Photography Lecturer Sylvia de Swaan has completed two two-week segments of a six-week residency program awarded to her by the Center for Exploratory and Perceptual Arts (CEPA) in Buffalo.
CEPA is a not-for-profit arts center founded as a resource for photographic creation, education, and presentation. Its scope is international, providing a forum for artists and curators throughout the world. The gallery supports and funds projects of both established and emergent visual artists. CEPA also functions as a research and education center for the exploration of new technologies in the photographic arts.
During her residency de Swaan is focusing on the post-9/11 environment, specifically on visual representations of how the world has changed since that day, "expressions of apparent normalcy in an environment of apprehension and fear." For de Swaan, September 11, 2001, marked the end of her "Return" series, her metaphoric photographic return to the Eastern European regions of her ancestry and a new focus on the "ominous undercurrents of our post-9/11 world."
CEPA resident artists are provided with an honorarium, production/fabrication expenses and transportation costs. Resident artists are expected to use their time to start or continue a body of work. Exhibition opportunities are attached to the residencies, and de Swaan will present her work, both color and black and white photography, in the CEPA Gallery in February 2005. De Swaan has also been invited to lecture on her work this fall.
De Swaan was also selected to serve as a panelist for the New York Foundation for the Arts. She participated with four other professional artists in the selection of NYFA fellows for 2004.
Recommendations for potential panelists come from many sources including: the Artists' Advisory Committee, arts and cultural organizations around New York State and Indian Nations located in New York State, and suggestions from practicing artists. All potential panelists must be practicing artists in the discipline they review and must receive three recommendations from their field.
This year 148 fellowships were awarded, granting a total of over $1 million in eight categories, one of which was photography. Over 4,700 artists applied for the fellowships.
