Pew prizes go to a DJ, mock food sculptor

An alternative-band musician, a fiber artist whose recent works include a slice of key lime pie made from waxed linen and raffia, and a choreographer who asks audiences to walk through mazes of rooms to immerse themselves in her site-specific work are among the recipients of this year's coveted Pew Fellowships in the Arts.

Twelve fellows were awarded $50,000 each to spend any way they wish. The Pew program, in its 16th year, aims to identify Philadelphia-area artists at critical career junctures and give them the freedom to advance their artistic ambitions.

"One of the things [recipients] say to us is that now when people ask them what they do, they say first and foremost, 'I am an artist.' There is something about the validation that these grants bring," program director Melissa Franklin says.

Validation, yes, and a measure of liberation.

"I don't have to move furniture anymore," said Jamey Robinson, a 34-year-old composer perhaps best known locally as a member of the defunct band Need New Body. "I come up with a lot of ideas, but the difficult part is finishing them up and writing all of the parts. I'm always worried about money, so that's one level of thinking I can put behind me for a couple of years. It's going to change what I do tremendously."

Fiber artist Ed Bing Lee, 74, whose recent work has focused on fashioning sculptural food depictions made of knotting fibers, will continue to work part-time as a computer inputter. "It keeps me regular in terms of saying, 'Today's Tuesday.' It gets me out of the studio, in with people."

He's not entirely sure how or if the Pew grant will alter his course.

"It's hard to anticipate, isn't it? The things I do take a lot of time. A piece of cake can take as much as three months. My anticipation is that life will just go on. But it will make it so much more pleasurable and easier because I don't have to think about time as a luxury. It gives me the luxury of saying, 'If it takes me longer, it just takes me longer.' "

Also: "I'll probably buy a nice little digital camera, maybe even get a new computer."

"This came at the perfect time," said choreographer Nicole Cousineau, 37. "I am going through incorporating, so this allows me to bridge the time between now and the time I get organizational support."

Other 2007 recipients are choreographers Charles O. Anderson, 35, founder of a company called dance theater X; Kate Watson-Wallace, 28; and Dorothy Gordon Wilkie, 62, artistic director and choreographer of Kulu Mele African American Dance Ensemble. Joining them are composers King Britt, 38; Swarthmore College professor Gerald Levinson, 55; and Peter Paulsen, 55. Craft artists Fritz Dietel, 47; Adelaide Paul, 46; and Julie York, 35, round out the list.

Pew does not restrict how the money is spent. Since its inception, the program has provided $10.4 million to 213 Philadelphia artists.

The amount of the award has not changed in 16 years, and inflation has taken its toll. What $50,000 bought in 1992 would have cost $71,392 in 2006. Giving artists a raise, Franklin said, is "something that has crossed our minds," but no increase is planned.

"The idea of this program was to give artists a dignified living wage; $50,000 is still a good living wage," she said.

Each year the program awards grants to artists in different disciplines. (Next year's are painting, folk and traditional arts, and probably a third category.) Panels of specialists in each discipline review the first round of applicants and make recommendations to a multi-disciplinary panel, which makes the final awards.

As with any other grant program, the winners list reflects the judges' interests and expertise, but perhaps this year's choices point to an evolution in the field. Instead of four conservatory-taught composers whose works are heard in traditional concert-hall venues, the four recipients are working in quite different realms.

King Britt is an established Philadelphia DJ with a worldwide reputation. Gerald Levinson studied at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris, and his works have been performed by major orchestras. Peter Paulsen is the principal bassist of the Allentown Symphony Orchestra, and does both classical and jazz music. Jamey Robinson has mainly done alternative-band work, even if some of his pieces resemble experimental classical music of the 1950s in the way they sample and manipulate a wide variety of sounds.

Pew's Franklin says that historically, most applicants have identified their work as either classical or jazz, but interest in the "other" category has greatly increased.

"We always had an 'other' category that used to be small. And suddenly that's the category that's expanded," she said.

Robinson - who credits his girlfriend, painter Sarah Gamble, for making him apply for the Pew grant - says his former band, Need New Body, remains an influence in his solo work.

"People used to say it was kind of Captain Beefheart or Zappa, but not really sounding like either - it was avant-garde party music, alternative, it had a lot of energy. We would string together all kinds of different ideas, one 30 seconds long and another 10 minutes."

But it was a piece inspired by Bach - a work called Friends Forget - that captured the Pew music jury's attention. For this song, Robinson retuned his electronic keyboard so that the lowest note was at the right end and the highest at the left, and then played a Bach invention as written while layering vocals on top.

"The thing that struck us is that he had a lot of ideas," said Michael Gordon, one of the founders and artistic directors of New York's Bang on a Can Festival and a Pew music judge. "It was creative, and it sounded very cool."