The New Hampshire State Council on the Arts recently awarded six New Hampshire artists Individual Artist Fellowship Awards of $5,000 each. Visual artists Amy Jenkins and Kristen Reynolds, writers Joe Monninger and Kevin King, and performing artists Jeff Warner and Larry Polansky were chosen from among 90 applicants for the highly competitive awards. The state awards the fellowships annually for artistic excellence and professional commitment. Submissions are reviewed anonymously by out-of-state and in-state panelists with expertise in visual arts, crafts, music, theatre, literature, film and media arts, and their recommendations are eventually approved by the governor and Executive Council.

Seacoast area fellows include Reynolds, a mixed media installation artist from Newmarket; King, a poet from Brentwood; and Warner, a folk singer and musician from Portsmouth.

Describing her work in her application, Reynolds says she creates installations as theater, “as bizarre site-specific tableaus that evade certain knowing. The elements of an irresolvable narrative, architecture as dynamic and invasive, and the comedic grotesque, intersect to create a situation that persistently destabilizes unifying interpretations. In this way, the work acts like a joker, clown, or trickster, by posing a problem to catalyze heightened interactivity and multiple interpretations from the viewer.”

Reynolds received her Master of Fine Arts degree with a concentration in Studio Arts from Maine College of Art and Critical Theory, and her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Syracuse University with a concentration in Art Video and Sculpture.

Between her BFA and MA she continued her studies at the New Hampshire Institute of Art, Maine College of Art, and University of New Hampshire. She has received scholarships from the Maine College of Art, The N.H. Charitable Foundation and Syracuse University, and the Juror’s Choice Award from the Cambridge Art Association. Currently, she is preparing for 2007 with an exhibit at Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center in Buffalo, N.Y. She lives in Newmarket in a house she designed and built with her husband, Peter Lankdon.

In his artist statement, Jeff Warner, a resident of Portsmouth since 1997, attributes his interest in both scholarship and musicianship to the work of his parents, the well-known music historians Frank and Anne Warner. At ages 3, 8 and 16, Warner accompanied his parents on a few of their many trips throughout the eastern United States and Canada, listening while they recorded the locals who remembered the old songs of various regions and communities. These significant recordings are preserved for posterity in the Library of Congress.

In explaining his work today, Warner points out that he is not a traditional singer, in the academic sense. A traditional singer is one who has acquired the traditions, either through ethnicity or family ties. Warner says he prefers to refer to himself as a singer of traditional songs.

King was a finalist in the 2002 James Jones First Novel Competition. King’s two novels involve pivotal baseball history. “All the Stars Came Out That Night” (Dutton, 2005) is inspired by the story of the Negro Baseball Leagues during the days of segregation in major league sports, and his forthcoming novel, “The Birth of the Curse,” is about Babe Ruth’s career with the Red Sox. His lifelong interest in poetry began in fifth grade. In spite of its difficulty, he feels that writing poetry is a kind of survival, “it’s a way that I cope with the world.” He explains in his artist statement, “You get your demons out and confront them and try to make sense of the world through writing.” He is sometimes surprised by the connections between seemingly unrelated incidents or people that take shape in his own writing but discovers, “just where and how we connect to others in a way that’s meaningful.” King’s poetry has appeared in Ploughshares, the Threepenny Review and Minnesota Review, and he has received awards for his poetry from The Plum Review, The Hollins Critic and The Meredith Poetry Exchange.

For more information about the Fellowship program as well as Fellows past and present, visit the State Arts Council’s Web site at www.nh.gov/nharts. The next Fellowship application postmark deadline is April 13, 2007.