Fulcrum Fund

516 ARTS is pleased to announce the 2023 Fulcrum Fund grant recipients. This year, a total of $90,000 has been awarded to 11 New Mexico-based visual artists in amounts ranging from $4,000 - $10,000 to support the development and presentation of independent, artist-led projects and programs. Examples of funded projects this cycle include new exhibitions, the ongoing work of an experimental arts venue or collective, public art projects, one-time events and performances, workshops, publications directly related to the visual arts, and a film festival, to name a few.

Now in its eighth year, the Fulcrum Fund is an annual grant program created and administered by 516 ARTS as a partner in the Regional Regranting Program of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, with additional support from the Frederick Hammersley Fund for the Arts at the Albuquerque Community Foundation. The Fulcrum Fund serves as an essential support structure to enable artists to expand existing work and explore new directions in creating and showcasing projects that inspire curiosity, engagement, and dialogue. It is intended to be a springboard for artistic processes that are experimental and forward thinking, while celebrating projects that may not fit into the traditional museum and gallery systems.

This year’s guest jurors were Michelle Grabner, artist, curator, writer, and Professor of Art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and America Meredith (Cherokee Nation), publishing editor of First American Art Magazine, art writer, critic, visual artist, and independent curator. We received 118 submissions from 29 cities, towns and pueblos throughout New Mexico. The jurors selected the following 11 proposals:

Mira Burack // Sleeping Huts // Cerrillos
Sleeping Huts is a long-term, artistic project situated in the foothills of the Ortiz Mountains in New Mexico, where earthen architectural spaces will be created with imaginative bed designs and an immersive, nurturing and sensorial sleep experience. Funding supports the first phase of the project and will engage collaborators and develop architectural plans and drawings of interior sculptural and functional elements.

fronteristxs // Ni de aquí, ni de allá // Albuquerque
Ni de aquí ni de allá is socially-engaged art space located inside of a cargo shipment container in the backyard of the fronteristxs project space. It will be a long-term art space that exists to challenge what is expected of an art gallery and champion emerging artists, experimental and performance art.

Indigenous Society of Architecture, Planning, and Design (ISAPD) // First Future Project // Albuquerque
First Future Project encompasses a range of programming sustaining the endeavors of the Indigenous Society of Architecture, Planning, and Design (ISAPD) collective and celebrates and expands on Indigenous architectural principles firmly rooted in the tracking of natural phenomena and celestial events, specifically the fall equinox. Programming includes a built installation, community art contribution, maps and drawings, a public festival, a design competition, and an on-line community book.

Tyler Green // Carbon, Element // Albuquerque
By photographing landscapes impacted by wildfire and working directly with carbon, in the form of charcoal, Carbon, Element explores the relationship between ecological devastation and global warming.

Dust Wave // Fronteras Microfilm Festival // Albuquerque
Organized by Dust Wave, an Albuquerque-based film collective, the Fronteras Microfilm Festival will feature films of three-minutes-or-less that address the themes of borders, enforcement, and crossings for a one-of-a-kind short film festival.

Billy Joe Miller // Moving Window // Albuquerque
Designed for hospitals and inspired by the artist’s own experiences of illness, Moving Window offers a comforting aesthetic in otherwise sterile spaces and brings healthcare into conversations of contemporary art.

Roger Montoya // Hope and Belonging Pathways Mural // Velarde
The Española Pathways Shelter Mural Project, Hope and Belonging, is a multi-generational response to homelessness and addiction through the creation and exposure to artistic community.

Michelle Paisano (Laguna Pueblo) // Culturally Responsive Art Education for Native Communities // Laguna Pueblo
Michelle Paisano will bring a culturally responsive pedagogy into Native communities through an experimental arts collective and include a culture-based art education, art integration, artist-in-residence, and a senior arts program.

Manuel Alejandro Rodríguez-Delgado // Contingencias Futuras/Future Contingencies // Roswell
Contingencias Futuras (Future Contingencies) is an experimental arts and technology body of work intended to develop self-built technical solutions for emerging global crises.

Landing // The Land is a Verb // New Mexico
Landing is a collective comprised of five artists – joseline mendoza, fen root, row särkelä, and isabel tafoya with consulting by Blackhorse Lowe. The Land is a Verb will collaboratively develop non-imperial myths related to the land of northern New Mexico across a variety of mediums and formats including 16mm film, an exhibition, and series of workshops.

Submergence Collective // The Piñon Project // Albuquerque
Piñon Project explores the ecological and cultural resonance of piñon pine (Pinus edulis) in New Mexico and contends with its potential extinction due to climate change and the co-extinction of its vital mycorrhizal fungal partner, Geopora pinyonensis.

ABOUT THE FULCRUM FUND

The Fulcrum Fund is an annual grant program created and administered by 516 ARTS as a partner in the Regional Regranting Program of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Since its inception in 2016, the Fulcrum Fund has awarded a total of $735,600 to 324 artists, artspaces and organizations statewide and is one of 32 re-granting programs developed and facilitated by organizations throughout the U.S. and Puerto Rico.

ABOUT THE REGIONAL REGRANTING PROGRAM

The Regional Re-granting Program was established in 2007 to recognize and support the movement of independently organized, public-facing, artist-centered activity that animates local and regional art scenes but that lies beyond the reach of traditional funding sources. The program is administered by non-profit visual art centers across the United States that work in partnership with the Foundation to fund artists’ experimental projects and collaborative undertakings.

Since its inception, the Regional Re-granting Program has grown steadily, adding new cities and regions to its national network each year. When COVID-19 hit and it became clear that artists needed a different kind of support, the Foundation’s Board authorized a programmatic pivot; the existing 16 partners in the Regional Re-granting Program swiftly set up COVID-19 emergency relief funds to help artists cover basic living/medical/child-care expenses. Since April 2020, the Foundation’s original 16 Regional Re-granting partners have disbursed over $1 million in emergency grants. Since March of 2020, the Foundation has doubled the number of re-granting partners in its network; 16 new programs will provide emergency funds to artists in their regions while many of the original 16 programs have already begun a second round of emergency grants. The 32 Regional Re-Granting Partners are as follows: Mobile, Birmingham & York (AL), Atlanta, Boston, Detroit, Baltimore, Chicago, Cleveland, Denver, Houston, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Miami, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Nashville, Newark, New Orleans, Oklahoma, Omaha, Phoenix & Tucson, Philadelphia, Portland (OR), Portland (ME), Providence (RI), Raleigh & Greensboro (NC), San Francisco, San Juan, (PR), Seattle, St. Louis and Washington D.C. Together these programs have supported well over 1,000 independent art projects in the past ten years, granting more than 4.7 million dollars.

JURORS