Previous McKinnon Artist Minigrants

This semester, I’d like to apply the mini-grant for a project I’m working on a project that involves making book trailers for the stories I write. In essence, its combining music, writing, and filmmaking into a multi-media project that extends beyond the page. To do this, I would first like to purchase a baritone ukulele. I learned about it while diving into the world of stringed instruments, and the sonic quality and size fall between a standard guitar and a soprano or concert ukulele. In addition, I'm requesting a Zoom recorder and a Gimble for iPhone.

The summer of 2022, I was fortunate enough to attend a summer film acting intensive at a professional film studio run through NYU Tisch. While I was there, they snapped quick photos of us because they needed uniform class photos for their website. I’ve been submitting to acting projects with that same headshot ever since.

What is an artist without an audience? This is the question that, at its core, I’ve been thinking about for the past two years. My writing grew up on competitions. The subject and style that I used to write had been heavily influenced by the nature of the audience reading it.

This spring, I am applying for the minigrant to revisit many of the same ends, this time with more specific goals in mind. First, I would like to renew my website for another year, allowing me to continue to consolidate my public work in one online location. Next, I would like to allocate a portion of the funds towards submissions to various poetry magazines and contests. Though these magazines are often competitive, I’ve enjoyed this small taste of the publishing world, and have found the process of finding a place for my writing especially important as I get ready to complete my poetry concentration.

In my collection of Everyday Elegies, I seek to explore the distinctions and connections between form. I will create a six-song EP accompanied by six video-visual art pieces exploring everyday losses in my life.

This semester marks my formal dive into the study of poetics and English literature in a collegiate setting — whereas I’ve previously taken only writing workshops, my poetry education is now supplemented by more rigorous investigations of history, form, and criticism. As expected, my writing and reading are far richer for it: I now find myself more and more able to draw from the deep well of both established and contemporary English poetry when analyzing not only my own work, but the work of others.

With a minigrant, I would be able to purchase and read approximately thirty additional poetry books. This would be an opportunity to innovate in my own poetics, transforming the ways I think about form and language.

For my minigrant, I am proposing access to a fund for merchandise, which will cover the cost to order the totes, shirts, stickers, etc., and the cost of the artist’s time and work. The rest of the fund, after the initial merchandise order and artist payout, will go toward paying future artists for their work and future re-orders of merchandise.

I have countless video ideas and have plans to co-direct a video with a friend of mine, Bridget Hamel, who does creative direction and styling, but don’t have the funding to properly compensate a videographer for their work. For my minigrant, I am proposing access to a music video fund that will cover the costs of a music video for my upcoming single, “No Other Like You”.

When I got to UVa, I began to record with other musicians and producers, ultimately using the microphones they had at their disposal, but I have always known that in order to create the music that I dream about creating, I will need more high quality recording equipment. My current goal is to continue recording the solo album that I have been working on and to record and release work under the artist name LAMB, a collaborative project I have been working on.