TCG grant app--first two questions

Help edit my grant application. Please? Here is a link to the grant description and requirements: http://tcg.org/grants/cdpdesign/cdp_des_index.cfm


1) What inspired you to become a designer? What subsequent influences-theatrical or otherwise-have influenced your career aspirations?

Candlewood Playhouse 1990: “You’re never fully dressed without a smile,” I hear belted across the audience Thursday, Friday, Twice on Saturday, and then again on Sunday. “Let me entertain you,” I see a woman take off too many articles of clothing. In the Connecticut suburbs of New York City I am witness to my sister, a young stage actress, every night of my childhood whether at home at the piano, or in the theater.

Later love of geometry and fabric developed as a young child (twelve or so). My best friends mother, Pat, was a seamstress (the seamstress in town who made everyone’s prom and wedding dresses). My mom asked her for sewing lessons for me. Pat of course was too proud to take money, so my mother paid her in groceries. Pat taught me everything I needed to know to complete a garment from a pattern.

When I was sixteen, I discovered classes for high school students at the Fashion Institute of Technology. I convinced my parents to let me take Metro North to New York City on Saturdays to study draping. My father was worried about me getting to school so he made sure to give me fifteen dollars cab fair every weekend, but I saved the money, walked to school, and spent it in the garment district.

Through high school and college, the idea in my head and the final outcome could always be critically compared. But after a decade of design execution, I feel I am adept at executing ideas.

Whenever I am in an art museum, I have this restless feeling of wanting to be as close to a work as possible so as to feel what the artist was doing when he was creating—the strokes and blending of color, the planned and improvised, instinct, intent.

In live performance, a viewer has more insite into these processes. As not-for-profit theater seems to be growing more and more engaged with its community through talk-backs, tours, and educational endeavors, a patron of this form can truly immerse himself as much as he desires. As a designer, ther is the ongoing opportunity to literally enter your artwork—by viewing from the audience during technical rehearsals, editing work on the stage, and returning to the audience. Work as a designer is dually rewarding because of its collaborative nature. You don’t answer only to yourself, there is a director and a board of directors, and a community who are in your mind who must also be satisfied and inspired.

2) Discuss your strengths and weaknesses as an artist. Why is this the right time for you to apply for this program?

Some of my strengths are a commitment to a high-quality, aesthetically interesting product, the ability to work with a broad spectrum of personalities, humility, a welcoming and mature attitude to criticism, flexibility, a fresh outlook on old and new stories, commitment to appropriate means of story-telling with a balance of inspiring innovation, self-motivation (I wake up early and work very long hours on interesting projects), a genuine interest in life and people, excitement about life and work, work within budgets, interested in solving problems outside the theater
world such as human rights standards, energy conservation, and recycling.
Some weaknesses are that I work so much I am out of balance in personal life. Also, I would like to me more direct and exact in design (i.e. get it right the first time) rather than having to explore a solution during production. I feel this comes with age and experience.

This is the right time for me to apply for this grant because I have built up many well-nourished contacts in the Chicago theater community. Whenever I finish a design project, I feel as though I have poured my entire life into them. All of my time, exhausted all of my friends help. I wonder “How many more do I have of these in me?” When I finish a show, I feel I have just run a marathon. I always accept the projects that come my way and I always end up working just as hard on all of them no matter how much they pay. With this grant in my future, I would be able to look more critically upon design offers, editing options so that my life goals always stay in sight.