In 2005 I was given a CalArts Alpert Award in visual arts: http://alpertawards.org/archive/winner05/visualarts.html

The award was for $50,000 and is non-project based so I could do anything I wanted with it. I decided to use $20,000 of of the money to start a grant of my own for emerging artists which I called The Earthling Award--a sort of re-granting type of project. I then selected several people whose work I really liked to give award money too. Most of them got $1000 awards, one got $5,000, and then another $5,000 went towards funding for grants and technical support for a participatory web site I created with Miranda July called Learning To Love You More: http://www.learningtoloveyoumore.com/index2.php

A year after I gave out the awards I asked some of the recipients to tell me what they had been up to and to also send along an image of whatever they wanted, the results are included here on this website. I didn't ask what they did with the money, though some of them mentioned that in their statements. When I gave out the awards I said that it was just for having been good interesting people who have done good interesting work as far as I was concerned, and that I just wanted to encourage them to continue whatever they were already doing. I'm hoping that if I ever wind up with another windfall like the Alpert Award that I will be able to continue giving out more Earthling Awards.

Thanks very much to The CalArts Alpert Award for their great generosity with me, and to The Portland Institute For Contemporary Art for helping me distribute the awards.

Harrell Fletcher
July, 2006