We are very excited to announce that Kyla Kegler, Alexis Oltmer, Derek Roland, and Buffalo Center for Arts & Technology have been selected to receive funding through our Global Warming Art Project granting program. The program support projects created in response to the rising dangers of global climate change, and administers grants to a selection of artists and arts organizations in the spring and fall of every year. ASI’s Global Warming Art Project is funded by Ben Perrone and the Environment/Maze project donors.
Our next deadline for Global Warming Art Project funding is May 1, 2020. The application is open for submissions and is available online.
About the Grantees
Kyla Kegler (b. 1985) is a choreographer and conceptual artist whose work highlights feeling to combat apathy. She’s exhibited and performed extensively in Berlin, Buffalo, and New York City. She received her MFA in studio art on full fellowship at the University at Buffalo in 2018, and her MA in Solo/Dance/Authorship at the Art University of Berlin in 2015. Between 2009 and 2016 she lived in Berlin, where she cofounded Zuhause, an experimental theater venue. Between 2013 and 2019 Kegler has received four NYSCA DEC grants for community-engaged performance in Buffalo. Kegler’s work is highly social and explores her search for connection. Her funded project, “It’s Hot Here,” is a theater performance addressing the ecopsychological impact of global warming on teens. It will premiere at Hallwalls.
Alexis Oltmer is an artist born and raised in Endicott, NY, a town known for its classification as an active class-2 superfund site due to its widespread groundwater contamination. She grew up participating in weekly litter pickups in her hometown, and in 2011, Endicott made national news when a climate change-driven flood caused massive destruction and destroyed her childhood home. This background has greatly influenced Oltmer’s artistic practices. In 2016, she began cleaning Emerald Beach to create art with plastic pollution. In 2018, Oltmer partnered with the Alliance of the Great Lakes to provide plastic pollution data and founded #PlasticFreeBuffalo, a community-based project in which she coordinates beach cleanups with local institutions, schools, businesses, influencers, and community members. Her current body of work, “For Future Generations: A Plastic Pollution Study of Lake Erie,” was exhibited at the CEPA Gallery. Oltmer plans to continue exhibiting the body of work in Buffalo and to other cities located on the Great Lakes.
Derek Roland is a writer, performer, director, choreographer, and arts educator originally from Rochester, NY. His writing has been seen Off-Broadway at the New Victory Theatre, at the Traverse Theatre in Scotland during the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, in the New York Theatre Festival, and at the International Human Rights Festival in New York City. He holds a master’s degree in playwriting from the University of Edinburgh, where he was awarded the William Hunter Sharpe Memorial Scholarship. Roland is also a longstanding company member with the three-time Drama Desk-nominated physical theater company Parallel Exit in New York City, with which he has co-created and performed in numerous productions across the U.S. and Europe. Roland received Global Warming Arts Project funding for his new play “Waist Deep,” which will receive a public reading at Road Less Traveled Theater at the end of April.
Buffalo Center for Arts & Technology (BCAT) provides opportunities for careers through the arts and workforce development. BCAT’s tuition and fee-free after-school arts programs empower Buffalo high school youth to harness their creativity, talent, and skills to graduate from high school with a college/career plan. Their visual and performance work is regularly featured at Buffalo Infringement Festival, Burchfield Penney Art Center, Albright-Knox, 500 Seneca, Beau Fleauve Festival, Cobblestone Live, Jefferson Avenue Arts Festival, Oishei Children’s Hospital, Roswell Park, Ralph C. Wilson Foundation office (Detroit, MI), and several international film festivals. With funding from the Global Warming Art Project, BCAT young artists will create a multimedia installation, ”Scar on the Land.” Under the guidance of BCAT teaching artists and in collaboration with Penn Dixie Fossil Park, young artists will tell the story of environmental damage caused by industrial negligence through paintings, sculptures, and photography.
