upcoming grant deadline: 05/15/2024

upcoming grant deadline: 05/15/2024

Helen Cahng

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2002 Inspiration Award

During a recent trip to Los Angeles, I experienced a feeling of déja-vu. I reflected back to the last time I was there when I realized there had never been a last time. What I was remembering was a collection of memories accumulated from a lifetime of mass media stimulation, which I'd adopted as part of my own history. Through print, film, television and radio, I had experienced Hollywood without ever having been there.

To me, art is not merely academic, but also includes the signs, sounds and symbols that accompany daily life. Mass media has become an influential part of our collective memory. I create self portraiture not with a believable physical likeness, but rather with symbols and text taken from popular culture that contain personal significance. As familiar images, they create both associative and inherent responses from the viewer. Through this process, my work examines relationships between contrasting ideas; word and image, overt and subliminal, applied and inherent meaning in symbols, and real and imagined experience. Because they are easily reproduced and distributed, works on paper lend themselves readily to this idea.

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Leeway grant?

Window of Opportunity Grant

The Window of Opportunity (WOO) grant provides financial assistance of up to $1,500 to Leeway grant and award recipients to help them take advantage of imminent, time-sensitive opportunities to support their art for social change practice. The Community Care Fund (CCF) provides financial assistance of up to $1,250 to Leeway grant and award recipients to support with immediate and essential emergency needs. [read more]

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Upcoming events
04/025:30 pm - 7:00 pm

4/2 Transformation Award (LTA) Awardee Panel + Info Session (In Person)

Have questions about the application process for the Leeway Transformation Award (LTA)?

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04/185:30 pm - 6:30 pm

4/18 Transformation Award (LTA) Info Session (Virtual)

Have questions about the application process for the Leeway Transformation Award?

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