Name: Marion “Rik” Freeman

Grant Applied For: City Arts Projects; city offers up to $15,000 to “expose the arts to the broader community”

Money Needed For: costs associated for producing a mural for Dance Place

Background: Freeman is a pro at scoring money from the District, which has awarded him three Artist Fellowship Awards, totalling $10,000, since 1996. According to his application, he’s produced “murals in the Washington DC/Metro area since 1989” and has “completed several large scale works” in that time.

Plan: In his application, Freeman noted the grand “scope and size” of his work. “The primary goals of this project are to not only produce the [roughly 75-foot-by-20-foot] mural,” he wrote, “but to have the subject matter be inclusive in several ways: to reflect the diversity of dance and the immediate community of Dance Place…as well as the diversity of programs and classes offered at Dance Place.” He went on to ask the city for $4,500 to help offset the project’s $21,600 price tag—which includes $17,500 (or $17,000, depending on where you look in his application) for his fee.

Amount Asked For: $4,500

Status: approved

Upshot: Freeman’s project hit a snag when he discovered that the wall he’d selected to work on was prone to a water leak, which he says “causes the paint that’s on the structure to peel back.” Undaunted, he moved the mural inside…and onto a floor at the Dance Place facility. “It’s a different concept,” he says, “[but] it’ll work.”

—Mike Kanin