What drives cultural practitioners to experiment, discover, and create?
We spoke to Lela Aisha Jones (2016) who intertwines personal history, social commentary, and interdisciplinary methods, drawing from, in her x, “the individual and collective lived experiences of blackness.”
We spoke to visual artist Eileen Neff (1994), who conflates physical and photographic space in artworks that challenge the ways in which photography mediates perception.
We spoke to theater artist Jennifer Kidwell (2016), whose poignant, performer-driven theater work addresses the complexities of race and notions of American history with sharp intelligence and wry humor.
We spoke to Matthew Levy (2016) whose performance practice and compositions combine modern classical music with the rhythmic and improvisatory aspects of jazz, guided by his dedication to exploring the saxophone’s genre-defying capabilities.
We spoke to composer Andrea Clearfield (2016), who creates deep, emotive musical languages that she says, “synthesize disparate elements into a musical whole” and “build cultural and artistic bridges.”
In 2017, The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage celebrated the 25th anniversary of the Pew Fellowships in the Arts.
Thom Collins on the Barnes Foundation’s efforts to “unpack” the museum’s collection and history through performance.
We spoke to Ryan Eckes (2016), whose narrative-driven poetry is, in his words, “a possible form of history:” a way to document the voices and conditions of urban life.
Tiona McClodden’s interdisciplinary approach encompasses documentary film, experimental video, sculpture, and sound installations.
We spoke to Jymie Merritt (2016) a pioneering bassist and composer who, over the last 60 years, has played with some of the most acclaimed American jazz and blues artists in history, including Art Blakey and The Jazz Messengers, B. B. King, Dizzy Gillespie, Max Roach, and Chet Baker.