Stanford Alumni Arts Grant

About

This grant supported the burgeoning arts career by a recent Stanford graduates with up to $5,000 toward a public production, exhibit, or other original work in any creative arts discipline. This grant was offered from 2015-2019 and was administered by the Office of the Vice President for the Arts.

The Stanford Alumni Arts Grant was made possible by generous gifts from individuals and the Drs. Ben and A. Jess Shenson Fund.

The Alumni Arts Grant program is no longer active.

Visit our Next Steps page for resources to support your artistic career.

Contact:

Sabrina Wilensky (she/her)
Director of Program Operations and Project Management
Office of the Vice President for the Arts
swilensk@stanford.edu

Alumni Arts Grant Recipients (2015-2019)

2019 Grantees

Photo: Frank Chen

Joel Chapman, Weston Gaylord, Matt Herrero, Jessia Hoffman, and Ken Savage
Staged Concert Reading of Gravity - A New(tonian) Musical

Gravity - A New(tonian) Musical is a fantastical, historical comedy created by five Stanford alums. When physicist Sophie accidentally time-travels to the year 1666, she encounters Isaac Newton on the brink of discovering gravity—but inadvertently prevents Isaac’s famous falling-apple epiphany, setting history dangerously off course. To return home, Sophie must navigate the world of 1666, where Natural Philosophers are the musical celebrities of their day, emerging Enlightenment thinkers have one shot to fast-track themselves to fame, and women fight to leave their mark on history.

Gravity was initially supported by a generous grant from Stanford Arts after the writers won the inaugural Stanford 72-Hour Musical Project in January 2015. The musical presented its first staged readings in October 2015 and March 2016 at Z Space’s Z Below. The writers were invited to perform "Gravity Showdown" at Stanford+Connects in May 2016, and in August 2016, Gravity joined the TheatreWorks Silicon Valley New Works Festival as the inaugural Next Generation Musical. Gravity was honored as a finalist for the O’Neill National Musical Theatre Conference in 2017. Two songs from the show were featured at A Little New Music in Los Angeles in August 2017. Gravity - A New(tonian) Musical will be presented as a concert staged reading on March 17-18, 2019 co-produced by SFBATCO at the Brava Theater in San Francisco.

Bios

Joel Chapman is a conductor, bass-baritone, and songwriter in the Bay Area. He sings professionally with Volti, an SF-based ensemble that performs and animates completely new works, as well as Endersnight, a choir specializing in Renaissance music. A sought-after low bass, Joel has been made appearances with groups peppered throughout the Bay Area, including the San Mateo Masterworks Chorale, Convivium, California Bach Society, and Stanford Chamber Chorale. Music directing credits: Tinderella (premiere, Custom Made Theatre Co) Voices of the Quilt (workshop, Custom Made), Sweeney Todd (SFBATCO), The Last Five Years, Sunday in the Park with George, My Fair Lady (Stanford University). As an educator, he teaches voice privately and works with the Piedmont Children’s Choir as a conductor and accompanist. Joel is a Stanford graduate and holds a B.A. in Music and M.A. in Music, Science, and Technology. | joelchapmanmusic.com

Weston Gaylord is a librettist, playwright, and mixed-reality creative technologist based in Los Angeles. He has worked to develop and produce narrative VR and AR experiences with Here Be Dragons, FX, The New York Times, Facebook, The United Nations, and the USC Shoah Foundation. His original work for the stage often combines live performance, music, and virtual and augmented reality: Chained: A Victorian Nightmare (Madison Wells Media, premiering 2018), Retrospective (Co.Reality), Lights Out Damn’d Spot (Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics), Ghost in the Machine (San Jose Rep Emerging Artists Lab, Stanford Institute of Design). Lyricist credits include Gravity: A New(tonian) Musical (TheatreWorks New Works Festival ’16) and Gaieties (Ram’s Head Theatrical Society). He holds a B.S. from Stanford University in Symbolic Systems with a focus in Human-Computer Interaction.

Matt Herrero is an actor, singer-songwriter, improviser, and playwright from the Bay Area. As an actor, Matt has shared the stage folks such as Michael Tilson Thomas (San Francisco Symphony) and David Hein and Irene Sankoff (Come From Away). He continues to work as a lead actor and co-author of the original musical, Gravity: A New(tonian) Musical (TheatreWorks, Z Space). His other recent theater credits include: Michael in The Bridges of Madison County (TheatreWorks Silicon Valley); Melchior in Spring Awakening (Stanford); Fedotik in Three Sisters (American Conservatory Theater). Matt has performed his original music up and down the West Coast, and has been featured in songwriting workshops led by Benjamin Scheuer (The Lion) and Casey Lee Hurt (The Unfortunates). Matt holds a B.S. from Stanford University (‘17) in Symbolic Systems with a focus in Computer Music. | mattherrero.com

Jessia Hoffman is a Bay Area-based improv coach, performer, educator, and freelance writer. She has taught, developed, and supported arts programming for TheatreWorks Silicon Valley, Signature Theatre (NYC), BATS Improv, Collective Capital, the Stanford Storytelling Project, Stanford Arts Intensive, and Stanford Improvisors. Select theatre credits: writer/director of SHEILA, an original play (Stanford Arts); co-creator of Gravity: A New(tonian) Musical (TheatreWorks Silicon Valley, Z Space); guest improviser for Un-Scripted Theatre Company; Carolyn in The Bridges of Madison County (TheatreWorks); Lisi in The Man in the Ceiling workshop (TheatreWorks); Tracy Turnblad in Hairspray (Stanford); Dot/Marie in Sunday in the Park with George (Stanford). Jessia aims to use theatre as a vehicle for social change and civic engagement, developing investigative new work. She holds a B.A. from Stanford University in English with a focus in Creative Writing, and Interdisciplinary Honors in the Arts.

Ken Savage is a San Francisco theater director and the Associate Producer at American Conservatory Theater where he produces for the mainstage, M.F.A. acting program, Young Conservatory, and other special projects in the Geary and Strand theaters. He also is the co-producer for A.C.T.'s annual New Strands Festival, in which he has shepherded new works by Lucy Thurber/Casey Lee Hurt, Susan Soon He Stanton/Mina Morita, Dipika Guha/Jeremy Cohen, Christopher Chen/Byron Au Yong, Marisela Treviño Orta, Lucas Kavner, Lauren Yee, Don Nguyen, Dustin Chinn, and Darren Canady. Ken has worked with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, the Public Theater, Arena Stage, CalShakes, TheatreWorks Silicon Valley, and Crowded Fire. He is a Stanford graduate (M.A. Communication with a focus on virtual reality and performance, B.A. Drama) and the recipient of the Silicon Valley Creates Artist Laureate Emerging Artist Award (2015). | kensavageproductions.com

Photo: Leanna Keyes

Leanna Keyes
Two Ladies of Vermont

Two Ladies of Vermont is a new script in development that remixes and modernizes the classic Shakespeare comedy Two Gentlemen of Verona. That early comedy contained many of the dramatic building blocks that would become Romeo and Juliet, but the play’s gender dynamics poison the text to the contemporary audience. Two Ladies takes the successful elements of Shakespeare’s framework and replaces the failures with a compassionate queer and trans take on the competition for love.

This project allows for a weeklong intensive rehearsal process with professional actors. Workshopping and tweaking will occur throughout the week as Leanna works with the talented artists at the Tennessee Shakespeare Company. This culminates in an April 2019 public reading that will be held through her playwriting residency at Crosstown Arts in Memphis, Tennessee.

Bio

Leanna Keyes is a playwright, producer, and designer based in the San Francisco Bay Area and Memphis, Tennessee. She works with a variety of Bay Area organizations devoted to the development of new and reimagined plays, including Playwrights Foundation, The Cutting Ball Theater, and Performance Design Acronym. She will be a playwright in residence at Crosstown Arts in Memphis from February to April 2019.

In 2018, her play Doctor Voynich and Her Children received collegiate productions at Rhodes College and at Stanford University, with more productions coming soon. Previously produced plays including God Herself Could Not Sink This Ship in 2014 and Legal-Tender Loving Care and The Kilogram Play in 2013. She also co-wrote the updated The Real World: Stanford with Olivia Haas, which was produced annually from 2015 to 2017.

Her plays have been studied at universities around the country, including Stanford University, Carnegie Mellon, Rhodes College, Linfield College, the University of Kansas, and Western Carolina University. In 2017, her work was featured at Carnegie Mellon in the curriculum of “American Women Playwrights of the 20th and 21st Centuries.”

Find out more at www.leannakeyes.com

Photo: Raquel Beauchamp

M the Myth
Him to Them

Him to Them is an intergalactic space opera focused on the story of my gender identity transition. Integrating film, fashion, dance, and theater into a thirteen song set, “Him to Them” explores my genderqueer experience. Set in an alien galaxy, the show bends gender norms through visuals, movement, and sound. I “queer” the stage using androgynous neon-colored costumes, mixed-genre choreography, abstract film, oral storytelling, and queerpop music. As our current government tries to set non-negotiable legal definitions of gender and sexuality, this show fights for the freedom of queer and trans existence. I have performed the show at multiple venues/festivals in New York as a work-in-progress, drawing together the LGBTQIA+ community and its allies.

Bio

M the Myth is a genderqueer pop artist who explores gender identity, sexuality, and self-empowerment in their music and live performances. Music Connection Magazine described their music as having “unabashed hookability.” In 2016, they placed 9th in Guitar Center’s nationwide singer-songwriter competition. Their sophomore EP “Holy Stoner” was released in August 2018 and was featured on Deer du Bois, a playlist on Spotify highlighting queer music. M has toured California and New York as a featured act and opened for Leif Garrett at the Whisky A Go Go. They were a Semi-Finalist in the Unsigned Only Music Competition in 2015. M the Myth is known for their vocal prowess, avant-garde visuals, and highly stylized shows integrating film, music, fashion, and dance. They recently placed second in The Bowery Poetry Club’s YourSong Songwriting Competition, and have a residency at Sidewalk Cafe in New York City. M is working on their third EP “Prey” set for a 2019 release.

Photo: Desmond Love

natasha tsukiko
i only know Plenty/F U R U S A T O

i only know Plenty/F U R U S A T O is a hybrid and magical realistic documentary short about the renewal of vows between the artist and her maternal ancestral land. Tsukiko returns to Fukushima seven years after the nuclear explosion cast radiation through the region’s soil and water, to find that the land and her ancestors have been patiently awaiting her return. What ensues is a dynamic conversation that transcends the limitations of linear time, geographic place, and spoken language. As Tsukiko comes to recognize her belonging to a web of living relationships, she begins to tend to the wounds of separation within and around her through collaborative ritual, play, and creation.

Bio

natasha tsukiko is a filmmaker, poet, musician, dancer and energy healer whose work heals, reanimates and celebrates relationships between people, our ancestral lineages, all living creatures and the earth. natasha produced the afrofuturist documentary short Sidelots as a member of the inaugural cohort of the Detroit Narrative Agency, and has had poetry and fiction published in Glimmer Train Magazine and the AK Press anthology Rebellious Mourning: The Collective Work of Grief. they practice Reiki and ear acupuncture therapy, holding those around them with love and restoring balance, ease and peacefulness to the bodies of those with whom they work. natasha is a singer and taiko drummer who has played, performed and toured with the Shintofuturist pop band Tina-Hanaé, the Godaiko Drummers, Stanford Taiko, and the Asian Diasporic Drummers of Detroit, a collective which restores Japanese ceremonial practices to the making and playing of the drum, of which natasha is a co-founder.

Photo: Marcelo Culligan Photography

Rosewater Vigilante
The Lavender Files

The Lavender Files is a radio drama/fiction podcast about black queer romance, mystery, and resistance in a film-noir speculative future. Lavender Black sells anti-surveillance gear under the table in the Independent California, but when their investigation of a disappeared customer leads them to femme (fatale?) Veronica and her missing ex, converging cases reveal Independent California isn’t the safe-haven we were promised. Shrouded organizations vie for power under the cover of fog, and too many questions lead to trouble. After all, have you ever met a Veronica who is good news?

Bio

Rosewater Vigilante is an afrofuturist, floral femme, writer, and forever stage manager at heart. They play with past and future--radio drama and podcasting. Their witchy work mixes mystery and romance in a film noir world of monetized surveillance. Rosewater creates immersive theater and radio stories to chart radical resistance and survival for folks threatened by the administration that will not be named. In 2018, they workshopped The Lavender Files as a resident artist with SAFEhouse for the Performing Arts and staged live readings as part of the 21st annual National Queer Arts Festival (NQAF).

2018 Grantees

Photo: Beverli Alford Photography

Jace Alexander Casey (BA Film & Media Studies), Dead Mall

In this short film, a gay couple spends their day in a virtually abandoned mall. Through their encounters with each other and other shoppers, we learn they are at different stages battling their own homophobia.

Biography

Photo: Sam Ellison

Sam Ellison (MFA Documentary Film), Cheche Lavi (Looking for Life)

A month before the presidential election of 2016, thousands of desperate Haitian refugees appear at the US-Mexico border in Tijuana. Among them are Robens and James, traveling companions whose American dream unravels as a new border wall takes shape on the horizon. CHECHE LAVI is a documentary film about friendship and abandonment in the eye of a geopolitical storm, stretching from the jungles of Brazil through a labyrinth of ICE detention facilities in the United States to a sleepy town on Haiti’s central coast.

Biography

Photo: Kola Shoba

Jessica Lá Rel (BAH African & African American Studies), 28 Hours

Jessica Lá Rel will be collaborating with platinum selling, UK based producer, Troy Miller on her single from her upcoming album entitled War Love. Drawing upon themes of police brutality, state sanctioned violence against Black life, and the tense state of race relations, Jessica and Troy will be weaving together a timely single and performing it in conjunction with Every 28 Hours plays festivals.

Biography

Jessica Lá Rel is an urban contemporary artist putting a fresh spin on soul, house, and r&b. Her 2016 debut EP, Four Freedoms ranked #12 on the UK Soul Charts, and landed her opportunities to perform for Oprah Winfrey, US. Rep John Lewis and Rev. Jesse Jackson. Lá Rel's most recent music videos have gained national attention as they inspire empathy around the issue of police brutality and representation in STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics). Huffington Post recently commented on Lá Rel's work, stating Lá Rel "uses her song and video to provide an anthem for the contemporary movement for Black rights. She is a rising superstar with incredible potential, an artist who inspires, and someone that we should all be looking out for." Lá Rel has opened for Melanie Fiona, Luke James, Omarion, and Angelique Kidjo and has been featured at multiple venues/festivals in California, Atlanta, Washington DC, and Chicago. She is most known for her soaring vocals and thrilling live performances. Jessica is set to release two eps and a culminating album entitled War Love in 2018.

Photo: Garrett Schlesinger

Carly Lave (BA American Studies, Minor in Dance, Honors in the Arts), Artificial Intelligence and the Dancing Body

A.I. is a performance project that explores the interplay between the human body and Artificial Intelligence systems.

Biography

Carly Lave is a Bay Area based choreographer and dancer. She is curious about how behaviors of control, technology, and societal systems confine the body from its full potential. With a background in performance studies and embodied practice as a dancer, her work seeks to question identity and liberate the power of the body. She holds a BA in American Studies and Dance from Stanford University, with Honors in the Arts. She has participated in residencies with organizations such as the San Francisco Conservatory of Dance and SAFEHouse Arts. Her work has presented at ODC, the Joe Goode Annex, through the Mark Foehringer Dance Project, SAFEHouse Arts, and Stanford University. She received her early dance training from Northwest Conservatory of Dance under Anita Mitchell, and later with Portland Festival Ballet, the Joffrey Ballet, San Francisco Conservatory of Dance under Summer Lee Rhatigan, Alex Ketley, Robert Moses, Muriel Maffre, and Diane Frank among others. Learn more at carlylave.com

Photo: Ouree Lee

Ouree Lee (BA Film & Media Studies, Honors in the Arts), state of being

state of being is an experimental documentary that reflects upon my upbringing in Kentucky as a Korean-American woman.

Biography

Photo: Thandie Gula-Ndebele

Elijah Ndoumbé (BA African & African American Studies, BA Feminist Gender and Sexuality Studies), Reimagining the Archive – an Assertion

Reimagining the Archive – an Assertion (2018) is a multi-disciplinary visual project grappling with Black and Queer intimacy, trauma, and memory, within the scope of Ndoumbé’s current geo-political location and community – Cape Town, South Africa. This exhibition is but a part of a much larger tapestry that will continue to be woven as Ndoumbe’s larger project of Black and Queer Diasporic archiving through the lens continues.

Biography

Elijah Ndoumbé is a queer creative of the Black Diaspora who uses writing, film, and photography to challenge the dominant narrative around Black, Brown and Queer bodies as pathologized beings. Ndoumbé received their bachelors in African & African American Studies, and Feminist, Gender & Sexuality, at Stanford University. Ndoumbé has worked for organizations such as Warner Bros., artists such as Lena Waithe, and developed content for private clients, the Sex Workers’ Education and Advocacy Taskforce (SWEAT), Color of Change, IDA, as well as other independent organizations. They are currently based out of Woodstock where they work closely with SWEAT to produce visual content around the decriminalization of sex work, with an emphasis on supporting Queer and Trans communities of color.

Ndoumbé’s scattered Diasporic background – which saw them grappling with Blackness across geo-political boundaries early in life (born in France, moved to Los Angeles at the age of 9) – as well as their continued building of relationships with Black Queers around the world, allows them to be in conversation across Diaspora. The key with their work isn’t just in the content but also in the process, and the histories of what such processes have meant for many key populations captured and shared outside of their own context. Ndoumbe’s position as a Black, Trans, and gender- nonconforming individual – even within the complex racial-read of their current surroundings in South Africa – allows them access to communities that one doesn’t always get to see. Ndoumbé is focused on creating work asserting itself within the conversation around a decolonial aesthetic, and a radical archiving.

The push is to create artistic content which engages in the active processes of unlearning, re-shifting, and the questioning of hegemonic power structures – in the proximity of content to audiences, the process through which the work is captured, and also in its choice of materials and curation. Trust is a vital ingredient to their process.

What began with Undone (2015 – 2016) – an intimate portraiture series on Black and Queer individuals shot in London, New Orleans, and NYC – quickly saw Ndoumbé turning to visual art to portray and amplify the voices, spirits, and bodies of Black and Queer people. Undone came out of a need to see themselves – as well as a turning of the camera onto friends and chosen family, while finding the beauty so inherently present in their existence.

The Coffee Shop as Queer Salon, Parts I & II, and Portraits (2017-present) is a photographic and visual exploration that seeks to honor both a historical legacy and current moment of queer bodies within the context of the politics of space.

The project is also in conversation with how visual art can be a mechanism to establish agency for queer bodies. In this continued series, Ndoumbé focuses on the spatial dynamics and the occupation of queer bodies in the coffee shop space. The current archive of the series finds its roots in the Bay Area, California, USA.

In the spirit of embodied artistic work and collective re-imagining, Ndoumbé used an exhibit opening for Portraits from the Salon on display at the Field Office in February of 2018, in Woodstock, to collaborate with other local and queer artists of color to facilitate The Queer Salon. During the evening, members of Queer and Trans Communities of Color were invited in to share space, connect, create, and express themselves in community with one another.

Photo: Summer Thompson

Laura Petree (BA Comparative Literature, Honors in the Arts), In Search of America's White Whale

In Search of America’s White Whale reworks, subverts, and stitches together foundational stories from the American consciousness, creating a piece which foregrounds Laura's identity and whiteness. Beginning with the source texts of Moby Dick, The Great Gatsby, Annie, The Wizard of Oz, and select movies from the Disney canon, the performance seeks to place whiteness at its center, other it, investigate it, and hack at its root system to create a new American foundational myth which calls the original myths into question.

Biography

Laura Petree graduated from Stanford in 2015 with a BA in Comparative Literature and Honors in the Arts for directing and producing a site specific, immersive, student written adaptation of Euripides’ The Bacchae. After graduation, she earned an MA with Distinction in Theatre and Performance studies from Queen Mary University of London, where she was the recipient of the Principle’s Prize and the Marjorie Thompson Prize for outstanding academic achievement. While at QMUL, Laura began working with Lois Weaver and Peggy Shaw of the legendary performance duo Split Britches, and with acclaimed performance artist Stacy Makishi. In the UK she performed at venues like the Southbank Centre, Chapter Arts Centre in Wales, QMUL, New Unity Church, and in various clubs. Her artistic practice and academic work are focused on immersion, intimacy, technology, space, identity, and femininity. She is currently based in Brooklyn, NY.

2017 Grantees

Photo: IDEO.org

Katie Brigham (BA International Relations, MA Journalism), Information Station

Information Station is a documentary short exploring the cozy, authentic culture and community of the remote Carson Pass Information Center. Located in the Sierra Nevada along the famous 2,650 mile long Pacific Crest Trail, the station is collectively owned by a team of close-knit volunteers who provide a refuge for PCT hikers to relax and reflect on their journeys.

Biography

Katie Brigham is a San Francisco-based video producer. She graduated from Stanford with a BA in International Relations and a MA in Journalism. Since then, Katie has produced short form documentary style videos for the San Francisco Chronicle, KQED, MissionLocal.org, and most recently the nonprofit design company IDEO.org. From California to East Africa, she's documented everything from salmon spawning in the Central Valley to mobile money usage in Uganda and Tanzania. Inspired by the stories of individuals and communities far and wide, Katie is excited by this opportunity to shine a light on unique faces and places a little closer to home.

Photo: Talon Clayton

Talon Clayton (BA Human Biology), Reflections / Reflections in BlaQ

Reflections / Reflections in BlaQ is a multimedia project that uses performance and oral history to explore the lives of Black and Queer people at Stanford and beyond.

Biography

Talon Clayton is a contemporary choreographer and dancer. A 2nd degree Black belt in Karate and Tae Kwon Do, his practice incorporates martial arts, hip hop, modern, and classical dance styles to create new and unique forms. Talon uses dance to explore identity.

Kiyan Williams (gender pronouns they/them/theirs) is a multidisciplinary artist who explores Black queer subjectivity. They create performances, texts, objects, videos, sounds, and installations informed by autoethnography, archival research, and social practice.

Photo: Erin Diebboll

Einat Imber (MFA Art Practice), Sea to Sea

In July 2016, I set sail across the country with a giant folded-boat. During the month long trip, the sculpture in tow served as an instant conversation starter with local residents along the route. Sea to Sea is an art exhibition presenting my encounters with a cross-section of American landscapes, people, histories and realities.

Biography

Einat Imber (born 1979, Israel) is an interdisciplinary artist currently based in the Hudson Valley, NY. In the San Francisco Bay Area she exhibited at the Stanford Art Gallery, Kala Art Institute, SOMArts, Root Division and En Em Art Space. Her recent solo show at Basement Gallery Oakland featured an interactive installation. In New York, she was a 2011-2012 fellow at A.I.R Gallery and a 2013 weather-watcher for SP Weather Station. Her work has been included in the Dumbo Arts Festival and the Governors Island Art Fair. Imber has participated in residencies at Lucid-Art foundation in California, SOMA Summer in Mexico City, the Vermont Studio Center and Tsarino, Bulgaria. Imber received her BFA from Cooper Union and MFA from Stanford University. Her work can be seen on www.einatimber.com

Photo: Rahim Ullah

Gio Jacuzzi (BA Music, Minor in Computer Science), Spaces in Between

Spaces In Between is Gio's debut studio album as an independent musician and recording engineer. An original production inspired by coming of age as a part of the social media and streaming revolution, the album questions the role new technologies play in music and 21st century America, the development and relationships of modern youth, and the search for adult identity. With elements of rock, soul, folk, and jazz, the record explores common ties between different genres and eras of music, with instrumentation ranging from acoustic banjo to electronic instruments of Gio's own invention.

Biography

Gio is a musician and audio engineer based in San Francisco, California. As a multi-instrumentalist he has opened for international acts Flume and AlunaGeorge and performed with local bands throughout the Bay Area. As an audio engineer Gio has produced official remixes for Warner Bros. Records in Los Angeles, developed cutting-edge 3D audio technology for Sennheiser in Zürich Switzerland, and now works with several recording studios in San Francisco and Berkeley making records. While completing his undergraduate studies in Music Science and Technology at Stanford's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics, Gio built and performed with experimental instruments and audio equipment — early designs that eventually evolved into a new patent-pending haptic technology for electronic musicians. His latest inventions provide modern musicians with new dimensions of expression and control on stage and in the studio, while informing his own personal work as an artist as well.

Photo: Luke Lorentzen

Luke Lorentzen (BA Film and Media Studies, Honors in the Arts), Midnight Family

In Mexico City’s cutthroat for-profit ambulance industry, the Ochoa family competes with other unlicensed EMTs for patients in need of urgent care. Midnight Family is a feature documentary that explores this family's everyday life and the challenges of running a for-profit ambulance service.

Midnight Family was selected as part of the 2019 Sundance Film Festival U.S. Documentary Competition, as well as receiving funding and support through the Sundance Institute. Learn more.

Biography

Luke Lorentzen is a recent graduate from Stanford University's department of Art and Art History, where he studied Art History and Film Studies. His short film, Santa Cruz del Islote (2014) – a short documentary about a small and densely populated fishing community in Colombia – has won awards at over ten international film festivals including the San Francisco International, Full Frame Documentary, Camden International, and Chicago International. His first feature documentary, New York Cuts (2015), explores six hair salons in disparate cultural enclaves of New York City. The film had its world premiere at the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam and its US Premiere at the Camden International Film Festival. Luke is also part of the creative team behind the recent Netflix documentary series, Last Chance U. His work explores elements of everyday life, often through rigorous formal means, questioning and experimenting with the ways in which non-fiction stories are told. Originally from Connecticut, Luke is now based in the New York City area.

Photo: Lananh Lê

Maia Paroginog (BAH Art Practice), Sudden Glare of the Sun

This project documents my process based practice in the form of sketchbooks, paintings, and photographs. The questions driving my work include: "what does healing look like?" and "how are the personal and the political intertwined?". Through a combination of sketchbook entries and alternative photographic processes, I hope to delve further into these questions, my personal archive, and Filipino American history.

Biography

Maia is a Filipino American visual artist who was born in Bacolod, Philippines and immigrated to Seattle, WA at the age of six. They have shown at Stanford and at Kearny Street Workshop in San Francisco. Maia holds a B.A. in Art Practice with Honors (c/o 2016). Their work can be found at maiaparoginog.com. Maia is included in the Filipino American Artist Directory (http://www.filamartistdirectory.com/).

2016 Grantees

Photo: Brian Vecci

Xandra Clark (BAH Theater & Performance Studies, MA Journalism), Anthology: Crown Heights

Anthology: Crown Heights is an interdisciplinary performance project that explores the stories of Crown Heights, Brooklyn residents 25 years after the 1991 riots. Through recorded oral histories and new devised performance work made in collaboration with fellow local musicians, dancers, poets, and other artists, the piece confronts new tensions arising in the neighborhood due to gentrification along with old tensions related to racial, religious, and socioeconomic differences. The show is being produced in partnership with DIVAS for Social Justice and Weeksville Heritage Center, where it will be presented in 2016.

Biography

Xandra Clark is an actor, writer, performance-maker, and audio documentary producer based in Brooklyn, NY. Her work has been presented in NYC at The Tank, The Bowery Electric, Whitehead Hall at Brooklyn College, and The Green Room (a performance salon she curates). She completed a BA with Honors in Drama and MA in Journalism at Stanford, studied with award-winning playwrights Anna Deavere Smith and Amy Freed, and worked with The Public Theater on two Shakespeare plays. Xandra has performed at Dixon Place, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the BEAT Festival, the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, The Wild Project, the cell theatre, Connelly Theater, and Lincoln Center. She has participated in residencies at Mount Tremper Arts and Chez Bushwick, and she has also received grants for her performance work from Brooklyn Arts Council and Brooklyn Community Foundation. She is co-founder/producer of True Story podcast and previously worked at national nonprofit StoryCorps. For more info, visit www.xandraclark.com.

Photo: Celeste Sloman

Kimi Lee (BA Film and Media Studies, Minor Creative Writing), SUGAR

Derived from the 2015 BlueCat winning feature length screenplay, SUGAR offers a provocative glimpse into the concealed underworld of “Sugar Baby” relationships. Devoid of emotional intimacy, how do two strangersdiverging vastly in both age and life experiencego about fabricating a makeshift romance? SUGAR depicts the first night of a young woman's depraved summer as a “girlfriend-for-hire”.

Biography

Kimi received her B.A. in Film and Media Studies and Creative Writing from Stanford University, where she was the recipient of a Levinthal Tutorial. Kimi’s first feature script, KINDERGARTEN, won first place in the dramatic category in the 2015 Creative World Awards Screenplay competition, and was a winner and Official Selection at the 2015 Richmond International Film Festival. KINDERGARTEN also placed as a semi-finalist in the 2016 Academy Nicholl's screenwriting competition, and was a finalist in StoryPros, Fresh Voices, the Courier Awards and Marquee Lights screenwriting competitions. Kimi¹s second feature script, MOUTH, won the Grand Prize for Best Narrative Feature in the 2015 BlueCat Screenwriting competition, subsequently securing her management at Industry Entertainment for both feature and episodic work. Additionally, MOUTH recently landed on the Tracking Board's 2015 "Hit List" of the year's best unproduced screenplays. When she is not writing, Kimi curates user-generated local "stories" for Snapchat.

Dan Rorke (BA Music, BS Biomedical Engineering), The Dynamic Album Project

The Dynamic Album Project hopes to capture the creative process and spontaneity of the current Baltimore jazz scene by developing a new form of album where the music changes over time. It will encourage listeners to appreciate a diversity of interpretations, rather than a single authoritative recording.

Biography

Dan Rorke is a Baltimore-based music recording engineer who founded Charles Street Sound, a recording service that captures the incredible live music performed throughout Baltimore each week. His work revolves around finding new ways to capture the ambience and energy of each performance. He earned a BA and BS in music and engineering from Stanford and an MA in recording arts from Peabody Institute.

Photo: Michael Rooney

Samantha Toh (BA International Relations, MA East Asian Studies), Guerilla Fiction

Guerrilla Fiction appears where you do not expect to find stories: wedged in your book, clipped to your bar tab, or served with your coffee. Centering on the theme of migration and diaspora, these micro stories are printed on postcards, which can then be sent, "traveling" from person to person.

Biography

Samantha Toh has published work in Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, Best New Singaporean Short Stories (Volume Two) and a number of Math Paper Press (Singapore) publications. A former production intern with performing arts company ZSpace Theatre (San Francisco), Samantha is also interested in writing for performance. Her work has been performed at the Poetic Theatre Festival in New York City, the Singapore Writer's Festival, and at various art festivals during her time at Stanford University.

Photo: Valentina Sadiul

Eric Tran (BA Music), Debut Recording and Launch Concert of New Chamber and Solo Music

Eric Tran's debut album will feature all new original solo and chamber music, performed by top-notch SF Bay Area musicians, such as the Friction Quartet. A launch concert is planned for November 2016.

Biography

Photo: Zack Bonzell

Gideon Weiler (BS Symbolic Systems) and Jake Winkelman (BA Urban Studies), These Are The Days

Gideon Weiler and Jake Winkelman are creating a narrative, multimedia, live experience centered around the concepts and themes of the music on Jake Winkelman's (Mays) debut album: "These Are The Days." The project will musically, visually, and narratively explore themes of race, technology, activism, and gender in an honest tone and imaginative form. Some central preoccupations will be whiteness, masculinity, the psychology of privilege and ally-ship. This will be the second installation piece for emerging artists Gideon Weiler and Jake Winkelman who last collaborated on "Valley of Silicon" which debuted at the Cantor Arts Center last spring.

Biography

Gideon Weiler grew up in the Bronx and Israel. He studied Symbolic Systems at Stanford and believes we have no idea how the internet is impacting society. He is an aspiring filmmaker inspired by Russian Literature, Judd Apatow comedies, Hip Hop, and his faith in God.

Jake “Mays” Winkelman is originally from Berkeley, California and has been rapping for nearly a decade. After graduating from Berkeley High School he attended Stanford University where he explored the intersection of art, activism, and policy and earned a degree in Urban Studies. Since graduation he has immersed himself in his artistic pursuits both in Los Angeles and in the Bay Area and will be releasing his debut album “These Are The Days” at the end of the month. He is ecstatic to share this innovative, engaging project with the Bay Area and ultimately the world.

2015 Grantees

Photo: Al Ponce

Katherine Hawthorne (BS Physics, Minor in Dance), Mainframe
Mainframe is a dance asking how computers have changed the way we see our bodies. Mainframe was performed at ODC in San Francisco on Dec. 3-6, 2015.

Biography

Helen Hood Scheer (MFA Documentary Film), Painted Desert
Painted Desert (working title) is a documentary short about an African American physician in Navajo Nation who collaborates with the local indigenous community and renowned artists to create arresting public artworks that are installed across the reservation.t

Biography

Helen Hood Scheer is an award-winning documentary filmmaker specializing in cinema vérité portraits following eccentric people who subvert expectations and better their communities in unusual ways. Her films have screened at over 150 venues including Hot Docs, True/False, Los Angeles Film Festival and the National Gallery of Art. She earned a BA with highest honors in American studies from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and an MFA in documentary film and video from Stanford University.

Adam Katseff (MFA Art Practice), Rivers and Falls
This body of work and accompanying exhibition are based on night landscapes, representing the abstract forms of rivers and waterfalls. Rivers and Falls opened at the Sasha Wolf Gallery in New York on April 8, 2015.

Biography

Emma Webster (BA Studio Art), How Much Searching Is Not Enough Finding

The series of 5-by-6-foot paintings freely combine abstracted landscapes, historic portraiture and youthful, explorative mark-making. This exhibition opened Aug. 7, 2015, at Classic Cars West Gallery, Oakland, Calif.

Biography

Yoo Hsiu Yeh (BS/MS Electrical Engineering), with Cecilia Wu and Romain Michon, Navigating the Cycles

Inspired by the traditional Tibetan prayer wheel and Tibetan singing bowl, Navigating the Cycles presents the Tibetan Singing Prayer Wheel, a combination of a novel physical motion-sensing controller and digital audio signal processing software that processes the real-time voice of the operator based on his or her body motion, as part of an interactive art installation.

Yeh was introduced to the world of sound art through the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA) at Stanford in 2012, and since then has built several interactive sound art pieces, striving to cultivate calmness, delight and curiosity in those who encounter them. These pieces have been shown at various art exhibitions within Stanford and at the Bay Area Maker Faire.