Eat Dinner Fund an Artist

The June 10, 2011 event “Eat Dinner, Fund an Artist” was the brain child of David Aguirre, Director of Dinnerware Artspace. I know this was almost a year ago now, but this is the beginning of a wonderful journey I had last year and it wouldn’t make sense to leave it out.

The concept for the event was to invite the community to donate $10-$20 to enjoy a wonderful meal made by Monsoon Kitchen and listen to seven local artists give a five minute presentation on a project they would like to accomplish.

The morning of the event I was having second thoughts about participating. I kept thinking that I would forget everything I wanted to say as soon as I stood on stage, or that my project wasn’t good enough to win the funding. The anxiety was worse as the day went on, but my partner Melissa broke the anxiety by saying “what do you have to lose?” Walking into the great space on Toole Ave I recognized several of the artists and community patrons in the audience. I figured then that I needed to be myself go around and say hi to everyone and to meet the new faces in the crowd.

One by one the other artists began to go on stage and give their pitch. So the moment came for me. I got on stage and told the community that I wanted to teach a “storytelling” workshop.


After all of the presentations, everyone in the audience was handed a ballot and we all anxiously awaited the tally. I tried to walk around and continue talking to people to pass the time and to try to distract myself. After about 10 minutes, David Aguirre took the stage to announce the winner. It was ME!! I won a $500 grant to go towards my Storytelling workshop….

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