Greater Milwaukee Foundation’s Mary L. Nohl Fund for Individual Artists Suitcase Export Fund Launches Fifteenth Funding Cycle

The Bradley Family Foundation, in collaboration with the Greater Milwaukee Foundation (GMF), announces the fifteenth funding cycle of the GMF’s Mary L. Nohl Fund for Individual Artists Suitcase Export Fund. Created to help visual artists with the cost of exhibiting their work outside the four-county area (Milwaukee, Waukesha, Ozaukee, Washington counties), the Fund is designed to provide greater visibility for individual artists and their work as well as for greater Milwaukee. To date, the Fund has supported a diverse group of 274 individual artists and fifteen artist collectives exhibiting throughout North America, and in Europe, the former Soviet Union, Africa, and Asia. The awardees have received a total of more than $160,000 in grants and work in a variety of media, from film to ceramics. They include well-established artists as well as those at the start of their careers. A special effort has been made to support Nohl Fellows as they exhibit work made during their fellowship year. (See below for a list of 2016 awardees.)

The Suitcase Export Fund is open to practicing artists residing within the four-county area who want to export their work beyond the area for public display. Priority is given to artists with exhibitions outside of Wisconsin. The Fund provides support in two areas: transportation of the work (packing/shipping/insurance) and transportation of the artist. The maximum grant available to an individual is $1,000. Funding is only provided for upcoming opportunities (exhibitions or screenings commencing between December 1, 2017 and July 31, 2018 for the Winter Cycle; similar opportunities commencing between June 1, 2018 and January 31, 2019 for the Summer Cycle).

The Suitcase Export Fund opens twice a year, disbursing awards in response to demand until the funds for each cycle are exhausted. The Winter Cycle opens on December 1, 2017, and the Summer Cycle will open on June 1, 2018. Approximately seven thousand five hundred dollars will be awarded in each cycle. The guidelines are now online at http://www.lyndensculpturegarden.org/content/mary-l-nohl-suitcase-export-fund, and the electronic application will open at 11 am on Friday, December 1. For those without computer access, paper applications are available from Polly Morris at pmorris@lyndensculpturegarden.org or (414) 446-8794.

Artists have responded very favorably to the Suitcase Export Fund and its simple application process. The Fund contributes to the creative health of the region by supporting local artists at all career stages, from the emerging to the established; alleviating some of the financial burden faced by artists who want to exhibit their work at a distance; and by getting the work of Milwaukee artists out into the world. The support provided for artist transportation has enabled artists to be on site to install work–important to most artists and indispensable to those working in the areas of installation, performance, and site-specific art. The opportunity to attend openings, where artists can meet with collectors and distributors and make critical connections with gallery owners, is consistently cited as a significant benefit. The Fund also creates opportunities to expose work in new regions and to new audiences, to meet other artists and see their work, to sell work, and to plan new projects. Although the Fund does not directly support residencies or ancillary activities, awardees have taken full advantage of opportunities to make new work, deliver gallery talks, and participate in symposia at their exhibition sites.

Some of the most important gains for this year’s artists were personal. For two artists, the Suitcase Fund sent them back out into the world after a hiatus. kathryn e. martin, who participated in her first solo exhibition since the birth of her children, observed: “This show was very helpful in reminding me just how important my practice is to me—and my viewers….it provided me with a much-needed wake-up call about how important it is that I remain active as an artist and one capable of bringing in a strong audience outside Milwaukee and Wisconsin.” Mark Borchardt, who was showing his first film in 20 years, was pleasantly surprised to find that there were people at Slamdance who maintained an interest in his work: “it definitely reminds one that there is an enthusiastic audience out there.”

Artist Mary L. Nohl of Fox Point, Wisconsin, died in December 2001 at the age of 87. She left a $9.6 million bequest to the Greater Milwaukee Foundation. Her fund supports local visual arts and education programs, keeping her passion for the visual arts alive in the community.

ABOUT THE 2016 AWARDEES
In its fourteenth cycle, the Fund made 15 awards, providing assistance with shipping and travel to 16 individual artists (some of them applying as groups traveling shows outside Milwaukee). These artists–five of them Nohl Fellows—work in a range of media and their exhibitions took them to Flagstaff, Arizona; Denver and Grand Junction, Colorado; Miami, Florida; Grand Rapids, Michigan; New York, New York; Moorhead, Minnesota; Austin, Texas; and Park City, Utah. Destinations abroad include Scheifling, Austria; Toronto, Canada; Robertsbridge, England; Naples, Italy; and Jeonju, Korea.

Ben Balcom travelled to the Hotel Pupik Artist Residency in Scheifling, Austria, where he created a site-specific video installation for the Pupik group exhibition. This work of expanded cinema deployed video projection, objects, and still images in architectural arrangements, and was similar to the work he exhibited as a 2016 Nohl Fellow.

Mark Borchardt screened The Dundee Project, his first film in 20 years, at the Slamdance Festival in Park City, Utah; the festival runs concurrently with Sundance.

Marna Brauner and Rina Yoon were among a group of six Milwaukee-based artists invited to participate in an exhibition in Jeonju, Korea, during the Jeonju Hanji Festival. Jeonju is known for its long handmade paper tradition, and during this ten-day festival there were many exhibitions, papermaking demonstrations, public events, and activities related to hanji. This is the group’s second exhibition in Korea and part of an exchange that included an exhibition at the Villa Terrace Museum in 2015.

Santiago Cucullu will head to Naples, Italy in early 2018 for a solo exhibition at Galleria Umberto Di Marino in Naples, Italy. Cucullu will be presenting new paintings, ceramics, and video.

Paula DeStefanis was invited to participate in the Robertsbridge Arts & Crafts Fair in Robertsbridge, East Sussex, England. The fair included local and international artists; she sold several of her paintings and received a commission.

Melissa Dorn Richards participated in The Jump Off, a juried exhibition that focused on turning points in artists’ careers. Dorn Richards had four paintings in the exhibition at the Urban Institute of Contemporary Arts in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Sally Duback transported a large mosaic mural to the Gerald Ford Presidential Museum in Grand Rapids, Michigan, as part of Art Prize Nine. She remained on hand for two weeks to meet the public (she dispensed 14,000 business cards), give artist talks, and spend time with her fellow exhibitors.

Two of Daniel Fleming’s paintings were selected for Contemporary 2017: Retellings, a national juried biennial at the Western Colorado Center for the Arts in Grand Junction that focuses on artists who use traditional materials or narratives in new and innovative ways.

Guntis Lauzums used his award to attend the opening reception for Wandering Curves, an exhibition hosted by the New York Center for Photographic Arts at the Jadite Gallery in New York City. Lauzums’s work was chosen from more than 800 submissions and won the grand prize award and two honorable mentions.

Jack Long received the second prize in photography in the first Open Art Miami international art competition, and has been invited to exhibit four large prints in their group show at the Artium gallery during Art Basel Miami. He will attend the artists’ reception in early December.

kathryn e. martin flew to Flagstaff for the labor-intensive installation of her solo show at Northern Arizona University Art Museum. She filled three large galleries with 15,000 paper airplanes, 15,000 cast rocks, wall drawings, and piles of discarded objects.

For Above Low Tide, Joseph Mougel (Nohl Fellow 2016) and his collaborator Cynthia Brinich-Langlois used Glacier Bay, Alaska, to explore environmental issues and human-scale interactions with the natural world. Mougel exhibited ambrotypes, framed works, and videos. at the Roland Dille Center for the Arts Gallery at the Minnesota State University-Moorhead.

Co-cinematographer Dan Peters, one of the core members of the production team for The Blood is at the Doorstep, 2014 Nohl Fellow Erik Ljung’s film about the police killing of Dontre Hamilton, traveled to Austin, Texas for the SXSW (South by Southwest) Documentary Feature Competition. Rhe film received its world premiere at the festival.

2014 Nohl Fellow Kyle Seis contributed several photographic works to What Are the Wild Waves Saying, a two-person exhibition at Dateline, a gallery for emerging artists in Denver, Colorado. The exhibition was part of Denver’s annual photography festival, “Month of Photography.”

Andrew Swant’s (Nohl Fellow 2008, 2013) new short film, Silently Steal Away, was selected for the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival, and he traveled to Toronto for the screenings.

For more than a century, the Greater Milwaukee Foundation has helped individuals, families and organizations realize their philanthropic goals and make a difference in the community, during their lifetimes and for future generations. The Foundation consists of more than 1,300 individual charitable funds, each created by donors to serve the charitable causes of their choice. The Foundation also deploys both human and financial resources to address the most critical needs of the community and ensure the vitality of the region. Established in 1915, the Foundation was one of the first community foundations in the world and is now among the largest.

For further information about the Greater Milwaukee Foundation’s Mary L. Nohl Fund Fellowships for Individual Artists program and Suitcase Export Fund, please visit lyndensculpturegarden.org/nohl.

NOTE: This press release was submitted to Urban Milwaukee and was not written by an Urban Milwaukee writer. It has not been verified for its accuracy or completeness.