The 2023 Brother Thomas Fellowships

—Brother Thomas

The Brother Thomas Fund was established at the Boston Foundation in 2007 to honor the legacy of Brother Thomas Bezanson, a Benedictine monk and a world-renowned ceramic artist.

Since 2009, 91 artists have been awarded Brother Thomas Fellowships. All Fellows receive no-strings-attached awards of $15,000 and are selected biennially through a rigorous process of nominations and review by a multidisciplinary panel of Boston-area nonprofit arts leaders and practitioners.

The names of the artists who previously received Brother Thomas Fellowships are listed below.

2021

JOSEPHINE BURR , ceramicist

L’MERCHIE FRAZIER , visual activist

DEY HERNÁNDEZ, interdisciplinary artist & performer

KAOVANNY HOLGUIN , musician

JONATHAN BAILEY HOLLAND, composer

TATIANA JOHNSON-BORIA , writer

FRED LIANG , mixed media artist

FABIOLA M. MENDEZ , musician & composer

PATRICIA ZARATE PEREZ , musician

MOE POPE, musician

ALLISON MARIA RODRIGUEZ , interdisciplinary visual artist

GRACE TALUSAN , writer

CHANEL THERVIL , mixed media artist

SUSAN THOMPSON , textile & mixed media artist

CYNTHIA YEE, writer

KAREN YOUNG , cultural organizer

2019

JORGE SANTIAGO ARCE, performing artist

ANJIMILE CHITHAMBO, musician

SHAUMBA-YANDJE DIBINGA , dancer & performer

ROBERT GIBBS , muralist

ASHLEIGH GORDON , musician & violist

ARTHUR HALVORSEN , ceramic artist

YARA LICEAGA-ROJAS , poet & performer

PORSHA OLAYIWOLA , poet

OOMPA (LAKIYRA WILLIAMS), musician

VALERIE STEPHENS , performing artist & storyteller

BILLY DEAN THOMAS , musician

KYLA TOOMEY, ceramic artist

“We all share a creative goal with art. The goal is difficult; it is an invitation to change the world.”

From Our President and CEO

The Brother Thomas Fellowships are awarded every two years to Greater Boston artists working at a high level of excellence in many disciplines. The goal is to contribute to the freedom of these artists, enhancing their ability to thrive and enrich their communities with new work.

The catalog for a 2023 exhibition at the Pucker Gallery in Boston, which houses much of the late ceramic artist Brother Thomas Bezanson’s work, includes an essay that says, “Each pot by Brother Thomas is a unique individual, whether in his treatment of form, surface, or function…. He experimented with nearly all conceivable forms and glaze combinations, from the strictly traditional to the overtly non-traditional… and set no boundaries as to what he was willing to push and probe.”

That range and expansiveness we see expressed through his work is also expressed through his legacy. The community of artists created since 2009 by his foresight and generosity is extraordinary, with the newest cohort of 19 Fellows only adding to the remarkable diversity of the whole. They include ceramic artists, filmmakers, performers, producers, painters, and multidisciplinary artists, all of whose work defies simple labels. Brother Thomas never knew them, but he deeply knew and valued their drive to create and to make meaning through art.

At the Boston Foundation, we believe advancing equity for artists like these entails providing opportunities and resources in a fair and just manner to improve the quality of life, career, and ability of creatives to contribute to and communicate about their communities. The Brother Thomas Fellowship aligns with Advancing Community Wealth, TBF’s programmatic pathway that focuses on growing opportunities for residents, entrepreneurs, artists, culture makers, and workers—all of whom make our communities more vibrant and livable.

I am honored to present the 2023 cohort of Brother Thomas Fellows, introduced on the following pages.

M. Lee Pelton President and CEO of the Boston Foundation

Avilés

Filmmaker and Founder & Executive Director of CineFest Latino Boston

cinefestlatino.com

Sabrina Avilés is an award-winning independent filmmaker and educator, as well as the Founder and Executive Director of CineFest Latino Boston. Born in New York City to Puerto Rican and Dominican immigrants, she sees her life reflected in the stories she documents about Latinx communities. Avilés is a graduate of the Boston University film program. As a documentarian, her goal is to tell in-depth stories, incorporating longer substantive conversations with the community over time, moving beyond the headlines. By drawing attention to issues of Latinx communities, she hopes her films will shift perspectives and foster a deeper understanding of the human experience. Currently, she is working on a feature film about Chelsea, Mass., exploring the challenges and resilience of the city.

vladance.com

Victoria Lynn Awkward is a multi-hyphenate creator, administrator, and educator, aiming to inspire people through her work to pause and reflect on their actions toward themselves, their community, and their environment. Along with directing VLA Dance, Awkward is a freelance artist, recently choreographing The Boy Who Kissed the Sky, Bluebeard’s Castle, and Romeo and Juliet. A graduate of Goucher College, receiving high honors in dance, visual art, and education, she has taught at Salem State University, West End House, Middlesex School and elsewhere, and continues deepening her teaching practices with the Midday Movement Series. She utilizes her creative practices to claim joy and love of her existence as a Queer Black woman and inspires others to thoughtfully own their respective identities.

Daniel Callahan // Multidisciplinary Artist

danielcallahan.com

Daniel Callahan, multidisciplinary artist and designer, merges media such as film, painting, photography, and performance, seeking to create immersive experiences incorporating story, ritual, and the human form to explore aspects of resilience and mysticism. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania School of Design, with a master of fine arts in film and video degree from Emerson College, Callahan and his work have been featured at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the Institute of Contemporary Art, the Queens Museum, the New Orleans Museum of Art, and in publications such as The Believer magazine, Words Beats & Life: the Global Journal of Hip-Hop Culture, and the Smithsonian Press

Sabrina

//

Victoria Lynn Awkward // Director of VLA DANCE

Cicely Carew // Artist

cicelycarew.com

Cicely Carew’s printmaking and sculptural works channel radical joy and liberation. Carew has collaborated on exhibitions and installations with Now + There, the Fitchburg Art Museum, Northeastern University, and others. Carew won the 2023 Boston ICA’s James and Audrey Foster Prize. She holds degrees from Mass College of Art and Design and Lesley University. Carew is also a wellness facilitator and educator, and lives in Cambridge, Mass., with her son.

Catarina Coelho // Artist

catarinalcoehlo.com

Born in Portugal, Catarina Coelho explores the expanded field of print, often incorporating painting and writing. Her work appears in national and international exhibitions and is held in several collections, including the Boston Public Library and the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. After studying at the University of Lisbon and the Accademia di Belle-Arti di

degree from Mass College of Art and Design.

Monica

her

Cohen // Documentarian, Video Producer

theboomhouseproductions.com

Monica Cohen is a Colombian filmmaker whose documentaries center on art and culture in social transformation and human connection. Cohen founded Boom House Productions, a Boston-based company specializing in the production of promotional videos rooted in cinematic and documentary style storytelling. She has been a part of awardwinning film projects that have been shown around the world and in festivals such as Sundance, CPH:DOX, and FICCI, among others. Cohen believes in the power of stories to build bridges and spark important conversations that could be the catalyst to a more equitable world.

Joëlle Fontaine // Multimedia Artist

iamkreyol.com

Joëlle Fontaine is a Haïtian-American fashion designer, aesthetics and vibe architect, creative director, and entrepreneur utilizing fashion and art to advance social awareness and change. Fontaine accomplishes this through numerous artistic mediums and her entrepreneurial endeavors. She founded Kréyol, a high-fashion lifestyle brand providing a platform for economic mobility and sustainability to artisans and creatives worldwide. Fontaine firmly believes that art and entrepreneurship can create an economic revolution.

Brera in Milan, she received

master’s

Paul Goodnight // Painter

paulgoodnight.com

Raised in Roxbury, Mass., and New London, Conn., Paul Goodnight returned to Boston after serving in the Vietnam War to pursue a career as an artist. His work has appeared in the films Ghost, The Preacher’s Wife, and Gone Baby Gone, among others, and on many television programs including Seinfeld and The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. He has been featured in Architectural Digest, Décor Magazine, Ebony, Essence, Miami Design, People, and Upscale, as well as 100 Boston Painters. Here at home, the Baystate Banner and Boston Globe consider him one of our most talented native sons. He received his B.F.A. and an honorary M.F.A. from the Massachusetts College of Art. Goodnight’s learning continued under Paul Rahilly, John Biggers, and Chuck Stigliano.

Tim Hall // Artist, Educator, Connector

timvhall.com

Tim Hall is an award-winning musician, performance poet, and producer from Detroit, Mich., with Boston as his current home. Hall’s poetry charts nuances of Blackness, masculinity, and the beauties of life. He is a faculty member at Berklee College of Music; a trustee with the Harvard American Repertory Theater; a member of the award-winning band STL GLD; and coowner of HipStory, a digital media production company. Hall has shared stages and recorded with The Nappy Roots, Carolyn Malachi, Bilal, Chris Turner, Aloe Blacc, Maria Finkelmeier, The Boston Symphony Orchestra, and Diana Oh, among others. The 2020 Boston Music Awards named him Session Musician of the Year, and WBUR included him in the 2019 ARTery 25 (Millennials of color impacting Boston arts and culture).

Elisa H. Hamilton // Multimedia Artist

elisahhamilton.com

Elisa H. Hamilton is a socially engaged multimedia artist creating artwork and community-centered programs emphasizing shared spaces and the hopeful examination of our everyday places, objects, and experiences. Her work has been shown locally and nationally in solo and group exhibitions, and she has created participatory projects for institutions including the Institute of Contemporary Art, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, and the Currier Museum of Art. Holding a bachelor of fine arts in painting from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, and a master of art in civic media: art and practice from Emerson College, Hamilton strives to make artwork that brings people together, activates conversation about social issues, and fosters greater understanding of ourselves and one another.

Lucy Kim // Visual Artist

lucykim.com

Lucy Kim is a visual artist exploring the many naturalizing mechanisms that structure day-to-day visual experiences. Her practice is wide-ranging aesthetically and materially, with her focus on developing forms that are visceral, tactile, and less vision-centric. Using a broad range of materials such as oil paint, silicone rubbers, resins, and live bacteria cells producing melanin, her work acts to understand and challenge the power of appearance, and the socio-cultural systems working to produce visibility. Recent exhibitions of her work were held at Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art, Institute of Fine Arts at New York University, and Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, among others. Kim is an Associate Professor of Art at Boston University.

Ashton Lites // Founder, President, StiggityStackz Worldwide Inc.

stiggity.com

Ashton “Stiggity Stackz” Lites is one of Boston’s most renowned and veteran freestyle dance specialists, with 15+ years of intensive training in cultural and concert dance forms, including Krump, Popping, Locking, House, Hip Hop, Ballet, Tap, Jazz, Modern, Afro-Haitian, and beyond. Experienced event organizer, instructor, and choreographer, and well-traveled in the underground Hip Hop competition circuit, he runs community-based dance and creative entrepreneurship development programs, events, and festivals. With StiggityStackz Worldwide, he has partnered with DS4SI, The Boston Ballet, Red Bull, The Museum of Science, The Mass Hip Hop Archive, and others. Stackz is dedicated to supporting and centering his community in achieving artistic excellence, economic sustainability, and historical recognition, with specific care and attention to Black creatives across generations and creative outlets.

Silvia Lopez Chavez // Artist

silvialopezchavez.com

Silvia Lopez Chavez is a Dominican-American visual artist whose collaborative murals forge meaningful cross-cultural connections and transform urban spaces by exploring personal stories of adaptation and resilience via painting, printmaking, and drawing. She was named a Neighborhood Salon Luminary by the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and received the New England Women’s Leadership Award by the Boys and Girls Club of America and the New England Foundation of the Arts’ Leadership in Public Art Award. She completed artist residencies at MASS MoCA, Haystack, and Vermont Studio Center. Commissions include the U.S. Chinese Embassy in Beijing, Google HQ in California, Peabody Essex Museum, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Harvard and Northeastern universities. Lopez Chavez is a graduate of the Massachusetts College of Art and Design.

U-Meleni Mhlaba-Adebo // Interdisciplinary Artist, Author, Educator

u-meleni.com

U-Meleni Mhlaba-Adebo, a Boston-based ZimbabweanAmerican artist, author, and educator, examines and highlights fluid identities and intricate emotions using sonic elements, English, Shona songs, and storytelling, amplifying human experiences. Rooted in Zimbabwean-American heritage and merging Ndau and Ndebele lineages, she reshapes notions of womanhood, resilience, love, beauty, liberty, motherhood, and kinship as an “Emotional Anthropologist.” Drawing from medicine woman heritage, Mhlaba-Adebo invites exploration of ancestral connection through her work intertwining memory, personal and historical narratives, and global fabric. Her creative process is shaped with tools such as pen, typewriter, laptop, videography, voice, Mbira, and body.

Cassandra Queen // Artist

quueenn.com

Cassandra Queen is a multidisciplinary artist, independent scholar, and creative entrepreneur from Boston, Mass. Her creative practice is rooted in exploring and understanding Black fiber traditions, textile arts, crafts, and histories. Recently, her background and experience led to the creation of works at the intersection of design, function, craft, and technology, employing natural dyeing of fabric and fibers, textile design, millinery, digital fabrication, and fashion design. She has received awards and distinguished fellowships for her artistic practice and creative entrepreneurship along with recognition for her work as a costume designer for a regional theater in the Boston area. Queen is the founder of QUUEENN, a design studio and brand centering storytelling through craft.

Kathryn Ramey // Filmmaker

rameyfilms.com

Guggenheim Fellow and Creative Capital Award winner Kathryn Ramey is a filmmaker and anthropologist, working at the experimental edges of both disciplines with films, installations, and performances exhibited widely. From domestic and global concerns to the personal and political, her work is characterized by manipulation of the celluloid, “troubling” the image and agitating the viewer. Ramey leads workshops and publishes articles and books on alternative film techniques, working to manifest radical empathy through a love of creating and sharing gritty, artisanal, experimental film form. In the Anthropocene, with human activity the central driver of climate change and its existential threat, small-gauge ecologically oriented artists like Ramey embody a sustainable future for the medium.

Ellen Schön // Ceramic Artist

ellenschon.com

Ellen Schön is a ceramic artist embracing both ancient and contemporary techniques in two distinct yet complementary series. Her traditional hand-coiled organic forms evoke the gesture and stance of the human figure, and pose narrative vignettes recalling connections and disconnections, meetings and partings. Harnessing new technology in her 3D clay-printed geometrical structures alluding to the mathematical symmetry of Platonic solids, she brings her tactile sense of clay into the digital sphere. Throughout all of the work, Schön’s original intention persists—to create unique, personal forms which resonate, whether functional, metaphorical, or somewhere in between. Schön is Adjunct Professor in Fine Arts and Ceramics Studio Supervisor at Lesley University College of Art and Design in Cambridge, Mass.

Anjali Srinivasan // Artist, Associate Professor at MassArt

anjalisrinivasan.com

Anjali Srinivasan began her creative practice with collaborative research and design initiatives aimed at socioeconomic empowerment with traditional artisans in India in 1998. In the studio, she develops ways to discover, access, and restructure information held in a material or situation, and is currently exploring “biological craftpersonship” and “crowd-created” entities in the fields of sustainability and social engagement. She completed undergraduate studies at the National Institute of Fashion Technology in New Delhi and Alfred University in New York, and a graduate degree from the Rhode Island School of Design. Srinivasan lives and works between India and the United States, as Associate Professor at Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Boston, and Director at ChoChoMa Studios, Bengaluru.

Zahili Zamora // Pianist, Composer, Arranger, Educator

zahilizamora.com

Zahili Zamora’s professional musical career has taken her from Cuba, Canada, and Southeast Asia to the United States, with her rich musical background and career experience rendering her a leader in the modern Afro-Latin jazz idiom. With her former trio, MIXCLA, Zamora headlined at the 59th Monterey Jazz Festival, the 2016 Stave Sessions with Celebrity Series of Boston, and the 2015 Montreal International Jazz Festival. After joining the Berklee College of Music Piano Department in 2019, Zamora received her master of music in contemporary performance degree with a concentration in music performance anxiety in August 2023. Currently, she is working on her third album, featuring music inspired by her ongoing research on music performance anxiety.

Supporting the Brother Thomas Fellowships

IN THE 1970 s , when Brother Thomas Bezanson first met Sue and Bernie Pucker, owners of the Pucker Gallery on Boston’s Newbury Street, ceramics were considered more craft than art. Brother Thomas changed that perception forever. Today, his work can be found in more than 50 national and international museums and galleries, including the Pucker Gallery, which holds the largest and most diverse collection.

Brother Thomas knew that for most artists, the journey is a challenging one, and that even established artists may struggle for the resources they need to advance their art. Toward the end of his life, he joined forces with the Puckers to create a legacy that would benefit other artists through the sale of his work. Today, the proceeds of the sale of the remarkable pieces held by the Pucker Gallery—a series of breathtaking vessels with luminous and delicate glazes—support the Brother Thomas Fellowships.

Brother Thomas Fellows are selected through an inclusive, two-step process of nomination and panel review, with a diverse and multidisciplinary group of nominators and panelists.

The Boston Foundation’s Arts Fund matches all contributions to the Brother Thomas Fund. We invite you to join us in fulfilling Brother Thomas’ vision. If you are interested in contributing to the fund or if you are a collector who would like to learn more about purchasing Brother Thomas’ works as a way of supporting the fund, we encourage you to contact us. We also invite you to contribute to the Boston Foundation Arts Fund, Greater Boston’s only permanent endowment to support arts and creativity in our community. For more information, please contact the Boston Foundation at 617-338-1700.

Sue and Bernie Pucker

Artist photos by Craig Bailey (except Goodnight, Lites, Lopez Chavez, and Srinivasan, which are courtesy of the respective artists).

2017

JEAN APPOLON , choreographer & dance educator

SANDEEP DAS , musician

MAYA ERDELYI , animator & director

MARIA FINKELMEIER, percussionist & composer

PATRICK GABRIDGE, playwright & author

REGIE GIBSON , performer & poet

STEPHEN HAMILTON , visual artist & educator

KATHYRN KING, ceramic artist & teacher

SHAW PONG LIU, violinist & composer

MARSHA PARRILLA , choreographer

HAKIM RAQUIB , photographer

EVELYN RYDZ , visual artist

ENZO SILON SURIN , poet

YU-WEN WU, interdisciplinary artist

2015

NICOLE AQUILLANO, ceramic artist

HALSEY BURGUND, sound artist & musician

DANIELLE LEGROS GEORGES , poet

RAUL GONZALEZ III , visual artist

NAPOLEON JONES-HENDERSON , visual artist

MASAKO KAMIYA , visual artist

BALLA KOUYATÉ, composer/musician

SANDRINE SCHAEFER , performance artist

MICHELLE SEATON , author

JAE WILLIAMS , filmmaker

2013

AMBREEN BUTT, multimedia artist

LORRAINE CHAPMAN , choreographer

SEAN FIELDER , choreographer

EKUA HOLMES , visual artist

MATTI KOVLER , composer

MEGUMI NAITOH , ceramic artist

2011

SACHIKO AKIYAMA , sculptor

ANGELA CUNNINGHAM , ceramic artist

DAVID VALDES GREENWOOD, playwright & author

WENDY JEHLEN , dancer

CHANDRA DIEPPA ORTIZ , painter & sculptor

ROBERT TODD, documentary filmmaker

2009

JOHN OLUWOLE ADEKOJE, filmmaker & playwright

KATI AGÓCS , composer

BARBARA HELFGOTT HYETT, poet

RICHARD HOFFMAN , poet

BRIAN KNEP, video artist

ALLA KOVGAN , film editor

TRACY HEATHER STRAIN , documentary filmmaker

HEATHER WHITE, jeweler & designer

Brother Thomas Fellows continued from inside front cover

About the Boston Foundation Founded in 1915, the Boston Foundation is one of the most influential community foundations in the country. Partnering with community members, donors, the public sector, businesses and nonprofits, we aim to repair past harms and build a more equitable future for our city and region. Supported by the Annual Campaign for Civic Leadership, we publish research into current critical issues, convene people in public forums to discuss the city’s agenda and the region’s trends— and use our shared knowledge to advocate for public policies that promote equity and opportunity for everyone. TBF is also one of New England’s largest grantmakers, supporting nonprofits in Greater Boston through our endowment and working closely with our donors to support nonprofits locally, nationally and internationally.

For more information about the Boston Foundation or the Brother Thomas Fellowships, call 617-338-1700 or visit tbf.org.

“As an artist, I am not into making things—the world has enough things—I am into revealing something, something even I do not know.”

—Brother Thomas