Announcing the Idea Capital 2021 Grant Winners

Now in its fourteenth year of awarding grants to a diverse group of area artists, Atlanta independent arts funding group Idea Capital announces its latest awards. Nine Atlanta artists working in a wide array of media are the winners of $15,090 in awards this year. In total, since its inception in 2008 Idea Capital has given out $151,725 in grants to 135 artists.

This year’s Idea Capital grant winners engage deeply with important social issues that continue to define American life including accessibility for the disabled and aging; race; homelessness; and the marginalization of the Latino community.

This incredibly diverse group of artists, some emerging and some established, use disciplines from performance to documentary video to playwriting to delve into issues both esoteric and universal. Jumping off from a fascinating real-life story, Atlanta theater fixture Lee Osorio will use his Idea Capital grant (his second) to write a theater piece centered on the writer Laud Humphreys, who in 1970 published a book documenting the underground homosexual liaisons that took place in public restrooms in Saint Louis throughout the Sixties. In a project similarly rooted in the intersection of public and private life, Serena Perrone will use the discovery of a child’s dress in an abandoned Italian church as a departure point for an examination of, among many other topics, family honor and domestic violence.

All of the artists receiving grants have demonstrated commitment to Idea Capital’s mission of recognizing the kind of innovative, risk-taking works unlikely to be funded by more traditional revenue streams. Idea Capital remains committed to ensuring that the city’s creative class finds opportunities to produce and exhibit their work. This year’s award recipients are Nova Cypress Black, Jessica Blinkhorn, José Ibarra Rizo, Jackson Markovic, Courtney McClellan, Lee Osorio, Serena Perrone, Rebecca Shenfeld, and Thulani Vereen.

Projects to look for in the coming year:

• Nova Cypress Black — Black will create a short experimental documentary or “choreo-doc” that explores how the lived experiences of Black non-binary people in Atlanta echo the nearly erased history of gender non-conformity in pre-colonial Africa.

• Jessica Blinkhorn — “REVERENCE: We 3” is a performance series that highlights the lack of accessibility for the disabled and aging in American society. For her Idea Capital grant Blinkhorn will develop this project engaging with her audience to begin a necessary conversation about civil rights and access in contemporary America. Blinkhorn is the winner of the Margaret Kargbo Artist as Activist Grant

• José Ibarra Rizo — For “Somewhere In Between” Rizo will continue to build his ongoing portrait series focused on the Latino experience in the South. Originally a photo-based project, as part of the Idea Capital grant, Rizo will expand his project into a series of short films.

• Jackson Markovic — “My Light in a Dark Place” looks at the tension between Atlanta’s rapid gentrification and the homeless residents of the Cheshire Bridge corridor. His project will challenge the idea of “cleaning up” the area by collaborating with residents of the street itself to create a photo exhibition that will be presented on Cheshire Bridge Road.

• Courtney McClellan — McClellan has studied the relationship between performance and the law by focusing on the legal simulations and professional practices used to educate future attorneys at law schools across the South. With the support of Idea Capital, she will continue this expansive project.

• Lee Osorio — Inspired by a 1970 Laud Humphrey book on gay sex in public restrooms, “Tearoom Trade: Impersonal Sex in Public Places” Osorio will create a theater piece drawn from Humphrey’s life. Osorio’s “Tearoom” will examine Humphrey’s unconventional research methods in recounting the clandestine and elaborately choreographed public sex that occurred in Saint Louis’s Forest Park.

• Serena Perrone — In “Smarrimento/Apparizione” Perrone will use her grant to create a series of prints, large-scale photographic scrims and installations of maiolica tiles centered on her discovery of a child’s dress in the ruins of an abandoned church in the artist's hometown in Sicily. The project interweaves history and her own imagination to tell the story of the dress and how it came to be there. Perrone is the winner of the Antinori Visual Artist Grant from Idea Capital.

• Rebecca Shenfeld — In a film blending animation and documentary entitled “Zero Sum” Shenfeld will focus on Galina Risis, who was born in Moscow, immigrated to America and has flirted with QAnon and other conservative doctrines. Galina is also the artist’s mother.

• Thulani Vereen — Using contemporary ballet, technology-art and mathematical concepts, Vereen’s “The Permutations of Humanity” explores what it means to be human. Drawing from training in computer science, Vereen will use physical computing as another element to bring concepts of collective behavior to the fore.