The Eliot School's Associate Director Alison Croney Moses, has been awarded a prestigious US Artists Fellowship.
Alison Croney Moses (Source image by Tyahra Angus; courtesy of United States Artists)
This national prize recognizes artists with a $50,000 cash award for their contributions to the field. Croney Moses is one of five award-winners in the field of craft, among a total of 63 thinkers and makers who represent communities across 23 states and Puerto Rico, spanning every career stage, and illuminating a breadth of artistic practices, according to a press release.
“After another year of challenges brought on by the pandemic, artists continue uplifting those around them and investing in their communities. The 2022 USA Fellows were selected for their remarkable artistic vision and their commitment to community – both within their specific regions and discipline at large,” says the US Artists’ website.
Croney Moses artist’s statement reflects not only her accomplishments as a sculptor in wood, but also her Eliot School work developing spaces for learning and making for all, particularly for young people and artists of color, through the Eliot School's Teen Bridge and Artist in Residence programs, as well as the special woodworking class she developed this fall for women of color.
Croney Moses has worked for in the past 15 years in alternative education settings to build out education programs that center the communities they work with while fulfilling the missions of the institutions, says her US Artists bio. Her work is in the collections at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, elsewhere, and has been featured in American Craft Magazine.
This award comes at a time when Croney Moses' work just garnered the Eliot School a third year of funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, and a coveted public art grant from New England Foundation for the Arts, both for the Eliot School's Artist in Residence program.
This year, the teens and local community will work with two renowned muralists, GoFive and TakeOne, to create murals on the theme “Spaces of Belonging” at English High School, a long-time partner in the Eliot School’s program that brings art and woodworking classes into Boston’s public schools, according to a press release.