The University of Windsor was well represented among the emerging artists to receive grants from the Windsor Endowment for the Arts, celebrated at a May 20 ceremony outside the Chimczuk Museum and Art Windsor-Essex.

Calligrapher and textile artist Tina Rouhandeh, a student in the School of Creative Arts, received the Lois Smedick Emerging Artist in Visual Arts Grant — named for the first woman to serve as dean of the UWindsor Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research. Rouhandeh will use the funds to complete her project Inquiry about Forgotten Birds, which combines stitches, calligraphy, and hand weaving to tell the story of persecuted people in her homeland of Iran.

Writer and editor Jade Wallace (MA 2021), a creative writing grad, will use her award for literary arts to complete her book-length poetry manuscript The Work is Done When We Are Dead.

Musician and composer Austin Di Pietro (BMus 2018) will apply his performing arts grant to his research and study on transborder, transnational, and border issues. He plans to develop original compositions on the same theme in the contemporary jazz style for a full-length album.

The University of Windsor Alumni Association sponsored the Emerging Artist in Film Arts Grant received by producer and director Michael J. Krym. The grant will help cover the costs for his film The Thousand Colours of the Morning, featuring an all-Windsor-based cast and crew.

Each of these grants is worth $3,000, part of more than $30,000 in awards announced at the event. 

“It is an honour for WEA to use our awards and grants program to promote and support our region’s creatives as they work to revitalize arts and cultural experiences for the benefit of all in our community,” said Windsor Endowment for the Arts president Stephanie Barnhard. “We heartily congratulate each of this year’s awards and grants recipients.”

Find information on other honourees on the WEA website.