06/15/2020
Call for Artists
“Reflections and Expressions: Communities and Cultures of Central and South America”
Down Jersey Folklife Center at WheatonArts is seeking to connect with visual artists, musicians and dancers whose ethnic and cultural backgrounds are related to the countries located in Central and South America. The artists will be invited to participate in a nine-month multi-layered and multi-faceted project, tentatively scheduled for the spring, summer and fall seasons of 2021.
The project is planned in the context of the WheatonArts’ Creative Community Connections initiative, a series of programs inaugurated in 2004 to raise awareness of cultural heritages and to create a welcoming community setting for understanding, appreciating, and sharing the arts and cultures of our region’s extraordinarily diverse population. Major highlights of programs will include: one or more major exhibitions, community arts projects, demonstrations, classes, workshops, performances, teacher training activities, one or more festivals, artist market, and a conference.
We would like to present a variety of artists working in folk and traditional art forms, whose artworks can once again engage our audiences in conversations about cultural heritage and shared humanity. Our major focus is to be on arts and cultures associated with Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Peru, Brazil, Bolivia and Argentina. Major art forms to be featured include but are not limited to: Guatemalan weavings, Ecuadorian bamboo carvings, pottery, folk music and dance, Peruvian retablos (boxed scenes), ceramics, mates burilados (carved and painted gourds), textiles, carpets of flower petals, music and dance, Panamanian molas (reversed appliquéd fabric), baskets and beadwork, Salvadorian wood paintings and ceramics, Garifuna music and dance from Belize, Colombian tree-bark dolls and cumbia music, Venezuelan wood sculptures, Brazilian ceramics, woodcut prints, capoeira and batalá drumming, Bolivian carved sanots (saints), traditional music and dance, Argentinean fileteado (traditional painting), leather works, woodworks, costume making, masks, folk music and dance.
If you wish to be included in this project or have further questions about it, please contact Dr. Iveta Pirgova, Director of Folklife and Cultural Studies at Wheaton Arts and Cultural Center at [email protected]. as soon as possible but not later than June 15, 2020.
