Performing Arts Fellowships

Performing Arts Fellowships are $5,000 unrestricted awards of merit that are given in honor of excellence in the artist’s field. They are juried by noted professionals in the field based on appropriate media samples and artist statements. Applications are now closed and will open in the spring.

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2023 Performing Arts Music Fellowship Recipients

Patrick Chadwick, Jackson

For more than a decade in Jackson Hole, Patrick Chadwick has crooned introspective lyrics that deftly reflect their setting, whether it is a mountain vista, a changing relationship or civil unrest. The singer-songwriter and guitarist’s latest outlet is the indie rock band Inland Isle, whose debut 2021 album “Time Has Changed Us” was lauded for its “rich heartland rock, folk harmonies and anthemic vocal hooks” by Under the Radar magazine.

With Inland Isle, Chadwick’s songs are given life with four-part vocal harmonies and well-crafted accompaniment from longtime Jackson musicians on electric guitar, bass and drums. Glide Magazine called the music a “big Laurel Canyon sound” while Atwood Magazine praised it as “charming and evocative, intimate and energizing.”

Originally from the Boston area, Chadwick was surprised after leaving that cultural hub to find Jackson Hole brimming with talented musicians who were supported by the community and uniquely influenced by the area’s natural beauty. Before long, he had new songs and a folk-bluegrass group called The Flannel Attractions, which attracted a passionate following and a spot on Paste Magazine’s “Nine Wyoming Bands You Should Listen to Now” in 2014.

After The Flannel Attractions disbanded, Chadwick released his Americana-tinged “Soul of Mine” EP in 2016, recording with a number of Jackson Hole musicians at community-driven spaces like Teton Artlab and Henhouse Studio. That same year, he released a collaboration with Jackson native and University of Wyoming graduate Victor Pokorny (Pat + Victor’s “Stay! Positive!” EP), which twisted the conventions of folk songwriting with offbeat lyrics and counterintuitive instrument pairings.

Chadwick’s latest single with Inland Isle, “Year’s Divide,” was released in April 2023 as part of The WyoFolk Project, a compilation album from 14 celebrated Wyoming songwriters produced at Three Hearted Recording.

Visit Patrick’s website here.

 

Kalyn Beasley, Cody 

“You don’t get any more rural than Wyoming, if that’s what you mean by country. I see inspiration every direction I look. I grew up at the doorstep of Yellowstone Park in the Rocky Mountains and I don’t suppose I’m moving anywhere anytime soon. I write my own songs and tell my own stories. As a musician, poet, adventurer and outdoorsman my goal is for you to find a little bit of yourself in the songs I sing and the stories I tell.”

​Kalyn Beasley is an acclaimed songwriter, storyteller, singer and musician. He has performed at the Yellowstone, Red Lodge and Whitefish Songwriter festivals, Red Ants Pants (White Sulphur Springs, MT), Treefort Music Fest (Boise, ID), Forget Me Knot Festival (Cooke City, MT), Headwaters Country Jam (Three Forks, MT) and is selected to perform at the 2023 Dripping Springs Songwriter Festival (Dripping Springs, TX).

His 2022 album, ‘A Matter of Time’, is nominated for All Genre Album of the Year at the 2023 Josie Music Awards.

Kalyn’s songs are meticulously crafted narratives, with clever, infectious and intellectually stimulating ideas, melodies and hooks. An authentic Westerner, his life as a cowboy, rodeo hand, pilot, bookseller and outdoorsman has furnished him with a novel palate from which to color his works.

Kalyn makes his home in the high, dry mountains of Northern Wyoming, land of geysers and grizzlies. 

Visit Kalyn’s website here.

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2023 Performing Arts Theatre and Dance Fellowship Recipients

Oakley Boycott, Lander: Theatre

Oakley Boycott (she.her.they.them) is not a pseudonym. They are a multi-disciplinary artist born and raised in Lander, Wyoming on Apsaalooké (Crow), Eastern Shoshone, and Cheyenne land. The majority of their childhood was spent touring with her parents, the Western music duo “The Grizzlies” to communities across the country, focusing on the Rocky Mountain West. Based out of New York City since 2007 working predominantly in theatre, film and television she can be seen regularly on stage and screen and with consistent appearances and accolades at the Metropolitan Opera, the Town Hall Theatre, Feinsteins 54 Below, and Theatre Row.

As an endurance artist, Oakley has performed endurance art piece: SILENCE based on Marina Abramovics “The Artist Is Present” in both New York City and Wyoming. SILENCE takes place over the course of three, 8-hour days, sitting in complete silence with no breaks. Oakley has extensive ongoing collaborations across with artists of varying mediums across the country.

Past collaborations include:

• Wyoming Cowboy Hall of Fame: Documentary on the last of the Wyoming Cowboys 
• Flappers to Fringe Exhibit: History of Women’s Fashion from the 1920s-1970s 
• Nervous Means Do It: Lifestyle Concept designed and owned by Mei Ratz
• Finding Peabrook: Collaboration with Patricia Heal

In January 2023, they served as the curator for Lander Art Center’s mental health exhibition REFLECTION: the Art of Being. Oakley currently resides in Lander, Wyoming as working as the Outreach Director for Lander Art Center and serves on the board of the Lander Veterans Community Resource Center.

Visit Oakley’s website here.

 

Scott Tedmon-Jones, Laramie: Stage Design

Scott Tedmon-Jones is an assistant professor at the University of Wyoming in the Department of Theatre and Dance and a freelance designer. He is a member of United Scenic Artists, Local USA 829.

At the University of Wyoming in addition to advising and mentoring students, Scott teaches courses in Introduction to Design, Scene Design, Period Style for the Theatre, Drafting, and Scenic Painting.

In NYC, Scott has designed sets for the premieres of David Rhodes’s Consent (The Black Box Theatre at the Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center For Theatre), Mallery Avidon’s Mary-Kate Olsen Is In Love (The Flea Theater), and Lindsay Joy’s Rise And Fall Of A Teenage Cyberqueen (Labrats Theater Company).  Additional NYC credits include Mother Jones And The Children’s Crusade (2014 New York Musical Theatre Festival), Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me And Dutch Heart Of Man (Animus Theatre Company/Cherry Lane Studio Theatre), and That Beautiful Laugh Featuring Alan Tudyk (La Mama E.T.C.). 

He has been a guest designer at the Juilliard School, NYU/Tisch New Studio on Broadway, The College at Brockport SUNY, and the University of Rochester. As an associate designer he has worked on regional and off-Broadway productions and in 2015, was the associate designer for the Broadway premiere of Sam Shepard’s Fool For Love.

He received his MFA in Scene Design from Carnegie Mellon University in 2010.

Visit Scott’s website here.

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Previous Performing Arts Fellowship Recipients

Previous Recipients