Farewell, 2019 fellows
by Sarah Feng
It’s the end of August, and we’re now bidding farewell to the writers, visual artists, and musicians who participated in the first COUNTERCLOCK Arts Collective program.
Over the past month, Arts Collective fellows were separated into cohorts, or 3-person groups consisting of one writer, artist, and musician. At the start of the program, cohorts called over Skype to introduce themselves and brainstorm their first theme. Conflict, identity, and body were several among the themes chosen, and through the next week, fellows created writing, visual art, or music that explored, questioned, and defined what this theme meant to them. As they worked, they discussed art pieces through history over Slack, including songs by Mozart, and continued to message one another with newer drafts of their own creations. At the end of the week, each cohort member had completed one work, which they shared with one another and discussed deeply over their second call. Through the next week, fellows used the works of their cohort members as inspiration, muse, and environment for the creation of their next work.
As mentors and program directors, we were able to see fellows grow, experiment, and enlarge their horizons in so many ways over the past months, and we couldn’t be more proud of all that they have accomplished.
We’re especially excited to be able to present the interdisciplinary projects of each cohort on September 20, 2019. Three miniature grants will be awarded to three fellows for their artistic pursuits in the coming weeks.
Not all fellows are pictured.
Finally, we’d like to express our great appreciation to the people who made this program possible:
Thank you to our mentors, who worked closely with fellows each week and gave individualized, thoughtful feedback to help them improve their craft; thank you to our program directors, who oversaw feedback requests, livestream performances, grant applications, peer reviews, and the logistical organization behind the program’s success; and thank you to our livestream performers, who performed their work and answered questions on an exclusive Facebook livestream, discussing their own experiences as prominent creatives in their field.
Without your expertise, guidance, and generosity, this program would not have been possible.
The COUNTERCLOCK Arts Collective will be open to 2020 applicants in the spring of 2020. More information will follow on our website.
If you would like to learn more about the COUNTERCLOCK Arts Collective, please click here.
Sarah Feng is the editor-in-chief of COUNTERCLOCK Journal and the founding director of the COUNTERCLOCK Arts Collective. Her works have been recognized by the Poetry Society of the United Kingdom, Teen Vogue, the Academy of American Poets, the Critical Pass Junior Poet Prize, the National Council of Teachers of English, and more. Find her work in the Adroit Journal and Gigantic Sequins. She plays piano and dabbles in charcoals, and she thinks rhythm and light and lyric pulse in every field of the creative arts – if you can call them distinct fields at all. In other words, she has faith in the power of the interdisciplinary arts and their persistence in our memories and minds. You can find her here.