Nick at Knight, accepting award at gala. Photo by Susan Beard.

The Knight Foundation announced 43 winners of the third and final year of the foundation’s three-year arts challenge. And FringeArts is one of the winners! The award will help  FringeArts “commission artist Mary Mattingly to ignite imaginations about a sustainable future by creating a large and visually stunning utopic floating structure called WetLand. A participatory art project, WetLand will be a water-based ecosystem replete with solar panels, gardens and housing, erected on a floating barge docked along the Delaware River. Creating an island-like environment, WetLand will be an educational space that visitors can board and explore, stirring thoughts about water usage and the environment.”

Also included in the winners is our own Theresa Rose, the FringeArts visual arts program director, who is also an artist and arts organizer. Her project: “To create connections between neighborhood restaurateurs and artistic will produce cutting-edge art and food projects that respond to growing trends in contemporary art and emerging food culture. The project will commission internationally renowned artists to develop site-specific and content-relevant local food projects. Participating restaurants will be predominantly family run and reflect the neighborhood’s demographics. During the spring of 2015, each artist will present their project that may include artist-designed dinner events, menu additions and other collaborations with the restaurants.”

Read the whole list here, as the Knight Foundation gave support to an impressive array of organization and artists across the city, in very refreshingly un-Vannevar Bush fashion. There are a number of pop-up performance projects so expect art to be happening in unexpected places, a number of get the audience doing the art, and community building through art. Lots of cool stuff!