CREATE! Micro-Grant Virtual Exhibit Displays Winning Projects

The completed projects of this year’s CREATE! Micro-Grant recipients can now be viewed online as part of the 2023 CREATE! Micro-Grant Showcase. This virtual exhibition includes photos and information on each of these creative projects.

In 2023, the CREATE! Micro-Grant program supported the proposals of 13 Michigan State University students who each received $500 to fund their proposed projects. The students then spent the fall semester completing these projects.

A graphic with multicolored text against a black background that says: "Supporting a Creative Life CREATE! Virtual Exhibit create.cal.msu.edu

Offered by MSU’s College of Arts & Letters and facilitated by the Dean’s Arts Advisory Council with support from the MSU Federal Credit Union and departments across the university, the CREATE! Micro-Grant program encourages critical engagement through art with the past, present, or future. It offers students the opportunity to creatively explore the issues of their generation through mediums such as art, dance, film, poetry, and song.

“These grants remain so necessary as a means of supporting our artists and decoupling their work from market forces. We thank our supporters and partners for valuing the work of artists and the centering of process over product.”
Pete Johnston, Co-Director of the CREATE! Micro-Grant Program

“This year, the CREATE! Grant program expanded the call for proposals from artwork dealing specifically with the challenges of COVID-19 to more broadly art that is responding to the challenges, traumas, and triumphs of our contemporary moment,” said Pete Johnston, Co-Director of the CREATE! Micro-Grant Program and Department of English faculty member. “As has been the case since the program was founded, our students answered the call with an abundance of spirit, ingenuity, vulnerability, and grace. These grants remain so necessary as a means of supporting our artists and decoupling their work from market forces. We thank our supporters and partners for valuing the work of artists and the centering of process over product.”

The following are the 13 student projects that received CREATE! Micro-Grant funding that are featured in the virtual exhibit:

Rose Butler-Shriner

Rose Butler-Shriner, an English major with a concentration in Creative Writing, wrote a poem, titled Ars Poetica: Just a Poem, about the inability to focus on mental health and the mantras of hope people repeat in order to carry on with the lifestyle they want to maintain.

Cam Carmichael

Cam Carmichael, a Studio Art major with minors in Comics and LGBTQIA Studies, created an oil-painted self-portrait depicting himself as a transgender person living in today’s political climate.

Rachael Grain

Rachael Grain, a Studio Art major with a minor in Business, created an oil painting depicting the relationship between parents and children and the generational trauma that surrounds that.

Samantha Gucwa

Samantha Gucwa, a Jazz Studies major with a focus on Saxophone, created a five-track album celebrating women who sacrificed their careers for their partners. The album explicitly references the five long-term relationships of Miles Davis with Cicely Tyson, Bette Davis, Frances Taylor, Jeanne Moreau, and Juliette Gréco.

Doug Mains

Doug Mains, an English major with a minor in Linguistics, created a collection of poetry and non-fiction prose, titled Ready, Aim, Whisper, that explores the intersection between Christian Nationalism, gun violence, fundamentalism, and displays of traditional masculinity. Through this work, he considers questions such as “How did gun violence and nationalism become so synonymous with American Christianity? How might we respond to the echoes of gunfire and the relentless bellowing oppression of Christian Nationalism?”

Faith Nhkum

Faith Nhkum, a Microbiology major with a minor in Comic Art and Storytelling, created a multimedia piece to bring attention to the genocide of the Jinghpaw people in Myanmar.

Lauren Rake

Lauren Rake, a Film Studies major with a Theatre minor, wrote a satirical comedy and dramatic screenplay addressing the isolation that can come with wanting to become a facet of the online community.

Jesse Mae Rayer

Jesse Mae Rayer, a Public Relations major with a Creative Writing minor, created a literary work blending two genres: horror fiction and narrative nonfiction that explores how art can function as an accessible and essential form of therapy, touching on themes of art as a method of understanding community, gun violence, and shared trauma.

Danny Sesi

Danny Sesi, a Music Performance major, created a musical composition addressing religion, attentiveness, and removing all “worldly cares” as mentioned in music compositions from the Eastern Orthodox Christian Liturgy.

Mackenzie Sheehan-D’Arrigo

Mackenzie Sheehan-D’Arrigo, a Studio Art major, created a sculpture of a budding plant walking on its roots to symbolize the budding potential of younger generations and the challenges they face as they enter adulthood.

Theo Van Hof

Theo Van Hof, a Political Theory and Constitutional Democracy major with a minor in Creative Non-Fiction Writing, wrote a poem focusing on the unfulfilled promises that come with the attempt to stop gun violence.

Kayla Wikaryasz

Kayla Wikaryasz, an Interdisciplinary Humanities major with a minor in Creative Writing, produced a short story Zine, titled Yellow Paint. The story is about a young girl named Agnes who wishes to pursue art school despite the pressure from her family to do otherwise. This work explores some of the struggles young adults face as they look to carve their paths in creative industries.

Hadara Willis

Hadara Willis, a Studio Art major, created a painting that explores the Black female body as it fits into modern Western feminine standards, depicting the overlaps between race and beauty and featuring motifs and imagery that are both historical and contemporary.