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The Maine Arts Commission Individual Artist Fellows - Fiscal Year 2008

 

	Molly Neptune Parker 2008 Traditional Arts Fellow.

Molly Neptune Parker, 2008
Traditional Arts Fellow

Molly Neptune Parker is a Passamaquoddy tribal elder who began making baskets as a small child, learning from her mother and grandmother. She has served as a former council member Lieutenant Governor for the tribe, and the President of the Maine Indian Basketmakers Alliance.

In teaching about basketmaking she philosophizes about the values she believes in—respect for nature and harmony with it. Basketmaking to her is a way of keeping the community healthy. Her baskets are displayed in the Smithsonian Institute of Natural History, the Hudson Museum and the Abbe Museum. She teaches an annual week-long class in basketmaking at Gould Academy, as well as workshops at the Abbe Museum and the Downeast Heritage Center.

 

	Karen Montanaro 2008 Performing Arts Fellow. Photo by Aaron Flacke.

Karen Montanaro, 2008
Performing Arts Fellow

Karen Hurll Montanaro, of Casco, is a solo-performer, an award-winning choreographer, and the innovator of "mime-dance" (the fusion of two classical art forms).  Karen studied ballet with Madeline Cantarella Culpo (Cantarella School of Dance), Andrea Stark (former director of the Ram Island Dance Company), and on scholarship with the Joffrey Ballet School.  She danced professionally with the Ohio Ballet and the Darmstadt Opera Ballet in Germany.  Upon returning to the United States, Karen danced principal roles with the Portland Ballet Company.  For more than a decade, Karen toured and taught internationally with mime master, Tony Montanaro.  She currently tours the world with her one-woman show entitled “Tanzspiel."  Ms. Montanaro is a teaching artist and offers residencies in movement, mime and dance in public and private schools throughout the United States.

The jurors for the fellowship in the performing arts, Simone Fontanelli, Buffy Miller and Janis Stevens were overwhelmingly moved by Karen's work. Her submission reflected a clear manifestation of decades of devotion to the discipline and evidence of continued growth exemplified in the culmination of a new art form which merges dance and mime.

For more information on Karen Montanaro and her works of art, please refer to her listing in the Maine Arts Commission's Artist Directory.

 

Jeffrey Thomson, 2008
Literary Arts Fellow

	Jeffrey Thomson 2008 Literary Arts Fellow. Photo by Jennifer Eriksen.

Poet Jeffrey Thomson, of Farmington, is currently Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Maine Farmington. He received a PhD. in Creative Writing from the University of Missouri, a MA in English and Creative Writing also from the University of Missouri and a BA in English and Creative Writing from Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois. He is the author of several books, most recently including The Country of Lost Sons, Renovation and Blind Desire. His published poems, creative nonfiction, critical essays, conference papers, book reviews and multimedia projects are voluminous.

Jeffrey's recent honors and awards include the 2006 Individual Creative Artists Fellowship from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, the 2005 Literature Fellowship in Poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Tennessee Williams Scholarship to the Sewanee Writers Conference in 2005.

Jeffrey was recognized by the Literary Arts Fellowship review panel: Major Jackson, Mimi White and Jim Kelly for his poem Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge. The panel described Jeff's Poetry as "thinking that becomes sensuous."

For more information on Jeffrey thomson and his works of art, please refer to his listing in the Maine Arts Commission's Artist Directory.

 

	Sam Van Aken 2008 Visual Arts Fellow.

Sam Van Aken, 2008
Visual Arts Fellow

Sam Van Aken, of Portland, arrived in Maine in 2001 to work at the University of Maine at Orono as an assistant professor of art teaching sculpture. Presently an associate professor of Art at Syracuse University, Sam's heart and home remain in Maine where he insists the fishing is better.

Sam Van Aken received two BA's in Communication and Fine Arts from Slippery Rock University in Pennsylvania, Masters level coursework at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Poznan, Poland and a Masters in Fine Arts from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Sam was also honored in 2005 by a solo installation at Colby College Currents2 program, and received a Maine Arts Commission Good Idea Grant.In 2006 he received the Association of International Critics of Art Exhibition Award. Again in 2006 he was honored by the Dallas Video Art Festival, was visiting artist at the l'Ecole Nationale Superieure d'Arts de Cergy-Pointoise, France, and received a University of Maine Research and Development Grant.

In 2007 he was artist in residence in Tacheles Art Center in Berlin, Germany and also received the jurors Award for Outstanding Artistic Achievement, Best in Show at the Portland Museum of Art 2007 Biennial.