The Cornell University Council for the Arts (CCA) has awarded more than $11,000 to 26 Cornell students and staff members to support a variety of art projects, including fashion design and photography.

Mark C. Parsons, an M.F.A. candidate, is the first grant winner to present his project, "Rock, Paper, Scissors: Exercises in Decisionmaking," an exhibition of sculpture showing in the Hartell Gallery in Sibley Hall through Sept. 20.

"The projects, which are proposed by students and staff, reflect the diversity of artistic talent on campus, and Mark's work illustrates the outstanding creative and artistic abilities the Council for the Arts looks for when reviewing proposals," said CCA Executive Director Anna Geske.

"My exploration of the theme 'Rock, Paper, Scissors' has taken me from an expected formal visual experience [in the arrangement of fine materials] to representing the basic construct of a decision-making system," Parsons said. "This work has served as an opportunity to literally juxtapose the idealistic questions of children with my own decision-making as a self-conscious 'artist' working with a larger system."

Below are the names, projects awarded and exhibition information, where available, for other CCA grant winners:

Nilda Taveras, a senior fine arts and psychology major, for a series of photographs and drawings on the people and landscape of the Dominican Republic; Samantha Jury, an M.F.A. candidate, and seniors Spencer Baker and Sandra Lee, for printmaking and book projects; recent graduates Meghan Faulkner and Christopher Ho, for a collaborative multi-media project, to be presented Nov. 3 - 14 in the Willard Straight Hall Art Gallery; Gia Mele, a senior in the Dance Program in the College of Arts and Sciences, for original dances to be performed by her at the Herbert F Johnson Museum of Art, April 18-19, 1998; Vineet Shende, D.M.A. candidate, for a song cycle for baritone and chamber orchestra to be performed April 4, 1998, in Barnes Hall; landscape architecture graduate students John Barney and Elisabeth Clemence and Steve Breitzka, a senior landscape architecture major, for projects related to their field; and Kenneth Eisenstein, a senior English major, to produce a film exploring the relationship between poetry and landscape images.

Seven undergraduates in apparel design in the Department of Textiles and Apparel in the College of Human Ecology received grants to create a line of clothing to show in the 1998 Design League Spring Fashion Show. They are: seniors Sara Boscoe, Caroline Byrne, Rachel Schmidt and Gwen Whiting and juniors Stacey Papa, Frank Velasquez-Petty III and Nathaniel Stern.

Staff members who received grants are Aulia Tisch, manager of the Cornell Concert Series, to create a series on portable terra-cotta tiles; Samantha Couture, a conservator in Olin Library, to produce an edition of five books of color photo-etchings of dance images; Stephen Kaiser, sales assistant at the Campus Store, to design and publish a collection of his own poems; Gina Campbell, lecturer in the Department of English, to create a series of oversized, ceramic perfume flasks; Elena Dubrovsky (B.A. '92, M.P.S. '96), a graphic artist and designer with the Interactive Multimedia Group in the Department of Communications and Cornell Cinema, to produce an animated short film on Australian aboriginal myths; and Scott Kecken, media assistant in the Department of Theatre, Film, and Dance, to produce "Louisville," a narrative film.

All of the above projects are eligible for inclusion in the juried exhibition of individual grant winners to be held at the Johnson Museum in 2000.