Contemporary Arts

Three Individual Artist Fellowships honor artistic excellence

The Maine Arts Commission’s Individual Artist Fellowship program honors excellence among visual, performing and literary artists in Maine. This year, for the second year in a row, one artist in each field was selected for a fellowship and awarded $13,000. The sole criterion for the fellowship is artistic excellence. It is the agency’s most prestigious individual artistic award.


	Lance Edmands, Kennebunk, Maine, 2005 Performing Arts Fellow.

Lance Edmands, Kennebunk, Maine,
2005 Performing Arts Fellow

Performing Arts: There were 28 submissions in the performing arts ranging from mime to new media. Verna Bloom, actress, David Dorfman, choreographer/dancer/musician and Mosanabu Masikemiya, musician and Director of the Arcady Music festival graciously and astutely served as jurors. With some interesting discussion regarding the apples to oranges construct of the fellowship and if film was indeed a performing art or more aptly a visual art, they agreed the film submission of Lance Edmands was the most compelling and artful.

Lance was born and raised in Maine and in 2004 graduated from New York University’s Tish School of the Arts where he received numerous accolades. His thesis film, Vacationland, was named winner of the 2004 Warner Brothers Film Production Award as well as the Clive Davis Award for music in film.

In June of 2004, Lance’s film The Paperboy was nominated for a Wasserman King Foundation award and a screening before the Director’s Guild of America. The Paperboy also won Best Actor (Morgan Montalvo) and Morning Glories garnered an Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography award at the First Run Film Festival. In 2002, Lance studied directing with Russian filmmaker Boris Frumin in France and in 2001, won the Stephen J. Hawkins Sound Image award for his work with sound design.

Lance has worked on feature films alongside such acclaimed Indie directors as Todd Solondz (Welcome to the Dollhouse, Happiness) and Jim Jarmusch (Dead Man, Mystery Train) and most recently, Broken Flowers with Bill Murray and Sharon Stone, which won the Grand Prix at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival. Additionally in 2005, Lance received the Jane Morrison Award administered by the Maine Community Foundation.


	Meredith Hall, Pownal, Maine, 2005 Literary Fellow.

Meredith Hall, Pownal, Maine, 2005 Literary Fellow

Literary Arts: There were 82 applications in the literary arts. Jurors, in all cases are from out of state and exemplary in their fields. They blind review all submissions. Major Jackson, Abby Fruct and Arthur Bradford read 82 applications and came to consensus on a piece of creative non-fiction, Without a Map, written by Meredith Hall of Pownal, Maine. Meredith is assistant director of the writing program at the University of New Hampshire and recipient of a Pushcart Prize and the Gift of Freedom Award from A Room of Her Own Foundation among others. She is a graduate of Bowdoin College with high honors and awards. The following is an excerpt from Without a Map.

It is my birthday. I want ritual. This place in Lebanon is called Jbeil, “the beautiful place.” I wash slowly in the Mediterranean Sea at dawn, dipping my head back into the cool, still water, an anointment. I wash my dress, and sit for the rest of the day on a long smooth ledge which falls away into the water. I have been feeling the silence acutely, the absolute lack of attachment. It frightens me, because I know I have slipped into the deepest current and may not come back. But I like the narcotic of walking and will not stop. I know the roads to Damascus and Latakia and Tyre. The walking claims ground as mine, and I am as much at home here as I have been anywhere since I was sixteen.

Between me and my mother, me and my father, me and my castaway child, beyond this quiet sea, is the dark and raging Atlantic. The sun on the Mediterranean stuns the mind. I am blank. I am here, in this beautiful place. I am twenty-three. I am alone. I have nothing.

Andrea Sulzer, Brunswick, Maine,
2005 Visual Arts Fellow

Visual Arts: The 58 applications in the visual arts were reviewed by Robert Gober, Sarah McEarnery and initially, Judy Pfaff who was later replaced by Linda Earle because of the loss of a dear friend. Jurors were sent the materials in advance of the meeting, reviewing the images again and again before finally selecting Andrea Sulzer for the award.

Andrea has recently returned to Woolwich, Maine from Glasgow, Scotland where she completed an MFA at the Glasgow School of Art. Sulzer began her accumulation of academic credits at Smith College where she majored in fine arts. She holds a BA in French from New York University, an MA in English as a Second Language from Colombia University, an MS in Forest Biology from the University of Maine and has attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. She has exhibited her work around the world and will mount an exhibition at the State House in Augusta this winter.


	Andrea Sulzer, Brunswick, Maine, 2005 Visual Arts Fellow.


	Once I Thought I Saw You, Graphite On Paper, 36" x 30" 2003, Andrea Sulzer.


	Head, Charcoal On Paper, 39" x 35", 2004, Andrea Sulzer.