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Six CIA artists talk about their work and their inspirations in a series of 20 short videos produced by 2005 CIA graduate Paul Sobota and released on Vimeo in late June.

All 20 featured artists are recent recipients of $20,000 Creative Workforce Fellowships, awarded in recognition of their outstanding work and innovation by the publicly funded Community Partnership for Arts and Culture. A total of 306 Cuyahoga County artists applied for this latest round of fellowship funding.

According to the CPAC website, “For its one-year duration, every Fellowship offers a $20,000 financial award that can be used for any purpose that advances the Fellow's artistic work and professional development. The award also includes a one-year membership with the COSE Arts Network, a tuition waiver for CPAC's Artist as an Entrepreneur Institute (AEI) and is included in a catalog of the artists' work.”

Winners of the 2013 awards include ceramics graduates Kristen Cliffel ’90 and Colleen Fraser ’96; illustration graduate Valerie Mayén ’05; assistant professors Barry Underwood and Sarah Paul, co-chair of the Sculpture + Expanded Media Department; and adjunct faculty member Liz Maugans, who has taught in the Printmaking Department since 1995. Virgie Ezelle-Patton, who took several courses at CIA between the early 1950s and late 1990s, also received a fellowship and is featured in a video profile.

Creative Workforce Fellowships are made possible by the support of residents of Cuyahoga County, Ohio, through the tax-funded organization, Cuyahoga Arts & Culture. The fellowship program is one of the largest publicly funded grant programs of its kind in the United States dedicated to funding individual artists.