New Jersey State Arts Council Awards 21 Artist Fellowships

The New Jersey State Council on the Arts held a public meeting on Tuesday, February 28th at the Mile Square Theatre in Hoboken and voted on the 2017 Individual Artist Fellowship Awards. The State Arts Council's 1st Vice Chair Sharon Burton Turner remarked, "The Fellowship program is one of the many ways the Council seeks to help New Jersey artists strengthen their careers and to make it just a little easier to get in to the studio - whatever kind of studio that may be - and get to work."

The Fellowships are competitive awards to New Jersey artists in 12 different disciplines which rotate each year, and are granted based on an anonymous panel review process focused exclusively on artistic quality. The program is carried out in partnership with the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation. This year's award winners are artists working in the categories of Choreography, Music Composition, Poetry and Sculpture.

"Over the past four decades these Fellowship Awards have become a metaphor for our mission," said Council Executive Director, Nick Paleologos. "By recognizing our most talented artists we celebrate the truth-tellers in our midst. And by so doing, we honor the most cherished value of our state and nation - freedom of expression."

The New Jersey State Council on the Arts, created in 1966, is a division of the NJ Department of State. The Council was established to encourage and foster public interest in the arts; enlarge public and private resources devoted to the arts; promote freedom of expression in the arts; and facilitate the inclusion of art in every public building in New Jersey. The Council receives direct appropriations from the State of New Jersey through a dedicated, renewable Hotel/Motel Occupancy fee, as well as competitive grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. To learn more about the Council, please visit www.artscouncil.nj.gov.