Danville’s Community Arts Center receives $10,000 NEA grant

Will support art education for local high school students

DANVILLE, Ky. (Dec. 16, 2015) — The Community Arts Center in Danville has been selected to receive  a $10,000 National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Challenge America Grant in support of its Art Under Pressure project.

Art Under Pressure will serve nearly 200 students at Danville High School. The project features a coordinated series of printmaking events facilitated by guest artists and will culminate in a public steamroller printmaking event. Printmaking artists Rodolfo Salgado, Jr. and Susanna Crum of Calliope Arts in Louisville will lead an exploration of large-scale printmaking with youth in Danville, Kentucky. The finished prints will be hung as a public art installation in the community.

“As an artist, business owner, and teacher, I look forward to sharing my experiences with students to help them understand the many ways that one can build a career centered in fine art,” said Crum. “Students will learn how to plan large-scale imagery together, manage their time through the process, and become proficient enough to introduce friends, family, and community members to printmaking processes themselves. Through this process of learning, planning, creating, and sharing, students will experience art as a way to engage viewers from all walks of life, and to know what it’s like to work with others to execute a complex, ambitious project.”

The Art Under Pressure project encompasses multiple facets, including:

• Education — The project will bring a pair of professional printmaking artists from Louisville to Danville to work with students at the high school over the course of several months. Students will be learning about large-scale printmaking; everything from sketching designs to carving the blocks to image transfer techniques. Seniors will also be taking a field trip to Louisville to see the artists’ studio.
• Community participation — To tie into the project at Danville High School, the Arts Center is offering printmaking opportunities to the public in the spring of 2016. The Arts Center will offer classes for adults and children and host a public lecture by guest artist Susanna Crumm. There will be a big public event in the spring that is the culmination of the project. A steamroller will be used to make prints onto large rolls of canvass using blocks the students carve and smaller blocks carved by community members who take classes. The event will be free and open to the public.
• Exhibits — The large finished prints produced by the students will be displayed in downtown Danville, and the May 2016 exhibit at the Arts Center will be focused on printmaking.

The NEA Challenge America program awarded 130 grants totaling 1,300,000 during its fall 2015 round of grant-making. Grants were awarded to organizations all across the country. The Community Arts Center was the only organization in Kentucky to be awarded an NEA Challenge America grant.