The California Arts Council created the Individual Artists Fellowship (IAF) program to recognize, uplift, and celebrate the excellence of California artists and culture bearers practicing any art form with unrestricted grants ranging from $5,000 to $50,000.
This program will elevate their capacity for continued contribution to the field and our state. It is intended to support a broad spectrum of artists working in all disciplines, from diverse geographies and communities of all sizes.
California Arts Council has contracted with Arts Orange County (ArtsOC) as the lead Administering Organization in Region I, comprised of the counties of Imperial, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, and San Diego. ArtsOC has joined with the City of San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture, Riverside Arts Council, Arts Connection – the Arts Council of San Bernardino County and North County Coalition for the Arts (Imperial County) in creating a collaborative of the five State-Local Partner arts councils that serve those counties.
2023-24 Individual Artist Fellows
Awards have been made in the following categories: Emerging Artist Fellows - $5,000; Established Artist Fellows - $10,000; Legacy Artist Fellows - $50,000.
Artists were selected by peer review panels comprised of artists, arts administrators, arts educators, and arts funders assembled from the participating counties in the region. The application submission period opened March 1, 2023 and closed on April 14, 2023. Free technical assistance was provided to applicants. The review panels met in mid-May, 2023 to make their final selections.
William Camargo (Established, Orange) - William Camargo is a photo-based artist in Anaheim whose work revolves around Latinx/Chicanx histories and his response to them in his photographic work. They live as interventions and documentation of erased histories in Anaheim, California. Furthermore, his work looks at the struggles of labor, gentrification, and police violence in southern California. (Photo by Ken Gonzales-Day)
Victor Payan (Established, Orange) - Victor Payan is an award-winning writer, interdisciplinary artist, curator and arts administrator who organizes public events and artistic interventions that promote tolerance, understanding and community empowerment. He is Founder/Director of Media Arts Santa Ana (MASA) and his projects include Dreamocracy in America, Aztec Gold with Lou Chalibre and Keep on Crossin’. (Photo by Pocha Peña)
Ulises Rodriguez (Emerging, Riverside) - Ulises Rodriguez is a Mexican born artist who migrated to the US in the year 2000. "I am a music composer, poet, and performer," he said. "Through my artistic career, I've studied, taught, and represented my community, both nationally and internationally. Focusing on influences of Son Jarocho and Afro Latin rhythms, I use my art to create safe spaces, supporting our youth and communities." (Photo by Romulo Landin Casillas)
Tula Strong (Emerging, San Bernardino) - Tula B. Strong is a Liberian-American performance artist working with the disciplines of dance, storytelling, and Traditional American Folk Music. She creates multidisciplinary performances that center the everyday & spiritual experiences of Black people globally. Most importantly, Tula is passionate about creating art that is accessible to diverse ethnic & socio-economic audiences. (Photo by Marcus Brown, Jr.)
Terrell Sledge (Established, San Diego) - Terrell Sledge is a multi-disciplined creator of responsible art and expressions that re-imagine culture and social perspectives. He harnesses empathy, understanding and social integrity through performance, literature, graphic storytelling and multi-sensory immersive art experiences. Terrell draws upon his background in expressive arts, community advocacy, leadership coaching, writing and education.
Ted Meyer (Established, San Bernardino) - Ted Meyer is an artistic patient advocate whose work helps patients, students and medical professionals see the positive in the worst life can offer. "My goals include using art to improve patient/physician communications and normalizing living with illness," he said. "I hope I offer insight into how we cope with pain, illness, and disfigurement."
T. Faye Griffin (Emerging, San Bernardino) - T. Faye Griffin is an emerging visual artist and artivist based in Apple Valley. "The objective of my work is to advocate for the good, call out the bad, and celebrate the beauty of Black Americans," she said.
Steve Dilley (Established, San Diego) - Steve Dilley believes that through a deep and abiding sense of artistic responsibility, his strongest desire is to help people through sharing the art making process. "This is how I have found community," he said. "I am fascinated by people. Curiosity informs my perspective. Informs my artwork, my practice and my reality. I have always been curious. I continue to forage and hunt to discover, what it means to be alive."
Stephanie Godoy (Emerging, Riverside) - Stephanie Godoy is a first generation Mexican American painter, muralist and teaching artist that primarily works with the communities of Riverside and Moreno Valley. "I create bright figurative paintings with the intention of shaping visual culture by promoting a diverse view of what society can consider beautiful and worthy," she said. (Photo by Stephanie Nortiz)
Stephanie Dorian Smith (Established, Orange) - Stephanie Dorian Smith works in the theatre community as an actor, director, playwright, teaching artist. She has been professionally acting for 20 years in New York, as well as regionally; teaching and directing at the Orange County School of the Arts (OCSA) since 2008; while additionally serving as Assistant Director of OCSA’s Acting Conservatory since 2014.
Sarah Rafael Garcia (Established, Orange) - Sarah Rafael Garcia is a Chicana writer, community-based educator, digital-archivist and conceptual artist raised in Santa Ana. Through her work, she offers counter-narratives for her gender, Spanish language, and culture while integrating contemporary social justice themes to advance creative narratives of people of color without the constraints imposed by society, U.S. history books or traditional storytelling. (Photo by Emily Davis)
Sara Guerrero (Established, Orange) - A versatile theatre artist and educator, Sara Guerrero describes herself as a Chicana of central Orange County, and says that as a born storyteller, theatre is her home. For 25+ years it has been her mission to model, share, and create theater-making opportunities for and with the Orange County community, the greater Los Angeles area and beyond.
Sant Khalsa (Legacy, San Bernardino) - Sant Khalsa is a visual artist whose work derives from a mindful inquiry into critical and complex environmental issues. Her practice balances art making (photography, mixed-media sculpture, and installation), teaching, lecturing, curating, writing, mentoring, and community building. She lives and works in Joshua Tree in San Bernardino County.
S. Ama Wray (Established, Orange) - S. Ama Wray is an artist who has created an African-inspired dance and music performance model called Embodiology®. She works with racially diverse groups of artists to catalyze communities seeking renewal, cohesion, and self-efficacy, marginalized due to sex, race, age, and socio-economic background across California and the United States. (Photo by Skye Schmidt)
Rosy Cortez (Established, Riverside) - Rosy Cortez is a Chicana artist focusing on underserved areas in the Inland Empire. A community based artist specializing in oil painting and murals, Rosy helps advocate and empower other artists in her region while creating with and for her commuity.
Robin Brailsford (Established, San Diego) - Robin Brailsford is a 70 year old woman who has been making significant school, park, cultural center and civic transit public art throughout southern California for over 30 years. Thousands, probably millions of people have passed through, within, under and over her public art interventions, having it affect their daily lives positively in a thoughtful and thought-provoking manner.
Rickerby Hinds (Legacy, Riverside) - Rickerby Hinds is a playwright/professor and Hip-Hop theatre pioneer who works with community members and students in the Inland Region of Southern California as well as nationally and internationally.
Reginald Brown (Established, San Diego) - Reggie Brown is an award-winning Black and Filipino illustrator for children's books, focusing on portraying and celebrating Black and Brown stories. Reggie aims to amplify underrepresented voices and cultures and create inclusive narratives that resonate with diverse communities.
Rebecca O'Connor (Emerging, Riverside) - Author and mixed-media artist Rebecca O'Connor serves her community throughout the Inland Empire, especially in the San Gorgonio Pass area. Whether it is through a lecture, her visual nature art or storytelling, she strives through every aspect of her work to help people understand and celebrate their connection to the wilder world, its animals (including other people).
Ramya Harishankar (Legacy, Orange) - Ramya Harishankar is a pioneer for Indian arts in Orange County who dons multiple hats as performer/teacher choreographer, and presenter of Bharata Natyam, a classical dance form. "I have also served the SoCal community," she said, "Particularly the South Asian Diaspora as arts administrator, philanthropist and producer of Indian dance events thru my Arpana Dance Company for over 40 years."
Quyên Nguyen-Le (Emerging, Orange) - Quyên Nguyen-Le is a queer vietnamese filmmaker born in California to refugee parents. Quyên's film work - spanning scripted, experimental and documentary formats - focuses on the ways histories are deeply felt in the quotidian everyday.
Nikia Chaney (Established, San Bernardino) - Nikia Chaney describes herself as an experimental textual artist, poet, memoirist, and science fiction writer who is deeply interested in how the sounds and the presentations of the written word create complexity, accessibility, and emotional resonance through and beyond meaning. "In the future, I hope my work, especially its experimental nature, helps to give validity to different ways that poetic voice can be expressed," she said.
Nicole Cloeren (Emerging, Riverside) - Nicole Cloeren is the founder and creative director of Puppets a la Carte, where she feeds the imagination with hands-on puppeteering. She currently works in Riverside County reaching children between the ages of 5-18, including programs that serve children with special needs.
Michelle Montjoy (Established, San Diego) - Connecting to the wonderfully diverse community in San Diego County informs Michelle Montjoy's socially engaged projects, installations and studio work. Whether gathering around a table, offering a question on an embroidered hankie or asking a question with a ceramic form, she says that her work is centered around the process of exchange.
Mario Chacon (Established, San Diego) - Mario Chacon is a San Diego-based muralist and visual artist informed by cultural, social, political, and spiritual experience working largely with the Chicano, Native American, and people of progressive inclinations. At 69 years of age, he has developed broad alliances with community based and grass roots organizations, educational institutions, and collaborated with artists on many projects.
Luis G. Hernandez (Established, Imperial) - Luis is a visual artist, curator, adjunct art instructor and mentor. His personal art production consists of sculptures, paintings, drawings, collages, and installations that incorporate subject matter that points to art history, politics, and border issues. The primary communities with whom he works are the trans-border art communities of Baja and Southern California and their audiences.
Leonora Simonovis (Emerging, San Diego) - Leonora Simonovis is a Venezuelan American poet, editor and professor of Latin American literature and creative writing in Spanish at the University of San Diego. She writes poetry and non fiction and works with underrepresented communities (BIPOC, queer/trans) in San Diego County. "As a person of mixed race, I'm interested in exploring the intersections of race, culture and history and how they impact our identities."
Kate Simonian (Emerging, San Bernardino) - Kate Simonian is an Armenian-Australian writer of stories and novels. Her fiction explores the link between trauma, sexual identity, and immigration, and how what has happened in the past ripples into the present. "Singleton," the novel-in-stories she is finishing, is inspired by her work with high-need students at California State University, San Bernardino.
Juanita Mantz (Established, San Bernardino) - Juanita Mantz is a writer and deputy public defender who writes creative nonfiction with a social justice bent about the horrors of mass incarceration. "I have two books, both memoirs, which focus on how my path from high school dropout to USC Law allows me to empathize with the plight of my clients," she said. Juanita also supports writers with a bi-monthly video podcast focusing on Inland Empire writers and social activists.
Juan Delgado (Established, San Bernardino) - Juan Delgado is poet, creating concrete poetry. "I explore typefaces, colors, layout, design, and incorporate visual, verbal, and kinetic elements in my artistic work," he said. "I work with local communities in San Bernardino and Riverside counties, focusing on Native and underrepresented groups." As an academic and community leader, Juan has worked with K-12 and university students, focusing on literacy and arts.
Joy Fire (Emerging, Orange) - Joy Fire's primary medium is forged steel. She works with community college students and women, LGBTQ+ folks, BIPOC, disabled folks, and others who are underrepresented in the fields of blacksmithing and the trades in general.
Jordan Verdin (Emerging, San Diego) - Jordan Verdin is a visual artist, portrait photographer, and storyteller passionate about promoting social awareness. His focus is to bring attention to the issues faced by people experiencing homelessness, as well as to marginalized communities while advocating for sustainable solutions. He primarily works within San Diego and Orange County.
Joe Lewis (Legacy, Orange) - Joe Lewis describes himself as a non-media-specific visual creator, community preservationist, and writer. "My work focuses on relationships between underserved communities, race and representation, social justice, and the existing State," he said.
Jayden Montalvo (Emerging, San Bernardino) - Experimental poetry, fiction, and literary analysis connected to postcolonial, queer, and post-Marxist theories combined with online praxis emerge in Jayden Montalvo's literature. "My work is prevalent in a few online political communities," he said. "Scholars and activists help me generate art and critiques within political organizations outside of theorization and my literary analyses."
Janelle Iglesias (Established, San Diego) - Janelle Iglesias works with and through objects and materials on site-responsive projects in a variety of contexts as part of her sculptural process. Ranging from simple displays to complex constellations, from handheld sculptures to public art, her work often explores the relationship between humans, consumerism and the natural environment.
James M Dailey (Emerging, Riverside) - James M Dailey is from Hesperia. Their work includes themes of water as a resource and space as a diminishing commodity. The work involves using historical archives along with personal photographs as a means to reflect and document the foundation issues that have and continue to shape the landscape along with the individuals within it.
Einar de la Torre (Legacy, San Diego) - Einar de la Torre works in collaboration with his brother James. A Mexican-American artist, he lives and works on both sides of the border. He is also well-known participant in the international glass art community as well as the Chicano arts community. He produces studio work, installation art and public art.
Isidro Pérez García (Established, Orange) - Isidro Pérez García is a cross-border, cross-disciplinary “campesino urbano” artist, based in Santa Ana, who often explores migration and kinship in his work; through his visual and material practice of “thanking with things,” his sculpture, painting, multimedia, performance, and social practice engage with concepts such as modernity, tradition, and indigeneity.
Iryna Krechkovsky (Established, Orange) - Iryna Krechkovsky is a concert violinist, educator, and an arts executive. As Co-Founder and Director of Orange County based non-profit organization Chamber Music | OC, her work focuses on promoting the art of chamber music through performance, education and community engagement. "I feel privileged to be able to contribute to such vibrant and diverse artistic community here in OC," she said. (Photo by Lisa-Marie Mazzucco)
Hugo Crosthwaite (Established, San Diego) - Hugo Crosthwaite is a Mexican-American visual artist native to the San Diego/Tijuana border region. His artistic practice is figurative, narrative drawing on paper, wood panel, canvas, ceramics, public mural performances and stop-motion drawing animations. The narratives in his drawing explore social issues, identity and mythologies about the San Diego-Tijuana-U.S./Mexican border communities.
Herbert Siguenza (Legacy, San Diego) - Herbert Siguenza is a veteran actor, playwright, director, educator, visual artist and arts advocate. He is a founding member of the legendary performance group Culture Clash. "As a Chicano theatre pioneer, my work has inspired and has opened doors to hundreds of Latinx theatre makers," he said. "I'm proud of that fact."
Geoffrey Gouveia (Established, Riverside) - Geoff Gouveia is an Inland-Empire based muralist and artist inspired by the world’s greatest game and community: futbol. He creates larger than life abstract characters in a plethora of media- from digital to block-long murals whether locally or globally. His client list includes Adidas, Coca-Cola, Starbucks, Facebook, Red Bull, Major League Soccer, the Premier League, and La Liga to name a few.
Evan Scoggins (Emerging, San Diego) - Evan Scoggins is an interdisciplinary artist with a traditional background in studio painting. His current artistic practice, however, revolves around textiles, specifically natural dyeing and weaving. Evan is currently working with the local artist community in San Diego and recently partnered with the Black Studies Project at UCSD.
Manuelita Brown (Established, San Diego) - Manuelita Brown says that she is a wife, mother, educator, and artist who creates bronze figurative sculptures for public and private use. "My sculptures are intended to elicit a sense of common humanity," she said. "I create monuments to the countless unknown people that contribute to society as well as monuments of known historical people, especially Black women."
Erin Maroufkhani (Established, Riverside) - Community artist, teacher and muralist Erin Maxwell Maroufkhani works with students and artists of all ages to tell the stories of their lives and communities through collaborative mosaic art and exhibitions.
Ekaterina Orlovie (Emerging, Riverside) - Ekaterina Orlovie is a Russian-born watercolor artist and muralist whose work is inspired by fairy tales, motherhood and the natural world. She is involved in organizing local gallery shows and working on public art projects with The Artlands in Redlands and community-led projects including a mural for Beautify Riverside. (Photo by Jeremiah Fishell)
James de la Torre (San Diego, Legacy) - James de la Torre works in collaboration with his brother Einar. A Mexican-American artist, he lives and works on both sides of the border. He is also well-known participant in the international glass art community as well as the Chicano arts community. He produces studio work, installation art and public art.
Doris Bittar (Legacy, San Diego) - Doris Bittar describes her art practice as layering pattern structures, textual icons, movement, and sound to frame and shape contemporary manifestations of colonial legacies, nationalism, and identity. "As an interdisciplinary artist, writer, curator, and activist, I guide intergenerational Arab American artists, nationally/internationally, to coordinate their discussions for collaborative and improvisational possibilities," she said.
Darren Villegas (Established, Riverside) - Darren Villegas is a muralist and arts educator who primarily works in Riverside and the surrounding Inland Empire area of Southern California.
Corey Nguyen (Emerging, Orange) - Corey Cao Nguyen is a third generation Vietnamese American cinematographer. "Specialising in cinematic realism, I offer naturalistic light and compassionate framing to the narrative and documentary projects I shoot," he said. "Rooting myself in the Asian-Am community, I work with AAPI/BIPOC directors at PBS, Hulu, Amazon, non-profits and activist groups to advocate for a more equitable world."
Chantrell Lewis (Emerging, Riverside) - Chantrell Lewis is an actor, published author, award-winning writer, and teaching artist for educational arts programs in under-resourced Riverside and Orange County communities. "I create programs that increase accessibility to sustainable arts education and have been creating joyous art that lives and heals for the last eighteen years," she said.
Célia Santos Rocha (Emerging, Orange) - Célia Rocha is a Portuguese artist based in Santa Ana. She views her artwork as a tool for activism, addressing the social issues of motherhood and sexual violence. Using text-based photorealistic drawings she creates artwork that dialogues with mothers and rape survivors building awareness for women’s mental health and healing. (Photo by Michael Seeley)
Cati Porter (Established, Riverside) - Cati Porter described herself by saying, "I am both midwife and mother to books, a writer-mother with two sons. Arts administrator advocate for literary arts. Poet who writes essays. Essayist who crafts memoir. Memoirist charmed by the power of place; of and for the people and stories of this inland southern California I call home."
Carlos Castro (Established, San Diego) - Artist, professor and musician Carlos Castro says that his practice departs from the appropriation of historical images and the formal and symbolic re-contextualization of found objects. "My work explores elements of the individual and collective identity and aims to bring to light muted histories and ignored points of view," he said. "I work with a wide range of processes including painting, sculpture, and video."
Anthony Small (Legacy, Orange) - Anthony Small is a storyteller, arts advocate, and musician. As Executive Director of Music Preserves Foundation, he helps to share the rich, multicultural history of American music. Anthony is an Executive Producer of the upcoming documentary “Los Lobos – Native Sons," while also serving as Picket Fence Media columnist (Dana Point ROCKS), and Ambassador of Music for Dana Point Sister Cities.
Andres Luz (Emerging, San Bernardino) - Andres R. Luz is a Filipino-American composer presently living in San Bernardino County's Chino Hills. He composes for both acoustic and electronic mediums for the concert stage and recital hall, and draws from a variety of subjects as inspiration for his work.
Alkaid Ramirez (Emerging, Orange) - Alkaid Ramirez is an Anaheim-based Chicano artist practicing fine art documentary photography. He uses film photography to capture the integral scenes, stories and civil unrest in his community that contribute to more extensive conversations about social inequality and inequity, as well as work that contains themes of immigration and assimilation into new environments.
Alfredo Guzman (Established, Imperial County) - Alfredo Guzman graduated from Otis College of Art and Design in 2007 with a BFA in painting. He is currently working on his Masters in Art Education. For over twenty years, he has created art, founded arts organizations, taught high school art, and organized public art installations.