2021 Recipients
CATALYST MUSE
2021
A grant was awarded to Catalyst Muse Creativity & Change Consultants to produce a short documentary film on the 4th Annual Akumal Arts Festival, its participants, founders, and the community. The three-day festival brings together over 100 local and international artists to Akumal, Mexico where they paint murals, offer workshops, give performances, and engage with the local community and each other. The film seeks to capture the beauty and spirit of the festival and the power of creative placemaking.
CRYSTAL BROWN
2021
I am excited to utilize this grant to tell the visual story of a great community in Seattle, fighting for environmental justice in their neighborhood. I live in this beautifully vibrant Seattle neighborhood of South Park. It is truly a unique area – a gem that is cut in half by a loud, unfiltered, and unnecessary freeway.
Our plan is to make a video piece by socially engaging the South Park residents and community members. We will interview them, film a variety of b-roll and cite facts and figures to produce a storytelling piece about how Highway 99 cutting through the community has impacted their environment.
The goal of this video project is to have this highway deactivated and transition that land into a usable space that would include community-driven spaces like parks, trees and other desirable segments of land that are conscious of the collective needs of our diverse community.
DONAVAN CERVANTES
2021
My current project is telling the story and history of the Logan Barrio in Santa Ana. I have already done a film on one of the oldest restaurants in the Barrio, as well as the mural to the fallen soldiers. I will be interviewing community elders from the neighborhood, including Sam Romero who was one of the first to organize 13 neighborhoods in the city to build Chicano power with the Pico national network.
Promoting Chican@ Culture Through Historical Preservation: youtu.be/865Um3veQsE
ROGER EYES
2021
Multidisciplinary artist, Roger Eyes R. has been a working professional artist since 2003. He began with mostly graffiti, (art)studies and commission work after art school, and it wasn't long before he began showing at private functions and group art shows in Orange and L.A. counties. By 2010, he began to focus on his hometown of Santa Ana, CA and became a member and Lead Artist of the Santa Ana Community Artist(a) Coalition, which connects and engages communities in need throughout the Southland through mural and art workshops. He has worked with a number of charities, public-charters, and nonprofits and is an Art Instructor with Orange County's Children's Therapeutic Art Center. Currently, he is working in a hybrid painting style all his own – Pop Impressionism – a hard study of movement through color and texture.
SPENCER GARLAND
2021
The funds will be allocated towards the creation of BRENDA LAB, a web series about Black arts and culture. Set to be filmed this summer in collaboration with the Portland Art Museum and N.M. Bodecker Creative Foundation, the show will speak to decolonizing the artistic canon while making room for joy, creative expression, sharing, and healing.
JONATHAN MARTINEZ
2021
Community Engagement awarded a grant to support the creation of a public art mural -- “Save Our Western Monarch Butterfly” – in a joint venture with the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. The mural is designed to raise awareness of this endangered species and is on display at the corner of New Montgomery and Mission Street.
https://artoftheendangered.com
PHUOC DU NGUYEN
2021
Many people in the west have a growing interest in meditation and Buddhism, and in Vietnam, artworks made from bodhi leaves have become trendy. This artwork is meant to bring a sense of peace, tranquility and beauty to those who practice Buddhism in California through artworks that are made from the bodhi leaves (Gotama the Buddha got enlightened under the bodhi tree) and other spiritual-related objects, such as wooden rosary beads made from agarwood, wooden buddha and bodhisattva statures. My goal is to get local, handmade products of Vietnam to a wider audience, create jobs for local elderly people and women, and give back to the local community.
PACIFIC CONSERVATORY MUSIC ACADEMY
2021
Funding was provided for four youth scholarships to attend the Pacific Conservatory Music Academy. The integrated program serves all ages and ability levels and is committed to the development of creative expression and long-term promotion of the arts in the community. The four Community Engagement scholarships will be provided to children from low-income households in Orange County.
KARISSA RAYA
2021
My inspiration for “Porch Portraits” came from the “Front Steps Project,” an idea that spread so fast amongst photographers. When I became aware of it, I noticed for the most part, nuclear families in front of single-family homes and lacking in diversity. I set an intention to document diverse and blended Santa Ana families in a series of “Porch Portraits.” I have already documented over 30 Santa Ana families on their porch, outside of their apartment or on their balcony.
https://www.karissamraya.com
https://www.thisissantaana.com
https://www.olivelavida.com
BRITT SAMUELS
2021
For the past four years, I have been motivated to start a photography camp for children. I have the vision to teach them the fundamentals for a week then have a gallery of their work displayed at the end of the session. I will continue to manifest this.
Photography is a very important part of my space… it is to discover, it is to capture giving flow to what the heart feels and sees in a certain moment, it is being in the street, experiencing, understanding, learning and, essentially, practicing the freedom of being, of living, of thinking.
I hope to share my vision to have this in the works by summer 2022. Art keeps the world sane for many. Imagine what it does for our youth.
Singing Blankets
2021
Singing Blankets is a collaborative art project with refugees and asylum seekers in the UK and Greece. The Community Engagement grant enabled a pilot series of blanket making and sound workshops. Participants received materials to make blankets and a platform for telling individual stories. We also engaged in group music creation (vocal improvisation and sonic meditation through singing, spoken word, playing found objects, etc.) an empowering and emancipatory process. The recorded sounds were made through adding a QR Code on each blanket, linking the individual blanket artworks to the collective music score.
Recognition and funding from Community Engagement helped us gain further funding and expand the project further. See our current activities on our website:
LALAH SIMONE SPRINGER
2021
The grant I received from Community Engagement enabled me to work part-time for three months to finish the manuscript for my first poetry collection An Aviary of Common Birds – an exploration of community, family, love and loss through a queer, Black working-class lens. The time also enabled me to make submissions of my poetry to magazines that led to two being published in Ink Sweat and Tears. Since then, the manuscript has been published by Broken Sleep Books. My poem, How to Pronounce Dagenham, has also been discussed by students on British National Poetry Day.
Lalah Simone Springer performing her poems live (2020):
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6bLYtLpKSGBz7kChbhLGRBYqU5Uinrpt
MICHAEL STEVENSON
2021
At this time, I am gearing up to do events under the moniker of Fred Hampton Summer. We've already supported an event launching a podcast about prison abolition told through stories of men currently and formerly incarcerated called Tin Can Phone. I am currently planning an 8-week summer camp called Fred Hampton Summer Camp where we'll learn about activists and former Black Panther Party members Fred Hampton in Boston, and Kent Ford here in Portland. Kent will visit our class and speak from his own experiences. Other summer events include a racially blended race dining event called “Tables for Two,” a film screening about covid-19 vaccine distribution in African countries and Ukraine, and a mixed-race BBQ event.
BLANCA S. VILLALOBOS
2021
The financial support from Community Engagement's microgrant program will go towards my travels to and from Green River, Utah where I will be staying for one month as an artist-in-residence with Epicenter in the fall of 2021. Throughout my journey in the Southwest, I will visit state and national parks in addition to other lands stewarded by community members to continue expanding my knowledge on regional histories, ecology, & herbalism. The microgrant will specifically meet my needs with car maintenance, audio/video equipment and any fees associated with camping so that I may safely arrive and return from my time in Utah's desert landscape.
Awarded Under Previous Guidelines
ANTONIO GONZALEZ
2021
The project that I’m creating is a series of ongoing works in graphite detailing some places of my mental state. It’s more like an “inside a mind” project. These pieces originated through concepts that feel relevant now. I try to portray the realm of memory and psyche as a real place, plagued with symbolism about my own state. So far, I have a couple of pieces made and others planned, but I still need to make more. Hopefully at the end of this project, I’ll have a collection of at least 15 unique pieces that I can exhibit and sell.
I want to tackle themes like loneliness, inadequacy, dependency, emotional numbness. These are relatable to a vast number of humans, but I know I can portray them in my own personal way. Not everything will be on that note. I want to cover good themes as well, like change, self-worth, and clarity.
THE FRIDA CINEMA
2021
Community Engagement generously supported our Classics on French Street program, which consisted of a series of classic films presented outdoors and free-of-charge for our community. The program was a great success on so many levels. The City of Santa Ana and its Parks and Recreations department were deeply impressed, and it opened the door for potential collaborations, including one at Birch Park in Downtown Santa Ana. In August 2022, we launched a four-week program of free classic movies at Birch Park. The series was so successful that we were reengaged to host four more in October, all of them complete with opening performances by local musicians.
The Classics on French Street series enabled us to show The Frida Cinema’s vision, capabilities, and commitment to the city’s leaders first-hand. We celebrate not only the success of the Classics on French Street series with Community Engagement, but moreover, the wonderful partnership and events that the series led to.
ALYSSA JUMMANI
2021
I am thirteen-year-old girl that loves to escape through my artistic abilities. I enjoy drawing because it gives me the satisfaction of bringing my ideas to life. I am autistic and I have high anxiety, so art for me is an escape. Drawing is also a stress reliever, a way to forget daily problems and just doodle, paint, draw or sketch.
My passion is in creating realistic portraits of people and anime. In elementary school, I was asked by many students on a weekly basis to draw their favorite characters. I never said no to anyone. I love to make everyone happy with my drawings. My Dad has posted several of my drawings on LinkedIn and he told me my drawings are viewed well over 2,000 times in matter of a few days.
MIRIAM KAMINSKA
2021
The grant will help me become more professional in the sense that I will be able to think more openly about sculpture. Not having too much money for the process makes me think in a lesser way. I don’t allow myself to explore new materials, I only use the ones that I’m used to. For example, I would like to experiment more with glass casting. In the Czech Republic, there isn’t a working network of grants easily accessible for emerging artists.
Currently I am preparing myself for an art residency in Peru at Arquetopia. I intend to stay there for at least three weeks. I will learn how to work with natural pigments. After I return, I will start preparing for an outdoor exhibition that will take place in Prague next year. It will be colored versions of sculpture I and You that were exhibited this autumn in Usti nad Labem in the gallery of Emil Filla at the exhibition IN VIVO.
ALBERTINA NORMAN
2021
The funding has allowed me to submit my work to different juried shows, as well as print and frame works for the community to view at The Frida Cinema in downtown Santa Ana. The funding has also been used to purchase equipment relating to my art (such as software and lighting) that is needed to make up my images. I am continuing to pursue more projects and hope to have another body of work to show for a future exhibit.
AIMA SAINT HUNON
2021
The Community Engagement grant allowed me to finance a large part of my sculptural and pictorial installation project, as well as a performance with the creation of costumes and masks. Two dancers, a pianist, a violinist, and I participated in the performance.
The art center in Southampton invited me to perform in their space and a friend of mine was able to film the performance. It was for me one of my greatest artistic realizations. Thank you so much for your support.
http://www.aima-artiste.com
https://www.ajourneyintosensuality.com