Annette LePique, September - October 2026

Annette LePique is a freelance writer based in Chicago. She has contributed to the Cleveland Review of Books, Frieze, Momus, and ArtReview. Annette writes frequently for Chicago's own NewCity and is a member of the International Association of Art Critics. She was the recipient of a Rabkin Prize for Arts Journalism in 2023 and is a big fan of dream logic.

Visit Annette’s website here.

This residency is supported by The Dorothea and Leo Rabkin Foundation and marks the fourth year of partnership between our organizations. Through this collaboration, the Rabkin Foundation sponsors an annual residency for a Rabkin Prize winner or finalist who remains an active arts writer, recognizing the need for dedicated time for rest, reflection, long-form writing, and deadline-free work.

About The Dorothea and Leo Rabkin Foundation

As media shrinks and fractures, there are communities across the U.S. where no one is paying attention to what artists do, at least full time and in public. In this increasingly unsustainable environment, arts journalists are seldom acknowledged, often under paid and experience the downward pressure of the media industry in their lives. 

The Rabkin Foundation is dedicated to inspiring the next generation of arts writers and collaborating with others to uncover more viable futures for the field. They do this through community building, thought leadership and the recognition of excellence.

The Rabkin Prize is the central initiative of the Dorothea and Leo Rabkin Foundation, an artist-endowed foundation. The prize is awarded through a nomination process. When possible, they provide additional support for the arts writing field.

The Dorothea and Leo Rabkin Foundation is based in Portland, Maine and is home to a destination gallery space where all are welcome to explore the art and archives of Leo Rabkin (1919-2015), a school teacher, art collector and artist. Leo Rabkin was known especially for color-saturated watercolors and his inventive box constructions in plastic, wood and found materials. The foundation was created in 1999 and received a significant bequest from the estate of Leo Rabkin, including most of the artistic works he created during his lifetime.

Jori Finkel, September - October 2026

Photo credit: Vanessa Lubic

Jori Finkel writes about contemporary art with attention to gender issues. Her work appears regularly in The New York Times and The Art Newspaper.

Visit Jori’s instagram here.

This residency is supported by The Dorothea and Leo Rabkin Foundationand marks the fourth year of partnership between our organizations. Through this collaboration, the Rabkin Foundation sponsors an annual residency for a Rabkin Prize winner or finalist who remains an active arts writer, recognizing the need for dedicated time for rest, reflection, long-form writing, and deadline-free work.

About The Dorothea and Leo Rabkin Foundation

As media shrinks and fractures, there are communities across the U.S. where no one is paying attention to what artists do, at least full time and in public. In this increasingly unsustainable environment, arts journalists are seldom acknowledged, often under paid and experience the downward pressure of the media industry in their lives. 

The Rabkin Foundation is dedicated to inspiring the next generation of arts writers and collaborating with others to uncover more viable futures for the field. They do this through community building, thought leadership and the recognition of excellence.

The Rabkin Prize is the central initiative of the Dorothea and Leo Rabkin Foundation, an artist-endowed foundation. The prize is awarded through a nomination process. When possible, they provide additional support for the arts writing field.

The Dorothea and Leo Rabkin Foundation is based in Portland, Maine and is home to a destination gallery space where all are welcome to explore the art and archives of Leo Rabkin (1919-2015), a school teacher, art collector and artist. Leo Rabkin was known especially for color-saturated watercolors and his inventive box constructions in plastic, wood and found materials. The foundation was created in 1999 and received a significant bequest from the estate of Leo Rabkin, including most of the artistic works he created during his lifetime.

Pat Shannon, October - November 2026

Pat Shannon is a Boston based visual artist who uses objects, photography, text and moving image to create quiet ephemeral works that touch on questions of presence, memory and shared emotional understanding.

She is a graduate of The School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University and also holds a Bachelor of Science degree from Northeastern University.

She’s exhibited in regional museums, academic venues, galleries, non-profit spaces and at the Hotel des Arts, Mediterranean Contemporary Art Center, Toulon France.

Her work is held in private collections and she was awarded a Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship Grant in Sculpture/Installation/ New Genres on multiple occasions. Her work has been published in “Paper Works” by Sandu Cultural Media in Gangzhou, China and “Villissima!: des artistes et des villes” by Guillaume Monsaingeon, Editions Parentheses, Marseille, France.

Visit Pat’s Instagram here.

Photo credit: Meg Alexander

Jessica Lanay, September - October 2026

Jessica Lanay is a hybrid poet, essayist, art historian, and art journalist. Her most recent reviews and interviews of artists can be found in BOMB Magazine and Art Review; she has also contributed writing to exhibition catalogs for The Andy Warhol Museum, Pen & Brush, and The Washington Project for the Arts. In 2020, the short film she wrote, As I Please, premiered with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. Her debut poetry collection, am•phib•ian won the 2020 Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Prize from Broadside Lotus Press.

Her writing can also be found in Indiana Review, Prairie Schooner, Poet Lore, Black Warrior Review, The Common, Salt Hill Journal, [PANK], and others. She is currently the 2024-2025 artist & scholar-in-residence for the Department of Fine and Performing Arts at Loyola University-Chicago. She is a fellow of Cave Canem, Callaloo, and Kimbilio.

Visit Jessica’s website here.

Author Photo and Book Cover Art by Jessica Lanay

Vandana Jain, October - November 2026

Watan, 2025
Woven plastic bags, wool shawl, stones
18 x 14 x 1 inches

Vandana Jain is an artist and textile designer based in Brooklyn, NY. She received her Studio Art degree from New York University and went on to study Textile Design at the Fashion Institute of Technology.

She recently shifted to a studio practice that brings together found materials and textile techniques, both on and off the loom. Her work explores the intersections of labor, cost, and value, and how this affects what we make, and what we throw away.

Visit Vandana’s website here.

Stephani Maari Booker, September - October 2026

Photo by Anna Min

Stephani Maari Booker is surviving the fire, plague and wrath of 2020s Minneapolis, MN, by creating works for the page and the stage in which she wrestles with her multiple marginalized identities: African American, lesbian, lower-class and nerdy.

She is a recipient of a 2024 McKnight Fellowship for Writers Administered by the Loft and a 2024 Minnesota State Arts Board Creative Individuals Grant. She has poetry, nonfiction and science fiction in many publications.

Visit Stephanie’s website here.

This residency opportunity was made possible through the generous support of the McKnight Foundation and Artist Communities Alliance.

About the McKnight Artist & Culture Bearer Fellowships Program

Founded on the belief that Minnesota thrives when its artists and culture bearers thrive, the McKnight Foundation’s arts and culture program is one of the oldest and largest of its kind in the country. Support for individual working Minnesota artists and culture bearers has been a cornerstone of the program since it began in 1982. The McKnight Artist & Culture Bearer Fellowships Program provides annual, unrestricted cash awards to outstanding mid-career Minnesota artists in 15 different creative disciplines. Program partner organizations administer the fellowships and structure them to respond tothe unique challenges of different disciplines. Currently, the foundation contributes about $2.8 million per year to its statewide fellowships. For more information, visit mcknight.org/artistfellowships.

About ACA

Artist Communities Alliance (ACA) is the international service organization for artist residency programs and artist-centered organizations. For 35 years, ACA has centered artists and artist residencies, providing them with tools, knowledge-sharing, resources, and frameworks to create and sustain inclusive, accessible, just, and joyful environments. We work to unite people and inspire the field.

About the McKnight Foundation

The McKnight Foundation, a Minnesota-based family foundation, advances a more just, creative, and abundant future where people and planet thrive. Established in 1953, the McKnight Foundation is deeply committed to advancing climate solutions in the Midwest; building an equitable and inclusive Minnesota; and supporting the arts and culture in Minnesota, neuroscience, and global food systems.

José Santiago Pérez, June - July 2026

José Santiago Pérez is an artist and educator based in Pittsburgh. Their work was recently exhibited at Tiger Strikes Asteroid (Chicago), the University Art Gallery at the University of Pittsburgh, and will be shown at Mindy Solomon Gallery (Miami) later this year. His work has been supported by residencies, grants, and fellowships including the Regional Residency at Contemporary Craft (2025), the Illinois Arts Council Agency (2024, 2021), and the Lunder Institute for American Art (2022). José received an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Visit José’s website here.

Roger Q. Mason, June - July 2026

Photo Credit: Sara Martin

Roger Q. Mason (they/them) is an award-winning playwright, performer and educator celebrated for visionary works like Lavender Men, which have earned prestigious accolades including the 2024 McKnight National Playwright Commission and the inaugural Dramatists Guild Foundation Catalyst Grant.

A versatile thought leader and CalArts faculty member, Mason holds advanced degrees from Princeton, Middlebury, and Northwestern, and has been hailed by The Brooklyn Rail as one of the most significant theatrical voices of the decade.

View Roger’s work here.

This residency opportunity was made possible through the generous support of the McKnight Foundation and Artist Communities Alliance.

About the McKnight Artist & Culture Bearer Fellowships Program

Founded on the belief that Minnesota thrives when its artists and culture bearers thrive, the McKnight Foundation’s arts and culture program is one of the oldest and largest of its kind in the country. Support for individual working Minnesota artists and culture bearers has been a cornerstone of the program since it began in 1982. The McKnight Artist & Culture Bearer Fellowships Program provides annual, unrestricted cash awards to outstanding mid-career Minnesota artists in 15 different creative disciplines. Program partner organizations administer the fellowships and structure them to respond tothe unique challenges of different disciplines. Currently, the foundation contributes about $2.8 million per year to its statewide fellowships. For more information, visit mcknight.org/artistfellowships.

About ACA

Artist Communities Alliance (ACA) is the international service organization for artist residency programs and artist-centered organizations. For 35 years, ACA has centered artists and artist residencies, providing them with tools, knowledge-sharing, resources, and frameworks to create and sustain inclusive, accessible, just, and joyful environments. We work to unite people and inspire the field.

About the McKnight Foundation

The McKnight Foundation, a Minnesota-based family foundation, advances a more just, creative, and abundant future where people and planet thrive. Established in 1953, the McKnight Foundation is deeply committed to advancing climate solutions in the Midwest; building an equitable and inclusive Minnesota; and supporting the arts and culture in Minnesota, neuroscience, and global food systems.

C. C. Ann Chen, June - July 2026

C. C. Ann Chen is an artist and educator based in Chicago, IL. Her work stems from architecture and landscape, exploring perceptual translations and misinterpretations of place and time. Projects range from direct observation to site-specific work, engaging each landscape with an open, experiment-based approach. Recent work reflects journeys by sea, to remote places in the North Atlantic and Arctic. She uses drawing and collage to examine new ways of looking at and understanding landscapes.

Chen has exhibited in Chicago and beyond, including Tiger Strikes Asteroid Chicago, the Chinese American Museum of Chicago, slow gallery, Heaven Gallery, Glass Curtain Gallery at Columbia College, Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, Research House for Asian Art, Emerge Art Fair in Washington, D.C., Zhou B. Art Center, Hyde Park Art Center, and The Franklin. Chen has been a recipient of the 3Arts Make a Wave Award, and the Midwest Voices and Visions Award. Her work has also been published in New American Paintings. Chen is also a member of artist collective Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Chicago. She earned a BA in Architectural History from the University of Maryland, and MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is currently Associate Professor, Adjunct, at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Visit C. C.’s Instagram here.

C. C. Ann Chen: Whereabouts

Gallery view of solo exhibition at Tiger Strikes Asteroid, May 24-July 5, 2025

Photograph courtesy of artist

Jean Shin, May - June 2026

Artist Jean Shin working to create her exhibition "Perch" at Appleton Farms as part of The Trustees Art Commission (Jesse Costa/WBUR)

Jean Shin is known for her sprawling and often public sculptures, transforming accumulations of discarded objects into powerful monuments that interrogate our complex relationship between material consumption, collective identity, and community engagement. Often working cooperatively within a community, Shin amasses vast collections of everyday objects—Mountain Dew bottles, mobile phones, 35mm slides—while researching their history of use, circulation, and environmental impact. Distinguished by this labor-intensive and participatory process, Shin’s creations become catalysts for communities to confront social and ecological challenges.

Born in Seoul, South Korea, and raised in the U.S., Shin works in Brooklyn and Hudson Valley, New York. Her work has been widely exhibited and collected in over 150 major museums and cultural institutions, including solo exhibitions at The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington DC, and the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, where in 2020 she was the first Korean American woman artist featured in a solo exhibition. Shin has received numerous awards, including the Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant and the Frederic Church Award for her contributions to American art and culture. Her works have been highlighted in The New York Times and Sculpture Magazine, among others.

Visit Jean’s website here.

Jean Shin, Sea Change, 2023
Plastic water bottles, zip ties, painted armature
Installation in Diani, Kenya in collaboration with HERI and Stanford University

Sharmistha Ray, May - June 2026

Sharmistha Ray in front of their painting. Credit: Zachary Riggleman

Sharmistha Ray (they/them) is a visual artist and Estella Loomis McCandless Assistant Professor of Art at Carnegie Mellon University. Their artistic practice uses modes of abstraction to explore imagery related to Hindu and Buddhist cosmologies, the patterning and ornamentation of South Asian crafts, and sacred architecture in relationship to global modernisms and queer futurity. Working primarily in painting and drawing, they have also made work in sculpture, artist books, and animation.

In addition to their solo work, they co-founded the spiritualist feminist art collective Hilma’s Ghost which acts as a collaborative model for research, artistic production, pedagogy, and community.

Ray’s work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions and projects internationally at The Guggenheim, New York, NY; The Shepherd, Detroit, MI; The Museu de Arte de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil; Museum of Contemporary Art, Tucson, AZ; Palm Springs Art Museum, Palm Springs, CA; The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT; Galería RGR, Mexico City, Mexico; Nature Morte, New Delhi, India; Secrist|Beach, Chicago, IL; and others. Public projects include a permanent 600 square foot glass mosaic installed inside Grand Central Station, New York, NY.

Visit Sharmistha’s website here.

Dahn Gim, May - June 2026

Dahn Gim works through material transformation, altering and reassembling repurposed objects and personal archives to navigate shifting boundaries between familiar and unfamiliar, known and unknown.

After completing her MFA from UCLA, she has exhibited internationally at venues including Somerset House (UK), Post Territory Ujeongguk and DDP (South Korea), Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, Hammer Museum, PST ART: Art & Science Colide, Human Resources, Steve Turner Gallery (LA), Currents New Media (Santa Fe), Rochester Art Center, and Hair and Nails Gallery (Minneapolis/New York City).

Gim is a recipient of the 2026 Minnesota State Arts Board’s Creative Individual Grant, 2025 MRAC Artist Impact Grant, and the 2024 McKnight Visual Artist Felowship. Born in Busan, South Korea, and raised in Toronto, Canada, she is currently based in Minneapolis, MN.

Visit Dahn’s website here.

Strata: 2016-19 (2024), 4.5 x 4.5 x 98", Legal documents

This residency opportunity was made possible through the generous support of the McKnight Foundation and Artist Communities Alliance.

About the McKnight Artist & Culture Bearer Fellowships Program

Founded on the belief that Minnesota thrives when its artists and culture bearers thrive, the McKnight Foundation’s arts and culture program is one of the oldest and largest of its kind in the country. Support for individual working Minnesota artists and culture bearers has been a cornerstone of the program since it began in 1982. The McKnight Artist & Culture Bearer Fellowships Program provides annual, unrestricted cash awards to outstanding mid-career Minnesota artists in 15 different creative disciplines. Program partner organizations administer the fellowships and structure them to respond tothe unique challenges of different disciplines. Currently, the foundation contributes about $2.8 million per year to its statewide fellowships. For more information, visit mcknight.org/artistfellowships.

About ACA

Artist Communities Alliance (ACA) is the international service organization for artist residency programs and artist-centered organizations. For 35 years, ACA has centered artists and artist residencies, providing them with tools, knowledge-sharing, resources, and frameworks to create and sustain inclusive, accessible, just, and joyful environments. We work to unite people and inspire the field.

About the McKnight Foundation

The McKnight Foundation, a Minnesota-based family foundation, advances a more just, creative, and abundant future where people and planet thrive. Established in 1953, the McKnight Foundation is deeply committed to advancing climate solutions in the Midwest; building an equitable and inclusive Minnesota; and supporting the arts and culture in Minnesota, neuroscience, and global food systems.

Soulaf Abas, May - June 2026

Soulaf was born and raised in Damascus, Syria. In 2008 she received her Bachelors of Fine Arts from Indiana State University. Then, she returned to Syria and taught art at the Arab European University. She also spent some time translating books and articles in Arabic and English.

In 2010, Soulaf returned to Indiana State University to get her masters in Fine Arts. After she received her MFA in painting in 2013, she taught part time at Indiana State University. Soulaf went back to visit her family in Damascus-Syria in the summer of 2012, a year after the revolution began. Upon her return from Syria, she started creating images in painting and printmaking that depicted what she’d experienced. She continues to explore the effects of loss and trauma in her oil painting and printmaking works.

Her work was exhibited nationally and internationally. She also received multiple residencies and awards for her work like the Social Justice Residency in Santa Fe, NM, and multiple ELCE Grants from Indiana State University. Soulaf lives and works in Terre Haute, Indiana with her partner, dogs, cat, and many plants.

Visit Soulaf'’s website here.

Matt Marble, April 2026

Matt Marble at Black Hole (2023), photo by Micah Silver

Matt Marble (b. Meridian, Mississippi, 1979) is an artist, author, and media producer whose work explores the intersections of art and spiritual imagination through archival research, curatorial storytelling, and creative practice. He is the director of the American Museum of Paramusicology and the author of Buddhist Bubblegum, as well as the creator of the podcasts Secret Sound and The Hidden Present.

His projects examine metaphysical influences in American music history and the creative lives of overlooked or unconventional artists, ultimately underscoring the vital freedom of the imagination—creative, personal, and collective—and a resistance to dogma and oppressive forces. His own art often incorporates idiosyncratic influences from metaphysical philosophy as well as his archival work.

Marble’s work has been presented internationally in exhibitions, publications, recordings, and public programs. He holds a PhD in Music Composition from Princeton University, a B.A. in Speech & Hearing Sciences from Portland State University, and a black rattlesnake from his dreams.

Visit Matt’s website here.

"Unknowable Music" (2023), acrylic painting by Matt Marble

Yatika Starr Fields, April 2026

Photograph by Joseph Rushmore

Yatika Starr Fields is a multi-disciplinary artist with an emphasis in painting, based in Tulsa, Oklahoma. A member of the Osage, Cherokee, and Muscogee Nations, Fields grounds his work in Indigenous identity while pushing the boundaries of contemporary Native art. His dynamic, color-saturated compositions often blend figurative elements with cultural and historical motifs, inviting viewers to explore layered narratives and find personal connections. Through this interplay, Fields creates a space for dialogue, one that bridges individual experience with shared memory and collective history.

Fields practice has taken him around the world, collaborating with institutions and museums to expand perspectives on Indigenous art in contemporary contexts. After graduating from high school in Stillwater, Oklahoma, he attended the Art Institute of Boston and spent a decade living and working in New York City. From 2017 to 2023, Fields was a Tulsa Artist Fellow, a residency that allowed him to deepen his studio practice and explore new materials and methodologies.

His work responds to the political and cultural terrains of today, while remaining rooted in the vitality, beauty, and resilience of Indigenous worldviews. With a distinctive visual language that honors movement, complexity, and cultural continuity, Fields challenges assumptions about Native art and amplifies the narratives of contemporary Indigenous life through a vibrant and evolving lens.

View Yatika’s work here.

Jory Drew, April 2026

Jory Drew is an artist and educator whose multidisciplinary practice explores how identity, memory, and social histories shape the possibilities of intimacy, kinship, and care within Black and queer life. Working across sculpture, installation, video, and performance, Drew examines the residues of systemic inequality while imagining alternative networks of support and survival. His work often reuses everyday materials — housing debris, domestic artifacts, and archival fragments — to reconstruct personal and collective narratives that challenge cultural erasure. Through these gestures, Drew turns vulnerability into a space of resistance, envisioning worlds in which Black life is centered, legible, and loved. Drew (b. 1992, Austin, TX) is a graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (BFA, 2015) and the University of California Los Angeles (MFA, 2025) and has recently exhibited at Art/Space 114 (Los Angeles, 2026), KITA Gallery (Los Angeles, 2025), and Murmurs (Los Angeles, 2023).

Visit Jory’s instagram here.

Rachel Gloria Adams, February - March 2026

Rachel Gloria Adams in the Split Studio. Photo by Kerry Constantino.

Rachel Gloria Adams is a multidisciplinary artist living in Portland, ME. Adams has developed a vibrant, graphic pattern-based visual language filled with references to the natural world and motherhood that posses an heirloom quality. Her work takes form by way of quilting, painting, design and murals.

She moved to to Maine in 2005 to pursue her BFA from the Maine College of Art and Design. She has gone on to exhibit artwork at the Portland Museum of Art, Space Gallery, Center for Maine Contemporary Art and Dowling Walsh. She has attended residencies at Speedwell, Pace House and is an Indigo Arts Alliance David C Driscoll Fellow. Her work has been acquired by the Farnsworth Museum and Portland Museum of Art. In addition to her studio practice, Adams has been commissioned to create murals for several institutions including the Children’s Museum of Portland, Farnsworth Museum and Worcester Art Museum.

Visit Rachel’s website here.

Olivia Berke, February - March 2026

Olivia Berke in the Hallam Studio. Photo by Kerry Constantino.

Olivia Berke is a New York City based artist. Her practice is centered around using everyday materials as portals to the imagination and finding wonder in the ordinary and unseen. Much of the material Olivia uses is either gifted or recovered, and so, each piece operates as a record of the time, place, and people involved in its creation. Ranging in scale, material, and process, Olivia seeks to create work that offers a moment in which an unfamiliar encounter can become something intimate. Her work has been a part of several group exhibitions, most recently at The Sheerly Touch-Ya/Shisanwu Warehouse in Glendale, Queens and Voltz Clarke Gallery in New York, NY. 

Visit Olivia’s website here.

Dream Paintings, 2024

James Eric Francis Sr., February - March 2026

James Eric Francis Sr. in the Pool Room Studio. Photo by Kerry Constantino.

James Eric Francis Sr., a member of the Penobscot Nation, is a multifaceted artist whose work is deeply intertwined with his roles as a historian, cultural preservationist, and tribal leader. His art, which includes painting, photography, filmmaking, and graphic design, is a powerful exploration of the relationship between Maine Native Americans and the landscape, viewed through an indigenous lens.

As a visual artist, Francis creates work that is both historical and deeply personal. He often uses his art to challenge dominant historical narratives and to assert the resilience and continued presence of the Penobscot people. A prime example is his painting "We Walk On; Eternally," where he recreates a genocidal 1755 proclamation from Massachusetts Lieutenant Governor Spencer Phips calling for the extermination of the Penobscot people. Across this document, he stamps in blood-red letters the Penobscot word for "we walk on; eternally," a powerful statement of survival and a plea for a new, respectful relationship with the people of Maine.

Francis's painting often incorporates intricate techniques, such as his dot paintings, which he began after being inspired by the methodical process of flint knapping. These paintings, such as "Welcome Home," pay homage to the natural world and Penobscot traditions, often celebrating the return of salmon to the Penobscot River. His work also delves into Penobscot legends and cosmology, as seen in his painting "The Great Penetrating Arrow," which tells the story of how all animals and people sprang from an ash tree shot by the hero Gluskabe. This piece, like much of his art, emphasizes the Penobscot belief that humans are on the same plane as all other living creatures.

His artistic practice extends to photography, filmmaking, and graphics. He co-produced the documentary *Invisible*, which examines racism faced by Native Americans in Maine and the Canadian Maritimes. His photography often takes the form of time-lapses, capturing the beauty of the Maine landscape—from the Penobscot River to Mount Katahdin—and its connection to his ancestors. Francis’s work as a graphic artist and filmmaker further supports his mission to revitalize and preserve Penobscot culture, with his oral history projects bringing to life historical pictures and community stories.

In addition to his creative work, Francis is a renowned curator. He has curated exhibits on Penobscot history at institutions such as the Bangor Museum and Center for History, the Abbe Museum, and Harvard University. His curatorial work, like his art, aims to "re-indigenize" historical landscapes and challenge the absence of Native American narratives in historical depictions.

Francis is working on a graduate degree of the University of Maine's Intermedia Masters of Fine Arts program, and his work as an artist is inextricably linked to his lifelong commitment to cultural preservation and education. He serves as the Director of Cultural and Historic Preservation and Tribal Historian for the Penobscot Nation and is a co-founder and Chair of Local Contexts, an initiative to help Indigenous communities manage their cultural heritage and intellectual property. Through his art and his many professional roles, James Eric Francis Sr. provides a unique and vital perspective on history, place, and the enduring power of Indigenous culture.

Visit Francis’s Instagram page here.

Victoria DelValle, January - February 2026

Victoria DelValle in the Hallam Studio. Photo by Kerry Constantino.

Victoria “thirteenvic” DelValle (b. 2000) is a Diasporican illustrator, painter, and designer based in Boston, MA. Her practice began in spoken word poetry, performing at Louder Than a Bomb, Brave New Voices, and the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University.

She later returned to visual art, earning a BFA from NYU Tisch School of the Arts in 2022 and pursuing further education at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. Her foundation in writing and performance informs her visual concepts and approach to arts education.

In 2023, she debuted her first solo exhibition, Lost Grief, at Nubian Square Open Studios for the Arts (NOSA). She continued gaining momentum through fellowships with Dunamis, Artists for Humanity and the Arts & Business Council of Greater Boston, and was awarded the Mass Cultural Council’s Grant for Creative Individuals in 2025.

Raised within Boston’s social justice–centered youth arts programs, she values mentorship and the transformative power of creative expression. As a consultant for the City of Boston and Boston Centers for Youth & Families (BCYF), DelValle co-facilitated BCYF Creates, a pilot initiative expanding access to arts programming across the city.

Through her work with young people and her roots in community storytelling, DelValle continues to shape an art practice that is both experimental and personal. She engages accessible, site-specific materials in response to her environment, embracing improvisation as both method and message. Her work reflects the layered realities of cultural memory, emotional inheritance, and transformation—navigated through a diasporic lens. Blending elements of street art, expressionism and surrealism, she invites viewers to confront fear, embrace absurdity, and find wonder within the unfamiliar. Through play, she softens the line between beauty and the grotesque, making difficult truths approachable and encouraging social growth.

Visit Victoria’s website here.