15 Montgomery County artists awarded – 2025 Artist Opportunity Grants
The Artist Opportunity Grant program, which is funded by the Montgomery County Arts and Cultural District (MCACD) and administered by Culture Works, empowers local artists to create new works and build their knowledge and skills through professional development opportunities such as workshops, residencies, and apprenticeships. Grants are awarded through a competitive process in which a panel of artists, arts administrators, and other knowledgeable community members evaluate applications and make funding recommendations based on applicants’ artistic vision, plans for creative and professional growth, and commitment to engaging the community through their art.
After reviewing applications from many outstanding candidates, this year’s grant panel awarded $68,284 to 15 Montgomery County artists to support projects happening through 2025. The artists will use funding to create new works, ranging from murals, paintings, textiles, music, and exhibitions; complete artist residencies to gain new skills and connect with other artists; and receive professional training that will enable them to lead richer artistic careers.
Learn about the artists and their projects below, and follow Culture Works on Meta to keep up with opportunities to engage with their work!
2025 Artist Opportunity Grantees
Brittany Antoon
Opportunity: To participate in a two-day floral design workshop led by floral designer and author, Gabriella Salazar, in her cutting garden in Valle de Bravo, Mexico.
About the Artist: Brittany Antoon is a creative who launched Backlot Buds, an urban micro-flower farm, in 2022, after years of hobbyist gardening. She plants seasonal mixed bouquet recipes and offers them locally via a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) model. Designing with the flowers she grows has become a new form of artistic expression for her, as well as a budding facet of her business.
Artist Statement: “Growing specialty cut flowers has provided the opportunity to observe and appreciate various cultivars throughout their lifecycles. Beauty, aging, and death are themes I encounter repeatedly in my work as a grower and artist, and because they’re also human themes I lean into them in my designs by using bare branches, immature fruits, mottled foliage, and seed pods. I’d like for viewers of my work—and myself—to more readily appreciate the beauty present in all stages of life. Embracing the limitations of seasonality and ephemerality has been as beneficial for my growth as a floral artist as it has for my humanity.”
Jamaal Durr
A Safe Space
Opportunity: To create an event where guests will witness an unveiling of artwork that explores the narratives of the profound impact of the prison system on families and raising children, prison reform, and the bond between a Father and Son.
Artist Statement: “I create art that stems from deep introspection, rooted in my sincere desire to explore and resolve issues surrounding the notions of identity and manhood. Each piece I create acts as a catalyst for critical thinking, allowing me to gain a better understanding of self. Through my figurative charcoal drawings and oil paintings, I convey a profound connection to the subject matter, with meticulous attention to detail.
The artwork I produce serves as a bridge between my inner thoughts and the outside world. It facilitates imperative inner dialogue that enables me to define my relationship with the world and my place within it.
My work has been on public display in various formats, from juried gallery and museum exhibitions to workshop/teaching settings, where I have facilitated the instruction of art-based activities for various age groups. I also have experience as a muralist, sharing my work on a large scale in public places for larger communities to engage with. Through these different outlets I am able to increase my visibility which allows for more opportunities to inform, educate and inspire.”
Evan Fiehrer
Opportunity: To write, record, and perform an album of original music that celebrates the rich history of funk music in Dayton, Ohio, while looking to the future of music by creating a fusion of digital music techniques, such as beats, effects, and virtual instruments, with traditional instrumental and vocal music.
About the Artist: Evan Fiehrer is a guitarist currently living in Dayton, Ohio. Evan holds degrees in guitar performance from the University of Cincinnati (BM ’13) and Johns Hopkins University (MM ’15). An accomplished performer, Evan has given concerts throughout the Ohio and Indiana areas. As a member of the band The Johnson Treatment, Evan has played events and music festivals throughout the Miami Valley area, including the Dayton Jazz Festival, the Dayton Funk Festival, and the Taste of the Oregon District. Recently, Evan has been performing with musical theater companies in the area, including Dayton Playhouse, Innova Theater, and Beavercreek Community Theater. When not playing guitar, Evan enjoys reading, spending time with friends and family, and attending as many concerts as is fiscally responsible.
Artist Statement: “I believe that the goal of a musician is communication. Whether it is through vocal or instrumental music, the concept of communicating emotion is central to any musician’s artistic endeavors. Although my artistic career has been primarily through interpretation of other people’s work up until this point, I believe that creating and performing my own compositions will provide a valuable perspective on the musical, social, and cultural landscape of today’s world. I know that I have something important to contribute to the field of music, and I think that today, more than any other time, I am prepared to show the world that I am capable of providing a beneficial perspective in the field of music.”
Janyce Glasper
Opportunity: Lead a mural project featuring eight women of color from Dayton and surrounding areas with local high school students and give a lecture about the individual importance of the highlighted women.
About the Artist: Janyce Denise Glasper is a Dayton, Ohio based multidisciplinary artist, writer, and independent scholar. She received a BFA in drawing from the Art Academy of Cincinnati and post baccalaureate and MFA from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. She has exhibited her art in Dayton, Cincinnati, New York City, Detroit, Philadelphia, Boston, and Portland. Her essays and short stories have appeared in Sixty Inches From Center, ÆQAI Journal, Belt Magazine, RaceBaitr, and other publications. She received an Andy Warhol/Creative Capital Art Writers Grant for Short Form Writing, a fiction fellowship from Roots, Wounds, & Words: Words of Resistance + Restoration, additional support from the Authors League Fund and Lampblack Direct Aid, and was commissioned by the Museum of Nebraska Art to write and record an essay about printmaker/painter Ruth Waddy.
Currently, she is a contributing arts writer for the artblog and runs Black Women Make Art and femfilmrogue.
Artist Statement: “Rendered through the womanist gaze, my vivid-colored figurative paintings include iconographic embellishments that often occupy Black women’s herstory, reading, and dreaming as tender survival mechanisms. ”
Colleen Kelsey
Opportunity: This spring, Colleen will be attending a two-week artist residency at NES in Skagaströnd, Iceland. During this time, she will create color studies in acrylic gouache to bring back into the studio. Her process of invention in image-making relies on a deep understanding of color and composition, and these studies will serve as the foundation for a new body of work. Beyond the creative benefits, the residency will have a significant impact on Colleen’s professional development. It will provide exposure to a new community of peers and mentors, expanding her network within the contemporary art world and opening doors to future exhibition opportunities.
About the Artist: Colleen has showcased her artwork both nationally and internationally, participating in group exhibitions at the Carnegie Mellon Museum of Art and the Cincinnati Contemporary Art Center. Pursuing her studies, she earned an MFA in painting at American University and an M.Ed. at Wright State University. Colleen has received the support of individual artist grants and attended artist residencies nationally. Her everyday studio practice is in Dayton, OH, where she lives with her husband/painter, Jeremy Long, and their family.
Artist Statement: “Eight years ago, I expanded my practice to include internal imagery discovered through a gestural drawing process. The drawings often serve as the foundation for future paintings. Working in either acrylic or oil paint, I focus on the immediacy of the painted line and the physicality of the medium. I enjoy creating dense compositions where active corners and filled surfaces brim with shapes, lines, and color relationships. The interplay of push and pull between positive and negative space is essential to my process. Through these compressed, intentional spaces, I aim to evoke the tensions and beauty of everyday life. The subject of my work is figurative and explores the dual nature of suffering and well-being. I intuitively delve into the shadow self, examining the complexity of human relationships shaped by the personalization of our conditioning.”
Shayna McConville
Opportunity: To participate in a two-week residency at Zygote Press to develop a new series of work using a variety of print-based techniques.
About the Artist: Shayna V. McConville is a Dayton-based artist working in print, photography, and painting. Her artwork has been exhibited in both group and solo exhibitions in cities including Dayton, Cincinnati, Philadelphia, New York, and Detroit. In addition to her artistic practice, she has taught art courses at the University of Pennsylvania and Antioch College, and curated exhibitions in Dayton, Cincinnati, and Philadelphia. McConville received her BFA from Parsons School of Design and MFA from the University of Pennsylvania. She currently is the Division Manager of Cultural Arts for the City of Kettering, based at Rosewood Arts Center.
Artist Statement: “ I draw inspiration from 19th and early 20th-century photography, using a contemporary lens to engage with visual history. My work often weaves its own images and research into narrative compositions, where I embrace the challenge of blending reality and imagination to produce fresh, unexpected outcomes in collage, painting, printmaking, and mixed media.”
Mychaelyn Michalec
Opportunity: To create work for a new show for Sarah Gormley Gallery in Columbus, while mentoring a Dayton area emerging artist(s) in textile art skills.
About the Artist: Mychaelyn Michalec is a textile artist using traditional craft practices to connect women’s work to contemporary art. Her rug paintings have evolved into works that are exemplified by forays into abstraction, figuration, and unflinching self-portraiture. They also use allegorical, collaged compositions as a means to articulate and examine fallacies in our collective understanding of womanhood, domestic life, and freedom.
Artist Statement: “My work uses craft, specifically textiles, to address themes of gendered labor and stereotypes, feminism, aging, sexuality and art history. I create large-scale wool tufted rugs using both hand tools and a commercial tufting gun which are often embellished with embroidery, hand knitting, and found vintage sewing notions.
Textiles are historically a language of creation and storytelling assigned to women at birth, and I use these processes as part of a historical continuum of our cultural heritage. Textile work has been central to my artistic practice for the last 7 years. My work is centered around ideas of using traditionally female domestic based skills of craft such as embroidery, knitting, weaving and tufting to examine roles of contemporary midlife women as well as representations of women historically and in art history.
I have had solo shows at The Contemporary Dayton and The Weston Art Gallery in Cincinnati. Recently, I was part of a group exhibition at the Dayton Art Institute called Riveting: Women Artists from the Sara M. and Michelle Vance Waddell Collection. My goals as an artist are to always challenge myself in creating work and finding opportunities to share them.”
Amy Powell
Opportunity: To prepare and print a portfolio of previously unseen works for a trip to New York City to meet with a mentor artist.
About the Artist: Amy Powell is a documentary photographer working with medium-format film to explore themes of home, family, and intimacy. She is fascinated by the role of vernacular photography in shaping our perceptions and connections. Her most recent solo exhibition, Only Let People Who Love You Photograph You, was shown at The Contemporary Dayton in 2022.
Yetunde Rodriguez
Opportunity: To create a new body of work to be exhibited at a local gallery, and facilitate workshops with the community around the new body of work.
About the Artist: Yetunde Rodriguez is a Nigerian-American artist living in Dayton, Ohio. Her work is deeply rooted in the intersection of cultural heritage and her contemporary experiences. Her practice has evolved from surface pattern design to mixed media art that explores the complexities of identity, belonging, and an Afrofuturist imagination.
Artist Statement: Yetunde draws inspiration from the rich tapestry of Nigerian textiles and patterns of her youth, incorporating these elements into two- and three-dimensional works. Her Afrofuturist aesthetic serves as a vehicle for exploring the possibilities of a future where Black culture and technology coexist harmoniously. By merging traditional elements with futuristic concepts, she create visually striking and conceptually rich pieces that invite viewers to consider the potential of a more equitable and inclusive world.
Kate Santucci
Opportunity: To travel to France for a two week residency to connect with other artists from around the world and to work on a new series of mixed media paintings and drawings inspired by her time there.
About the Artist: Kate Huser Santucci lives and works in Dayton, Ohio. She graduated from Wright State University in 1994 with a BFA in visual art with a concentration in sculpture. Kate started her career as a sculptor and is now working in encaustic and mixed media. She is fascinated by the natural world, and finds those themes recurring in her work as she explores our connection to that world and our personal evolution within it. Her latest work addresses our changing climate and how we are adapting and surviving in an increasingly chaotic environment.
Artist Statement: “My work is primarily in encaustic- a mixture of beeswax and damar resin mixed with pigments and applied in layers. Each layer is fused with a torch, built up and then scraped back to both obscure and reveal symbols and images. Each piece involves using writing to set an intention and direction for the work. I use mostly illegible script, mark making, and asemic writing as part of an underpainting created with charcoal, graphite and encaustic medium. As I work with the layers in my pieces, I am drawn to the idea of signs and sigils, which are symbols that are thought to have magical value, a power, a spell, a way of connecting to something beyond our concrete understanding, or a prayer of intention. I use these techniques to explore themes such as communication, time, place, and our perception of the way things change, both in the short and long term.
My current body of work combines both abstract mark making and figurative realism to help convey my thoughts on how we interpret meaning and context in our struggle to understand one another, our world and our role in it. My work involves multiple layers and textures, inviting the viewer to look deeper into the piece and glimpse imagery floating beneath the surface of the wax.”
https://www.katehusersantucci.com/
Dave Scott
Opportunity: To create an art exhibition that weaves together the complexities of the black American experience through history from slavery to present with a unique point of view.
About the Artist: Dave Scott, is a multidisciplinary visual artist born and raised in Dayton, OH. Naturally gifted, Dave has been doing art his entire life. In 2014, he studied fine art at Sinclair community college to find his style and polish his skills. While his main focus is in painting, Dave is also a fashion designer, graphic designer, and sculptor. He is the founder of GLO WRLD, a lifestyle brand that is an extension of his art and life values. Dave had created a lane for himself by staying genuine to the craft. He has exhibited at the Cincinnati Museum of Art, Springfield Museum of Art, The Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, The Contemporary Dayton(The Co), the Roger Glass Center for the Arts and a plethora of other locations. His mural can be seen downtown on the Oregon Bridge Entrance and he works with city wide development to design signage for neighborhoods around Dayton.
Artist Statement: “Observation is the key to understanding. Understanding how you see the world, and why you see it that way.
I’ve often been described as stoic throughout my life because I’m very observant. I analyze all things in my life between emotions, thoughts, actions, reactions and everything in between, both intrapersonal and interpersonal. Through my creativity, I have realized that all these happenings are small dots of color that make up the larger picture of life.
I strive to communicate with people through my art because I get an overwhelming sense of satisfaction from observing them interact with what I’ve been able to think, feel, and visualize.”
Barb Stork
Opportunity: To participate in a 2 week Position on Retreat residency on Vancouver Island. There, Barb Stork will create new work inspired by the ancient landscape of Vancouver Island, and will also participate in a cultural dialogue with artists from across the globe. The experience of this residency will be shared with the community in the form of an art exhibition to take place in 2026.
About the Artist: Barb Stork is a mix media artist based in Dayton, Ohio. She explores themes of landscape, poetry, and spirit. She has been creating and teaching fine art for the past 40 years. Her work has been exhibited in numerous juried shows, including Emerging Visions at the Ratner Museum in Bethesda, Maryland and The Mystical Work of Barb Stork at The Missing Piece Art Space, Dayton, Ohio.
Artist Statement: “My work is based on the landscape and, most recently, the Ohio Fen, where I make plein air studies of the area. In the studio, I work from these studies and memory to make final paintings in watercolor, acrylic, and ink. These compositions evolve over time, and elements of collage are often added to the work. It is my intention and hope to capture some sense of the clarity, beauty, and light of the landscape, which then may be experienced by the viewer.”
Lydia Williamson
Opportunity: To travel to Buenos Aires, Argentina, where she will experience an artist residency and engage with local artists, drawing inspiration from the city’s vibrant culture. This experience will fuel the creation of an 8-piece series in her signature NOODLE People style, which will culminate in an exhibition at Casablanca Studio and Gallery at Front Street in Dayton, Ohio.
About the Artist: Lydia Williamson is a painter and muralist based in Dayton, Ohio, where she co-runs Casablanca Studio and Gallery at Front Street. Her signature style, NOODLE People, features playful figures with exaggerated limbs that explore the boundaries of human form and movement. This series, developed over the past five years, began during her time living abroad in Morocco, and continues to evolve with every new travel experience. The abstract nature of her NOODLE People invites viewers to project their own emotions and narratives onto the figures. With vibrant colors, patterns, and whimsical forms, her work encourages exploration, freedom, and imaginative engagement.
Lydia’s art is designed to be accessible, sparking dialogue about the fluidity of identity and experience. Travel has been a vital influence on Lydia’s creative process, with each destination offering new cultural elements that shape her work. Lydia captures the essence of these places through her unique lens, ensuring her work remains dynamic and ever-evolving.
Artist Statement: Lydia Williamson is an artist whose NOODLE People series explores human connection and identity through elongated figures and vibrant, abstract forms. Drawing inspiration from her travels and life experiences, Lydia’s work creates a dynamic dialogue about the fluidity of self and the transformative power of art.
Taliaferro Woodfork
Opportunity: To honor local legends through the innovative use of bleach art, creating a unique medium that brings their stories to life.
Artist Statement: As an artist, my work is a fusion of realistic portraits and cultural references, drawing inspiration from hip hop, film, and music. I strive to pay homage to those who often go unrecognized, capturing their essence through vibrant imagery. My aesthetic is characterized by bold colors and dynamic compositions that invite viewers to engage with the narratives I weave. Overarching themes in my work include identity, representation, and the celebration of underappreciated figures within popular culture.
Currently, my body of work primarily employs acrylic and spray paint, with occasional explorations into wood and epoxy. Each piece serves not only as a standalone work of art, but also as part of a larger dialogue about visibility and respect for diverse voices. My goal is to make my work recognizable globally, not just for its aesthetic qualities but also for the deeper conversations it fosters. I aim to inspire young people to explore their creativity and express their unique perspectives through art.
As I continue to develop my practice, I am committed to addressing social issues relevant to the art community. I believe that art can be a powerful catalyst for change, and I want my work to contribute to that dialogue. Through my journey, I hope to create a legacy that inspires future generations to embrace their creativity and recognize the beauty in diverse narratives.
Sheri Yarbrough
Opportunity: To create a 10-part YouTube series expanding on my Psychology of… book series, which explains psychological disorders by analyzing iconic characters in tv and film, my video series will allow me to add a visual medium to my creative non-fiction writing.
About the Artist: Words have always been fascinating to me. Growing up, I read the Webster Dictionary daily to learn new words. I loved to utilize these new words in my everyday conversations. My love for words culminated into short stories and then eventually full-length novels. The tone presented in my writing can be described as engaging, suspenseful, enlightening, and sometimes frightening. The genres I write in are Horror, Thriller, Mystery, Fantasy, and Narrative non-fiction. My earliest story was written in kindergarten. A ghost story. My affinity for writing scary stories came from weekly trips to the drive-in with my parents. I have written articles for Vocal and Brain and Life magazine, a short story for the anthology “The Many Lives of Bindi” and now the first two books in the extensive Psychology of…series. My master’s degree in Applied Behavioral Science with an emphasis in Psychology and Criminal Justice helps me to engage with people on a deeper level. I have a vibrant imagination, and I am known for my stories.
Artist Statement: During an event at Columbus State College, I was approached by several students who asked if I had a podcast or a YouTube channel expanding on Criminal Psychology and how it applies to movie characters. The more requests I received I realized it would allow me to connect and reach more people. S.L. Yarbrough Explains Podcast/ You Tube Channel will allow me to represent Black Forensic Psychologists. In the niche I am in, there aren’t many Black YouTube creators and none over 50. I will be able to provide a unique perspective from others in my niche.
https://www.slyarbroughexplains.com/
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