The Vermont Arts Council is pleased to announce the recipients of three competitive grant programs. Seventy-two awards totaling $257,116 are funding Arts Learning, Community Arts and Creation projects across Vermont. In addition, seven organizations will each receive $7,000 in the third installment in the multi-year Local Arts Partnership grant program.

The Vermont Humanities Council is helping fund a look at immigrants to Vermont from the Balkans. The group has awarded $5,000 to the Vermont Folklife Center in Middlebury to put pictures, video and research into the subject on the Internet. The project, titled “New Vermonters from the Balkans” parallels Katherine Paterson’s “Day of the Pelican,” the book chosen by the council for its Vermont Reads 2010 program. The grant was one of nine the council recently made for humanities programs.

Citizens Bank has announced it has made a $10,000 donation to the Paramount Theatre in Rutland to support its 2010 season. “We are just delighted that Citizens Bank is generously supporting our upcoming 2010 season,” said Bruce Bouchard, executive director of the Paramount Theatre. “We appreciate Citizens Bank’s partnership and commitment, and we are grateful to the entire team at Citizens Bank, who have been fundamentally important in the building of a new era at the Paramount.”

Brattleboro was among two Vermont cities recently listed among the Top Arts Destinations in American Style magazine's annual readers' poll. The town was ranked No. 20 in the annual poll's 25 Small Cities category (populations of up to 100,000); Burlington was placed at No. 12 on the list which featured Santa Fe, N.M., in the top spot, and which also included Boulder, Colo., Chapel Hill, N.C., Key West, Fla., and Carmel, Calif.

 Each spring the work of Vermont artists and craftspeople can be seen firsthand during Vermont’s annual Open Studio Weekend. Open Studio Weekend is a statewide celebration of the visual arts and the creative process in which Vermont artists and craftspeople invite the public to visit them in their studios during Memorial Day weekend on May 29 and 30. More than 236 sites will be open during this event, with more than 300 artists and artisans participating. Open Studio Weekend represents a unique opportunity to meet a wide variety of artists and craftspeople in their studios, some of which are only open to the public during this weekend.

Last summer was the Carving Studio's test run for bringing the Stone Bench Project, which gives a small group of local teenagers a hands-on education in the basic tenets of carving – lettering, architectural and sculptural stone working and the Marble Valley's history. Since 2004, the studio has sent an artist to Peru to teach the same skills to youngsters in the mountain villages surrounding Ayacucho. The first run was a success, she said. The students worked for a week on the bench, about eight hours each day, under the direction of Argentinean sculptor Nora Valdez.

The Endangered Alphabets Project, spearheaded by Vermont-based travel writer Tim Brookes, is an attempt to keep rare alphabets alive by calling attention to their peril. Over the last year or so, Brookes has gathered sample text in 13 rare alphabets from around the world and carved and painted each example by hand onto individual slabs of Vermont maple. The 13 completed plaques will be displayed together for the first time next weekend in the Champlain Mill in Winooski. The reactions of those who've had a sneak preview of the plaques, in person or on the Web, reveal a fascination with the obscure writing, says Brookes.

The Flynn Center announced Tuesday afternoon that John Killacky, manager of an arts-and-culture program for a foundation in California, has been hired as the Burlington performing-arts center's next executive director, succeeding founding executive director Andrea Rogers. Rogers, who became the Flynn's first leader when the center began three decades ago, will work with Killacky and the Flynn's board of directors until the transition is complete June 30, according to a news release issued by the Flynn Center. A communitywide celebration in honor of Rogers and her retirement is scheduled for June 26.

The future is not only vague for big-budget films in Vermont, it’s bleak for the Vermont Film Commission itself. The office that serves as a liaison between companies that want to make movies in Vermont and the producers, crews and locations that will help them do that is in jeopardy of major cuts as the state faces anticipated deficits more than $100 million in each of the next two budget years. Gov. Jim Douglas wanted to cut funding for the film commission altogether, but the state Senate last week added $100,000 for the commission in the next budget. The $100,000, however, represents a drastic cut from the film commission’s current budget of $171,000.

In celebration of its 50th anniversary in Vermont, The Nature Conservancy and partners, the Bennington Center for the Arts and the Bryan Memorial Gallery in Jeffersonville, are issuing a call to artists to create works of art that are inspired by the places that have been protected by the Conservancy. Artists are invited to explore and be inspired by the sights and sounds, texture, color and light of the Conservancy’s more than 50 preserves and 100 locations around Vermont.

 About 50 artworks crafted for an exhibit titled “Art of Action: Shaping Vermont’s Future Through Art,” will travel to Washington, D.C., next week where they will be on display from April 12 to 16, just steps away from the U.S. Capitol.  The Vermont Arts Council, in collaboration with Lyman Orton and Janice Izzi, commissioned the Art of Action project after the Council on the Future of Vermont worked with thousands of Vermonters to identify issues that will help shape Vermont’s future. The artwork is intended to help inspire Vermonters to pursue their vision for the state's future social, cultural and political landscape.

Cows are being painted in the Champlain Valley. Fiberglass cows, that is. Cows are sponsored by business owners and individuals as part of the Lake Champlain Regional Chamber of Commerce's "Cows Come Home to Burlington." Two weeks ago, the gray-primed, fiberglass cows arrived as blank 3D canvases in 35 locations to be painted by local artists. They will be on display from May to September and be put up for auction at the end of the season. Partial proceeds will benefit local programs of the Vermont Campaign to End Childhood Hunger.

Stephanie Bertoni is one of many Vermont artists who trade volunteer hours in Burlington City Arts' Main Street Studio for their own studio time. Burlington City Arts is both a city department, and a not-for-profit organization. Serving the community for the last 25 years, BCA sponsors artists in a number of ways. They maintain the clay studio, more traditional studio space and exhibition space in the Firehouse Center around the corner. They also provide artists with market space to sell art, and maintain artists in residence programs at their studios.

The Southern Vermont Arts Center is seeking entries for "Vermont Artists, Past and Future," a statewide art contest for middle and high school students in Vermont. More than $5,000 in scholarship grants will be awarded to first through third place winners in painting, sculpture and photography. An exhibition of work by the 100 finalists will be on view with outstanding examples from the Arts Center’s permanent collection in the Wilson Museum at the Arts Center from May 22 - June 23.

The Healing Arts: New Pathways to Health, in conjunction with Vermont Arts Exchange and United Counseling Service of Bennington County presents "The Atwood Artists Group Annual Show," opening with a reception in VAE’s Mill Gallery, in the Sage Street Mill, on Thursday, March 4, from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. The Atwood Artists are a group of about 12 adults who work weekly in VAE’s art studios through UCS’s day service program. "The artists exhibiting are all faced with various physical and mental challenges in their lives," says VAE Artistic Director and teacher Matthew Perry.