Tanne Foundation 2020 Artist Awards Announced

The Tanne Foundation has announced the recipients of its 2020 awards. Now in its twenty-first year, the foundation's mission is to underscore the importance of supporting individual artists with unrestricted funding. The award acknowledges the remarkable dedication and creativity of artists in all disciplines and from all sections of the country.

This year the Tanne Foundation awards, totaling $81,000, honor five artists as well as three artist-run organizations in recognition of their artistic achievements.

Garrett Turner, Florence, AL, is an actor, singer, poet, and playwright. He writes at the intersection of moral courage and joy. He is currently writing a play, An Elegy For Patriarchy, about a young Black man stuck between monogamy and a hard place, and a musical Eleanor: A Church Story about a Black girl from Tennessee who stages a mini revolution in her own church when they ban her from preaching because she is a girl. Turner has performed across the United States in venues such as the National Black Theatre, Baltimore Center Stage, Miami New Drama, and True Colors.

Jose Villalobos, San Antonio, TX, is an artist working in sculpture and performance. He grew up on the U.S./Mexico border and was raised in a conservative family. His art explores the challenges he faced as a gay man growing up between traditional Mexican customs and American mores. Villalobos protests the toxicity of machismo through the use of objects that reflect the norteño culture such as boots and cowboy hats. He playfully and pointedly deconstructs their masculine symbolism by literally taking them apart and adding glitzy rhinestones and fringe. Although new forms are created, the objects express the battle between self-acceptance and assimilation.

Mobius, Inc., Boston, MA, is a non-profit, tax-exempt, artist-run organization. Founded in 1977, Mobius's mission is to generate, shape, and test experimental art in all media. It is known for incorporating a wide range of visual, performing, and media arts into innovative live performances, video, installation, and intermedia work. The Mobius Artists Group consists of artists from all disciplines who program their own work and that of guest artists. They are committed to structuring environments that foster projects incorporating this wide range of disciplines by working with other artists from different geographical regions.

Non-Event, Inc., Boston, MA, is a nonprofit, tax-exempt organization that presents experimental, electronic, improvised, and new music concerts to audiences in and around greater Boston, Massachusetts. Active since 2001, the curatorial group of Non-Event has put together over 350 concerts by international, national, and local artists in a wide variety of spaces around the city. In recent years, the group has increasingly focused on organizing site-responsive sound performances in acoustically unusual, non-traditional spaces.

Out of Hand Theater, Atlanta, GA, was started in 2001 to create a new kind of theater whose mission is to spark conversation to build a better world. They work at the intersection of art, social justice, and civic engagement, by using the tools of theater to promote anti-racism and economic justice in collaboration with community partners. Their Shows in Homes series address issues such as gun violence, and mass incarceration. Equitable Dinners: Lift Every Voice, a monthly, online conversation series on racial equity featuring art, experts, and small-group conversations, is presented in partnership with The King Center, and other civil rights groups. Creative Kids programs help close the opportunity gap for low-income and minority students.