Public Space One is proud to announce the 2025-26 Big Field Fund grantees. In its second year, BFF is awarding a total of $60,000 to 10 Iowa artists or collectives living within an 80 mile radius of Iowa City. These grants support the research, development, and public realization of artist-led projects in the visual arts, often falling outside the reach of typical funding sources. In the coming year, this work will manifest new and inventive models, support under-resourced creative communities, and engage with vulnerable structures, systems, or ecologies.
Big Field Fund is a Regional Regranting Program supported by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and administered by Iowa City arts organization Public Space One (PS1). Part of PS1’s mission is to sustain and provide access to inclusive, experimental, and non-commercial arts programs, spaces, and resources, for our members and our community. We also aim to support and advocate for artists by offering opportunities and resources to help them thrive in their creative careers. Among those resources, thanks to the generosity of the Warhol Foundation, BFF grants continue to offer essential support for publicly-engaged experimental, collaborative, and connective visual arts projects in eastern Iowa.
Offering new perspectives to the selection process, this year’s Big Field Fund jury included artists and cultural workers alike – Julia Franklin (Des Moines, IA), Narciso Meneses Elizalde (Cedar Rapids, IA), Jessica Johnson (New Orleans, LA), and Ingrid Raphaël (Philadelphia, PA).
One of the jurors and recent BFF grantee, Narciso Meneses Elizalde, shared the following: “It is absolutely inspiring and fulfilling seeing the breadth and reach of the selected proposals […] from providing safe creative spaces to non-artists within LGBTQ+ and disability identities, to the production of zines for the self-education and empowerment of the community during these times of censorship and cultural oppression […] these proposals and the artists that unfold them address various, often unseen aspects of life in Iowa.”
Research/Development Grantees
Jason J. Snell – Adam in Wonderland
Adam in Wonderland, named after one of the
first raves in Cedar Rapids in 1993, is an archival and interactive project preserving Eastern Iowa’s long-running, largely undocumented rave culture. For over three decades, this scene has brought together thousands, offering working-class, LGBTQ+, and alternative youth a sanctuary for belonging, creativity, and self-expression. With the passing of time, much of this history risks being lost without intentional archiving.
As a ‘90s founder, Snell will collaborate with other DJs, promoters, and community members from the era to collect and preserve flyers, clothing, equipment, recordings, and stories. This material will anchor a public exhibit at CSPS (the site of the original event) and later expand into libraries, museums, and an online archive. The exhibit’s centerpiece will be an interactive brainwave-driven sound installation, allowing visitors to experience immersive rave soundscapes generated from their own mental states, connecting today’s audiences to the energy that defines Iowa’s rave movement.
Erin Turvey, Haileigh Steffen, and Morgan Olsen – Slumber Party
Writer Erin Turvey and her team plan to create a 10-20 minute proof-of-concept short film to practice the tone, themes, and visual language of what may become a feature-length film that combines animation, live-action experimentation, and magical realism narrative. The film will explore the lasting social and economic impact agricultural industrialization had on a Midwestern town during the 1980s through the eyes of a young woman working for her father’s struggling print shop, Quick Pr
int. The proof-of-concept short film will serve several informative purposes, most importantly, as a testing ground for the collaborators’ experimental narrative and technical choices. This will allow the team to identify potential problems with the script and to become familiar with the demands of a low-budget production.
Nat Holm – Teach It Yourself
Teach It Yourself will be a zine workshop series and experimental history textbook composed of mini-zines developed by workshop participants. The project addresses gaps in media literacy, the overuse of AI in academic spaces, and Iowa book banning legislation. It also aims to create space for Johnson County youth to explore underrepresented historical figures and events through applied art skills and community learning. The planned workshops will teach accessible creative techniques and help participants develop media literacy skills by creating their own informative material. Creating these zines will also empower students to educate and learn from their peers by providing an accessible space to copy and distribute the zines they design. Project development will consist of crafting sample historical mini-zines, creating lesson plans, and hosting all-ages zine workshops.
eli rodriguez fielder and e clayton scofield – Ecologies of the Unwanted
Ecologies of the Unwanted shows love to species that thrive in new environments and questions the metrics by which society distinguishes between wanted and unwanted nature. The project draws attention to the language used when talking about plants, insects, and animals as “exotic” entities who will “take over” and destroy what “belongs” in an environment. Who made this taxonomy? asks the poet Marwa Helal in Invasive Species, calling on us to “unmake it.” Ecologies of the Unwanted wants to breakdown categories, so that we might collectively unlearn how we relate to what flourishes in ignored places: the drainage ditch, urban creek, wooded lot, alleyway. Through performance and film the collaborators imagine these species where they don’t belong and invite you to listen.
Sarah Ndagire – Barkcloth: A Living Canvas
Barkcloth: A Living Canvas is a seven-day visual arts installation at the Dubuque Museum of Art exploring Lubugo, the traditional Ugandan barkcloth made from the mutuba tree, as a medium for cultural expression, ecological storytelling, and wearable sculpture. Sarah Ndagire will lead the project in collaboration with Paris-based Ugandan fashion designer and visual artist Stella Atal, who will travel to Iowa to participate in the exhibition and deliver a public artist talk and Q&A. The installation will feature Stella’s barkcloth garments and a looping video documenting barkcloth harvesting and preparation, curated and adapted for gallery presentation by Ndagire. Outreach through AfriWell Hub, the museum, and community partners will ensure broad and inclusive community access. The project expands visual art narratives in Iowa and serves as a pilot for a future traveling exhibition.
riel Sturchio and Bianca Sturchio of Begin Collective – I See You See Me
I See You See Me: Iowa Chapter is hosted by Begin Collective, run by twin collaborators riel Sturchio (BFA/MFA in Photography) and Bianca Sturchio (MSW, LCSW). Together, they created this project to offer a cost-free, affirming space for creative expression. As queer, neurodivergent, disabled, and chronically ill individuals, the collaborators know how rarely people like them are reflected in traditional image-making. This project is designed for those who may not identify as artists or have access to technical training, yet deserve the tools to shape how they are seen. Grounded in participatory photography, queer visibility politics, and disability justice, I See You See Me challenges traditional art practices that prioritize product over people and instead makes space for co-authorship, rest, and representation.
Carlos Maldonado – Traditional Art Classes in West Liberty
With an aim to teach the beauty and therapeutic value of art as a healthy emotional outlet, this project will provide local children with low-barrier access to art classes in West Liberty, IA. Classes will be conducted downtown at Zarpa Studio once or twice each week. Instruction will center on the elements of art and fundamental principles of design, with a strong emphasis on direct observational practice. Through these classes, Maldonado hopes to inspire and encourage individuals in the community to engage with visual art as a meaningful form of self-expression as well as a connection to Mexican culture and intergenerational exchange.
Satomi Kawai and the Women: Hood Collective –Women: Hood Fourth Phase
Women: Hood is a community-based, collaborative art project launched in 2018. The project explores the complex experiences of femininity through interviews, responsive artworks, and performances. For the past eight years, Satomi Kawai has interviewed a diverse range of women from various cultural backgrounds, social statuses, age groups, and educational levels regarding their experiences. Based on these interviews and as sources of inspiration, the project collective (Satomi Kawai, Douglas Baker, Anita Jung, Dani Sigler, and Vero Rose Smith) creates multimedia artwork that amplifies and engages with the participants’ video narratives.
In 2026, new interviews will take place in eastern Iowa, ensuring that stories reflect diverse urban, rural, and small-town contexts. The collective will build on their experiences from the previous three phases to highlight commonalities and differences across communities and amplify women’s voices statewide.
Akwi Nji – In Living Color: Black Art in Iowa Festival
In Living Color: Black Art in Iowa is a one-day, multidisciplinary festival celebrating the transformative power of Black artistry across the visual arts, movement, and storytelling. Scheduled for September 2026, the festival will nurture experimental, ephemeral, and connective modes of presenting art—blending gallery-style exhibitions with performance art, artist talks, live storytelling, and immersive audience engagement.
The project builds on Akwi Nji’s past work producing interdisciplinary, artist-led experiences that blur boundaries between exhibition, performance, and storytelling. A pilot of In Living Color in 2022 transformed a residential home into a gallery space and drew more than 250 people from across the region. Beyond visibility, In Living Color aims to cultivate a sense of sanctuary and empowerment for Black artists and audiences. By pairing traditional exhibition formats with cross-disciplinary activations, it models new ways to present and nurture visual arts in Iowa and builds a replicable framework for artist-led community engagement.
Miriam Alarcón Avila – Maíz, Tierra, Agua y Vida
Maíz, Tierra, Agua y Vida (Corn, Land, Water, and Life) is a multidisciplinary exploration of community agriculture as a source of cultural resilience for displaced Indigenous Latin American communities living in Iowa. The project documents their efforts to access land where they can grow traditional crops that nourish the body, reconnecting them with their ancestry, identity, and sense of belonging in a new place.
Through visual storytelling—video, photography, and audio—the project will follow the shared experiences that take place during the Círculos de Maíz (Corn Circles). In these gatherings, participants prepare and share foods such as tamales, pozole, tortillas, and Totomoxtle art made from corn husks. These circles function as community rituals where stories are
exchanged around the fire and the griddle, creating space for healing while working on borrowed land. All collected materials will form a public archive of stories shared through social media and community events.
