BICA announced 23 incredible artists and projects receiving support through the Generator Fund. These works capture the creative spirit of Buffalo and beyond, exploring themes like climate change, labor, rest, identity, and craft—both traditional and reimagined. From anachronistic technologies to the future possibilities (and fears) of AI, these projects span time and imagination.
As a part of the Andy Warhol Foundation for Visual Art’s Regional Regranting Program, this fund targets artists, informal non-incorporated artist collectives, and independent curators and organizers whose work often falls outside the scope of typical funding sources. The fund is meant to support artistic activity outside of the studio, to encourage collaboration, and to foster new connections and institutions among artists in Buffalo, Niagara Falls, and the suburban and rural areas that surround us.
Types of Grants
Kinetic Grants are awards up to $2,000 to fund an artist’s production for a new project with a publicly accessible component. Examples may include but are in no way limited to exhibitions, performances, videos or film screenings, books/zines/brochures.
Potential Grants are awards up to $10,000 and are intended to act as seed funds to sustain novel, long-term platforms for artistic expression and experimentation that foster collaboration, dialogue, and discourse in our region. Examples may include exhibition spaces (from formal to informal; your bedroom to a rented space); podcasts or radio stations; zines or forums for arts writing; collective spaces; community gardens; public lecture series. This grant is meant to fund artists in collaboration to create new platforms for presentation.
The Generator Fund Round 2 Grantees
Kinetic Grantees
Glass Landscapes and Polaroid Emulsion Lift Workshop
Alexa Kanarowski
Glass Landscapes merges stained glass and photography to create a body of work investigating memory, landscapes, and their distortions. Accompanying the creation of the work is a series of free public workshops on Polaroid Emulsion Lifts.
Into Dust
Tallulah Gordon
Into Dust is a short film love story about two young Buffalo Natives who, along with the rest of their class, learn that the world is ending in less than 24 hours. Feeling powerless, they decide to throw one last big party where things take a dark turn.
Useful Symbiont
Claudia Mancuso D’Auria
We believe we shape the world of objects – but our objects shape us. We are symbionts. These things carry, collect and present. Their role is ambiguous, residing between art and science, data and display. Collect, grow, feed, perform: responsive in the world.
Dreams Travel Wondrous Wires
Christopher Michael + Saelyx Finna
Dreams Travel Wondrous Wires is a dream-like, short experimental film that explores altered states of consciousness through The Seth Material, a formative series of New Age texts published by Jane Roberts as the result of her channeling the non-physical entity, “Seth.”
Contaminated Culture
aidelen montoya
Through historical Eurocentric and misogynistic views, there has been a separation of craft and art. This show will consist entirely of craft materials focusing on Filipino culture being highlighted by technological aid; the same inventions used to suppress many indigenous cultures and diminish traditional knowledge transfer.
Tangled Gravities
Shawn Chiki
Tangled Gravities is a public sculpture / interactive mixed reality worldbuilding exercise, where people with radically different gravities coexist innocently, traversing a playground of AI-generated nonsense.
Buffalo ReFuse: Video Theater
Michael Chernoff
ReFuse is a multi-channel screening of films that document the urban landscape of Buffalo NY, made by local filmmakers, and constructed from salvaged building materials and old CRT video monitors. The work will be publicly exhibited at ReUse Action on Buffalo’s East Side neighborhood, and includes artist talks and workshops.
Frontera de carácter (Frontier of Character)
Misael Hernandez
Frontera de carácter (Frontier of Character) is an exhibition that utilizes photography and Adobe building materials to express my identity as a second-generation Mexican American and references the experiences of living within my Mexican and Northwest American cultures.
Hyper(in)Visible
Soda Haley
“To be hyper(in)visible means receiving both excessive attention and being overlooked, sometimes simultaneously.” – Jeannine A. Gailey. Hyper(in)visible will be an exhibition, featuring oil paintings and sculpture that explores fatness through a personal fat queer lens, aiming to provoke dialogue and challenge societal prejudice against the fat body.
Bodega 333
Alison Cortes
A magic market focused on childlike imagination, community, and creating safe spaces. A local gallery is transformed into a playful storefront, creating an immersive exhibition space for unique and free public programming. Bodega 333 is a dreamlike space where all are invited to wander and wonder.
Gold Leaf Workshop 2025
James “Yames” Moffitt
The goal of this project is to break down financial barriers associated with gold leaf and make it accessible through subsidized workshops. I will also be funding my own education into brilliant cut glass with a course at the Corning Museum of Glass.
Vision Of Vocation: Finding Rest
Joel Mulindwa
In Vision of Vocation: Finding Rest, Joel explores themes of labor, purpose, value and overlooked moments of stillness within the lives of workers. I plan to create frames for the drawings I will show as an intentional finishing touch that will supplement the subjects.
Excursion to View the Moon
Julia Dzwonkoski
I’ll produce an artist book in conversation with the work of Helen Adam (1909-1993), made while visiting her archives at the SUNY Buffalo Poetry and Rare Book Collection.
phase </> un-phased
Jason Beaudreau
An immersive interdisciplinary installation exploring themes of connection and dis-connection through cymatic (sound made visible) projections juxtaposed over patterns and networks found in nature in the greater Niagara Falls region.
The Sense of Wonder
Christine Marie
Analog versus digital. Nature versus destruction. The battle unfolds on a giant cube, where analog devices casting natural landscapes compete with intermittent AI-powered digital projections of disaster. The convergence and clash of these visuals invite reflection on the fragility of our environment and the profound consequences of unchecked technological advancement.
Books Exhibition Duo
Nick Mass
Funding will support two group exhibitions showcasing artists’ books, focused on personal sketchbooks and photo books made of Polaroid photos. The exhibitions will allow visitors to touch and flip through books, providing inspiration and enabling comparisons between artists techniques.
716 & Art
Khalim Evans & Robert Rivera
716 & Art is an event showcasing the vibrant film-art scene in Buffalo. Hosted in the Ujima Theatre, this event will gather seven talented Buffalo-based directors to showcase their short films, followed by a brief Q&A session.
Sunshine Recorder
Nicholas Christakis
Sunshine Recorder is an arts and culture zine showcasing Buffalo’s unique creatives through studio visits, gonzo journalism at events, and any exciting happenings in 2025. Featuring musicians, illustrators, painters, poets, photographers, and vigilantes, it captures the endless artistic expressions that define the city’s dynamic cultural landscape.
Pick-A-Print Art Vending Machine
Chris Fritton
Pick-A-Print vending machines will host small-scale pieces of art (handmade prints, limited editions, zines, found objects, and more) from local Buffalo artists, in a fun, accessible, low-cost format. It intends to host work from over 40 different artists in its first year, and expand from there.
Potential Grantees
Expanding the WNY Print Community
MIRABO PRESS (Partners Rachel Shelton, Mizin Shin, and Bob Fleming)
Mirabo will establish the Growing the Western New York Print Community Program Program. It will offer free residencies to 3 to 4 artists for one week. A Mirabo printer will guide each resident through their residency. Each artist will participate in a group show in the Mirabo gallery.
Gatheringspace
Joel Brenden & Avye Alexandres
A new creative workspace for artists exploring the intersections of photo/video, performance, and printed matter. The Generator Fund will support initial costs establishing an adaptable space and subsidize materials for use in workshops and by guest artists.
Prairie
Jillian Solotes
Prairie is a new center for artistic growth, experimentation, and connection, where artists from diverse backgrounds can come together to collaborate and inspire one another, while cultivating an inclusive artistic ecosystem that helps Buffalo thrive.