Fine Arts professor wins $10,000 grant to create Ohio artist-run site

Fine Arts Associate Professor Danielle Julian Norton is on a roll.

Last spring she took home CCAD’s 2018 Teaching Excellence Award, noted by nominators for her collaborations outside the classroom, and she was recently awarded a $10,000 Griffith Big Project Grant to take her teamwork even further.

With her win, Norton (Fine Arts, 1999) will conduct a series of collaborative art and ecology workshops through Zippitydirtdada, a space in southeastern Ohio for artists and community members to create, connect, experiment, and learn in an ecologically informed and responsible space, with the understanding that art has a critical role in what it calls “democrazy.”

Her work will culminate in the collaborative design and building of a cob oven/kiln and a shelter for future workshops in Appalachian Ohio. Participants include a multidisciplinary combination of regional artists, field experts, community members, and CCAD students. Zippitydirtdada, Norton said, encourages artists to take things into their own hands, build their own spaces, and think outside a traditional artmaking and sharing atmosphere.

The generous grant is part of the Griffith Big Project Fund, made possible by CCAD’s Griffith Faculty Excellence Endowment established in 2013. It’s awarded to retain the highest caliber faculty and supports projects in a variety of disciplines in which faculty are developing new work or scholarship based on research and studio/design-based practice.

Learn more about Danielle Julian Norton, the Griffith Faculty Excellence Fund,and CCAD’s Fine Arts program.