Saint Louis Story Stitchers is pleased to announce that the organization has been awarded a 2016-17 Missouri Arts Council Minority Arts Program Express Project Grant for the portfolio project entitled, Curating Teen Voices.
Curating Teen Voices joins writing and images created by local teenagers and adult professional artists reflecting on the theme coming of age in St. Louis. Curating Teen Voices will be an edition of prints housed in hand crafted boxes. Mariana Parisca, working with printmaker Carmon Colangelo, will create the edition of 10 sets.
Curating Teen Voices is a time capsule of teenage voices combined with adult artists living in St. Louis in 2015, all reacting to and with powerful teenage voices at a critical and unique time in the history of race relations, gun violence, police roles and community relationships in the city of St. Louis, the state of Missouri, and United States.
Saint Louis Story Stitchers held the Youth Art and Writing Contest: Coming of Age in St. Louis in the spring of 2015, as the unrest in Ferguson after the death of 18-year-old Michael Brown was starting to calm. Sixty youth from St. Louis city and county entered work. Honorees were chosen by judges Jordia Benjamin, Joanna Hearne, Ph.D., and Jeffrey Quinn McCune, Jr., Ph.D. and some will be included in the final portfolio.
Saint Louis Story Stitchers artist in residence Mariana Parisca organized a series of workshops at the Stitchers Storefront Studio over the summer and fall of 2015 with Stitchers Teen Council and professional artists. The first half of the project has received support from Kranzberg Arts Center, Yvette and John Dubinsky Family Foundation, Washington University, and the Regional Arts Commission.
The project contains an edition of 10 sets of 30 archival digital prints. Each set will be housed in a handcrafted box. Images created by professional artists including Carmon Colangelo, Addoley Dzegede, Heather Bennett, Kahlil Irving, and Buzz Spector consider and react to the teens’ art and writing. Artists and youth together produced work in response to the project. In addition, professional artists Michael Byron, and Ann Hamilton added works. Ann photographed several of the Stitchers teens while producing the photographs for her new public art commission at the Brown School of Social Work at Washington University. Mariana also includes youth writing excerpts on several of the printed sheets.
This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Stay tuned for more details as this special project unfolds…
