City Council OKs Nearly $1 Million in Arts Grants : Endowment: Almost half of the funds will go to individual artists and fledgling arts groups, both previously ineligible for city funds.

The Los Angeles City Council and Mayor Tom Bradley have approved nearly $1 million in arts grants through the Los Angeles Endowment for the Arts, with more than one-third of the money going for the first time to individual artists.

The council and Bradley approved a total of $989,660 in cultural grants, including $369,900 for 72 individual artists and another $52,500 for 20 fledgling arts groups--both of which have previously been ineligible for city funds. The remainder of the grants--$567,260--went to 92 more established and traditionally funded organizations such as Los Angeles Theatre Center, Lula Washington Contemporary Dance Foundation and Plaza de la Raza.

The city plans to actually issue the money approved on Wednesday in January.

The grants mark the first time that the multimillion dollar endowment, which was approved by the City Council in November, 1988, has provided grants to individual artists and entry-level groups. The addition of those categories, which were approved by the City Council in August, have been heralded by local artists as an indication that the city is finally beginning to value its arts.

“Important art arises where art is thought to be important, and this is the beginning of that support,” said choreographer Karen Goodman, who received a $2,500 entry-level grant for her Karen Goodman Dance Foundation. “Ultimately these grants will make a difference.”

Said Don Hewitt, the director of Cal State L.A.’s Dance Kaleidoscope, and a member of the so-called “peer panel” that ranked grant applicants in the dance category: “To have the city show so much interest in the arts like they’re doing now just makes me feel wonderful. You forget about the past. . . . In a way, the city is making up for it’s lack of attention to culture in the past.”

“It’s a good beginning, and I’m confident and happy that there’s a lot of equity in the process,” said Al Nodal, general manager of the Cultural Affairs Department, which oversees the administration of endowment funds.

But, Nodal admitted that this first set of grants to individual and emerging groups has shown that the city needs to revise some aspects of its grant-making process.

“We’ve found that we have to fund individual artists in a different way, since there’s not enough money to fund everybody,” Nodal said. “Some (individual) artists may have been funded at such a low level that they may not be able to finish the projects. A segment of these projects may be undoable.”

The Los Angeles Endowment for the Arts is basically a trust fund which is now operating on $5.8 million from the city’s general fund. Another $15 million or so is expected to be raised from fees on municipal and private developments.

While most of the 72 individual dancers, photographers, performance artists and other artists who received grants had applied for the maximum allotment of $15,000, the majority of grants approved were in the $3,000 to $7,000 range. Had the city funded artists in the full amount, Nodal pointed out, only about 20 of them would have received grants.

“It’s a tough dilemma. I think I would rather give full funding to a lesser amount of artists,” Nodal said, noting that the city awarded nearly $200,000 more than it had planned to do because so many worthy artists were seeking grants. “But then again, it would be a shame to do the full funding for only a small amount of artists. So what we tried to do was a little bit of both.” Nodal noted that in the entry-level category, which carried a maximum allotment of $2,500 to help groups get started, the full amount was awarded in nearly all cases.

“There are problems with the amount of money I’ve gotten,” said visual artist Frank Romero, who will use his $7,000 grant (one of the largest awarded in visual arts) to paint a mural for the Central American Refugee Center addressing the urban problems faced by a refugee population.

“It will pay for the materials and the help I have to hire, but it won’t pay anything for my time--and I’m getting $30,000 and $50,000 for murals these days.”

Said theater producer Susan Franklin Tanner, who received $7,500 to produce a documentary performance piece about infertility: “It’s going to be a hardship to do the piece with this amount. I’m going to have to rethink a lot of what I was going to do.” But still, she said, “This is a luxury to me to be able to produce this piece--I wouldn’t have done it without the grant.”

“I think it’s great that so many individuals got as much money as they did,” continued Tanner, co-director of the Los Angeles Arts Congress, a group that lobbied the city toward proper implementation of the endowment. “Individuals really need that money. There’s fewer places you can go as an individual artist to get money for your work.”

Photographer Irene Fertik, while very excited about being told of her $5,000 grant, called the amount “a disappointment.”

“I had hoped for the maximum amount,” said Fertik, who plans to document the city’s artists and arts programs to provide a lasting record for the city’s archives. “I was hoping to print huge color prints, but I can’t do it for the money I’m getting.”

Laurie Garris, a member of the peer panel that ranked the grant applicants in the visual arts, said it was “disheartening” to see the grants cut so sharply.

“When you’re offering as much as $15,000 to an artist and that artist comes up with a concept and budget that totals $15,000, and then you tell them, ‘We really like your project, but we’re only going to give you $6,000,’ where does that leave that artist? I just don’t know. I think there’s something wrong in the presentation of that program,” said Garris, who is acting director of Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions. Garris noted, however, that the city did not expect to receive anywhere near the number of grant applications that it did.

(For this particular grant period, known as the January 1990 Window, the city received 808 grant applications, 55% of which were from individual artists. Only 291 applications were received in the last grant period.)

The 184 grants approved on Wednesday were awarded in the following disciplines and amounts: dance, $133,700; design, $35,500; folk arts, $43,990; interdisciplinary arts, $127,500; literary arts, $45,310; media/communications, $95,100; music, $102,550; parades/festivals, $36,000; Theater, $145,800; visual arts, $136,350; and technical assistance, $87,970. Only the organizational grants require that artists raise matching funds.

Applications for the next grant cycle, a full fiscal-year program for projects taking place between July 1, 1990 through June 30, 1991, must be completed and submitted to the Cultural Affairs Department by Feb. 28.