What drives cultural practitioners to experiment, discover, and create?
In this installment, 2021 Pew Fellows—visual artists Rami George and Didier William—discuss how they approach personal and family narratives within their work and how they balance their creative practices with the obligations of daily life.
For National Poetry Month, we invited three poets—Julian Talamantez Brolaski (2019 Fellow-in-Residence), Kayleb Rae Candrilli (2021 Fellow), and Marissa Johnson-Valenzuela (2020 Fellow)—to discuss what drew them to poetry, how writing and “pre-writing” permeates throughout their daily lives, and how to sustain a creative practice over time.
In our ongoing artist interview series, we illuminate the distinctive artistic practices, influences, and creative challenges of our Pew Fellows, who represent a diversity of perspectives and creative disciplines.
Lighting designer Maria Shaplin (2019) spoke to us about the works that shaped her approach to her own practice, what makes Philadelphia’s artistic community distinctive, and how her theater background comes in handy with a new baby.
Tina Satter spoke to us about her plans for the residency, how her athletic career influenced her approach to theater, and how the pandemic may have given her more freedom in her practice.
Poet Kirsten Kaschock spoke to us about her daily writing routine, how her dance background informs her poetry work, and why she doesn’t believe in procrastination.
Writer Imani Perry (2019) spoke to us about her search for humanity in her research, the ethical considerations that drive her work, and what makes Philadelphia a “Blackness-of-all-sorts kind of place.”
Dancer, choreographer, and educator Dinita Clark (2019) spoke to us about her lifelong interest in dance, the current issues she is addressing in her work, and what makes Philadelphia’s dance community distinctive.
Based in San Francisco, theater performer, director, teacher, and writer Rhodessa Jones is a Fellow-in-Residence who will begin her one-year residency in Philadelphia next year.
“You would deal with the catalogue as you would normally deal with a catalogue, except the sites of the exhibition were Niagara Falls or The Hague or wherever the artists were working. In that sense, it was like a catalogue for a world exhibition.”