BELLOWS FALLS, Vt. – Canal Street Art Gallery presents the Student Art Exhibition Program, a new monthly show with a mission to fill the need for professional experience in the arts, which seeks to raise $15,000 in “altruistic capital.” The gallery plans for this opportunity to enable students to foster their creativity, cultivate real world skills, and find exposure and guidance to prepare for professional settings. This new program has its first deadline for students to submit their artwork by Nov. 1. The inaugural show will open on Dec. 20. To learn more and submit artwork to be considered by the gallery’s artist advisory board and show in the program, go to www.studentartshow.com.
To build the community outreach necessary to find student involvement, educator support, and advertising partners, three new contracted positions of program director, program developer, and exhibition manager will support the program. To pay a monthly stipend for these positions, along with building, promoting, and advertising for the Student Art Exhibition Program, Canal Street Art Gallery launches its third fundraising campaign on the Kickstarter crowdfunding platform.
This campaign, the gallery’s most ambitious fundraiser yet, asks for an all-or-nothing goal of $15,000 to fund the first year of the Student Art Exhibition Program. The yearly total of stipends for the program is $11,000. To successfully raise funds for this purpose, the gallery introduces the concept of “altruistic capital,” which means creating a budget for mission-driven businesses to contribute to society by developing public programming with philanthropic ideals, and thereby supporting future humanitarian acts. To back the “Help Us Build Our Student Art Exhibition Program” campaign, go to www.kickstarter.com/projects/canalstreetart/help-us-build-our-student-art-exhibition-program.
This fundraiser will help pay for additional lighting, and a new freestanding triangle of walls, to be an “island” within Canal Street Art Gallery’s Canal Room, on which the program will exhibit student’s artwork. This room, overlooking the Bellows Falls Canal and Fall Mountain, is flooded with northwest-facing natural light, and hosts the gallery’s Working Artist Program, free community art studio, and visible storage. This places students in a vibrant, active, and dynamic environment with other artists and creative people working in the arts. With the addition of the Student Art Exhibition Program, the Canal Room will become an even more extensive creative community incubus, with possibilities for learning, collaboration, availability of art supplies, and exhibiting and selling of artwork.
Canal Street Art Gallery is located at 23 Canal Street in historic downtown Bellows Falls, Vt., and is open Tuesday-Saturday, from 10 a.m. – 5 p.m. For more information about the Student Art Exhibition Program, or the “Help Us Build Our Student Art Exhibition Program” Kickstarter campaign, go to www.studentartshow.com and www.canalstreetartgallery.com; call Mike, the development director, at 802-289-0104; or send emails to Brooklyn, the exhibition manager, at brooklyn@canalstreetartgalley.com.