Announcing the 2025 Joan Mitchell Fellows
The Joan Mitchell Foundation is pleased to announce the recipients of the 2025 Joan Mitchell Fellowships: 15 US-based artists working in the evolving fields of painting and sculpture. The artists, who hail from 11 states and range in age from 30 to 74, will each receive $60,000 in direct funding, distributed over five years alongside professional development, peer engagement, and network-building programs. The Fellowship awards represent a $900,000 monetary commitment to the 15 artists, augmented by more than $400,000 in non-monetary services offered over the five years of the program.
The 2025 Joan Mitchell Fellows are:
Gerald Clarke, Anza, CA
Cathy Della Lucia, Boston, MA
Bob Dilworth, Providence, RI
Nancy Friedemann-Sánchez, Lincoln, NE
Sahar Khoury, Oakland, CA
Sammy Seung-min Lee, Denver, CO
Brenda Mallory, Portland, OR
Suchitra Mattai, Los Angeles, CA
Troy Montes Michie, Los Angeles, CA
Sara Rahbar, Great Neck, NY
Eric-Paul Riege, Gallup, NM
Juvana Soliven, Honolulu, HI
Linda Rotua Sormin, New York, NY
Lan Tuazon, Chicago, IL
Anthony White, Seattle, WA
“I’m thrilled to congratulate this year’s Joan Mitchell Fellowship recipients—a group of esteemed creative practitioners whose work represents a broad range of stylistic approaches and themes, reflecting both their material explorations and their varied personal backgrounds,” said Christa Blatchford, Executive Director of the Joan Mitchell Foundation. “Joan Mitchell was clear in her will that her foundation should support artists in their practices—a mandate that reflects Mitchell’s own deep and abiding commitment to her work as a painter and her strong belief in the importance of artists having the resources to thrive. As we celebrate the many facets of Mitchell’s legacy in her centennial year, we welcome the new Fellows to a remarkable community of artists that has grown out of Mitchell’s generosity, encompassing more than 1,200 former grant recipients, 365 former Artists-in-Residence, 75 Joan Mitchell Fellows, and hundreds of other artists and art students who have intersected with Mitchell’s legacy and the Foundation’s programs over the past three decades.”
As we celebrate the many facets of Mitchell’s legacy in her centennial year, we welcome the 2025 Joan Mitchell Fellows to a remarkable community of artists that has grown out of Mitchell’s generosity.”
Christa Blatchford, Executive Director of Joan Mitchell Foundation
About the Fellowship Program
Following decades of grantmaking to individual artists, the Foundation launched the Joan Mitchell Fellowship in 2021 as a multi-year commitment to artists, designed to weave financial support together with other critical resources that artists need to sustain their practices over the long-term. Hallmarks of the program are a focus on individualized support, in which each artist can tailor their professional development sessions and the distribution of their fellowship funds to best meet their particular needs, combined with cohort building that recognizes that a strong and engaged community of peers is one of the most important resources for any artist. Throughout the five-year program, artists are invited to regular virtual meetings to discuss specific topics, sharing experiences and challenges with their peers on issues ranging from gallery relationships to studio management. As they begin the program, Fellows are also invited to connect with one another at two annual in-person Fellowship Convenings, which include artist work-share presentations and peer advisory sessions, as well as participatory skills-building workshops on core topics including strategic planning, artist interviews, financial literacy, and legacy planning.
"Over the years, we continue to learn from artists’ feedback and have adapted the Fellowship to better meet their needs,” said Solana Chehtman, the Foundation’s Director of Artist Programs. “Because we focus on supporting artists who haven’t yet received the full recognition they deserve—many of whom live and work outside major art centers—we’ve come to understand just how vital it is for them to be part of a strong, engaged cohort. The opportunity to connect with peers who are navigating different, yet parallel, challenges is where the true heart of this program lies. Our main role is to foster those relationships, support meaningful conversations, and be present whenever a Fellow needs something more tailored or specific."
The 2025 Fellows mark the fifth cohort entering the program, as the first group of Joan Mitchell Fellows, selected in 2021, conclude their five-year engagement with the program. Reflecting on the impact of the award, 2021 Fellow Margaret Curtis remarked, “I remember working on the Fellowship application, imagining my goals and priorities, some of which seemed at the time to be pie-in-the-sky dreams. I had wanted to expand my studio space and, after years of living in the relative isolation of rural North Carolina, I longed for a more national audience and artist network. Here I am, five years later, and I have realized those goals in ways that far exceed what I had originally hoped for. Rather than renting a larger studio, I utilized Fellowship funds to significantly expand my home studio—doubling the work space while increasing the value of our home. Last year, I had a solo exhibition at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art and, through a friendship with another Fellow, my work was included in a show in NYC—my first time showing there since I moved to the South more than 20 years ago.”
Curtis continued, “It took me awhile to work through the imposter syndrome that came with winning this award, which is one of the reasons I think the five-year structure is so important—and the engagement sessions with other artists, many of whom are struggling with the same feelings. The confidence I’ve built and the connections I’ve made through the Fellowship have knitted back together what had felt like two distinct chapters of my life: the career I built in NYC and the career I rebuilt in North Carolina after the birth of our first child. I see now that I have one career, and I’m immensely grateful for that.”
I remember working on the Fellowship application, imagining my goals and priorities, some of which seemed at the time to be pie-in-the-sky dreams... Here I am, five years later, and I have realized those goals in ways that far exceed what I had originally hoped for.”
Margaret Curtis, 2021 Joan Mitchell Fellow
Selection Process
To select artists for the Fellowship, the Foundation uses a nomination and jury process. Each spring, the Foundation invites a diverse group of artists and arts professionals from all corners of the United States to nominate artists who are making important contributions to artistic and cultural discourse, are deserving of greater national recognition, and would find the Fellowship to be meaningful and impactful on their lives and careers. For 2025, the Foundation engaged 81 nominators hailing from 41 states and Puerto Rico—43% of whom identify as working artists—and received 157 nominations.
The nominated artists are then invited to submit online applications, which are evaluated by an outside jury of artists and arts professionals who consider the following criteria: Does the artist’s work present a strong and clear artistic vision? Is this a pivotal moment for the artist, when the award could have a significant impact? Is the artist interested in engaging with peers in a community of practice? Evaluation of the submitted application materials and discussion of these questions lead the jury to select a final group of 15 Fellows.
The jurors for the 2025 Fellows were:
- Amir H. Fallah, multi-disciplinary artist based in Los Angeles, CA; recipient of the Foundation’s Painters & Sculptors Grant (2015)
- Kaitlin Garcia-Maestas, independent curator, New York, NY
- Kahlil Robert Irving, visual artist based in St. Louis, MO; Painters & Sculptors Grant recipient (2020)
- Janet Zweig, public art and installation artist based in Brooklyn, NY; Painters & Sculptors Grant recipient (1999)
- Christine Y. Kim, Britton Family Curator-at-Large, North American Art, Tate Modern, additionally participated in the first round of application review.
“It was an honor to help select the 2025 Joan Mitchell Fellows alongside such thoughtful and engaged fellow jurors,” said Amir H. Fallah. “With over 150 applicants from across the country, narrowing the list to just 15 Fellows was no easy task. The artists we selected are pushing boundaries, telling important stories, and reflecting the complexity of this moment that we are all living through.”
Kaitlin Garcia-Maestas additionally noted, “As a juror, I was struck by the expansive geographic reach of the Fellowship and the extraordinary depth and breadth of creative practices represented across the applications. Many of the awarded artists in this remarkable cohort have sustained their studio practices for decades and serve as vital creative leaders within their communities, bringing diverse cultural perspectives and geographies to the forefront of our field. Rooted in conceptual rigor and material innovation, their practices underscore the vital role of the studio as a space for discourse, care, and transformation."
About the 2025 Fellows
Gerald Clarke (b. 1967, lives in Anza, CA), an enrolled citizen of the Cahuilla Band of Indians, draws on his community’s everyday experience to create conceptual artworks that exist within a spectrum of Indigenous expression that is simultaneously ancient and contemporary.
Cathy Della Lucia (b. 1989, lives in Boston, MA) creates multi-part sculptures out of wood, ceramic, and digitally fabricated materials that are built to come apart. Her work reflects on modularity and the relationship between the body, tools, toys, and weapons.
Bob Dilworth (b. 1951, lives in Providence, RI) is a painter who depicts stories from his family, friends, and personal life to reconcile his Southern roots with his current life in Rhode Island. His most recent works incorporate fabric elements and sewing to embellish the surface of his paintings.
Nancy Friedemann-Sánchez (b. 1961, lives in Lincoln, NE) makes interdisciplinary work about the “curious and intense” experience of migration, drawing on her childhood in Colombia and personal migration to the US to explore the structures and legacies of colonization in contemporary society.
Sahar Khoury (b. 1973, lives in Oakland, CA) is a sculptor who incorporates training in anthropology into her practice, utilizing waste materials, found objects, and fabricated elements to create assemblages and installations that center social and political relationships and the cultural residue of humans.
Sammy Seung-min Lee (b. 1975, lives in Denver, CO) explores sculpture, bookbinding, and installation in her interdisciplinary practice. Shaped by her nomadic youth and bicultural identity as a Korean American, Lee creates assemblages that bridge spatial, temporal, and socio-cultural divides.
Brenda Mallory (b. 1955, lives in Portland, OR) makes abstract, textural compositions by “sewing” together soft, reclaimed materials with industrial hardware, exploring ideas of dominion, disruption, repair, and interconnection.
Suchitra Mattai (b. 1973, lives in Los Angeles, CA) is a multi-disciplinary artist of Indo-Caribbean descent whose work preserves ancestral stories through the exploration of memory and myth. She often combines processes and materials once associated with the domestic sphere, such as embroidery, beading, and sewing, to honor the labor of women.
Troy Montes Michie (b. 1985, lives in Los Angeles, CA), an interdisciplinary artist, engages with archives and print media to create collage works that explore the complexities of the gaze and disrupt visual modes of consumption that have historically fetishized and erased marginalized identities.
Sara Rahbar (b. 1976, lives in Great Neck, NY), an artist born in Iran who relocated to the US during the upheaval that followed the Iranian revolution, creates sculptures and assemblages that interrogate concepts of nationalism, separation, and belonging—driven by central themes of pain, violence, and the complexity of the human condition.
Eric-Paul Riege (b. 1994, lives in Na’nízhoozhí / Gallup, NM) is an interdisciplinary Diné/Navajo artist who honors the Diné worldview and celebrates the ancestral stories in weaving, language, and adornment passed down from his maternal family.
Juvana Soliven (b. 1988, lives in Honolulu, Hawaiʻi) sees her craft-based practice as a lens and language that subverts colonialist and patriarchal systems, in which objects can speak to issues around intimacy, labor, grief, human rights, and traditional gender roles and expectations.
Linda Rotua Sormin (b. 1971, lives in New York City) utilizes raw clay, fired ceramics, and found objects to create sculptures that she sees as hands-on embodiments of her family’s diasporic experiences and histories rooted in Thailand, China, and Indonesia.
Lan Tuazon (b. 1976, lives in Chicago, IL) makes sculptural installations and public monuments that reimagine present realities related to climate change, social justice, consumption, and waste as surplus and supply chain for new material needs. Tuazon sees her projects as “test sites” that serve as tools and apparatuses to propose ecological futures.
Anthony White (b. 1994, lives in Seattle, WA) draws inspiration from Dutch vanitas paintings to explore interactions between objects and their environments, questioning how seemingly mundane moments carry deeper significance and how our existence is mediated through digital and consumerist culture.