The Tanne Foundation is pleased to announce the recipients of its 2011 awards. Now in its thirteenth year, the foundation’s mission is to underscore the importance of supporting individual artists with unrestricted funding.

This year’s awards, totaling $39,000, honor four artists in recognition of their artistic achievement as well as one artist-run organization which has presented exceptional work for over 30 years.

The 2011 recipients are:Raife Baker, New York, New York, actor. Born and raised in Covington, Georgia, Baker has lived in and created theater in Atlanta, Chicago, San Francisco and New York City—four artistically vibrant and diverse cities. As well as being a professional actor and teacher, he is currently developing separate projects as an adaptor, musician and producer in New York City.

Along with three fellow theater artists, Baker founded The Crook Theater Company in New York. In its goal to work with new actors, directors, playwrights and stage managers who have just relocated to the city, Crook Theater acts as shepherd and showcase for these new artistic voices. Their first production was off-off Broadway in 2008, The House of Yes, by Wendy MacLeod.

Jane Gilmor, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, intermedia artist. For the past 35 years, Gilmor’s artistic practice has been concerned with social issues, found situations and psychological narrative. In addition to creating sculptures, videos and performances, Gilmor was a pioneer in the area of community-based public work, collaborating with individuals in hospitals and homeless shelters.

Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and has been awarded NEA Artist’s Fellowships, a McKnight Interdisciplinary Fellowship, and residency fellowships in Ireland, Italy, and London and at The McDowell Colony among others. In 2004, she was a Fulbright Senior Scholar at Evora University in Evora, Portugal.

Joe Meiser, Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, sculptor, installation and performance artist. Meiser earned a Master of Fine Arts degree at Ohio University. He investigates the limited and often flawed nature of human perceptions, the manner in which our bodies direct our experience of the world and our compulsion to create narratives.

The human tendency to mythologize is both the subject and strategy of Meiser’s artwork—while questioning our compulsion to create metaphysical narratives, he simultaneously weaves his own. With great technical skill tempered by humor, Meiser creates art that is visually stunning and conceptually compelling. Meiser has exhibited his artwork across the United States.

John Christian Plummer, Cold Spring, New York, playwright/director. Plummer is a writer and director who founded the Actors Shakespeare Company in Albany, directing 14 free productions including his vaudeville musical Moliere’s Shorts and the commedia, Nights of Carnival. Plummer co-scripted and directed the internationally touring silent clown shows Get Lost and Chaotica for Gams on the Lam and the world premiere stage version of James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room in London. His play, We Have Brought Nightmare, won the True North Theatre Project’s Play Festival Competition. He recently directed Twelfth Night for the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival.

Mobius, Inc., Boston, Massachusetts, is recognized as one of the seminal alternative artist-run organizations in the United States. Mobius produces and presents performance art, video, sound art, dance, installation and multimedia works by the Mobius Artists Group, their collaborators and guest artists.

Negotiating the space between creative people, between creative people and the general public, between art and public-space, and among artistic media, has been the basis of its artistic investigations since it was founded in 1977. The artists have presented their work through the United States and at venues and festivals in Canada, South America, Europe and Asia.

The Tanne Foundation was founded by an artist in order to enrich the artistic experience and broaden horizons for artists and audiences alike. The foundation’s primary interest is in the support of individual artists. A majority of its board members are artists, who guide the foundation by the philosophy that in the creation of art, however unrecognized or obscure the voice, the sound may be extraordinary, and it is vital that it be heard.

Since its inception the foundation has made awards to sixty-one artists and nine organizations in recognition of outstanding achievements in a variety of fields in the visual and performing arts, including performance art, painting, poetry, music, acting and dance. Nominations for awards are made by the trustees of the Tanne Foundation. The foundation does not accept unsolicited requests.

Contact:

Michelle Lamarre Jenney
Administrator
Tanne Foundation
c/o GMA Foundations
77 Summer Street, 8th Floor
Boston, MA 02110-1006
617-391-3087
mjenney@gmafoundations.com