Creative Fellowship
PPL’s annual Creative Fellowship, founded in 2014, provides an opportunity for a local artist to create new work based upon, utilizing, or inspired by materials in and images from our Special Collections.
The Creative Fellowship lasts 6-8 months, coinciding in topic and timing with the Library’s annual exhibition and program series. Proposals are accepted in specified creative disciplines, which rotate on a five-year cycle.
The fellow receives a stipend, funds to help cover the cost of project materials, intensive research support, and office space.
Application Process
The call for proposals is usually issued in late summer, with applications due in
September or October. Upcoming calls will be posted on this web page, in the Library’s
newsletter, on Library social media, and through various local listservs and arts organizations.
Fellowship applications consist of the following:
- A proposal describing the intended project, how it relates to the exhibition theme, and how it will utilize Special Collections materials
- An artist biography
- Samples of past work
- A CV, résumé, or narrative description of experience
Feel free to contact us with questions about the Creative Fellowship.
Current Fellow: Becci Davis
Becci Davis (2018) is creating new work exploring the topic of hair.
Past Fellows
Keri King (2017) created a full-color, 8’x8’ mural of an al fresco dinner party using analog and digital collage techniques. Her mural incorporated scanned images from our collections and remains on permanent display at the Library. Keri also hosted a collage workshop for youth and adults.
Walker Mettling (2016) created a series of articulated paper characters and an oversized, full-color comics newspaper (Providence Sunday Wipeout #2), the latter of which incorporated his own research-based illustrations as well as comics from numerous other local artists. He also put together an evening of readings and performance called “A History of Future Bummers.”
Micah Salkind (2015), our inaugural Creative Fellow, worked with the Fiske Harris Collection of Civil War song sheets to extend the history of anti-racist anthems into the Civil War era. He wrote an issue of the Special Collections publication “Occasional Nuggets” on the racial types used in the woodblock printing of broadsheets published by New York's Henry Marsan Publishers, and his father printed and sewed the issues’ covers.