FOCUS ON FOUR OF THE APRIL 2018 GRANTEES:

BUD DORSEY

With the support of a Great Meadows Foundation Professional Development Grant, Louisville artist Bud Dorsey plans to travel to Senegal to visit museums, meet with artists and institutional directors he has connected with, and give a talk about his work at the West African Research Center (WARC) in Dakar. He will also travel to the city of Saint Louis, exploring the vestiges of the days when that city was France’s colonial capital in West Africa as well as observing street art and the daily pulse of life in Senegal’s cities.

Dorsey writes: “My work, which is so focused on and steeped in the Black community and so clearly conveys a sense of history, is inherently rooted in the history of the transatlantic slave trade. By traveling to one of the places where enslaved Africans departed the continent for the Americas, I’ll be examining my roots as a person and as an artist. I will also surely develop a richer understanding of the ways in which African culture has shaped African American culture and the ways in which Western culture has shaped contemporary African culture. By meeting with a diverse range of artists… and by visiting a number of art museums and galleries containing a wide variety of art by talented African artists, I will learn to think more expansively and creatively about ways of exploring the Black experience. My conversations with the artists …will also give me insights into how they perceive the history and culture of African Americans, thus helping me to step back and defamiliarize the familiar, which will surely influence how I document the Black community in Louisville after this trip.”

For more than half a century Bud Dorsey has been documenting life in West Louisville. His work has been published in The Louisville Defender newspaper, where he worked for over 20 years, and the Courier Journal, as well as national publications Jet, Ebony, Jive, Bronze, Thrill, Sepia, and Hep. “Dedicated to capturing Black life in an unfiltered way that minimizes artifice,” Dorsey’s photography candidly portrays his subjects in a manner that calls attention to our shared humanity and to the diversity of people and experiences within the Black community. A monograph about Dorsey’s work, Available Light: Louisville Through the Lens of Bud Dorsey, was published by Louisville Story Program in 2017.

PHILIS ALVIC

Lexington artist Philis Alvic plans to attend the Textile Society of America Conference in Vancouver, Canada, where she will present her illustrated lecture: Eliza Calvert Hall, The Handwoven Coverlet Book, and Collecting Coverlet Patterns in Early Twentieth Century Appalachia. A biannual international forum where speakers address textile knowledge from artistic, cultural, historic, socio-economic and -political perspectives, TSA also offers participants special visits to exhibitions in the host city. In particular Alvic is interested to see and learn about the art of Canada’s First nations and to see exhibitions of contemporary Canadian textile art. 

Alvic writes: “ The TSA conference will be stimulating, because academics, museum curators, and artists attend this event… The conference theme is The Social Fabric: Deep Local to Pan Global…drawing heavily on the indigenous coastal peoples and their significance to the international city that Vancouver is today. My presentation will outline how the work of Kentucky and Appalachian women provided hundreds of coverlet patterns for use by textile artists. The sessions that I attend… will explore ideas about how the work of the individual relates to local culture and how that fits in the international art scene… I will be condensing [my] material into a written paper that will be published as part of the conference proceedings and will be available to a wider audience on the internet… The experiences I have at the conference will help clarify and focus my discourse. Because this conference deals with all types of textiles, textile history, and textile art, I will be confronted with many new ideas. When able to digest my notes and think about how my art relates to all these experiences, I plan to do more writing. 

A student at the Art Institute of Chicago and Winthrop University in Rock Hill, SC, over the last forty years Philis Alvic has used “completely loom-controlled pattern weaving to convey a series of visual ideas that are usually approached through painting rather than woven panels.” She has presented her work in over 225 exhibitions nationally and received numerous awards and grants. As well as presenting lectures and papers on textile art, she has also published widely in weaving, craft, and art magazines, including being the Kentucky critic for Art Papers magazine. She is also author of Weavers of the Southern Highlands published by the University Press of Kentucky, 2003.

RODOLFO SALGADO

Louisville artist Rodolfo Salgado has been selected to attend a three week summer fellowship at Mildred’s Lane Complex(ity) in Beach Lake, PA. Led by artists Mark Dion and J Morgan Puett, Mildred’s Lane is an experimental environment that encourages a trans-disciplinary approach to artistic practice. Where guest speakers outnumber fellows three to one, the program nurtures long lasting professional relationships. At Mildred’s Lane, Salgado’s three week program will include lectures and seminars led by visiting specialists and scholars, as well as collaborative projects with an international array of fellows. 

Salgado writes: “Mildred’s Lane will be catalytic for my artistic practice… approaches to presenting knowledge will be especially significant to me, as well as the opportunity to work with scientists, artists, researchers, and curators. During the fellowship, I will work with a diverse group of participants who share my interests in critically engaging the practices of collecting and display. Mark Dion’s work has been influential to my work for more than a decade, with an approach that blurs boundaries between scientific categorization and an inventive ordering of objects… [His] critique of the ways that institutions create knowledge through collecting and display is a significant inspiration to my practice and approach. Within the cross-disciplinary environment of Mildred’s Lane I will develop a shared language and approach for a variety of activities… I will return to Louisville with an expanded vocabulary and methodology to engage new audiences with my work.”

Rodolfo Salgado received an MFA in Printmaking with a minor in Ceramics at the University of Iowa, and a BFA in Printmaking from California State University, Chico. His work explores collecting, archiving, and our relationship to the human body. “With the limited knowledge I have of the human body, I propose alternative anatomical processes in printmaking, ceramics, mixed media installation, and performance. I view the body as a pressurized, magically-mechanized world in which everything is interconnected.” Salgado has exhibited nationally in group and solo shows since 2008. He is a co-founder and Executive Director of Calliope Arts Printmaking Studio in Louisville and faculty member at Kentucky Center Governor’s School for the Arts.

TIFFANY CARBONNEAU

New Albany artist Tiffany Cabonneau will travel to South Africa to meet with artists and curators she has connected with. Her plans include visits to art spaces and museums, particularly Zeitz MOCAA, and the South African National Gallery, as well as The Centre for the Less Good Idea, artist William Kentridge’s interdisciplinary art incubator space—where she hopes to meet Kentridge himself.

Carbonneau writes: “Exploring and understanding systems that connect me with others on a local, national and global scale allows me to critically analyze my own culture and practice through new and diverse perspectives… As a country still grappling with social and political divisions, and one of the most diverse places I have ever visited, I look forward to experiencing South African art and culture on a deeper level while reflecting upon how my own artwork deals with similar struggles of bigotry and inequality in the US. I look forward to meeting with a diverse range of South African artists and curators to discuss how their practices deal with social and political injustice, and how art is being used as a tool to engage in layered social and economic histories that have fostered current demographic divisions. I am particularly excited about the opportunity to visit the new Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa. As an American Artist, most of my museum experiences have been based in western history and mostly western contemporary collections. Visiting the Zeitz Museum… will allow me to broaden and diversify my own notions of contemporary art, and to share those experiences with my studio art students at Indiana University Southeast.”

Carbonneau received BSc and BFA degrees at Northern Arizona University—spending a semester studying abroad at the University of Ghana—and an MFA from Ohio University. An artist working with architectural video projections, she has produced and exhibited works internationally, exploring “the complexity of what defines a place.” She is currently creating “a body of work that emphasizes migration as innately human and shines light on the historic and contemporary role immigration has played in the economic development and stability of the United States.” A recipient of numerous professional grants, Carbonneau is Associate Professor of Fine Art, Digital Art and Interactive Media Program Head at Indiana University Southeast.