Interlace Grant Fund is proud to announce the inaugural nine recipients of Project Grants for visual arts projects produced and presented in Providence. The grants, totaling more than $50,000, support new and experimental work by local artists who have visions for projects that might otherwise fall outside of traditional arts funding opportunities.

Awarded Artists & Projects

• Currents Off the Invisible Shore, Alessia Arregui with Gloria Fan Duan
  Currents off the Invisible Shore is a Mixed Reality (MR) journey through a labyrinth of spaces generated from an open-source 3D scanning workshop with the Providence community. The spaces along the shore exist between the liminal thresholds of: private and public spheres, physical and virtual sites, and material and psychological transformations. ‘The Shore’ will be accessible through the internet, in addition to a site-specific installation in Providence.
  

• Us Naming Us, Edwige Charlot with Noel Puello
  Us Naming Us is a project by Providence-based artist printmaker Edwige Charlot in collaboration with Providence-native artist Noel Puello. As progeny of an island, Ayiti/Kiskeya, Charlot and Puello will explore Queerness and Transness within the context of Creole and Afro-Latinx identity. The project includes the creation of new visual imagery and sculptural work, a publication, a public presentation and a conversation with the artists.
  
  
• Filipina Snow, Hannah Liongoren
  In Filipina Snow, Hannah Liongoren is producing a semi-autobiographical webcomic, related sculptural objects and a limited-edition artist book, that encapsulate her experience of being a recent immigrant, dealing with aging sick parents remotely, raising a biracial child and adapting to a foreign country, while keeping true to her Filipino identity.

• The Providence Community Herbarium, Heather McMordie
  The Providence Community Herbarium is an unofficial survey of Providence vegetation, as seen through the eyes of Providence citizens. The project consists of a portfolio of 15 prints and an interactive zine. The prints will be a collaboration between Heather McMordie and 15 Providence residents, each containing an image of a plant and an accompanying personal story. The zine will be distributed free, inviting Providence into a city-wide plant scavenger hunt.
  
  
• No Mind Collective Galleries “The Stories that Entwine Us: Healing and Community”, Lexi Laboy with Bee Milson
  No Mind Artists Collective will be organizing a series of galleries and producing a zine showcasing small, local visual artists. Galleries will provide an opportunity for artists to interact with the public, speak about their process, inspirations and highlight the beauty of their individual experience. Collaborators will be chosen with the intention of uplifting marginalized communities. Artists will be given a stipend and access to materials with the intention of making art more accessible.

• How We See Us: An OSA Curated Exhibition and Calendar Series, Mer C and Ocean State Advocacy
  A set of two visual exhibitions and calendars curated by Ocean State Advocacy (OSA). Each exhibition will feature a “call for entry” for work by sex workers in Rhode Island with the intent of destigmatizing and expanding public awareness of erotic labor and sex worker visual expression. This project highlights the history of sex worker organizing, OSA’s mission of providing emergency funds to RI-based sex workers, and the socio-political climate of erotic labor.

• (a)dressing a haunting, Zooey Kim Conner
  Zooey Kim Conner will produce a mini-collection of three garments and an accompanying risograph printed zine documenting the process of the garments’ construction. The garments, constructed from community-sourced textiles using traditional Korean quilting techniques and design motifs, serve as a physical representation of the process by which the artist, a mixed Korean American, constructs a relationship to their Korean identity in the face of an intergenerational haunting that obscures their access to Korean culture.

• Queer Memories Reflection Lab: Where Have We Gone From Here, Selene Means with Virginia Thomas, Kwana Adams, Janaya Kizzie, Julia and Gem/Haus of Codec, Kotone Deguchi
  Selene Means is an organizer/ artist guided by social and communal processes. His project brings together community collaborators from the queer worlds of Providence journalism, archiving, art, and community-building to collectively investigate stories, archives, and ephemera pertaining to queer of color history in RI. They will create four documentary episodes about the QTBIPOC History of Rhode Island. Incorporating new interviews, existing archival materials, and viewing parties to create space to gather, reflect, and galvanize collective action.

• The Magic Car Wash by Portal Rental, MJ Robinson, with “Mr. Portal”
  Portal Rental will produce and project a series of short experimental films and animations onto a simulated windshield in their first portal: a magic car wash. Hosted out of a colorfully customized box truck parked in public sites around Providence, this fun, multi-sensory experience brings an unexpected, interactive visual arts experience to many audiences.

2023 Project Grant Jurors

Bob Dilworth
Nationally recognized and exhibited, Bob Dilworth’s works on canvas and paper, and assemblages, have won many awards including the 2014 recipient of the Rhode Island State Council for the Arts Fellowship in painting, and grants from the Rhode Island Foundation, University of Rhode Island Center for the Humanities, the University of Rhode Island Council for Research, and the National John Biggers Award in drawing, and the Virginia Commission for the Arts. His work has also won fellowships from the following artist residencies: Iris Project Artist Residency Program in LA, California; Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts in Saratoga, Wyoming; Angels Gate Cultural Center in association with Marymount California University in San Pedro, CA; Playa Artist Residency in Summer Lake, OR; Anderson Ranch Art Center in Snow Mass CO; Hambidge Creative Center for the Arts and Science in Rabun Gap, GA; the Klaus Center for the Arts, San Pedro, CA; Contemporary Artist Center in North Adams, MA; the African American Master Artist in Residence Program (AAMARP), Northeastern University in Boston, MA; and Le Cite International des Artes, Artist Residency, Paris, France.

Lois Harada
Lois Harada is an artist, printmaker, and educator. Born and raised in Salt Lake City, she came to Providence to study at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) and settled in Rhode Island after graduating with a BFA in 2010. Lois works at DWRI Letterpress, a commercial letterpress printshop where she also prints her own work. Harada utilizes text and the medium of the poster to tell her family’s story of incarceration — her paternal grandmother was interned in Poston, Arizona from 1942 -1945. She takes inspiration from propaganda printed and distributed by the United States government and prints with type and equipment similar to that which would have created the original works. Harada the Chairperson of the Art in City Life Commission serving the city of Providence. She is a member of The Wurks artist collective and has recently joined the board of the Mid America Print Council.

Jan Howard
Jan Howard is the Houghton P. Metcalf Jr. Curator of Prints, Drawings and Photographs at the RISD Museum where she previously also served as Chief Curator. Prior to her arrival at RISD in 2000, she spent fourteen years as a curator in the Department of Prints, Drawings and Photographs at The Baltimore Museum of Art. She had an internship at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and curatorial positions at the Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas, where did her graduate work in art history. Her exhibitions and publications have focused on modern and contemporary art. A selection includes Shahzia Sikander: Extraordinary Realities, 2021; Drawing Ambience: Alvin Boyarsky and the Architectural Association (co-curated with Igor Marjanović), 2014; Pat Steir: Drawing Out of Line (co-curated with Susan Harris), 2010; Interior Drama: Aaron Siskind’s Photographs of the 1940s, 2003; and Laurie Simmons: The Music of Regret, 1997.