African art, contemporary and modern dance and the Great American Songbook all take center stage in the work of three of the six recipients of the 2022 Artist Innovation Fellowship Program sponsored by the Cultural Council for Palm Beach County.
Actor and singer Elizabeth Dimon, visual artist Kianga Jinaki and choreographer Shanique Scott, along with musician Yvette Norwood-Tiger and visual artists Henriett Michel and Carin Wagner, each received a $7,500 fellowship, allowing them the opportunity to pursue their art.
The works are being showcased in an exhibit at the council’s headquarters in Lake Worth Beach through Sept. 9. The exhibit opened July 20.
“Supporting professional artists is absolutely essential to our work,” said Dave Lawrence, CEO of the Cultural Council.
“The Artist Innovation Fellowship program is a journey of discovery, creativity, and innovation,” he said in a prepared statement. “The fellowship offers an opportunity for artists to breathe and think outside daily constraints, and to celebrate creativity and the act of making.”
“The showcase provides our audiences with a glimpse of that journey and the creative process,” he said.
Taking a moment to breathe is key for these artists, whose livelihood, health and ability to create art were all impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath.
Riviera Beach-based fiber artist Kianga Jinaki, 64, who was hospitalized in April 2021 with COVID-19 and on oxygen for two months, has long been inspired by the narrative quilts of artist Faith Ringgold.
With the fellowship, she seized the opportunity to study with two other quilt artists she admires – “The Quilt Whisperer,” Janet Green, and mixed media artist Gwendolyn Aqui Brooks (“Black art royalty”).
Her hand-stitched piece of a set of lungs, created with photo transfers and mola techniques, is called I Can Breathe Again, and reflects this time in her life. She says receiving the fellowship was the push she needed to give up her day job as massage therapist and yoga instructor and devote herself full-time to her art.
“COVID-19 was a wake-up call for me to take a look at what I wanted to do,” she says. When she saw the announcement for the fellowship application, she knew, “It was now or never.”
“I can breathe again as a person and as an artist because I am living the life I envisioned,” Jinaki says.
She’s excited to see the showcase and all the fellowship artists’ works together and hope she’s making her four children and parents (although deceased) proud.
“I love telling stories of my culture and heritage and hope that I always create work reflecting who I am and ‘whose’ I am,” says Jinaki, who also makes dolls and mixed-media works.
Incorporating historic and cultural traditions from America and Africa, Jinaki uses traditional and contemporary African textiles as well as textiles she creates by dyeing, sun-printing and appliqué.
Also taking a moment to breathe and give back to her community is Shanique Scott, a former South Bay mayor (2014-20) and city commissioner, choreographer and dancer. Scott, 40, runs Ascension 33 Dance Studio in Belle Glade, and is the former aristic director of Street Beat Inc., a youth-based mentoring and art program in South Bay.
With her studio in jeopardy during the pandemic, Scott, who studied with Debbie Allen in Los Angeles, says the fellowship literally “gave me a breath of fresh air.”
“The pandemic put a financial strain on my small business,” she says. “This grant allowed me to keep pushing, to keep creating and to keep being inspired.”
The result? African-inspired dance pieces I’m Tired, and Finding Your Way Back, an homage to Beyoncé’s 2019 hit “Find Your Way Back.”
In addition to choreographing and teaching dance, Scott aspires to offer more to her underserved students, including social, financial and life skill-sets.
Passionate about her calling, Scott, who comes from a large extended family, credits her faith and community for inspiring her to create and give back.
“I love the creative process — seeing an idea crystallize from a caterpillar to a butterfly — that brings me joy,” she says. “All my work comes from personal experiences.”
For actor and singer Beth Dimon, 66, breathing is a prerequisite for song.
In California for a play she was performing in, Dimon, a four-time Carbonell winner, was “shocked and happy” to get the call notifying her of the fellowship.
“I was floored,” she remembers.
She chose and recorded four songs from four decades of the American Songbook — George Gershwin’s 1926 “Someone to Watch Over Me” and his 1937 “They Can’t Take That Away from Me”; the 1944 Johnny Mercer and Harold Arlen hit, “Accentuate the Positive”; and Frank Sinatra’s 1964 hit “Fly Me to the Moon” — as a tribute to her late husband, juxtaposed with videos of world events including the two world wars, the Great Depression and the Korean War.
She created a collaboration with musicians and a videographer and says she is a collaborator at heart.
“Art should be experienced collectively,” she says. “To experience with others is a different experience than experiencing something alone. Watching Netflix alone at home is a different experience than sitting in a theater with 200 people experiencing the same feelings at the same time.
“Theater is a reflective art form,” says Dimon, who admires actors Judi Dench and the late Geraldine Page. “And without reflection, we lose our ethics.
“It’s important to slow down, watch a play and have it promote a thought or feeling in us so we can take a moment to breathe,” she says. “Otherwise, we’re just reacting.”
Dimon has words of advice for other artists.
“Keep creating,” Dimon says. “That’s how we get through life — creating beauty while the rest of the world is spinning around us.
“Music and art are a great balm for that.”
The Artist Innovation Fellowship Showcase exhibition is on view through Sept. 9 at Cultural Council’s Main Gallery at its downtown Lake Worth Beach headquarters. Summer hours are Tuesday through Saturday from noon to 5 p.m., as well as the second Saturday of each month from noon to 5 p.m. Admission is free.