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CAFE Grants Support Local Artists

By Michael Edward Miller

http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/wutc/local-wutc-943687.mp3

CAFE Grants Support Local Artists

Michael Edward Miller

Chattanooga, TN – Planet Altered is one of the newest galleries in Chattanooga's South Side art district. Once a month, gallery workers set up tables and chairs inside the gallery and serve soup and bread.

It's called the CAFE grant supper. CAFE is an acronym which stands for Community Arts Funded Event. Everybody who comes for dinner pays ten dollars--about 40 people usually attend, so up to four hundred dollars is collected. During dinner, artists compete for the small grant.

While everybody is eating soup and bread, the artists show examples of their work, and they talk about how they might use the money, how it could help them improve their art.

Jerry Green is a Chattanooga landscape artist. He made a presentation at the October CAF grant supper, and he won. He says he's out of work right now, so he can really use the money. He was laid off from his manufacturing job. He's decided to reinvent himself--to become a professional artist. It's difficult because, being unemployed, he doesn't have a lot to spend on art supplies. The grant has helped him purchase those supplies.