Locust Projects Announces 2023 WaveMaker Grantees
Locust Projects is proud to announce the recipients of the 2023 WaveMaker Grants! Through The Andy Warhol Foundation’s Regional Regranting Program, Locust Projects has granted $60,000 in WaveMaker Incubator Grants to 13 Miami Artists supporting experimental public projects. This cycle of the WaveMaker program marks a total of $570,000 in grants since 2015.
The 2023 WaveMakers are: New Work / Projects: Trish Gutierrez and Nicole Pedraza, Monica Lopez de Victoria, Laura Marsh, Karen McKinnon and Caecilia Tripp, misael soto, and Hsieh Yi Chin; Long-Haul Projects: Nicole Nyariri and Third Portal; Research & Development + Implementation: Isabella Marie Garcia, Luna Palazzolo, Christina Pettersson, Martina Potlach, and Monica Sorelle.
The grantees this year were selected by a panel of reviewers including, Terence Price, Miami-based artist and 2022 WaveMaker grantee for Finding Sue; Adeze Wilford, Curator at MOCA North Miami; Amelia Broussard, Director of Artist Initiatives and Exhibitions at Antenna Gallery, Warhol Foundation Regional Regranting partner in New Orleans; and Kalaija Mallery, Executive and Artistic Director at The Luminary, Warhol Foundation Regional Regranting partner in St Louis.
The thirteen grant recipients were selected from a record 129 applicants with the criteria that none of the New Work, Long Haul or R+D applicants had received a Wavemaker grant in the past five years. Projects were selected for conceptual rigor and relevance to the local cultural, geographic, and socio-economic context, impact on the local community, and the accessibility of the resulting project to the public.
Meet the Wavemakers
NEW WORK/PROJECTS - $6,000
Trish Gutierrez and Nicole Pedraza – Quiero Bailar Contigo
Quiero Bailar Contigo is a transdisciplinary art experience led by movement artist and educator Nicole Pedraza and transdisciplinary artist Trish Gutierrez. It combines visual, audio and movement elements to awaken the creativity of local community members who interact with the projection interface. Nicole will demonstrate dance phrases for the audience to mimic in front of a depth sensor and observe how the visual and audio elements evolve and transform in response to their gestures. This will culminate in a visual record of art and technology’s accessibility, inclusive of all backgrounds and serve as a launching pad for attendees to begin their own creative journey.
Monica Lopez de Victoria – Swamp Deco
An immersive interactive extended reality (XR) art experience where players dive into the year 2500 were climate change has happened and Miami’s historical Art Deco architecture is underwater. Monica Lopez de Victoria is a digital and aquatic creator who believes people need to feel the reality of our city disappearing under the waves, and wants Swamp Deco to be a soft way of awakening consciousness.
Laura Marsh – Dear Washington Correspondence
Dear Washington Correspondence is a textile project and wordsmith workshop series held at South Florida art centers, aimed to connect with teens and recent college graduates who have both assumed and are about to enter the higher education system. This is a new project arriving out of correspondence that Laura Marsh had with White House staff, that she’s converting into new embroideries and banners.
Karen McKinnon and Caecilia Tripp – And Still I Rise / The Water Dancers
And Still I Rise / The Water Dancers is an uprooting “Afrofuturistic Water Dancer” Film installation monument. A memorial and act of empowerment to the deep souls lost in the shipwrecks off the coast of Key West and beyond, its entanglement with the drowned History. A tribute to Black Lives Matter and a celebration of Black Joy. The project will be done in collaboration with Diving With A Purpose and NY choreographer Okwui Okpokwasili.
misael soto – "Bridge Deconstruction" by the Department of Reflection
Bridge Deconstruction is a sustained creative investigation undertaken by the Department of Reflection for The Wolfsonian-FIU. The research-based, and context and site-specific collaborative endeavor uses bridges and related infrastructure as vectors for individual and communal ideation, storytelling, and creative expression. Bridge Deconstruction takes direct inspiration from The Wolfsonian-FIU’s collection, particularly its Bridge Tender House (aka the Josephine Baker Pavilion), which is seen as a launchpad from which a public installation and collaborative programming will take place.
Hsieh Yi Chin – The Dinner Party
The Dinner Party is a project that explores the exhibition as a medium of art practice, a storytelling platform, and more. The Dinner Party will bring small groups of people together and experience the exhibition by looking, touching, hearing, and sharing stories with the participating artists at gathering events with food. The project is event based with several workshops; artist talks will also be held to have in-depth discussion about relationships towards food in different cultures.
LONG-HAUL PROJECTS - $6,000
Nicole Nyariri – In Conversation: Sex Work is Real Work
An engaging and thought-provoking conversation evening that explores what it means to be a sex worker today, following the release of Nicole Nyariri’s coffee table book "Sex Work Is Real Work." Through a panel discussion with sex workers, advocates, and academics, they will delve into the complexities and realities of the industry. This evening aims to provide a space where sex workers can share their stories and experiences, and where allies and community members can listen and learn.
Third Portal (Kay-Ann Henry, Luz Estrella Cruz, and Starr Abraham) – The Writing on the Bathroom Wall: A Portrait of Club Saints and Icons
The Writing is On The Bathroom Wall: A Portrait of Club Saints and Icons, is a long haul project that will serve as a community investigation into the real and imagined coming-of-age stories of Miami’s queer and fleeting nightlife as it pertains to Black communities here in South Florida. Third Portal’s research will document the black Miami clubs scene as they know it, feel it, and understand it. They hope to make the musing of their communities into a zine that will be shared with folks in alternative art spaces and donated to community archives in Miami for others to reference and reflect on.
RESEARCH + DEVELOPMENT / IMPLEMENTATION
Isabella Marie Garcia – What Happens When the Dust Settles? | Research & Development - $2,000
What Happens When the Dust Settles? will investigate holistic aftercare in relation to death and grief, and in proximity to Latinx, BIPOC, and Indigenous communities. Isabella Marie Garcia will study the history of burial practices and cremation within subtropic / tropic communities. Fueled by interview-based field studies of how these communities take care of loved ones who have passed away and careful documentation of ritual practices through respectful photo captures, What Happens When The Dust Settles? will honor the rhetoric of loss.
Luna Palazzolo – Text-a-poem | Research & Development - $2,000
Text-a-Poem is an innovative SMS service that automates the delivery of poetry via code. Drawing inspiration from the iconic Dial-A-Poem service established by the late poet, artist, and activist John Giorno in 1968, Text-a-Poem aims to bring public poetry to the digital age. During a successful test in January, Luna Palazzolo experimented with a phone number generator page. Participants who texted the word ‘POEM’ to a specific number received a new poem every day for two weeks. With the generous support of the Wavemaker grant, we plan to automate and extend these poetic processes for a period of two months.
Christina Pettersson – The Abortifacient Garden | Research & Development - $2,000
Throughout human history, writers in many parts of the world have described abortifacients - "that which will cause a miscarriage", any substance that induces abortion. Christina Pettersson will grow an artist-led ‘garden’ devoted to the history of botanical abortifacients, focused on our specific region and local population. This will be a widely sourced local community based project, seeking naturalists, gardeners, healers, scientists, historians, etc. who study plant and human histories.
Martina Malka Potlach – Mapping Waterscapes | Research & Development - $2,000
Inspired by Golden Age Miami cafe culture, Floridian coastal ecology, and anthropology, Martina will create a distributable placemat, powered by ESRI-GIS environmental data, highlighting the region’s native land and waterscapes, with a focus on Biscayne Bay, sea-level-rise, and our sacred relationship to water. This visual storytelling project will engage both tourists and locals of all ages and literacy to connect with our Bay and develop coastal resilience.
Monica Sorelle - Transfer | Implementation - $4,000
Linking intimate family moments to the Caribbean diaspora at large, Transfer is a series of video works relating the transfer of physical media into digital data to the passing down of nostalgia, folklore, trauma, and genetic memory from family and community members by utilizing home movies, video projection mapping, and the degradation of media otherwise known as generation loss.
Founded in 2015 and administered by Locust Projects since 2017, WaveMaker is made possible by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts' Regional Regranting Program, a network of 32 regranting partners across the country: Alabama - Coleman Center for the Arts, Alabama Contemporary Art Center/ Space One Eleven: The Verdant Fund, Albuquerque - 516 ARTS: Fulcrum Fund, Atlanta - Atlanta Contemporary Nexus Fund, Baltimore - Baltimore Arts Realty Corporation: GRIT Fund, Chicago - 3Arts: Ignite Fund, Cleveland - SPACES: The Satellite Fund, Denver - RedLine Contemporary Art Center: INSITE Fund, Detroit - CultureSource: Flourish Fund, Houston - Aurora Picture Show, DiverseWorks, & Project Row Houses: The Idea Fund, Indianapolis - Big Car Collaborative: Power Plant Grant, Kansas City - Charlotte Street Foundation & Spencer Museum of Art: Rocket Grants, Knoxville (TN) - Tri-Star Arts: Current Art Fund, Los Angeles - LACE Lightning Fund, Medford (MA) - Tufts University Art Gallery: Collective Futures Fund, Miami - Locust Projects: WaveMaker Grants, Milwaukee - The Open, Poor Farm: The Open Fund, Minneapolis - Midway Contemporary Art: Visual Arts Fund, New Orleans - Antenna & Ashé Cultural Arts Center: Platforms Fund, Newark - Project for Empty Space: Newark Artist Accelerator, Oklahoma - Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition: Thrive Grants, Omaha - The Union for Contemporary Art: Populus Fund, Philadelphia - Temple Contemporary: The Velocity Fund, Portland (ME) - SPACE Gallery: The Kindling Fund, Portland (OR) - Portland Institute for Contemporary Art: Precipice Fund, Providence - Interlace Grant Fund, Raleigh (NC) - Visual Art Exchange: Snapdragon Fund, Saint Louis - The Luminary: Futures Fund, San Francisco - Southern Exposure: Alternative Exposure, San Juan, PR - Beta Local: Maquina Simple, Seattle - Collective Power Fund, Tucson (AZ) - MOCA Tucson: Night Bloom Grants, Washington DC - Washington Project for the Arts: Wherewithal Grants.