By Michele Henry
A former Ryerson student is one of 16 across Ontario and Quebec to receive a new arts grant, awarded to help students in the visual arts bring a project in its final stages to fruition.
Dave Kemp, a photography student who graduated from Ryerson last May, received $5,200 from the du Maurier Arts council in August. Du Maurier just announced the winners Monday, to build momentum for 2002’s grant campaign.
“It was a good day when I received the letter telling me I got it,” Kemp said.
Kemp’s project is a series of 10 photographs of life-sized nudes, taken with a homemade pinehole camera. He took five different exposures of each body part and overlapped them to form one image. He is using the money to mount, frame, exhibit, and to promote his work. “If it wasn’t for their grant I wouldn’t be able to mount or show my work,” he said.
The grant will help aspiring artists finish a project and help them present it to the public, said Caoline Reny, a sponsorship associate with du Maurier. “[It will] get them out there and help them launch their careers,” she said.
Reny hopes to award the grant annually to students in either a master’s program or in their final year in visual arts, cinema or multimedia studies.
Reny said that when it came to Kemp’s project, the panel of judges — experts in various artistic disciplines — were unanimous in their decision.
Eleven grants were awarded in Quebec and five in Ontario. Students in Ontario were given $30,000 out of a possible $135,000 to share, divided according to the budget applicants filled out as part of their applications.
Until last year, the du Maurier Arts Council awarded grants only to private corporations. This year it broadened its criteria to allow talented but broke artists like Kempt to get their hands on some cash.
A sample of Dave Kemp’s work. The Ryerson photography student received $5,200 grant to produce similar nudes. The final images will be 20 inches wide by five and a half feet high and viewers will get the full-frontal view. Kemp took the photos with a specially designed homemade pinhole camera. Photo courtesy Dave Kemp
Leave a Reply