2017 Fellows Exemplify Cape Cod’s Creative Diversity From Falmouth to Provincetown, and every community in between, there are local artists doing extraordinary work with their creative talents. If you want proof, simply look at this year’s submissions that the AFCC received for its artist fellowships. “The applicants that came in this year were diverse, incredibly talented, and crossed all mediums,” said AFCC Executive Director Julie Wake. “It motivates me to raise more funds so we can add to the fellowships we offer because clearly there is a need based on the talent we have here.” Fellows are chosen by an anonymous jury of their peers who live as close as Cape Cod and as far away as Los Angeles. Now in its third year, the AFCC’s Fellowship Program provides meaningful support to Cape Cod’s working artists, each of whom are given a $1,500 award to further their artistic vision.
JULIA CUMES (VISUAL ARTS)
It is through her camera that Brewster’s Julia Cumes has gained a better understanding of our world. It all began when she was a teenager living in apartheid-era South Africa. “I grew up in this society that had a very strong bias and prejudice against non-whites and women,” Cumes said. “Very early on I was shaped by that experience. I started photographing women and girls as a 13-yearold in South Africa. It was my way of seeing the world through the camera and understanding my own identity, and exploring the concept of identity in this world.” Since then, photography has served as Cumes’s passport around the globe, taking her to such faraway places as Cuba, Rwanda, India, Kenya, Morocco, Tanzania, and Uganda. Her work has appeared in a variety of publications, including the Cape Cod Times, Cape Cod Magazine, Boston Globe, New York Times and National Geographic. Art, she said, “is so fundamental to who we are as human beings,” serving as a mechanism to “communicate ideas, explore feelings and work out some of the struggles we all have in life.” Cumes, who arrived on Cape Cod in 2001, plans on using her fellowship award to help fund a portrait series that will shine a light on women in the region who have been impacted by cancer. “We [Cape Cod] have a 20 percent higher rate of breast cancer than the rest of the country,” she said. “This fellowship empowers me to work on this project and it gives me affirmation that this [series] is something interesting to people, and important to our lives.” You can learn more about Julia Cumes and her work at www.juliacumesphoto.com.
JORDAN RENZI (PERFORMING ARTS)
When Jordan Renzi graduated from college in 2011, she came back to her hometown of Orleans with a backpack full of clothes, a bicycle and a guitar that “I didn’t really know how to play,” she said. Today, that instrument has become a prized possession, helping Renzi find her voice as one of the Cape’s preeminent singers and songwriters. She started off through a process of trial and error, performing at local open mics where she initially sang cover songs before eventually singing one of her own, “September,” which would make its way onto her first EP of the same name. Local coffee shops and bars, such as Flying Fish Café, Harvest Wine Gallery, and the Sand Dollar Bar & Grill, served as unofficial institutions of higher learning where Renzi cut her teeth as a musician, developing her creative talents on the fly in front of Cape audiences. She recorded her first EP in 2014, the same year she played at Boston Mayor Marty Walsh’s inaugural ball at the Hynes Auditorium in Boston. Here’s a fun fact - the Dropkick Murphys technically opened for her, playing prior to her three-song set that night. Two years later, Renzi released her second EP, “Featherbed Lane,” 52
Pops by the Sea 2017
