Advanced Artist Award Supports Artistic Exploration And Innovation

FOR RELEASE
January 20, 2010

WHITEHORSE – The Advanced Artist Award will provide $40,000 toward 11 innovative projects being developed by Yukon visual, performing and literary artists.“The Advanced Artist Award encourages artists to experiment and take risks, which is essential to their growth as professionals,” Tourism and Culture Minister Elaine Taylor said. “By facilitating exploration by artists, the award assists Yukon artists in creating innovative works that are gaining them recognition from their contemporaries, and appreciation from audiences in Yukon and elsewhere.”

For dancer Michelle Fisher, the award will support the development of a new work involving collaboration with other dance, film and theatre artists. Fisher and her collaborators will be creating four interdisciplinary pieces, each representing one of Yukon’s four seasons.

“As a professional dance artist, I have decided to take the chance of creating an original piece inspired by my first year in the Yukon, a work of art that I can feel passionate about,” Fisher said. “There is a risk in creating your own work, but the support I receive from the Advanced Artist Award makes it a risk worth taking.”

In another project funded through the award, writer Lance Blomgren from Dawson City will be taking an original approach to the ghost story genre.

“The Advanced Artist Award will allow me the extra time to work on a series of three contemporary ghost stories towards a full length book,” Blomgren said. “These stories will extend the themes of a number of recent writings which have gathered around notions of absence, ethereality and haunting as metaphors for the more concrete human conditions of memory and loss.”

The Advanced Artist Award is funded by Lotteries Yukon and is administered by the Department of Tourism and Culture. Submissions are adjudicated by an independent committee.

The next intake for the Advanced Artist Award is April 1. Artists interested in applying are encouraged to contact the fund administrator at 667-8789 or toll-free from the communities at 1-800-661-0408, extension 8789.

For more information about the Advanced Artist Award visit www.tc.gov.yk.ca

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See backgrounder below.

Contact:

Emily Younker
Cabinet Communications
867-633-7961
emily.younker[at]gov.yk.ca

Heather LeDuc
Communications, Tourism & Culture
867-667-5318
heather.leduc[at]gov.yk.ca

List of Advanced Artist Award October 1, 2009 Recipients

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