidelines and applications for next year’s fellowships, which will be awarded to composers, will be available on the foundation’s website after July 1.

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