Congrats to Shakira Olivera Bautista for Receiving the Palmetto Luna Arts Emerging Artist Award!

From our Friends at Palmetto Luna …

When a door closes on an artist, we can choose to open another. When injustice happens, we can choose to act.

Palmetto Luna Arts is proud to announce Shakira Bautista Olivera as the inaugural recipient of its Latina Emerging Artist Award, created in response to the South Carolina Arts Commission Board of Commissioners’ decision to exclude her from its Emerging Artist Cohort.

When we learned that Shakira had been recommended for the grant by an independent panel but was ultimately denied funding, we knew we could not stand aside. As a statewide Latino arts organization, we believe we have a responsibility to stand up for our artists when they face injustice, discrimination, and barriers to opportunity.

We refuse to let rejection be the end of the story. We choose to turn it into action.

This award is our commitment to Shakira and to the broader community of Latino artists in South Carolina. It is about more than recognition. It is about defending artistic expression, creating opportunities, and making sure our artists have the resources and platforms to share their work with the world.

This award will include:

  • A solo exhibition in 2027 to showcase Shakira’s work and artistic vision.

  • Featured artist recognition at Palmetto Luna’s upcoming Day of the Dead Festival, celebrating Latino art, culture, and community.

  • Featured artist participation in Traditional Grabados Latinos: Printmaking as Cultural Memory and Community Voice, a project celebrating printmaking as a powerful expression of identity, cultural memory, and community voice.

  • Fundraising support to help replace the funding Shakira lost when she was excluded from the SC Arts Commission’s Emerging Artist Cohort.

  • Additional opportunities through Palmetto Luna Arts programs and events to expand her visibility, build connections, and advance her artistic career.

This is only the beginning.

The Latina Emerging Artist Award is intended to become an ongoing commitment to artists facing discrimination, exclusion, and barriers to opportunity. We will respond not with silence, but with solidarity. Not with despair, but with action. Not by closing doors, but by creating new ones.

At Palmetto Luna Arts, we believe that when our artists rise, our communities rise with them.

We stand with Shakira. We stand with our artists. And we will keep creating opportunities where others close doors.

The denied grant implied $1.8K in support. Palmetto Luna has already committed funding to replace part of Shakira’s lost grant. Help us reach our goal to replace the entire funding  by donating through our donation page and specifying "Shakira" in the message box.

Palmetto Luna Arts — Fostering Latino arts and culture in South Carolina since 2008.

Learn more at www.paluna.org.



Jasper Poetry Editor ED MADDEN Wins SC GOVERNORS AWARD FOR THE ARTS!

Congratulations Ed!

We’re delighted to report that Jasper Magazine’s own ED MADDEN is one of the recipients of the 2022 SC Governor’s Award for the Arts!

Ed has been Jasper Magazine’s POETRY EDITOR since the founding of the magazine in 2011. He has served as a major advisor to the Jasper Project as well as co-editor of Fall Lines - a literary convergence since its inception. Ed also serves as the poetry editor for our JASPER WRITES column in ONLINE JASPER.

Ed, who won in the Individual category, shares the spotlight with Darion McCloud, winner of the 2019 Jasper Project Theatre Artist of the Year, who won in the Artist category, and Carrie Ann Power who won in the Arts in Education category. One Columbia for Arts and Culture, the organization that grabbed and ran with the proposal that a City Poet Laureate position be created and that Ed Madden be seriously considered for the post, also won in the organization category.

Ed’s bio reads, “ED MADDEN (Individual Category) is a poet, activist, and a professor of English, with a focus on Irish literature, at the University of South Carolina. There, he is also director of the women’s and gender studies program. His academic areas of specialization include Irish culture; British and Irish poetry; LGBTQ literature, sexuality studies, and history of sexuality; and creative writing and poetry. In 2015, Madden was named Columbia’s first poet laureate, a post he maintains today. Madden has been a South Carolina Academy of Authors Fellow in poetry twice and was South Carolina Arts Commission Prose Fellow in 2011. He has been writer-in-residence at the Riverbanks Botanical Garden and at Fort Moultrie in Charleston as part of the state’s African American Heritage Corridor project. He also works with the South Carolina Poetry Initiative and was 2006 artist-in-residence for South Carolina State Parks. His numerous publishing and editing credits include four of his own: Nest, Ark, and Signals and the chapbook My Father’s House, runner-up for the 2011 Robin Becker Chapbook Prize.”

While we are super proud of the accomplishments listed above we’re most proud of the talents and energy that Ed shares with the community on a voluntary basis, such as the work he contributes to the Jasper Project and as the Poet Laureate of of Columbia. It’s a lovely thing to honor a person or organization for doing well the work they are commissioned to do, and it is encouraging to those individuals and organizations to continue to do well the job they are paid to do. But when someone like Ed, who is already inordinately busy directing a university academic program, maintaining and growing his art, maintaining and growing his homelife, and more, chooses to take on more responsibilities because he believes his gifts should be shared FREELY with his community — then THAT is something to celebrate.

Cheers to our friend and colleague Ed Madden, as well as to the other honorees of this year’s SC Governor’s Awards for the Arts. And thank you for making our home a better place!