Exhibit to Honor Artist Innovation Recipients

(PRESS RELEASE)_July 11, 2023 (Lake Worth Beach, Fla.) -- The Cultural Council for Palm Beach County is honoring the work of its 2022 Artist Innovation Fellowship recipients with a luminous showcase and exhibition this summer.

The Cultural Council created the Artist Innovation Fellowship Program to support the creative individuals who form the core of Palm Beach County’s cultural sector. A program for professional artists across all disciplines, the 2022 fellows are Elizabeth Dimon (actor, West Palm Beach), Kianga Jinaki (visual artist, Riviera Beach), Henriett Michel (visual artist, Palm Beach Gardens), Yvette Norwood-Tiger (musician, Wellington), Shanique Scott (choreographer, South Bay), and Carin Wagner (visual artist, Palm Beach Gardens, who is also one of two 2022-2023 South Florida Cultural Consortium grantees for Palm Beach County).

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​Slated for Thursday, July 20, from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m., the free, one-of-a-kind showcase and reception will celebrate each of the six artists’ journeys over the past year and include live performances and the chance to meet the artists. The all-female exhibition will feature new work, photographs, videos and other artistic expressions. The exhibition will remain on display in the Cultural Council’s Main Gallery through September 9.

“Supporting professional artists is absolutely essential to our work,” said Dave Lawrence, the Cultural Council’s president and CEO. “The Artist Innovation Fellowship program is a journey of discovery, creativity, and innovation. 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.”

The Artist Innovation Fellowship is unique among professional development opportunities as it focuses on personal creative growth and the belief that an entire community will benefit through investments in creative individuals. The program is designed to address the pursuit of innovation in either existing avenues of creative expression or through the pursuit of new ideas and projects without the constraints of budgets or specific project outcomes.

“This is an opportunity for mid-career artists who are established and want to take the next step in their development,” said Jessica Ransom, the Cultural Council’s director of artist services and curator of the exhibition. “This program has provided a chance for artists to fulfill dreams that they’ve had for a while and just haven’t had the chance to pursue.”

The Artist Innovation Fellowship Program included funding for six $7,500 fellowships in 2022. Each fellow spent the past year exploring new ideas, new or familiar avenues of artistic expression, apprenticeships, conducting research or receiving instruction, culminating in the exhibition and performance showcase.

Selected by a regional panel of discipline-specific arts professionals, applicants were evaluated according to the quality of the applicant’s artistic work, the strength of their proposed fellowship activities and its relation to their work, and the intended impact on the applicant and his/her work. Fellowships were awarded to applicants who demonstrate a sustained level of accomplishment, commitment, and artistic excellence.

The 2022 group was preceded by Palm Beach County-based professional artists Anthony Burks, Sr. (visual artist), Amy Gross (visual artist), Isabel Gouveia (visual artist), Joshua Lubben (musician) and Donna Murray (choreographer/dancer), who were awarded inaugural fellowships when the program launched in 2020.

The Artist Innovation Fellowship Showcase exhibition will take place in the 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. To RSVP for the July 20 opening reception, visit https://www.palmbeachculture.com/council-events/.