The San Diego Foundation's Creative Catalyst Fund helps artists make money

The tendency to award art grants to institutions rather than individuals has been prevalent since the famous “NEA Four” case in 1990, when National Endowment for the Arts chairman John Frohnmayer vetoed grants to four artists due to what he considered controversial subject matter. While the artists won their case, the NEA eventually bowed to pressure from Congress and cut off funding to individual artists. Many other grantors followed suit.

This year, the San Diego Foundation’s gutsy new Creative Catalyst Fund: Individual Artists Fellowship will defy that trend and finance innovative projects by San Diego artists like Joel P West, Wes Bruce, Kira Carrillo Corser, Justin Hudnall and Vicki Leon.

“The money’s not directly in the hands of the artists themselves,” said Felicia Shaw, director of the foundation’s arts and culture program. “But it’s close…. There’s a beauty in the way we’re pairing artists with institutions—a lot of the artists said they appreciated being teamed up with the nonprofits.”

Last spring, the San Diego Foundation surveyed almost 700 local artists, dancers, musicians, poets, designers and writers for a report titled “A Portrait of San Diego Artists.” Among the study’s findings was a pressing need to “increase income opportunities” for artists so that creative San Diegans won’t leave for cities like New York and Los Angeles, which are perceived as more culturally robust and financially feasible.

“I was really shocked that no one had ever compiled data on San Diego artists before,” Shaw said. “So, this is a really important first study for us.”

After the study was published, the foundation announced the Creative Catalyst Fund, which listed 19 sponsoring nonprofit arts organizations—such as the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego; San Diego Writers, Ink; and Moxie Theatre—and asked artists to pitch project ideas specifically geared toward enhancing the programming of up to three nonprofits.

“It was like Match.com a little bit,” Shaw joked, explaining that after the artists picked the nonprofits to pitch, the nonprofits then looked through the project proposals and made final selections.

Fifteen artists were eventually selected and, during the coming year, San Diego audiences can expect to see things like San Diego Writers, Ink and Hudnall’s collaboration, The Far East—a multimedia anthology and performance of personal stories by inhabitants of San Diego’s East County (submissions are being accepted at sosayweallonline.com through April 1)—as well as Lux Art Institute and Bruce’s project, which is described as an experimental installation investigating personal stories of joy, mourning, curiosity and wonder and people’s connections to living spaces, places of worship and other structures that have impacted their lives.

Shaw says the foundation hopes that by pairing artists with arts-and-culture organizations—and even the process of having the institutions go through hundreds of proposals and getting to know more about the pool of local artists—the result will be more job opportunities and official collaborations between the institutions and artists.

“Over the years, we see this shift happening in the way art is consumed and made,” Shaw said. “We’re realizing that our institutions are only engaging just a small percentage of our creative community…. The real action is happening in the lives of artists who often aren’t associated with nonprofits at all…. This program is a start, a beginning of unearthing these projects and increasing awareness of the artists who are here and ready to work.”