Borelli Project in Ashland Receives $75,000 ArtPlace Grant
We are pleased to announce that Prospectus artist Dan Borelli (The Cloud of Unknowing) has been awarded a $75,000 grant from ArtPlace to realize his related multiyear, cross-disciplinary, research-
ArtPlace America is a collaboration among 14 foundations, 8 federal agencies, and 6 financial institutions dedicated to investing in creative placemaking projects across the country. Dan’s project was one of 55 projects selected from among 1,270 applications.
Illuminating Futures: Ashland, Massachusetts is a unique creative placemaking project in that it focuses on a community liability– the Nyanza Superfund site, the toxic contamination of area water and soil by the Nyanza Chemical Plant. The subject choice is deeply personal as Ashland is Dan’s hometown, and the Superfund site is directly responsible for contaminating his community. Friends of his contracted a rare, fatal form of cancer, and Nyanza was posthumously verified as the source.
How do you transform a community that has chosen to suppress and ignore the risk associated with toxic contamination into an engaged and knowledgeable community focused on a healthy future? Through color and light, Dan intends to interrupt the Ashland community’s long-term malaise, help community members become knowledgeable about the current risks, and stimulate a new kind of stewardship of the land that will help to shape the social, physical, and economic future of Ashland.
Artists in Context began working with Dan when the project was in thesis form at Harvard Graduate School of Design. The Cloud of Unknowing is part of the Artists’ Prospectus for the Nation, and Artists in Context now will continue to work with Dan on Illuminating Futures.
