Oolite Arts has honored New World School of the Arts visual arts alumni with The Ellies this year, recognizing five with the 2022 Creator Awards, which support individual artists with grants of $2,500 to $25,000 to realize a significant visual arts project that will advance their careers. One NWSA alum, now adjunct teacher at New World School of the Arts, received the 2022 Teacher Travel Grant, which provides K-12 art teachers with $5,000 in funds for travel that will ultimately enrich their classroom curriculum.
“It’s gratifying to see a former student of ours getting the recognition he deserves at this early stage of his career. He will greatly benefit from this opportunity and will bring back his experiences and knowledge to the classroom.”
– Maria Martinez-Cañas, Associate Professor, Photography
Now in its fifth year, The Ellies – Miami’s visual arts awards – celebrates individual artists who are the backbone of Miami’s visual arts community. Oolite Arts provides local artists with free studio space, exhibition opportunities, direct support and programming needed to advance their careers. They also offer programming to the surrounding neighborhood and the wider community to help them better understand, and create, contemporary art.
The Ellies were announced for the following NWSA alumni:
CREATOR AWARDS
Amanda Linares (NWSA 2020): Yo vengo de todas partes, y hacia todas partes voy
Immersive installation spurred by the artists’ discovery of her paternal great grandfather’s stone home in Spain, which explores themes of immigration, interconnection, and identity.
Coralina Rodriguez Meyer (NWSA 2000): Hachuela
Exhibition of documentary sculptures and moving images created in collaboration with reproductive health crisis survivors, allies, and justice leaders as a healing sanctuary for black, brown, and queer bodies.
Ema Ri (NWSA 2017): Flower Columns
To continue the thread of love, time, and memory by creating columns made with resin and dehydrated flowers from the artwork “Here with You”
Johann C. Muñoz (NWSA 2012): Entre el estampido de los cohetes y la música de varias bandas
A transdisciplinary performance chronicling the journey of Numa Equís, an accordion player from Magdalena, Colombia, who migrated to the U.S., and her transforming relationship with musical traditions and identity
T. Eliott Mansa (NWSA 1995 & 2000): Room for the Living / Room for the Dead
An exhibition that recreates the sunken living rooms popular in the 1970s as a shrine to the dead and is activated as a gathering space to play cards and dominos or bring flowers and photographs for their departed loved ones.
TEACHER TRAVEL GRANT
Jose Luis Garcia (NWSA 2014), NWSA adjunct faculty
“Thank you to Oolite Arts for granting me the opportunity to travel to New York to visit museums and archives and attend photography workshops that will help spark my students’ interest in black and white darkroom photography and other non-digital photographic processes. I can’t wait to share my experience and new skills with my high school students.”
– Jose Luis Garcia
Aspiring artists in the NWSA visual arts division can join other exceptionally talented students as they engage in the pursuit of their artistic career in the visual, graphic, or electronic arts. Trained by nationally renowned practicing artists, students at New World School of the Arts are encouraged to develop a personal, artistic, and aesthetic vision while mastering their technical skills in traditional and new media. Students are allowed to explore new paths while at the same time being exposed to the work of both classical and contemporary masters. Through disciplined training in traditional and new media, students develop new skills and refine others while gaining invaluable understanding of the roles of art and design in society. Areas of concentration include Art & Technology, Drawing, Graphic Design, Painting, Photography, and Sculpture. Information about the NWSA visual arts program at 305-237-3620.
A Florida center of excellence in the visual and performing arts, New World School of the Arts is an educational partnership of Miami-Dade County Public Schools, Miami Dade College, and University of Florida. NWSA provides a comprehensive program of artistic, creative, and academic development through a curriculum that reflects our community and the rich multicultural state of Florida. Through our partners NWSA confers the high school diploma, Associate of Arts degree, and Bachelor of Fine Arts and Bachelor of Music degrees in programs accredited by the National Association of Schools of Dance, Music, Theater and Art & Design. NWSA’s rigorous eight-year curriculum and conservatory-style teaching has empowered students in our community and our nation to become leaders in the arts for more three decades.
Information about New World School of the Arts at 305-237-3135 or nwsa.mdc.edu.