Every year, CherryArts, the organization responsible for putting on the Cherry Creek Arts Festival, announces five recipients for their ‘Emerging Artists Program’
For the last two decades, the program has given new artists ‘a leg up’ in the art festival world, by providing mentorship and a free booth at the Art Festival. But this year, CherryArts is offering recipients direct financial support.
Each finalist will receive a $5,000 grant. The program is highly competitive. This year, the festival's panel of judges had the challenge of selecting just five artists from a pool of over 240 applicants. Two of those artists are Denver natives.
Potter Emilia Ealon
Specks of clay dust swirl around Emilia Ealom as she sits in her basement studio. Mugs, bowls and vases of every shape and size are neatly stacked on shelves behind her. For Ealom, a life-long ceramic artist based in Denver, having a studio space in her own home has been a life-long dream. But that dream was put off for decades.
“Life happened,” Ealom said.
For many artists, finding the balance between perfecting their craft and understanding the business element of selling their work is a challenging dance. And Ealom’s work was no exception.
Ealom, who originally “fell in love with the wheel” as a freshman in high school, decided to study ceramics in college. Her love for pottery ended up taking her around the world — from receiving a ceramics apprenticeship in England to living with an indigenous community in Costa Rica where she learned traditional pottery techniques. After graduating, Ealom moved to Argentina to continue her craft.
“Being young and naive, I didn't understand the business side of art,” said the Denver-based artist. “And so I quickly came to learn that: I love making my art, but selling it is a very different story.”
After feeling the financial strain of being an artist in a foreign country for seven years, Ealom moved back to the U.S. She started a family. She went back to school for a clinical social work degree. She thought she could combine her passion for art and pottery with her new profession.
“I had a hope of doing art therapy because I really love to connect with people,” she said. “I really love to teach. And I was teaching in Argentina and would give lessons and teach in the community arts school.”
But after working in the healthcare system for 14 years, Ealom became burnt out.
That’s when she decided to apply for the Cherry Creek Arts Festival emerging artist program.
“I actually applied in a moment of dread,” she said. “I’d been toying with this idea of ‘could I give this a go again, could I do this?’ And so I was just in this moment of existential crisis, and I said, ‘Well, what do I have to lose?’”
“Beyond my wildest dreams, I never thought that I would be accepted, but I'm so grateful that I was,” she said.
Ealom is one of the three Colorado natives selected to be a part of this year’s ‘Emerging Artist Program,’ sponsored by CherryArts. This is the first year where each of the five award winners will receive a $5,000 grant to further support their work.
Ealom says that being selected as one of the recipients for the grant has given her both confidence and some financial backing to become fully devoted to her craft.
“Having art as your career is a profession just as any other profession is,” she said. “But I'm very new at that — the business side of art. I can talk about clay and glaze and throwing on the wheel and all of my thoughts about pottery traditions until I'm blue in the face. But if you ask me about doing an art fair, I don't know the first thing about that.”
Painter Adam Anglin
Like Ealom, Adam Anglin, another one of this year's emerging artists finalists, is not new to the art world.
Anglin, a Denver-based painter and former graphic designer, says he wanted to be involved in the art world at a young age. But, like Ealom and so many, he struggled to figure out “how to make it work.”
For the last few years, Anglin has worked as a worship leader and music director for his local church. But he says he felt something was still missing. So he decided to start painting again.
“Being an artist has just always been a part of what I've done,” Anglin said. “But I think figuring out what medium has really just sort of been a continual pursuit.”
And Anglin’s nine by nine foot basement studio is a representation of that pursuit. The tiny room is stacked with audio recording equipment, paints, easels and a giant desktop computer.
“Me pursuing painting is not really like, ‘Hey, I need this to survive,’” Anglin said. “It's really more of just, I need this to be a whole person. I need this to just be a healthy person that's engaging with who I am at my core.”
Anglin says that receiving the grant gave him the confidence to continue to pursue his craft.
“Because they had this program and because I knew the reputation of the festival, I thought, it feels slim I would get into this, but if I did, it felt like a big catalyzer for me to push what I'm doing into a new phase and to try to take more risk with my work.”
Anglin says his paintings are inspired by both his love for western landscapes as well as his graphic designer past.
In addition to supplying the selected artists with funding, the emerging artist program also connects the finalists with mentors in the art world, professional development workshops and a booth at Cherry Creek Arts Festival.
You can view or purchase Anglin or Ealom’s artwork at the Cherry Creek Arts Festival this weekend: from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m on Saturday and 10 a.m. to 6 p.m on Sunday.
