FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Announcing the Rema Hort Mann Foundation 2017 Artist Community Engagement Grant Recipients in NYC New York City, The Rema Hort Mann Foundation is pleased to announce the recipients of the newest season of our Artist Community Engagement (ACE) Grant in New York: Mauricio Cortes Ortega, Amanda Trager, Katherine Toukhy, Chris Bogia, Damien Davis, Kara Lynch, Jodie Lyn-Kee-Chow, Ilana Harris-Babou. The goal of the ACE Grants is to make a positive and lasting impact on the artist community, especially in support of artistic collaboration, special projects, and community engagement. The ACE grant makes a wide range of project formats possible, including: panel discussions, artist talks, public presentations, workshops, web-based activities, lectures, screenings, publications, and other public events or cultural exchanges. These eight ACE grantees reflect the full potential of the projects we support and facilitate. The Rema Hort Mann Foundation was created in September 1995 by friends and family of Rema Hort Mann to honor her joyful and vivacious life after her untimely death from stomach cancer at age 30. The Foundation has evolved into a dynamic and effective organization, offering both unrestricted and community-based grants, by nomination only, to promising emerging artists who demonstrate an ability and commitment to making substantial contributions in the arts. Through the generosity of individual donors, artists, galleries, and organizations, such as the Warhol Foundation and the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, the Rema Hort Mann Foundation continues to increase its impact in New York City and Los Angeles, and has awarded over 200 unrestricted cash grants to artists in New York City and Los Angeles since 1995. Through careful deliberation by our selection committee, eight artist proposals were chosen to receive funding ranging from $1250- $1,500 to carry out these projects. Please help us congratulate the eight 2017 ACE Grantees by reading more about their projects and sharing the information: Mauricio Cortes Ortega , “Workshops for Children and their Parents.” A series of three art workshops for children and their parents. The workshops would have an emphasis on still life drawing and painting; children and their parents would be encouraged to bring with them to the workshop personal home objects for them to draw and paint. Each day there will be a different guest artist that will work alongside the participants and provide encouragement and suggestions.     Amanda Trager, Collaborator: Erik Moskowitz,”Island.” ISLAND, is a film and multimedia project that involves documenting the lives and legacies of a group of renowned avant-garde artists living on a remote island, made in conjunction with an Octavia Butler-influenced Sci-fi fiction. Combining these narratives in a multi-part work of art is a way to think and feel through issues relating to survival, race, and creative agency in near and distant futures.   Katherine Toukhy, “The Khayamiya Monument Workshops.” As a continuation of The Khayamiya Monument, a collaborative print series and intergenerational open mic in Bay Ridge will link the Afro-Arab and Arab immigrant community with first generation Americans in the diaspora and others in the local community. By opening up creative space for personal expression, the workshops and open mic will strengthen voices in this immigrant community and connect them to others. The Khayamiya Monument, a monument to the herstories of female Arab and African refugees and U.S. veterans critical of their time in combat.   Chris Bogia, “Exhibition.” Spring 2018 exhibition of the five artists chosen for the 2017 Fire Island Artist Residency Residents at the Bureau of General Services: Queer Division, a multi-use space that holds performances, programming, and exhibitions while doing double duty as New York’s only independent LGBTQ book store. The Bureau is located within the NYC LGBTQ Center, and this central location allows us to reach a wide audience beyond “art seekers”, and the public programming we will execute during the two month exhibition will further it’s reach to even more people, gay and straight.   Damien Davis, “An Afternoon Seminar of Art & Law .” Seminar would introduce public to the effects of law and jurisprudence on cultural production and reception.  This seminar would bring together contemporary artist with scholars possessing backgrounds in law, art history and cultural history in order to analyze the emerging field of art and law ( mutual interests, and make connections).     Kara Lynch, “how will we be free.” ‘Freedom Cities, brooklyn’ invites artists and community to gather at St. Ann’s Church in brooklyn to explore the question: “how will we be free?” From winter to summer 2018, this project will host artist residencies to provoke dialog, encourage long-term visioning, and practice community building necessary to meet our vision of brooklyn as a freedom city.     Jodie Lyn-Kee-Chow, “The Gypsies ‘Picni’.” ‘The Gypsies’ Picnic is a performance and installation work which collages individual units of table cloths to be enjoyed by communities of different people while they dine picnic style with the  intention  to eventually travel all over the globe and include people from all walks of life willing to share their unique cuisines on this communal picnic blanket.     Ilana Harris-Babou, “Interactive performance.” Performance that is a hybrid between a public workshop and a video shoot. The project will take place at Larrie, a space for inclusive exchange and grassroots community engagement, with a focus on the important issues that women face today.   For inquiries, Director, at director@rhmfoundation.org. Rema Hort Mann Foundation| 153 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10013 212-966-8444| www.rhmfoundation.org