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July Issue 2004
SC Arts Commission Announces Artist Fellowships for 2005
The Board of Commissioners of the SC Arts Commission in Columbia, SC, is honoring six professional artists residing in South Carolina with 2005 Artist Fellowships. Each fellow receives $2,000 in recognition of superior artistic merit. In addition, the SCAC has named alternates in each category who do not receive monetary awards, but are considered notable in the competitive selection process. The 2005 SC Arts Commission Fellows are:
Linda Annas Ferguson, Charleston - Poetry
Alternate - Debra A. Daniel, Blythewood
Brenda Dale McClain, Edisto Island - Prose
Alternate - Henry Sanford Howie, III, Spartanburg
Kathleen Vandekieft, Columbia - Music Performance
Alternate - Lee-Chin Siow, Charleston
Darryl Lorenzo Wellington, Charleston - Playwriting
Alternate - Herbert Willis Robertson, Jr., Columbia
Jocelyn Chateauvert, Charleston - Crafts
Alternate - David Ross Puls, Charleston
Jack Steve Gerstner, Jr., Columbia - Visual Arts
Alternate - Jennifer Marie Wallace, Catawba
Fellows and alternates are selected through a competitive application process. Out-of-state review panelists make recommendations for selections, which are approved by the board of the SC Arts Commission. 2005 Fellowship panelists were: David Trinidad, Chicago, IL (Poetry); Kelly Cherry, Halifax, VA (Prose); Cynthia Gonzalez, Jose Gonzalez & John Ozment, all of Washington, DC (Music Performance); Randall David Cook, New York, NY (Playwriting); Julie Sasse, Barbara Rogers, and Alfred Quiroz, all of Tucson, AZ (Crafts and Visual Arts).
About the SC Arts Commission's 2005 Artist Fellows
Linda Annas Ferguson, Charleston – 2005 Fellow in Poetry
Linda Annas Ferguson is the author of two poetry chapbooks. Last Chance to Be Lost, published in 2004, was the winner of the Kentucky Writers¹ Coalition Poetry Competition. Her first chapbook, It¹s Hard to Hate a Broken Thing, was the 2002 winner of the Palanquin Press Poetry Competition of the University of SC, Aiken. She served as the 2003-2004 Poet-in-Residence for the Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston, SC. A former winner of the Poetry Fellowship of the South Carolina Academy of Authors, she was also a 2003 finalist in the John Ciardi Book Prize in Poetry of Bookmark Press. She has been a featured poet in Piccolo Spoleto¹s Sundown Poetry Series in Charleston, SC; Isothermal College Writers¹ Workshop, Spindale, NC; the Weymouth Center for the Arts and Humanities, Southern Pines, NC; Burroughs-Chapin Art Museum, Myrtle Beach, SC; the South Carolina Poetry Society and other venues. Her songs were performed in Indigo Jazz, a presentation by the Low Country Heritage Society in conjunction with the College of Charleston School of the Arts. Examples of her work and more information available online at (www.lindaannaferguson.com).
Brenda Dale McClain, Edisto Island – 2005 Fellow in Prose
Brenda McClain has completed her second novel, Willie June. Excerpts were chosen for the 2003 SC Fiction Project as well as for The Writers¹ Workshop 2002 Fall Fiction Contest and Catfish Stew, the official anthology of the South Carolina Writers¹ Workshop. She was named a finalist for the 2004 Reynolds Price Short Fiction Award. An excerpt from the novel was published in the anthology In the Company of Women in 2000. Her first novel, Darby He Likes Ropes, was awarded the 1993 Fiction Award at the Southern California Writers¹ Conference. She has attended writing workshops a round the country and internationally, including Bread Loaf, the Iowa Writers¹ Workshop, the Maui Writers Conference, the Aegean Arts Circle in Andros, Greece and the Art Workshop International in Assisi, Italy. She serves on the Board of Directors for the SC Writers¹ Workshop and is active in the NC Writers Network and the Writer¹s Workshop in Asheville, NC, where she regularly conducts workshops in writing fiction.
Kathleen Vandekieft, Columbia – 2005 Fellow in Music Performance
Kathleen Vandekieft was lead soprano of the Augsburg Stadttheater for nine years and has sung concerts and operatic roles throughout America and Europe. A past Grand National Winner of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, she serves on its National Roster as judge, lecturer and recitalist. As lirico spinto, she has sung versatile and challenging roles such as Desdemona in Othello, Marguerite in Faust, Violetta in La Traviata, Mimi in La Boheme and many others. She has won a series of additional prestigious awards and grants from institutions such as the United Nations, the Metropolitan Opera, Lyric Opera, Belvedere Competition in Vienna, Lyric Opera of Chicago, SC Arts Commission, Munich National Opera, and the international concorso di musica in Vercelli, Italy. She has been on the SC Arts Commission Roster of Approved Artists and Community Tour. Formerly Associate Professor of Voice at Presbyterian College, she is charter sponsor and currently co-director of the Metropolitan Opera National Council SC District Auditions. She has taught at Wofford and Converse colleges and the University of SC. The SC Arts Commission honored her with its Music Performance Fellowship in 1991, and Converse College bestowed a special Career Achievement in Music Award in 2003.
Darryl Lorenzo Wellington, Charleston – Playwriting
Darryl Lorenzo Wellington is an African American poet, playwright and freelance journalist. He regularly writes for such magazines as Crisis, The Washington Post Book World, the American Journalism Review, the Progressive and the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education. He has written plays for six years, and won two awards in playwriting from the Playwright Conference in Beaufort, SC. He won an award and a staged reading from the People¹s Theater of Florence, SC. In 2001 he was selected to study under playwright Arthur Kopit as part of a residency fellowship at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in New Smyrna Beach, FL.
Jocelyn Chateauvert, Charleston – Crafts
Jocelyn Chateauvert was born, raised and educated in Iowa. She received her MFA at the University of Iowa where she studied metalworking, hand papermaking and sculpture. After teaching in London at Middlesex Polytechnic she established herself as an art jeweler in San Francisco. Exhibiting nationally and internationally, she earned a place in the New Museum of Scotland¹s survey of contemporary jewelry, ³Jewellery Moves.² Hand papermaking informs her work in the low country. A resident of downtown Charleston, she pursues her creative work, raises her son, Elvin, and is rehabilitating a home and studio in the historic district with her husband, David.
Jack Steve Gerstner, Columbia – Visual Arts
Jack Gerstner was born in Cheraw, SC in 1963. His family moved to Columbia in 1972 and Jack entered the University of SC in 1981. At USC, he completed a BFA degree in printmaking and drawing and pursued his MFA studies there, focusing in sculpture and installation. Most of his work for the last ten years has focused on installation and sculpture using found objects, tree branches, fibers and interesting environments, usually abandoned, rustic and distressed locations and buildings. In 1996, he founded Gallery 701, a progressive arts center located in a turn-of-the-century cotton mill community center. Gallery 701 features art exhibitions, dance, jazz and classical music concerts, theatre, opera and presentations of Tibetan and Native American culture.
The next round of Artist Fellowships (for 2006) will select fellows in prose, poetry, dance performance, music composition, visual arts and craft. The deadline for applying is Oct. 1, 2004. For an application and guidelines, as well as more information about the Artist Fellowship program and the SC Arts Commission, visit the agency's website at (www.SouthCarolinaArts.com) or call 803/734-8696.
Carolina Arts is published monthly by Shoestring Publishing Company, a subsidiary of PSMG, Inc. Copyright© 2004 by PSMG, Inc., which published Charleston Arts from July 1987 - Dec. 1994 and South Carolina Arts from Jan. 1995 - Dec. 1996. It also publishes Carolina Arts Online, Copyright© 2004 by PSMG, Inc. All rights reserved by PSMG, Inc. or by the authors of articles. Reproduction or use without written permission is strictly prohibited. Carolina Arts is available throughout North & South Carolina.