Twelve artists have won the first batch of the Trellis Art Fund‘s $100,000 awards, with Lorraine O’Grady, Candida Alvarez, and American Artist among the inaugural winners.

The Trellis Art Fund, a New York–based private foundation, said it had specifically awarded two of the awards to working parents in recognition of the challenges they often face.

“Making a grant unrestricted is akin to funding basic science research,” Corina Larkin, Trellis’s executive director, said in a statement. “We wanted to relieve our grantees from the financial challenges of being an artist at every stage of life, and allow them to deploy resources on their own timeline. More than anything, artists need time, space, and stability to be in the studio and engage deeply with their work.”

More than 75 curators, historians, artists, and art world professionals from around the world were invited to nominate up to three artists earlier this year in January. Any artist eligible to work in the United States was considered. In February, those who were nominated were then invited to apply for the award, after which an anonymous jury then decided the final 12 recipients from a pool of 157 applicants.

Those selected work across a variety of mediums, including painting, sculpture, video, performance
and social practice, and hail from a number of different locales. The funds are unrestricted and can be used to fund personal or professional needs.

Speaking on behalf of the anonymous jury, Trellis Art Fund advisory board member and sculptor Arlene
Shechet explained, “There is nothing simple or straightforward about the process of elimination and
selection, but we are immensely pleased and grateful that, in this inaugural year for Trellis,
twelve astoundingly dedicated and talented artists will receive substantial, no strings attached,
funds towards realizing their dreams and sharing their visions.”

The recipients are as follows:

Candida Alvarez, Chicago, IL
American Artist, New York, NY
Ja’Tovia Gary, Dallas, TX
Every Ocean Hughes, New York, NY
Autumn Knight, New York, NY
Young Joon Kwak, Los Angeles, CA
Lorraine O’Grady, New York, NY
Paul Pfeiffer, New York, NY
Ronny Quevedo, New York, NY*
Alison Saar, Los Angeles, CA
Shizu Saldamando, Los Angeles, CA*
Jorge González Santos, San Juan, PR

*Artist parents with children under 12 years old.