The public is invited as Murfreesboro Cultural Arts will introduce and honor the 2020 Painter, Photographer and Poet Laureates at a reception January 12 from 2:00 to 4:00 p.m. at the Washington Theatre Community Gallery located in Patterson Park Community Center.
The laureate program is a notable honor for local artists, providing recipients with further opportunities to educate, advocate, and represent the community through their own creative initiatives. Laureates serve for one year with an optional one-year renewal.
Painter Laureate Dawna Kinne Magliacano is a multi-discipline artist who considers herself a visual storyteller and art adventurer. From traditional portraiture and painting to sculpting, her work leans toward the whimsical and enchanting with often amusing story lines and lots of color.
"I am in love with exploring art processes and then combining those processes to tell a story," said Magliacano.
Photographer Laureate Tommy Womack is a freelance Website designer. As he grew his business, he realized that a website needs attractive imagery, eye-catching photographs, video and animation. This realization led him to pursue photography classes and spurned a new passion. Womack’s photography features a mixture of local landscapes and current events.
Poet Laureate Amie Whittemore is the author of the poetry collection Glass Harvest (Autumn House Press). Her poems have won multiple awards, including a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Prize, and her poems and prose have appeared in The Gettysburg Review, Nashville Review, Smartish Pace, Pleiades and other publications. She is the Reviews Editor for Southern Indiana Review and teaches English at Middle Tennessee State University.
The laureates are considered a civic appointment and one of honor. The laureate program is designed to acknowledge the work and contributions of local artists. The selected artists will receive a year’s commitment for exposure and community support for the work they do and a $500 monetary award. In turn, the Laureates will complete new work inspired by Murfreesboro, exhibit their practice and expertise at city events, and complete at least 2 community outreach arts related projects that will target non-traditional and/or under-served audiences during their tenure as Laureate. Laureates serve for one year with an optional one-year renewal.
To be considered for the laureate program, candidates must live or work in Murfreesboro, fill out the requisite program application, and agree to the responsibilities of the Laureate.
The Cultural Arts Laureate Program was founded with the intent to give experienced individual artists an opportunity to share their talents with their community, offer youth citizens and emerging artists role models within their own community, and to encourage and nurture the growing arts and creative culture in Murfreesboro. The desired outcomes of this initiative are that each year the selected laureates will use their creative practice to impact their community in a way that they find rewarding and continue to give time to after their term, that this program will encourage artists to set goals within their own community, that the community will be best served by the arts, and lives will be enriched by the work the laureates accomplish.
Murfreesboro Parks and Recreation Department is dedicated to providing vibrant public spaces and inclusive programs delivered with visionary leadership and caring staff that engage the individual and strengthen the quality of life of our community.
