Racing Magpie supporting Lakota creative expression through the Sinew Fund

RAPID CITY – There are just a few days left for artists and collectives to submit proposals for projects that chart new territory in their communities. Racing Magpie Art Gallery has opened the second round of 2024 grant funding for Lakota visual creatives. This round, which opened on July 5, will close on August 13, 2024, when all proposals are due.

In the first round of funding in the spring, Racing Magpie awarded $50,000 dollars in grants to six Lakota visual creatives through their Sinew Grant. The gallery is able to fund the grants through a partnership with the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. The Foundation’s has a program, the Regional Regranting Program, which partners with local arts organizations around the country to make grants to artists and collectives for projects that chart new creative territory in their communities.

This is a prestigious program in which to be involved. “The Sinew Fund is by invitation only from the Andy Found for the Visual Arts,” explains RaeAnne Schad (Cheyene River Lakota). She is the Coordinating Program Curator for Racing Magpie Art Gallery. She explained that Racing Magpie is the only organization in South Dakota to have been invited. “They invited us as a part of their Regional Regranting Program back in early 2023 to create a program for our community. They have been doing this nationwide and they add more every year. They work with different local arts organizations helping them create an answer to a need within their communities. We were lucky to be a part of that and this is our third cycle now.”

The national program in June of 2024 awarded $4 million dollars to 49 organizations and institutions that keep artists at the center of their work. The network is currently active in 35 cities and regions, supporting artists whose work falls outside the scope of traditional presenting organizations and/or funding opportunities.

The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, on its webpage, notes  “We acknowledge our culture’s systemic marginalization of artists because of race, gender, religion, age, ability, sexual orientation and/or immigration status among other factors. We actively seek to highlight the work of under-represented practitioners and support efforts to address entrenched inequities. The Foundation is committed to preserving Warhol’s legacy through creative and responsible licensing policies and extensive scholarly research for ongoing catalogue raisonne projects.”

Foundation President Joel Wachs saying that their grantees range from major museums to organizations so small they only have one staff member. The goal is to uplift artist resources, provide innovative platforms for critical cultural dialogue and promote artist-centered organizations that support experimental practice. The Foundation looks for projects and organizations that challenge art historical and social conventions, address systemic inequities, and push are in new directions. No matter if it’s through content, concept, aesthetics, process, techniques or materials.

Each partner in the network creates its own program tailored to the specific needs and artistic identity of its region.  “The Andy Warhol Foundation really believes in thinking outside of the box, allowing for more creative freedom, so artists are less inhibited in the projects they want to do,” said Schad. “The Foundation wants artists to be able to creatively express themselves. Maybe an artist has a big idea, but they don’t know how to make it happen.” Schad explained the wide range of local projects. “Sinew Fund recipients have done screenplay readings. Others have developed classes around their medium so they can teach it to their community. There are so many different things people can do. It’s interesting how people have stepped up and figured out their passion within the parameters of this program.”

Six Sinew Fund applicants were chosen in the spring round – two individual projects and four collaborative projects. Each collaborative project received $10,000 dollars and each individual project received $5,000 dollars. The recipients from the spring round are:

Charlie Brave Heart, Anissa Martin and Cinnamon Cuny have collaborated to create the Hiikceya Wounspe Preservation where they will host workshops to showcase Lakota tipi knowledge through hands-on learning and resources sharing.

Dewayne Wilcox and Bryan Parker will use their collaborative grant for a film project. They will conduct interviews with Lakota veterans of the Vietnam War to record and preserve their histories in the film titled Warriors: Vietnam War Era.

Individual category recipient Jaida Grey Eagle’s project is an untitled Lakota photography project with workshops and an exhibit designed to uplift women and non-binary community members through portraiture and storytelling.

Jen and Glenda Fuller collaborative follows a more traditional path. They will use their grant for their Come Sew With Us, a series of workshops to teach community members the art of start quilt making.

Layli Long Soldier and Mikayla Patton collaborative is a visual poetry/art outdoor exhibition in Lakota territory that requires installing steel panels on which there are mirrors and text cut into the panels.

Finally, Wade Medicine’s individual project, Protect Our People, will be a publicly accessible mural meant to inspire conversation about the challenges facing the community including missing women, racism and prejudice.

Some of the other projects in other communities supported by these grants have included queer zines, living room galleries, radical seafaring events, and virtual reality film screening among other public-facing experimental activities.

Most of those are self-explanatory, apart from living room galleries and radical seafaring events. According to art hub artsy.net radical seafaring is a multidisciplinary exhibition, featuring twenty-five artists with works that range from artist-made vessels to documentation of creative expeditions, to plans to build alternative communities on the water.

Schad explained that the living room gallery project might be a little misleading. “I’m not sure people are just letting anyone into their living rooms,” she laughed at the idea and explained, “Some people will work with some of their artists friends and put together an exhibition. The program does need to be publicly accessible and free to the community. So they find a location that people can access and make it work.”

There is a project like this in Houston Texas in which residents are creating home-based galleries in their homes for emerging artists to showcase their work.

So far, Schad said they have awarded a total of 11 projects.

Interested visual creatives are invited to visit the Racing Magpie website  at racingmagpie.org for applications and information about qualifications and requirements for a Sinew Fund grant. Grantees from this round will be announced in late September of this year with disbursal of funds to follow in October.

(Contact Marnie Cook at cookm8715@gmail.com)

 

The post Racing Magpie supporting Lakota creative expression through the Sinew Fund first appeared on Native Sun News Today.

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