NEA awards Yuba Sutter Arts & Culture elusive grant

Jun. 9—In March 2021, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) introduced its American Rescue Plan awards, a series of grants and funding to help struggling artists and organizations recover from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Last November, the NEA announced it had $20.2 million in store for 66 art agencies for the purpose of re-granting to local artists and art organizations.

Yuba Sutter Arts & Culture (YSAC) was one of the 66 selected for this award out of 7,500 eligible applicants. The total amount received was $150,000, $100,000 of which will be distributed to six local individual artists and nine nonprofit arts organizations.

"I think it's the first in terms of size and category," said David Read, YSAC's executive director. "We've done a couple of these smaller ones, but this is the biggest one we've done where it's literally a re-granting grant."

Read hinted toward an even bigger grant to come in collaboration with other Northern California arts councils, but for now this is the largest. A portion of the total grant will be kept by YSAC for overhead and administrative costs, and to be used at the group's discretion with the possibility of future "microgrants."

"We're doing well by doing good," said Read excitedly. "It's the kind of thing I feel a responsibility to do, and to do more. We'll continue looking for these kinds of opportunities to try and help support our local arts organizations and individual artists."

Individual artists

Aaron Burks, U.S. Navy veteran, was among the six individual artists chosen to receive a portion of the grant. Burks described the award as a "God send" and will be using these funds to further his creative maritime endeavors. His newest work will come during a two to three week journey aboard the The Lady Washington, in which he will serve as a crew member and create art unique to that ship.

"While I'm on board I'll probably be doing a lot of drawing," said Burks. "When I get back to the studio I'll take those drawings and make bigger pieces of art out of them."

Once complete, the pieces will be displayed by YSAC during Novembers' Veterans Day events. Most of the work will be on sale to the public and one will be donated to Lady Washington herself. Burks has loved drawing and painting since he was a child and said his time as a sailor in the Navy served as a big inspiration.

"The sea gets under your skin and it sticks with you forever," added Burks.

Burks is also working on another project which involves the surviving veterans of Pearl Harbor.

Carob Bradlyn, a local arts educator, received a grant to make a large triptych ceramic tile mural in downtown Yuba City. She will be making this mural with her advanced ceramics students and Ceramics Club students from Yuba City High School. Bradlyn feels using ceramics as a medium makes public art unique and has already created several similar murals at Feather River Fish Hatchery, Coleman Fish Hatchery, and Yuba City High School.

"I feel honored to receive this grant," said Bradlyn. "Making public art with students helps teach about connecting learning with the community they live in. We will make a piece of art that will represent our community for our community."

Professional muralist Madelyne Templeton will work with students to design and create more on-campus murals.

"It's an honor and a privilege to be given this opportunity to use my talents as an artist to give to others with this grant," said Templeton. "The opportunity this provides will impact my experience as a full-time artist to share my talents with a local community. ... Art is what helped me to communicate and to learn. I believe this is an excellent opportunity to give back to the city that supported me as a child."

Patricia V. Davis, screenwriter and producer for the locally filmed "Lyvia's House," said she had grown tired of Hollywood tropes depicting the people who live in rural communities as either Leatherface or John Boy Walton. Her connection to the area comes from her husband whose family has owned and operated a rice farm in Sutter County for four generations.

"I cried when I heard the news," said Davis. "We are so passionate about our film, 'Lyvia's House,' which is set in and shot in the Yuba-Sutter-Colusa community. As an independent film, it needs all the financial support it can get. The grant came at a time when we were running low on money for post-production expenses."

The other individual artists included in the re-grant award include Kevin Belcastro, a participant in last year's Yuba Sutter Short Film Festival who will be helping other student-led film productions, and Pam Nowak, chairperson of Yuba City High School's Art Department. Nowak will be using her funds to create an after-school art program for English as a second language students.

Nonprofit arts organizations

YS Oratorio Society received a re-grant in the amount of $10,000 and will be using these funds to further its programs and provide scholarships, lessons, and instruments to young talented musicians in the community. It will also sponsor some guest artists from out of the area to perform with the YS Symphony.

"The YS Oratorio Society has been in existence for over 80 years," said Chris Kersting, vice president of the YS Oratorio Society. "We are totally dependent upon donations from individuals and from sponsors. So finances are always challenging. We are thrilled to receive this grant which will allow us to increase our musical offerings for our community and increase our outreach to youth musicians."

Louise Miller is the principal for Yuba Environmental Science (YES) Charter Academy in Oregon House.

"YES students and staff are inspired by the natural beauty of the Oak Woodland Habitat that surrounds our school, and by the rivers and mountains that are close by," said Miller. "At YES we believe that art is essential to connecting STEM, (Science Technology, Engineering, and Math), to the human experience. We work to integrate art into environmental science projects in order to provide students multiple opportunities to create, present, respond and connect to others and to the natural world."

This grant will help the school share its student environmental science work with the community through art as well as supply the needed materials for creative projects that seek solutions to environmental issues.

The Alliance for Hispanic Advancement will continue youth mariachi and folklorico dance programs and expand Latinx exhibits at the Sutter County Museum, and the museum will create four large scale multicultural murals inside its main gallery.

Camptonville Community Center's grant will help with pandemic recovery and offset backed up overhead and administrative costs. Tri County Diversity will install a professional art gallery display system and create an LGBTQ+ history and culture themed mural in their facility in Marysville. Yuba Sutter Master Chorale aims to mitigate the impacts COVID had on the organization and increase its marketing efforts to rebuild the choir's size and attendance. Finally, Yuba City Youth Ballet is set to create an original local production of "The Nutcracker."