Announcing 2021 Artist Fellowships Awardees

Mass Cultural Council is honored to announce the 2021 Artist Fellowship awards in Crafts, Dramatic Writing, Film & Video, Music Composition, Photography, and Sculpture/Installation/New Genres. The awards include 40 fellowships of $15,000, and 35 finalist awards of $1,500. See a list of this year’s fellows and finalists.

The awards are anonymously judged, based solely on the artistic quality and creative ability of the work submitted. We received a total of 1,251 applications from artists throughout Massachusetts, including 159 in Crafts, 158 in Dramatic Writing, 168 in Film & Video, 165 in Music Composition, 309 in Photography, and 292 in Sculpture/Installation/New Genres.

The Artist Fellowships are part of Mass Cultural Council’s sustained effort to support individual artists with grants and services. Earlier this year, we announced almost $1.2 million in emergency grants as part of the COVID-19 Relief Fund for Individuals.

We invite a wide-ranging group of panelists and first-round readers to conduct the anonymous review. The 2021 panelists and readers were:

Crafts Panelists: Miguel Gómez-Ibáñez, Michelle Millar Fisher, Kat Nakaji, Berta Welch, and Adero Willard

Dramatic Writing Panelists: P. Carl, Melisa Tien, Isaiah M. Wooden, and Pirronne Yousefzadeh; Readers: Jaime Carrillo, Andrea Hairston, Greg Lam, Davron Monroe, Anne G. Morgan, and Elena Morris

Film & Video Panelists: Ashish Chadha, Chico Colvard, Susan Kerns, and Barbara Vásconez; Readers: Zeina Abi Assy, Aya Yamasaki Brown, Peat Duggins, Lynn Kim, Erik Levine, and Julie Mallozzi

Music Composition Panelists: Laury Gutiérrez, Jessica Rudman, David Sanford, and Miki Sawada; Readers: John Aylward, Felicia Chen, David Freeman Coleman, Ayn Inserto, Tina Tallon, and Kirsten Volness

Photography Panelists: Crista Dix, Juan Carlos Gonzalez, Tsugumi Maki, and Theo Tyson

Sculpture/Installation/New Genres Panelists: Max Bard, Furen Dai, Erin Genia, and Nilou Moochhala

Artist Fellowships disciplines recur every other year. Next year’s discipline categories will be: Drawing & Printmaking, Poetry, Traditional Arts, Choreography, Fiction/Creative Nonfiction, and Painting. Read the discipline definitions.

Find a full list of this year’s Artist Fellowships awardees.

Images: Kate Gakenheimer (Crafts Fellow ’21), DECO CIRCLE (2018), stained glass, 23x23x2 in; Claudia Ruiz-Gustafson (Photography Fellow ’21), EL SUEÑO DE MARíA (MARIA’S DREAM) (2020), Archival Pigment Print, 12x18x1 in; still image from IN THE ABSENCE OF THINGS (2021), a film by Mariona Lloreta (Film & Video Fellow ’21); still image from a 2019 performance of THE MEDFIELD ANTHOLOGY, a play by Hortense Gerardo (Dramatic Writing Fellow ’21); documentation image from PLAY (2018), an interactive installation by Stephanie Houten (Sculpture/Installation/New Genres Fellow ’21); Yoon-Ji Lee (Music Composition Fellow ’21) at work, photo credit: Spectrum.