Announcing 2025 Interlace Project Grant Recipients
Interlace Grant Fund is proud to announce the 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.
Please join us in honoring these artists at our annual Award Ceremony
Thursday January 23, 2025, 5:30-8PM
RISD Museum, Chase Auditorium, 20 North Main Street, Providence, RI
RSVP here: https://tinyurl.com/interlaceceremony2025
Awarded Artists & Projects
Annie Chen, with Zoe Lee
Eating with the RI Ecosystem: A Visual Guide to Eating the Whole Fish
Project description
As part of a broader conversation of advancing climate action as a community-driven cultural shift, Annie Chen will produce a community workshop and illustrated zine that will serve as a visual guide to local Providence residents on eating the whole fish. She will collaborate with designer Zoe Lee and Kate Masury from Eating with the Ecosystem for the project, which aims to engage local seafood professionals and the Providence community to promote sustainable food systems.
Artist biography
Annie Chen is a Chinese-American artist, designer, and researcher based in Providence, Rhode Island. Her work moves between art and science, nature and culture – investigating the climate crisis in its intertwined socio-political, cultural and ecological dimensions.
Annie is a graduate of the Brown RISD Dual Degree Program, where she received a BA in Biology, a BA in Behavioral Decision Sciences, and a BFA in Industrial Design. She has previously conducted astrobiology research at NASA Ames Research Center, facilitated community sound mapping workshops for children at MIT Media Lab, and recently wrote and illustrated Salmon Run, a picture book about the magical life cycle of Pacific Salmon, forthcoming with Red Comet Press. She is currently part of the Year 11 Cohort at NEW INC.
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Jordan Seaberry
“We Live Until” Publication
Project description
The pieces in the exhibition "We Live Until" are made in conversation with patients in hospice care, asking the question: “What responsibility does the artist hold when making paintings with neighbors who will pass away before the painting is complete?” Jordan Seaberry is applying for funding to create a publication that will bring the exhibition images to participating hospice patients and families who are unable to attend the exhibition in person.
Artist biography
Jordan Seaberry is a painter, organizer, legislative advocate, and educator. Born and raised on the Southside of Chicago, he came to Providence to attend Rhode Island School of Design, and later, Roger Williams University School of Law. Alongside his art, he built a career as a grassroots organizer and legislative advocate, helping to pass multiple criminal justice reform milestones, including probation reform, the Unshackling Pregnant Prisoners Bill, and the statewide Community-Police Relationship Act.
Seaberry serves as Co-Director of the U.S. Department of Arts and Culture, and as a professor at Rhode Island School of Design. He previously served as the Director of Public Policy at the Nonviolence Institute, as the Community Leader Fellow at Roger Williams University School of Law, and as the Chairman of the Providence Board of Canvassers, overseeing the city’s elections.
He has served as artist in residence at Skowhegan, Yaddo, the Verge Center of the Arts, and elsewhere. His work is in collections including the RISD Museum, the Crystal Bridges Museum, the deCordova Museum, and others.
Shey 'Ri Acu' Rivera Ríos
TIERRA FUTURA: Becoming Human, Becoming Land
Project description
'TIERRA FUTURA: Becoming Human, Becoming Land’ will be a new body of work created as a decolonial and embodied un-archive of stories and anecdotes from lineage and land in Boriken and in Providence; a visual vessel for an experience of uprooting, migration, and building home. The body of work consists of 6 new annotated photographs and a new 15min performance art piece as manifestations of this un-archive, presented as a public exhibit.
Artist biography
Shey 'Rí Acu' Rivera Ríos (they/them) is an interdisciplinary artist and cultural worker who uses storytelling across mediums to create immersive worlds of magic and liberation. Born and raised in Borikén (Puerto Rico), Rivera has created home and set deep roots in Providence, RI, land of Narragansett and Wampanoag peoples. Rivera is founder of Studio Loba, a storytelling lab for art and culture projects that support social change. They have 15 years of experience in the arts and culture sector, interweaving artistic practice with community development, cultural equity, and gender justice. Their work is rooted in partnerships with place-based, cultural and advocacy organizations like SISTAFire and Puerto Rican Institute for Arts and Advocacy. In 2024, Rivera was selected for Providence Commemoration Lab (2024), a one year residency of social practice art to engage residents of Providence in reimagining commemoration. Notable projects include: 'Everything Living Fights Back' art and cultural practice exhibit at Aunty's House Studio in Providence (2024) and 'PORTALES Reimagining the Future' exhibit at Waterfire Arts Center (2022); theatrical productions Antigonx (2022) and Fire Flowers and a Time Machine (2021); transmedia artworks: MoralDocs (2020-21) and FANTASY ISLAND (2017); lead curator for El Corazón de Holyoke public art project (2020-21); and founder of LUNA LOBA performance series (2014+).
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Grechel Rosado
ESTAMOS AQUI: Threads of Memory and Belonging
Project description
Grechel Rosado will bring a traveling screenprinting cart to various Latino communities in Providence, paying homage to Puerto Rican street vendors. The project involves a series of pop-up workshops where public participants will create and print designs reflecting the Latin experience. These prints will then form a memory wall showcased at a culminating exhibition. The project aims to preserve and celebrate Latino cultural storytelling, addressing themes of community erasure, resilience, and belonging.
Artist biography
Grechel Rosado is a Latina printmaker and illustrator based in the Providence metro area. Born in Bayamón, Puerto Rico, Grechel has lived most of her life in a juxtaposition between her Latin heritage and her American upbringing. She is deeply inspired by the roots of her culture and how her lived experiences both influences and informs her artwork. Although she mainly focuses in the mediums of printmaking, Grechel is constantly expanding upon her disciplines and researching ways to blur the boundaries between them.
In 2020, Grechel graduated Magna Cum Laude from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Illustration with a Printmaking minor. She is the first in her family to obtain one. Grechel teaches Printmaking and also works at the WaterFire Arts Center as their Programs Coordinator. She is also a proud member of Binch Press/Queer.Archive.Work, a cooperative Print and Design studio centering queer and bipoc artists in Providence.
Sara Inácio
Look Outside: Building Alternative Worlds Through Collaborative Art-Making
Project description
“Look Outside,” is a collaboration between Sara Inácio and artists from Outsider Collective, a community studio centering artists with disabilities. Together, they will imagine new worlds and open up windows into alternate ways of seeing through a collaborative installation, a series of zines, and public pop-ups inviting others to co-create with them. This work will challenge normative ideas of professional art, encourage new relationships and elevate diverse ways of making and engaging with the world.
Artist biography
Sara Inácio is a Brazilian printmaker and public engagement artist based in Providence, RI. As a queer person who immigrated to the U.S. at a young age, they are drawn to make and think with ecosystems and communities that flourish in spite of human-built environments and societal structures that push against their existence. Sara finds kinship with unexpected beings, such as the rats in their neighborhood that scurry away in the dark, the feeling of being and not belonging. In their social practice, They use printmaking and collaborative art-making as a tool for community building and empathy. With a queer ecological lens, their work explores complex coexistences, prompting a rejection of the here and now and imagining another world.
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Sara holds an MFA in Printmaking from Rhode Island School of Design (‘24) and a BFA in Printmaking and Public Engagement from Maine College of Art (17’). They have participated in exhibitions, collaborations and curatorial projects across New England, and attended artist residencies at Queer Archive Work (Providence, RI), Art Farm (Marquette, NE) and Green Olive Arts (Tetouan, Morocco). In addition to their creative practice, they have worked in education management at AS220 Community Studios and in microscopy at RISD’s Edna W. Lawrence Nature Lab.
Ti Dinh, with Amy Ramos
A Well Lit Path
Project description
Ti Dinh and Amy Ramos will produce a series of four textile-based lamps as they explore the textile histories of their motherlands, Vietnam and Guatemala. They will research indigenous textile practices and postcolonial influences on those practices, including irreparable harm enacted by the United States, in order to explore their questions around their families’ immigration journeys to the US.
Artist biographies
Ti Dinh
Ti is a community taught maker and educator who lives in Providence, RI. She recently began her art journey after a significant life slowdown and now enjoys a daily community-based practice. She is most playful in clay, linocut, metal, and collage. In order to remain relatable to loved ones who are largely not in art spaces, her work is persistently functional or interactive. Her practice is cared for by her sister, partner, friends, large family, studio mates, mentors, and this city itself.
Amy Ramos
After a high school internship at Riverzedge (Woonsocket, RI), Amy Ramos taught middle schoolers about three-dimensional art. That internship propelled her to understand and hone in on a love for teaching and art. Amy teaches welding classes at the Steel Yard and works in three-dimensional mediums with metal, glass, tufting, and floral design.
Joanna Cortez
Keeping Palestine Amplified Through Beauty, Enamel, Fabric, and Traditional Motifs
Project description
Joanna Cortez will produce a series of fabric and enamel pieces featuring motifs found in traditional Palestinian tatreez (a form of traditional and modern Palestinian embroidery) in order to showcase the rich history and beauty to a western audience. Her aim is to join voices with so many other artists in keeping the contemporary and traditional beauty of Palestine visible in the US art world, in Providence, and beyond.
Artist biography
Joanna Cortez trained in printmaking, metalwork and ceramics. In her practice, she draws imagery from plants, patterns and motifs found in the American Southwest, Oaxaca, Jordan and Palestine. Her work attempts to be one more contemporary voice among many, unweaving narratives relegating her cultures to ancient times, propaganda, myth or as vanished. Her practice is in part record keeping, but she hopes it remains a vehicle for storytelling and continued conversations about heritage and our shared humanity.
As a printmaker, Joanna has worked with printmakers in Johannesburg, South Africa, New York, Tokyo, Japan and Rhode Island. They’ve worked with artists such as William Kentridge, Kiki Smith, Alfredo Jarr, Korakrit Arunanondchai and many more. They currently work as a master printer at Current Projects in Queens, NY.
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Serra Victoria Bothwell Fels
The Re:Center
Project description
The Re:Center is a site-specific wooden sculpture featuring tessellating geometric triangles surrounding a functional sauna for four, set in a Providence garden. This installation invites Providence’s queer communities to engage in private, small-group reflections on expanding queer joy through a ritual of social self-care. Each session will contribute a single photograph and paragraph of reflection to be compiled into a limited-edition book for all contributors.
Artist biography
Serra Victoria Bothwell Fels (b. Knoxville, TN) works in site-responsive sculptural installations embedded into pre-existing architectural and spatial contexts. Her sculptural interventions and outcroppings transform mundane architectural features into sites of imaginative disruption, unexpectedly shifting our sense of reality and revealing the significant role environment plays in our perceptions of being. This architecture-of-becoming investigates structural boundaries as the material, space as fulcrum, and community as activator.
Initially trained as a social psychologist at Stanford University, then as a metalsmith at the Appalachian Center for Craft, Bothwell Fels received her MFA from Columbia University. Her work has been presented at venues such as the Palais de Tokyo (Paris), The Clocktower Gallery (NYC), Pioneer Works (Brooklyn), University of Wisconsin (Oshkosh), BRIC (Brooklyn), Sun Valley Center for the Arts (Ketchum), and Smack Mellon (Brooklyn). She is the recipient of the Peter S. Reed Foundation Award, three Windgate Fellowships, a 2019 NYFA Architecture/Environmental Structure/Design Finalist Award, and a grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts.
Vuthy Lay
The Mutual Aid Altar
Project description
Vuthy Lay will build a public shrine that distributes free health and rescue supplies anonymously 24/7 year round. This site-specific installation builds upon the visual language of diasporic Buddhist altar building traditions. The Mutual Aid Altar aims to increase access to crucial resources, while inviting the broader community to reconsider harmful narratives and stigmas surrounding sexual health and addiction.
Artist biography
Vuthy Lay was educated in the field of architecture and also has experience as a designer and self-employed handy person. Their art practice is tactile, cyclical, and interdisciplinary, often utilizing multiple mediums to explore themes of identity, history and myth-making. Vuthy was born and raised in the West End of Providence, immersed in Cambodian culture from a spectrum of communities across the diaspora. They are deeply inspired by their ancestors and strive to uphold their artistic traditions, while attempting to make their own contribution to those legacies.
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2024 Project Grant Jurors
Deborah Clemons
Deborah Clemons is Director of Public Programs at the RISD Museum. In this role, she develops opportunities for learning and exchange among adult audiences. With a multidisciplinary approach to museum program production for and with artists, designers and creative makers, she prioritizes multiple perspectives, accessibility and inclusivity. A member of the museum’s Education Department for over 25 years, she holds a BS in Legal Studies from Roger Williams University and serves on the board of Gallery Night Providence, a nonprofit arts organization providing access to visual arts.
Thea Quiray Tagle
Thea Quiray Tagle, PhD (she/her) is a curator, writer, and transdisciplinary scholar of ethnic studies, queer studies, and visual studies. She has published in venues including Verge: Studies in Global Asias, Hyperallergic, and BOMB Magazine. Thea was the co-curator of New York Now: Home, the contemporary photography triennial at the Museum of the City of New York (2023), and is the Associate Curator of the Bell Gallery and Brown Arts Institute (BAI) at Brown University.
Juliana Rowen Barton
Juliana Rowen Barton, PhD is a curator and cultural organizer based in Providence, RI. Through her research and projects, she explores the confluence of race, gender, and design and invests in community-engaged creative practices as a vehicle for social transformation. Currently, she is the Director of the Center for the Arts at Northeastern University, where she oversees interdisciplinary arts programming including Gallery 360.She also co-organizes Designing Motherhood, a first-of-its-kind book, exhibition series, and open-source curriculum project that explores design and the arc of human reproduction. She has been the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including from the Graham Foundation, CASVA, ACLS, the Center for Curatorial Leadership, and the Mellon Foundation. Throughout her career, Barton has worked on exhibitions and programs at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, ArkDes, Center for Craft, Wolf Humanities Center, Center for Architecture, and the Museum of Modern Art, among others. She comes from a family of architects and spends her free time in the pottery studio and the kitchen.
Hannah Liongoren
Hannah Liongoren is a multidisciplinary designer, educator and maker living in Hannah, a Filipina interdisciplinary designer and educator, employs illustration, graphic design, and exhibition design to illuminate marginalized stories. Her creative practice centers on making stories accessible to the general public, particularly through the intersection of illustration and design. Through the creation of comics, she delves into her immigrant experience, offering a platform to reexamine her heritage and process the impacts of colonization on her identity. In her design endeavors, Hannah utilizes space to convey narratives or bodies of knowledge in a way that is easily digestible to a wider audience. Based in Providence since 2017, she frequently travels back and forth to the Philippines to care for her family's legacy art gallery.
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Sarah Montross
Sarah Montross is Chief Curator, deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, The Trustees, where she oversees the exhibition and outdoor art commissioning program. Located in Lincoln, MA, deCordova is the largest public sculpture park in New England.