Alyson Pou
Alyson Pou has been making installation and performance work for over 20 years. With a background in visual art, dance and writing, her work combines movement, text and objects. She has performed, exhibited and lectured at museums, galleries, art centers and colleges around the country. Her work has been presented in New York by Danspace Project at St. Mark’s Church, Performance Space 122, Franklin Furnace, The New Museum, Artists Space, Threadwaxing Space, Snug Harbor Cultural Center, Creative Time, Dixon Place, HERE, LMCC, the Bronx Museum, ALJIRA Center for Contemporary Art, Central Booking Gallery and The Downtown Performance Festival. In California at New Langton in San Francisco and The Contemporary Art Forum in Santa Barbara. The Contemporary Art Center in New Orleans, The High Museum of Art and Nexus Contemporary Art Center in Atlanta.
She is the recipient of the New York Dance and Performance Award (aka The Bessie Award) in the category of Choreographer/Creator. She has received fellowships from The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, The American Antiquarian Society, and has served on both organization’s artist advisory and selection committees. Voice and Vision Theatre awarded Pou an ENVISION professional artist residencies at Bard College to develop her play titled “A Slight Headache” that premiered In NYC in March 2009.
She has received grants from Art Matters, Inc., The Franklin Furnace Fund for Performance Art, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Swing Space Program, NYC Dept. of Cultural Affairs, a fellowship from the NEA Inter-arts Program, and the Henderson Award for Poetry. She has been commissioned by Deutche Bank and the Arts Festival of Atlanta to create site specific installations.
Pou has taught classes on the history of performance art and has led workshops and classes for multi-media performance production at NYU, Cooper Union, The New School for Social Research in NYC, Williams College and Smith College in Massachusetts.
Alyson Pou has been passionately committed to capacity and community building for individual artists throughout her career. She joined the staff of Creative Capital, a national organization that supports the work of innovative artist’s, in 1999. As Director of Programs and Services she developed the Artist Services Program. She then went on to designed the Professional Development Program in 2002 and currently serves as its Director. Now in it’s 12thyear, the program’s workshops and webinars have served more than 8,000 artists nationwide. An interview with her about fundraising for individual artists appears in Margaret Lazzari’s The Practical Handbook for the Emerging Artist and can be viewed in the Workshops & Lectures section of this website.
She was the Director of Programming and Public Relations at Creative Time, Inc. for twelve years from 1985 – 1997 and during that time lectured extensively on temporary public art and Creative Time’s innovative projects. She has many years of experience as a panelist for arts organizations including the New York State Arts Council, the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, and Doris Duke Charitable Foundations.