I would like to request funding to travel to New Orleans in the Summer of 2023. Known as “the birthplace of jazz,” New Orleans has long been a hotspot and melting pot for musical creativity and a variety of musical cultures.

This project will consist of a 4-song, all original E.P. The genre will be primarily modern
jazz with hints of fusion and world music. The songs will be primarily instrumental and focus on tonality and meter we don’t hear in popular music today. My stylistic experience in metrically modulating rhythms and shifting modal harmonies will center the album, but each song will be focused on a different aspect of these ideas.

Last year, for my 3rd year arts award, I recorded an E.P. “Comet” of 4 original songs. The project was a huge success, and I’d like to propose a similar project for this year, but with new music and a new vision.

I am requesting a $3,000 Miller Arts award to help cover my tuition for the 2023 Summer Shakespeare Intensive for Actors through Shakespeare & Company (May 29-June 26).

I am requesting a grant of $3,000 to aid with the project. This award will support me by enabling me access to a camera, and all of the equipment for video creation.

In Vienna, I will be taking 16 credits, including both Music and German courses. I am very excited for my schedule, which includes a Music Performance Workshop, where I will participate in weekly chamber, solo, and opera theatre performances, join an ensemble of instrumentalists and vocalists, have an in-house collaborative pianist, and learn from guest lecturers and renowned professionals from Vienna. I will also take private lessons and end the semester with my own vocal recital. This recital will help prepare me for my UVA third-year recital, which I will present only 4 months later in the Spring.

During this project, my top priority will fall on the aspect of directing and acting. In the past two years at the Drama Department, I greatly focused on those two areas.

I am asking for funding in three areas: continuing private lessons over the summer with my local instructor in Northern Virginia, attending a New York Philharmonic Orchestra concert, and one private lesson from a New York flutist, recommended by Kelly Sulick. This work will be ultimately presented via two orchestral excerpt recordings: one before I visit New York and one after.

I am proposing to receive funding to upgrade my flute’s head joint. The grant would allow me to invest in my future music career and surpass the limitations of my current instrument for my proposed DMP recital, where I will be performing expressive French flute repertoire.

I plan to create a picture-book of approximately 20 prints associated with the 5 stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Each print will involve a mixture of planography, intaglio, and relief; I hope to have many layers on a single page. Each stage of grief will have 4 prints associated with that certain stage. The story of the book will follow a character in their journey of life; they will experience loss and embark in the five stages of grief. I hope to portray their emotions and process in finding themself and acceptance.

I propose to create a series of seven prints for my Disinguished Majors Program (DMP) show, and I hope to edition and frame each of the pieces.

I propose that I will make a short documentary series that is about 4 episodes which will be distributed primarily through Youtube. My vision for this project is to tell often untold stories in our UVA community. These digital stories will not be limited to just students and professors.

I propose to make an autoethnographic short I'm and a portrait series exploring my identity as an immigrant Korean American by creatively examining the interactions of three generations: my grandmother, mother, and I. The short film will be distributed through Youtube, and the portrait series will be exhibited at a physical location. This funding will allow me to pursue my passion for visual storytelling, new media art, video art, and film making. The award money will be used for filming equipment and post production expenses.

For many years, I have wanted to attend the National Flute Association Convention, which would involve a similar kind of rich educational experience, but on a much larger scale. This year’s convention is being held at the Hilton Downtown in Chicago, Illinois, and for my rising third-year arts award, I would love to request funding to be able to attend this convention.

I am proposing support for a fourth-year voice recital which would allow me to present the culmination of my work as a music major and arts scholar at UVA. I am requesting $2500, which I have broken down in detail in my budget below, to be used to support the artistic preparation as well as logistics for putting together said recital.

My project proposal is to attend the Joffrey Ballet School San Francisco summer intensive program from July 25 - August 6, 2022. With this grant, I am hoping to gain more experience within my discipline. At this intensive, I will be able to take ballet, contemporary, modern, pilates, and a variety of other classes throughout the two weeks that I am there.

I am proposing the creation and performance of an album to be completed over this summer and fall. I will be recording, producing, mixing, and mastering the album, and then releasing it to music streaming platforms. Then, I will be creating and performing live sets of the album. I will be using this grant money to ensure that my album will be as authentic and high quality as possible, and that I am able to perform my music to live audiences to further my exploration of this genre.

I am proposing recording a four song EP in studio over the summer and into the fall. I would like to take a quality over quantity approach with this project, trying to craft each song with the utmost care and cutting no corners to make sure it is truly the best sounding work I can create.

I would like to spend the summer in Nashville, building professional connections and expanding my network outside of Virginia.

I do firmly believe that intensive training is necessary to becoming a well-rounded actor which is why I would like to apply to study abroad at two different conservatory style semester long programs. I am requesting $3,000 to attend one of the following opportunities, both in London, England. The London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts Semester Program for Classical Acting is my first choice.

For my fourth year project I would like to create a work that brings together four major passions into one multi-media project; Shakespeare, SFX Makeup, filmmaking and projection design. The purpose of this project is to honor the language and expression of Shakespeare’s words through a more experimental and unconventional art form.

Our string quartet hopes to perform a fourth-year recital in the Spring of 2023 (potentially on April 21st and 28th) to present the work we have accomplished over the past three years as a chamber ensemble. The four members of our group: Britney Cheung, Alex Taing, Isabelle Lesmana, and Christopher Fox, have played in string groups together (as a string quartet and with other musicians at UVA) since our first year, and hope to culminate our experiences together in this final project.

I will be spending next semester as a visiting student at Hertford College in the University of Oxford, and I am thrilled for this opportunity to cultivate both my analytical prose and my understanding of English literature, criticism, and theory. I sincerely thank the Miller Arts committee for the consideration of my proposal.

Over the past two years, despite difficulties posed by the pandemic, I have tried to make the most of the opportunities at UVA and elsewhere to continue my actor training. I would like to pursue a career in musical theatre, TV, and/or film, so I have sought out experiences focused on singing, acting, and dancing in order to hone my skill set.

In preparation for my fourth-year recital next year, I am applying for a grant towards recital expenses, in addition to various repairs that my cello ought to receive prior to the performance. Recital expenses will include piano accompaniment, private lessons, photography, a bow re-hair, and a new set of strings. Cello repairs will include varnish touch-ups, closing open seams, and wood adjustments.

For this project I will be completing two different pieces: Memory Lane and Vintage Modernity. The first of these pieces I began in Composition I in Fall 2020. It revolves around the use of both pre-recorded and newly recorded samples in order to represent my childhood. I was born in America, but I moved overseas at the age of 5, going to Moldolva and then Bangladesh. I finally returned to America at age 11. This journey is reflected in the piece in a transition from using pre-recorded samples from my life in America (e.g. Shows from PBS, songs my father sang, etc.) The second piece (Vintage Modernity) will focus on vinyl and synthesizers for this project. I have a large collection of vinyl records, both at home and at UVA. These range from popular hits to more obscure records which I’ve dug up at garage sales and physical stores.

For this project, I would like to purchase further additions to my home studio and make repairs to exis$ng equipment in order to create the best quality recordings and mixes possible for my upcoming distinguished major project. The distinguished major project will entail completion of a 35-40 minute album.

I am applying for a fourth-year award to supplement a summer study abroad experience at the Gaiety School of Acting in Dublin, Ireland. The program I will be attending is an Acting Intensive through IES Abroad. This program includes 2 weeks in Killarney, Ireland at their West End House followed by four weeks in Dublin at the Gaiety.

I am requesting Miller Arts Award funding for purchasing a new bow. I will still keep my current bow for backup purposes but would like to purchase a higher quality bow to become my default.

With funding from the Miller Arts Scholars Arts Award, and under the direction Pete Spaar and other members of the string faculty, I would like to prepare at least 2 to 3 full works for contrabass and accompaniment in contrasting styles to demonstrate the variety of techniques Pete and I have been working on during my time at UVA.

I am applying for a rising third-year award that will allow me to purchase an external hard drive for my computer, a keyboard MIDI controller, and two professional quality orchestral sound libraries: the “BBC Orchestra Professional” and the “SWAM All In Bundle” libraries.

In this grant I am applying for a new guitar as well as funding for lessons over the summer/fall which will help me perform a professional recital and help make my career in music after school a reality.

This upcoming summer, I intend to study abroad in Dublin, Ireland to take part in an acting intensive at the Gaiety School of Acting. I applied through UVA to this six-week IES abroad program, and also plan to apply for a three-week intensive program directly through the Gaiety school. I am asking for a $3000 grant in order to attend one of these programs. This grant would greatly help to cover the expenses of the program and the expenses of traveling abroad.

This upcoming summer, I intend to study musical theatre at a 1-3 week intensive either in New York City or Boston. I applied to three programs: Broadway Artists Alliance, Boston Conservatory at Berklee’s Musical Theatre Acting Intensive, and Berklee’s Musical Theater Workshop.

With a Fourth-Year Arts Award, I intend to travel to New York City to view some of these historical musicals in person as a part of my thesis research. I would like to see Hamilton and Come From Away. Also in New York City is the New York Public Library Digital Collections, which is one of the most comprehensive archives for theatre arts. I want to conduct research in the Theatre on Film and Tape (TOFT) Archive, which is home to professionally shot video recordings of Broadway musicals.

Contemporary music production, specifically the type of work that my project entails, is not possible without the use of a digital audio workstation (DAW). A mobile DAW that can handle the tasks necessary to complete this project is absolutely essential. For this reason, I am applying for funding for a powerful laptop with both the mobility and improved computational power to make this project feasible, and a high-fidelity field recorder to perform the field recordings.

I am applying for this Arts Award so that I can buy a good quality upright for my own use here at UVA, at home, at gigs, and for recording. This purchase will allow me to practice on a more consistent basis, as well as put to use the technique and new skills I’ve been learning these past two years outside of just UVA ensembles.

For this proposed project, I would like to build upon the skills I acquired in my Dance & the Camera course (Fall 2021) in order to plan, film, and edit a 4-6 minute dance film to further explore the connections I began to make between dance and the environment. During the summer recess, I will enroll in a dance intensive that includes classes on making screendance works.

I propose that I will create a short pilot for an animated series. Though the plot is discernible at this point, I have a simple idea for my pilot: a goofy and girl-friendly take on the sci-fi genre, a 16-year-old girl works ardently to become the next Evil Space Empress/Overlord of the galaxy (akin to Darth Vader). She does this all whilst navigating the ordinary perils of high school and personal struggles of her mixed-species (half-alien-half-human) identity.

I propose that I will spend the 2022-2023 school year creating and visually designing a romance TTRPG. I am particularly interested in Regency romances (e.g., Jane Austen and Netflix's Bridgerton) and will create my game under this theme. In my game, players will use character sheets of my design to create characters in Regency England's high-society.

I hope to spend my summer focused on two different intensives intended to balance my acting and directing development. The Shakespeare & Company virtual summer acting intensive is a weeklong program designed to develop a solid foundation for performing Shakespeare that came highly recommended by an acting and directing mentor of mine. My approach to directing would be deeply strengthened by the opportunity to experience their unique approach to embodying text. The Kennedy Center Directing Intensive would provide me with an opportunity to refine my directing skills by spending two weeks focused on the pre-rehearsal process as well as equitable rehearsal spaces.

The production concept I’m proposing is set in the near future in a post- industrial city left impoverished by the impacts of climate change, before shifting to the undeveloped forest setting. I think creating a production driven by the musical aesthetics of Funkadelic and Childish Gambino’s work, putting those previous and current generations in contrast with each other alongside Midsummer’s cast of characters seeking to escape their parents’ world like those in Parable of the Sower will result in a show that gives a new-forward thinking aesthetic approach to this classical text.

The objective of the project is to have a full weekend of a mainstage production (i.e. not in a lecture hall) of Twelfth Night so that we can reach a larger audience and so that we can retain the technical work that has already been put into this production.

I would like to have the opportunity to travel to New York to conduct research. I am currently in the process of declaring Drama as a major and American Sign Language as a minor. It is a goal of mine to work with both hearing and Deaf actors. During this trip I will conduct research in Deaf artists and their collaborations in theatre. I am also interested in learning more about physical theatre and experimental theatre.

This coming academic year I would like to apply for the 2021 Yale Summer Directing Intensive and then stage a student written work for the UVA community. After taking Directing I with Professor Dalton in Fall 2019, I found myself yearning to learn more about the craft. After having previous training in acting, directing was a new venture. Though I have choreographed in the past and helped produce showcases (collaborating with sound and light designers), working with actors and staging a scene was a whole new world.

In this project sponsored by the Miller Art Scholars program, I hope to travel to California and use additional funds to help with cost of materials for my fourth year/ painting DMP.

In this project, I intend to use color reduction linoleum prints to create a series of still-lifes intended to represent people’s identities through their objects.

Bates Dance Festival/Gibney Connect 2021 is a five-day dance intensive in NYC, aimed to cultivate creative exchange between artists and dancers.

Last semester, I applied for and received a Miller Arts Minigrant to fund the purchase of a new viola bow that would allow me to gain greater versatility in my sound and technique. I would like to expand on this project and these goals by spending the next year looking for and ultimately investing in a new viola.

I intend to perform a third-year recital early in the Spring semester of 2021, featuring both classical and musical theater repertoire.

I am asking for funding for continued vocal study with Pamela Beasley during the summer months, in addition to coordinating all aspects of a fourth-year recital in Spring 2022, which includes a space rental, accompanist fees, and other miscellaneous costs.

The main component that the grant will fund is a digital camera, and specifically, I am interested in purchasing a Sony Alpha a7R III. This camera fits my needs because it is a professional quality, mirrorless camera.

The main component that the grant will fund is a digital camera, and specifically, I am interested in purchasing a Sony Alpha a7R III. This camera fits my needs because it is a professional quality, mirrorless camera.

To enrich my fourth year studio art DMP thesis, which is in its embryonic stages, I am interested in utilizing Miller Art’s support to offset the costs associated with my practice and thesis exhibition next year. My thesis will result in a body of photographs, and I plan that they will serves as a study of obscure, bodily forms in the vein of postminimalist and feminist art. At the Miller Arts outcome report, I will provide a presentation that delineates how my research cultivated into a final body of photographs. I am requesting a Rising Fourth Year Award so that I can engage in a more liberated practice next year, one that will allow me to freely explore the parameters of my ideas without being restrained by the cost of materials.

To enrich my fourth year studio art DMP thesis, which is in its embryonic stages, I am interested in utilizing Miller Art’s support to offset the costs associated with my practice and thesis exhibition next year. My thesis will result in a body of photographs, and I plan that they will serves as a study of obscure, bodily forms in the vein of postminimalist and feminist art. At the Miller Arts outcome report, I will provide a presentation that delineates how my research cultivated into a final body of photographs. I am requesting a Rising Fourth Year Award so that I can engage in a more liberated practice next year, one that will allow me to freely explore the parameters of my ideas without being restrained by the cost of materials.

My proposed project is attending a five-day intensive: the Bates Dance Festival/Gibney Connect 2021 Dance Intensive (two names, but a singular intensive).

My amended project proposal is to attend the one-week American Dance Festival Winter Intensive in New York City. During the program, I will attend three to four classes a day in a variety of movement styles including contemporary technique, improvisation, and repertory from guest companies.

I plan to either hone my craft as an actor or get real-world experience in the film industry. I hope to improve my acting technique at the Stella Adler Studio in NYC, or work at a film company in L.A., assigned through the Emmys Television Academy Foundation.

I am proposing research in the field of interactive technology in performance. As a double major in Drama and Computer Science, this research will also be applied to my CS Distinguished Major research, where I will design or program a new way to use interactive technology in theater. By the end of the year, I'd like to create a live performance employing the technology I mastered in an upcoming project within the Drama Department, such as the Lab Series. To find where the future of theater technology lies, I first must purchase and experiment with these interactive hardware systems up close.

It is my intention to intern at a professional theatre in either directing or artistic directing in order to gain first-hand experience in the theatre industry. I plan on applying to numerous summer internships at various theatres across the country, including Hartford Stage Company, San Francisco Playhouse, La Jolla Playhouse, as well as a few others.

This Fall, through Virginia Players (the student wing of the Department of Drama), I will be directing a fully-realized, full-length production of ​The Cocktail Party​. The final product will be a fully-realized, entirely student-created production that will perform for one weekend in the Department of Drama.

I am asking for funding to buy a cello pickup microphone, Abelton Standard Software, an Abelton Push MIDI Controller, a Focusrite Audio Interface, and an Akai mini-keyboard Controller. Each of these items will be used to expand my capacities as a musician to explore new, experimental music with my cello.

I have been a classically trained cellist for 15 years, but over the past two years, I have begun to explore different types of music. This experience has been quite shocking, as I have seen the power of music in a much different way. Creating new types of music beyond the classical genre has inspired me to see other ways that music can effectively resonate with people. Thus, I hope for this project to be an opportunity for me to utilize my musical talents to create new music.

I propose spending a week in New York during the time that Stephanie Nakasian, my voice instructor at UVA, will be in New York performing and sitting in at many clubs including Birdland. She has agreed to allow me to accompany her and sit-in on her and others’ performances while introducing me to the big names of jazz in New York City.

I would like to professionally record my recital and release it as a live album. A recording technician and professional videographer would allow me to accomplish this by documenting the concert and then mixing and editing the recordings.

This proposal will span two parts: summer when I will learn taxidermy, and the fall and spring when I will work to incorporate the taxidermy into my art.

I am applying for a Miller Arts Rising Fourth Year Award to attend the American Dance Festival’s 2020 winter intensive, as well as various online classes.

My goal for this summer is to supplement my UVa dual-degree with a rigorous performance studies curriculum at the Summer Conservatory. I hope to glean practical field experience by working alongside industry professionals while making connections with peers and employers I undoubtedly will collaborate with in future film and television projects.

I look forward to expanding my acting training and involvement in short films as I will explain below. I have created the following detailed proposal for my Artistic Trifecta in which I hope to enrich my acting development. Essentially, I am centering my summer project around three training principles: professional feedback, self-inquiry and study with theory books, and immediate training application through involvement in a web series. I want each spoke of the trifecta to enrich the others as I work through each stage in parallel to nurture my acting development this summer. Seeing as this is my last summer still in college, this is the best time for me to tackle such a project.

With a Rising Fourth Year Arts Award, I would like to attend the New York Film Academy’s four-week Acting for Film workshop, a full-time, immersive training program focusing on Stanislavski’s System, monologues, and scene studies; I have experience in these valuable tools through the lens of theatre, but I have not been trained with them in a film setting.

I am requesting online classes at Gotham’s Writers, “...where writers develop their craft and come together in the spirit of discovery and fellowship,” according to their website. Gotham Writers was recommended to me by a mentor of mine, writer/director Roger Kumble, who developed some of his best work from their programs. I am also requesting a year subscription to Masterclass, an online site that hosts professionals from a variety of fields give virtual classes on their professions.

This summer I will be interning with Richard Maxwell’s experimental theater company New York City Players in Brooklyn, New York. I will be organizing their archives, creating content for the website, and helping assist in production for a series of summer workshops with their Incoming Theater Division. The Incoming Theater Division is a program that supports immigrant playwrights in putting their work onstage.

I am applying to the Rising Fourth-Year Award in order to advance my skills in painting from photo reference. This summer, renowned artist, Alyssa Monk, is hosting a workshop concentrated on the creation of oil paintings from photo references at the New York Academy of Art. This workshop focuses on capturing the essence of a photograph in an oil painting, something Alyssa Monk is famous for. This course would give me the opportunity to use my foundational skills and take them the next level.

I believe attending the sixth annual Champs-Elysées Film Festival would better expose me to the art of filmmaking and prime me to create my own screenplay about my experience traveling abroad.

For my fourth year award, I will return to my original artistic passion: theater. Stage performance was the primary reason why I applied for the Miller Arts Scholars program. Since my acceptance, I have explored other forms of art, but I always end up returning to the stage.

I am so thrilled to have been accepted to study abroad this summer through UVa’s Summer in Lyon program, and while my primary reason for going will be to practice French and experience language immersion, I also want to seize this summer as a creative opportunity. During my stay, I plan to write and record an EP of French and English songs inspired by my experiences that I will pair with an artist chapbook which will feature my illustrations and poetry.

With summer break fast approaching, I have high hopes of spending my time focusing entirely on music. School, work, and other involvements often have me expending energy that would ideally be put toward writing, recording, and playing shows; I am often daydreaming of time devoted solely to creating. For my Miller Arts rising fourth year grant, I am proposing a summer with less of these obstacles and therefore with more time to write, record, tour, and collaborate with other artists.

The main part of the project will be taking place in Columbus, Ohio at the summer intensive program for students at BalletMet. As a prospective dance minor at a liberal arts institution that only offers a minor in dance, I have been searching for opportunities to immerse myself in the professional dance world. After participating in several auditions for dance intensives, I chose BalletMet because of the extensiveness of the program, and also because it works with several dance genres closely resembling modern/contemporary technique in addition to classical ballet technique.

Through this project, I hope to attend weekly classes this summer, as well as attending 2-3 dance performances in New York City, and participating in a Summer Intensive with Gaga Movement in August. As a rising fourth year, I would like to take this opportunity to explore the dance community outside of UVa and continue to build upon the experiences I’ve had here before going into my final year.

I am currently in the process of applying to full-time (40+ hours per week) internships located in various cities across the United States. Since many theatres do not have a dramaturgy-specific internship available, there are three types of dramaturgy-related internships that I am applying for: Literary Intern, Community Engagement Intern, and Education Intern. Every theatre defines these positions differently, but each position is similar in that it encompasses primarily dramaturgical elements.

I would like to utilize MAS funds to attend a Broadway Teachers Workshop this summer. Additionally, upon returning to grounds next fall, I would like to offer a workshop for UVA students who may wish to incorporate techniques for including arts education in their training.

Continuing to expand my horizons as an educator and creator, I would like to use my Fourth Year Award to travel to New York City for an immersive experience. I hope to expand my skills and knowledge in the area of theater, specifically writing, directing, and theater education. Towards this end, I would like to see shows, attend the Educational Theater Association’s 2019 National Conference in September, and network with individuals working at colleges in like The City College of New York who have programs in educational theater and creating/writing. Additionally, I would like to join professional organizations, The Drama Teacher Resource Company and the Educational Theater Association, that would enable me to have access to resources and connect with others doing similar work.

For this reason, I am applying to fund a semester of studying classical acting abroad at one of London’s most prestigious acting schools, either the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art or the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. I have already been accepted to LAMDA’s semester program, and am still awaiting response from RADA following my audition in early March.

I plan to do a comprehensive project comparing the concept of conservation in the United States and Tanzania. I would like to visually express several topics, such as how climate change impacts conservation, how conservation impacts local communities, and how people impact conserved spaces. After exploring these topics throughout my semester in Tanzania and over my summer in Grand Teton National Park I plan to compile these visual comparisons upon returning to UVa during Fall 2019 and Spring 2020.

From June 13th to July 21st, I will take three classes per day, four days per week. On top of regularly scheduled classes, there are dozens of other classes, workshops, and performances to attend on the other three days of the week. I’ll be dancing constantly, exposing myself to different styles and cultural influences while making connections from every corner of the dance world.

Ultimately, my project with this grant would be a body of color film photos exploring the relationships that human society has with the natural world (the physical ​real​ world.)

For the rising 4th-year grant, I am proposing creating another book following my experiences in Italy, with photographs, journal entries, and sketches, etc. For my outcome presentation in April 2020, I will have a handmade book to display as well as prints to install.

My proposed project would be a series of three short films (each 2-5 minutes in length) which would expand upon this series of drawings. Using paint, costumes, and a variety of props, each film would seek to transform a human body into an other worldly, fantasy creature whose external form would embody the mental state of the character themselves, and would explore different aspects of spending time alone.

Using a mix of film and digital cameras, I would like to conduct a series of environment-oriented film studies. This would involve travel to a variety of both rural and urban places. I am particularly interested in the ways that nature and technology come together, so would seek out spaces in which industrial and natural forces meet head on. The final products of this project would be two or three observational films, between six and ten minutes each.

I am proposing to attend the workshop ​Fiber to Form: Sculpting with Paper​ at Anderson Ranch. During this week-long workshop, I will learn how to create paper sculptures using casting and folding techniques from Kozo fiber. I am especially interested in the casting technique, as I have used this method in my sculpture classes to create clay and plaster molds. Here, I will able to apply my previous mold-making experience within a new context.

This summer, I plan on going to the Carriage House Violins of Johnson String Instruments store in Newton Upper Falls, Massachusetts, which is right outside of Boston. I have been to them to get violin accessories in the past and their bows have been recommended to me as high quality. There, I will test out a few bows that I have found on their website that are in my price range by seeing how compatible they sound with my instrument. After getting a new bow, I will continue to work on the repertoire I have selected for my recital and prepare for the recital which I anticipate happening at the end of February or early March of 2020.

I am proposing a photographic portrait series that would explore cultural identity and exchange. As a double major in Studio Art and American Studies, I’ve enjoyed making connections between the two, using research and field-study to inform my photography and vice versa.

I propose to interview and print with the creators of the iconic Ranger Doug’s Enterprises National Park posters. As a studio art and environmental science double major, I am deeply invested in exploring the interface between the two fields.

I want to attend different music technology workshops hosted by the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA) at Stanford University. I would am seeking funding to cover my project, tuition expense and traveling cost.

I propose a six-month project I have long dreamed of: a full-length album of my original music, entitled “Loop.” The album will include twelve original songs ranging in time from 2013 to 2018, thoroughly exhibiting the artistic work of my professional career so far.

I will attend Yale's Summer Conservator for Actors, and will use my Rising Fourth-Year Award to help with tuition and housing costs in New Haven, CT.

Area will be a multimedia project which will engage with audio and visual elements in order to capture emotions without using language as a tool. It will rely on audiovisual components to reproduce reflective human consciousness. Area will consist of five different films with five different self-produced scores. All of the audio produced will be created with an analogue synthesizer and all of the visuals will be shot on 16mm film.

I am proposing to create a film called “Juniper” with a rising Fourth-Year Award. “Juniper” will use visual and audio components, as well as dialogue, to create an exploration into a nonsensical word.

I will apply to an immersive and competitive opera program presented by the American Institute of Musical Studies (AIMS) in Graz, Austria.

I see the outcome of this project as a collections of short films that explore the organic movement and behavior of materials such as inks, pigments, powders, oils, and soaps – with room for the discovery and use of new materials throughout the process. These are examples of some of the required materials, along with glassware such as plates and petri dishes. The specific equipment I will need includes a macro lens, a tripod, underwater film equipment, and studio lights.

I propose participation in the Metropolitan Studies and Architecture program in Berlin, Germany. The program takes place over the summer of 2018, from June 5th–July 28th. During the program, I intend to enroll in courses in Architecture, Art History, and Urban and Cultural Studies. I also intend to continue shooting photography and film during my time in Berlin, in addition to visiting the many contemporary art museums in and around Berlin.

Classical music is an industry. In order to progress in this competitive industry I need to start making connections and entering competitions that will allow me to advance my career. I believe that receiving a $1500 arts award to attend the Washington International Piano Festival will not only allow me to grow as a musician, but also enable me to meet world renowned pianists and compete against my peers from all over the world.

While I still have aspirations of becoming a great pianist, I now have aspirations of becoming a composer. This desire stemmed from a classical improvisation class I took while studying abroad. In this class, I learned that I had a compositional voice and that I enjoyed creating new music. This summer I hope to grow and develop my compositional abilities. In order to do this, I have secured an internship with composer and orchestrator Chad Cannon in Pasadena, California.

With assistance from the Miller Arts Scholars Third Year Arts Award, I will spend the spring semester of 2017 studying abroad in Lisbon at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa (UNL), through a language and culture program with CIEE, and I will conduct research on the different dance styles taught and practiced in Portuguese culture. I will take dance classes at a studio called STEPS: escola de dança e artes do espectáculo. STEPS offers dance classes in many different dance styles: Kizomba, Semba, Funaná, Eastern and Indian dance, Tango, Tap Dance, Forró, Samba, Salsa and Cuban Music. What interests me about this diverse group of classes is that each dance style is unique to a specific Portuguese territory.

I am applying for an Arts Award to travel to Perigeuex, France and participate in the Franco-American Vocal Academy program, where I will sing a full opera role and work intensely on French music and language. The Franco American Vocal Academy (FAVA) centers its mission on performance opportunities for young singers. While there are many summer opera programs that offer similar opportunities for technical training, FAVA distinguishes itself with a valuable combination of technical achievement, immersive language instruction, and most importantly, significant performance opportunities.

I am applying for a Miller Art Scholars Rising Fourth-Year Award to support my participation in Bel Canto in Tuscany, an intensive and immersive opera training program in Italy. This program, focused on advanced study in Italian vocal traditions, features a month of comprehensive vocal, musical, dramatic, and linguistic study.

This year, the Bates Dance Festival will be offering classes from a variety of dance disciplines including modern, ballet, jazz, afro-modern, Spiraldynamik, Pilates, yoga, and contact improvisation. There will also be more academically based courses on choreography, movement and writing, the business of dance, film and media, and natural body systems. Classes will be taught by extremely gifted faculty that are powerful forces in their respective corners of the dance community, and they will be accompanied by live musical artists.

As an undergraduate student about to undergo my final summer before graduation, I fully intend to devote myself to artmaking and travel. I am proposing a two part project which will take course over four months. The first part will be an intensive month of travel abroad. During this month, I intend to make a book of visual poetry and drawings which will document my experience and also explore the ecstasy that is inherent to travel--ecstasy being derived from word, ‘ekstasis,’ meaning: “movement of the soul outside the body.” I will visually and poetically explore the transient, exciting, almost spiritual experience of ecstasy.

I am requesting funding for photography equipment that will allow me to improve upon my portfolio, and study how the camera’s focal length and framing chosen for a shot shapes the narrative of the image.

I have been fortunate enough to be accepted to Stella Adler Studio of Acting’s ten-week conservatory. My primary goal in attending this program is to further develop my skills as an actress, preparing me for a career for the stage, film, and television.

This summer of 2016, I would like to put into use my two majors: Speech Language Pathology and Music (vocal performance). I plan on shadowing a Speech Pathologist in Yorktown, Virginia, Ann Cyptar, who focuses mostly on patients with vocal health issues (singers, actors, etc.) and occasionally with patients suffering from head and neck cancer. To further my studies, I would also try to shadow a few other speech pathologists who work primarily with patients suffering from more common speech disorders and stroke patients. In an effort to truly understand the usefulness and importance of Speech Pathology in practice as a singer, I will also be attending two vocal workshops/performance opportunities. The first would be the Classical Singers Workshop at Peabody University from July 6-10 in Baltimore, Maryland. The second would be participating in the Bethesda Summer Music Festival in Bethesda, Maryland from June 20 to July 3.

This summer of 2017, I would like to pursue my performance- based career goals and continue developing both my skills as an individual and as part of an ensemble (a key part of being a performer). I hope to work with past and new teachers in an attempt to better understand and exercise my voice, all the meanwhile gaining valuable insight from the professionals at the programs.

I am interested in finding bridges between music and dance, exploring their capability to interpret physical and cultural landscapes, and through that, codifying a methodology that allows dancers and musicians to enter into a deeper understanding of their relationship to each other, to place, to physical spaces, and to the past.

My proposed project centers on a high intensity, hands-on involvement with Cleveland, OH nonprofit, Fresh Camp. Fresh Camp and the Refresh Collective exists to enliven Cleveland through “creative arts, community engagement and youth development.” The camp uses project-based hip-hop-in-action programs to motivate, educate, and activate students in personal and community development. Students learn skills in digital music composition, lyric writing, recording arts, and public performance. The creative, song writing process allows students to express experiences, perspectives, problems and solutions. Founder Dee Jay Doc and his team listen carefully to what students are saying and help give them opportunities to create “fresh action” such as planting new neighborhood gardens, tasting fresh food, silk screening t-shirts, and writing songs that promote the neighborhood farmer's market. As an intern, I will have the privilege of working, learning and living in and through these efforts.

I plan to intern with Black Entertainment Television Networks. As a Programming Intern, I will have the opportunity to create original programming, act as an on-set production assistant and study with the Writing Team. I will be able to be a part of the creative process of the television industry from beginning to end. Specifically, I will be under the tutelage of Senior Vice President, Connie Orlando in New York, New York. It is important that I learn the systems of the television and film industry so that, in the future, I will know the best ways to share my art.

Art is an articulation of the soul. It is a way to reinterpret the things that we have words to describe and to translate the things that words cannot explain. Often, creation is cathartic—it is cleansing, nourishing, and freeing for the body, mind and spirit. For many people, including myself art is a method of practicing self-care. I think that it is important to practice art in this way; art for the sake of the artist is a completely valid and sometimes necessary practice. However, as an African-American artist, I do not not have the luxury of creating selfishly. As a participant in the ongoing Liberation Struggle, as a result of the political condition of Blackness assigned to me at birth, I must use the tools that I have been gifted with to work towards Freedom. It is my duty.

An artist’s book is the ideal approach to encapsulate the idiosyncrasies of a unique, yet shared summer experience. Within a self-contained entity, I will employ numerous mediums to depict the quintessential images and memories of my consecutive summers in concrete, representational forms alongside more abstract creations. Further, a three-chapter organization of the book will facilitate exploration into the experience of each generation. I plan to employ drawing, water-based painting, printmaking, and papermaking techniques. I envision the pages of the artist’s book being filled with small, detail oriented watercolors, linoleum, and woodcut depictions of the Chesapeake Bay.

For our joint Fourth Year Art Award, we will travel to Finland and Russia alongside our Printmaking professor, Dean Dass. We will travel from October 1st through October 11th to the Balkans to study the origins of printmaking as an art form. This exploration of art and culture will involve participation in the Graphica Creativa, the oldest international printmaking exhibition in the Nordic countries, in Jyväskylä, a university city 200 km north of Helsinki. Subsequently, we will take a bookmaking course with the graduate students at Helsinki’s Academy of Fine Arts.

In this project, I will focus on honing my Hip Hop dance techniques and interview professional Hip Hop dancers in Beijing, China. While I have been deeply involved in the Urban Dance crews and community in my time at the University of Virginia, I haven’t had much exposure to the Hip Hop dance scene due to diminishing popularity of Hip Hop dance in America. However, the Hip Hop presence in Beijing is still strong, and the fact that various world-renown Hip Hop dancers live in Beijing makes it an ideal place for me to hone my skills and accumulate knowledge about Hip Hop.

I aim to explore and experiment with the effects that varying narrative media has on storytelling. My areas of inquiry are: Can media interact to change or enhance a narrative? Can different media influence how individuals receive and internalize a story differently? Or do they receive it based off of their individual life experiences? Do media factors influence the audience’s response to a narrative? To explore these issues, I will tell the story “Big Wave and Little Wave” in four different ways using audio design, visual design, movement through dance, and finally as a written piece. I will survey to evaluate the audience’s experience of each mediated version of this story, and make a film about the project built around the audience responses of medium effectiveness.

In the next year, I propose to learn the tradition of photography, from its historical inception to its modern day value. My primary goal is to document my learning process. I will gather information through formally practicing the art and experimentally researching its uses. I plan to study pinhole photography in Italy this summer, take an additional course on film photography in the fall, and conduct independent research on digital photography next spring. However, learning a new art form is a sweeping statement and requires limits such as in time, space, and content. Although I trade-off perspective by limiting my scope, I view these limits as necessary secondary goals that filter and make sense of information. Without these filters, I may learn nothing meaningful at all from the abundant pool of information I foresee accumulating. In a sense, my learning process mimics the camera. I will deliberately set specific limits, like exposure time and aperture, and choose the focus through certain lenses to record information.

In my fourth year as a Miller Arts Scholar, I hope to further my studies in photography through two workshops in landscape photography and bookmaking at Anderson Ranch in Aspen, Colorado from Aug 8th to Aug 19th 2016. A $4,240 Fourth Year Award would allow me to build on my Third Year Award, which introduced me to the art of photography.

Spreading across 1,700 acres of land, housing over 16,000 students, and having almost 200 years of history and traditions, the University of Virginia has more to offer than almost any one person can explore. With every person that I meet at UVA, I learn something new about this amazing university. Everyone here has discovered their own “UVA secret,” such as a favorite spot, a tasty local meal, an inspiring professor, or a shortcut to get to their next class. Now that I have taken a year’s worth of cinematography and digital media classes, I have the experience and knowledge to reveal these hidden gems on our campus in a documentary-style film that I plan to title: “UnderGROUNDS.” It will consist of interviews with students, professors, and local residents of Charlottesville who have unique secrets to share about UVA, along with footage of these special discoveries.

I want to explore this theme of environmental art, and the relational aesthetic in as many ways as I can. As I have a background in analog photography, I wish to still use this medium integrally as a way to inform my printing and the topics at hand. The format of the book has been always been fascinating to me, and I hope to examine further what an Artist’s Book is and is not. Therefore, I intend to produce prints, books (or some form of the book, e.g. zine), and photographs during this time of research.

Nest will be a project with two simultaneous bodies of work. I plan to create a series of photographs while also making an Artist's Book. The Artist's Book will primarily consist of printmaking processes and mixed media, while the photographs will stand apart from the physical book. Together both book and photographs should be coherent thematically.