Lightning Fund Artist Grants

***Applications are now closed and will reopen in the fall of 2025. Learn more about the selected projects for the 2025 Lightning Fund and Jacki Apple Award.

LACE is thrilled to announce our fifth LACE Lightning Fund open call, a regional regranting fund made possible by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. The LACE Lighting Fund is an annual grant for artists and artist-driven organizations, projects, and publications. In 2020 and 2021, the Lightning Fund provided emergency relief grants to over 100 LA-based artists. In 2022, the Fund pivoted to supporting artist projects.

This year, LACE will award 10 artist project grants in the amount of $6,000. Only applicants that are LA County residents, are at least 18 years of age, and are not currently enrolled in a college program, will be considered. Learn more about the selected projects for the 2024 Lightning Fund Artist Grant and Jacki Apple Award

LACE is also accepting applicants for the Jacki Apple Fund, supporting one LA-based mid- or advanced-career artist with a $10,000 grant for work resulting in performance, media, exhibition, and/or publication within one year of the award. One artist will be selected through the Lightning Fund application process for this honor. Refer to the Lightning Fund requirements for eligibility. The artist selected for the Jacki Apple Award will have the added requirement of being a mid- or late-career artist. No additional application is required to be considered for this award.

To support applicants, LACE is offering a virtual information session on Thursday, August 1, 2024, at 1:00 PM PST, via Zoom. This session will include an overview of the Lightning Fund and Jacki Apple Award eligibility guidelines, application platform tips, and time for questions from attendees. This session is open to anyone interested in applying to the 2025 Lightning Fund and Jacki Apple programs, and will be recorded and posted on our website after August 1.

GUIDELINES

Qualified applicant artists are required to live in Los Angeles County and maintain a visual arts practice. We have an expansive definition of visual art practice: in addition to more traditional forms such as drawing, painting, printmaking, sculpture, installation, and similar mediums, we are also open to artists practicing in film/video, new media, sound art, performance art, and social practice.

Artists whose practices are firmly rooted in dance, theater, music, or industry/feature filmmaking, and/or nonprofit organizations and LLCs established for commercial enterprise are not eligible to apply.

We are open to innovation, experimentation, and risk-taking in the field and are supportive of diverse approaches to visual art making. Lightning Fund project submissions should be innovative and socially relevant, as well as accessible to the public outside of traditional museum or gallery settings. The review process will prioritize presentations in Los Angeles County. Awarded projects are not intended for presentation at LACE.

Please submit an application through the Submittable portal after creating an account. Applicants must include the following items in their application:

Artist Contact Information – artist teams are welcome to apply, but provide one person’s information as the main contact.
Website and/or social media if available
Brief description about yourself and your artistic practice – include past project experience (300 word max)
Project Title (working title OK) and description of your proposed project – this can be a new project or a continuation of work in your practice. Include information about your timeline and collaborators, materials, location, and any needs you have to make the project happen. (500 word max)
Outline of how a $6,000 grant would be used to fund or offset costs for a project in process. Provide a budget breakdown. The majority of the project should be achievable with the Lightning Fund grant. Artists may pay themselves a fee from the award. (500 word max)
Submit 1-3 strong work samples (images, video, audio, and/or links) that represent the project you are proposing for funding. Optional images can include: audio, video, writing, links, supplemental materials, and/or related information. (Video 2 min max)

Applications will be reviewed by a panel of local and national cultural workers, artists, and members of the LACE Team. Panelists will evaluate applicants based on their proposals and active artistic practice. We encourage applications from artists whose communities are underrepresented in relationship to visual art opportunities, economies, and funding streams. Strong consideration will be given to Black, Indigenous, POC, elder, LGBTQ+, disabled, immuno-compromised, and immigrant artists.

SELECTION CRITERIA

All proposals will be considered based on:

Overall concept, vision, and innovation
Relevance to a local social, cultural, and/or geographic context
Accessibility of the project to the public outside of a museum or gallery
Capacity of the applicant to realize the project on time (within one year maximum) and within estimated budget
Potential impact on the local community, the arts and culture landscape, and/or the artist’s growth

TIMELINE

Applications open Friday, August 16, 2024 at 12:00 PM PDT and close Sunday, October 6, 2024, at 11:59 PM PST. This deadline is firm. Applicants will be notified of decisions and funds will be issued by early December 2024. For questions, please contact lightning@welcometolace.org.

PANELISTS FOR 2025 LIGHTNING FUND SUBMISSIONS

Taylor Bythewood-Porter is an independent curator and writer. In 2023, she received the American Association for State and Local History Award of Excellence for her exhibition Rights and Rituals: The Making of African American Debutante Culture (2021) at the California African American Museum (CAAM). Prior to doing independent projects, Bythewood-Porter was an Assistant Curator at CAAM. During her tenure, she has co-curated several exhibitions including Tatyana Fazlalizadeh: Speaking to Falling Seeds (2023), Cross Colours: Black Fashion in the 20th Century (2020), Making Mammy: A Caricature of Black Womanhood, 1840–1940 (2019), The Liberator: Chronicling Black Los Angeles, 1900–1914 (2019), California Bound: Slavery on the New Frontier, 1848–1865 (2018), and Los Angeles Freedom Rally, 1963 (2018), and also contributed to How Sweet the Sound: The History of Gospel Music in Los Angeles (2018), Circles and Circuits 1: History and Art of the Chinese Caribbean Diaspora (2017), and Lezley Saar: Salon des Refúse (2017). She holds a Master of Arts in art business with a concentration in contemporary art from Sotheby’s Institute of Art at Claremont Graduate University and a Bachelor of Arts in Communications with a focus on public relations and journalism and a minor in art history from Monmouth University.

Marcela Guerrero is the DeMartini Family Curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Most recently, she co-curated with Angelica Arbelaez Ilana Savdie: Radical Contractions. Guerrero also curated no existe un mundo poshuracán: Puerto Rican Art in the Wake of Hurricane Maria and Martine Gutierrez: Supremacy in 2022-23. She was part of the curatorial team that organized Vida Americana: Mexican Muralists Remake American Art, 1925-1945, and also curated the 2018 exhibition Pacha, Llaqta, Wasichay: Indigenous Space, Modern Architecture, New Art. From 2014 to 2017, she was the Curatorial Fellow for Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960-1985 organized at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. Prior to joining the Hammer, she worked in the Latin American and Latino art department at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Guerrero’s writing has appeared in several exhibition catalogues and in art journals such as caa.reviews, ArtNexus, Caribbean Intransit: The Arts Journal, Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Fine Arts, Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, and Diálogo. Born and raised in Puerto Rico, Guerrero holds a PhD in art history from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Kimi Kitada is a curator based in Kansas City, MO. Currently, she is the Gallery and Programs Manager at Charlotte Street, where she oversees exhibitions and public programs such as Movement Lab, the Art Writing Intensive, and The Guest Curator lecture series. Previously, she was a Curatorial Assistant at MOCA Los Angeles (2019-2020). From 2014 to 2018, she was Public Programs & Research Coordinator at Independent Curators International in New York. Her recent exhibitions include: Potential Futures: Prototypes (2023); Handiwork: Art, Craft, and the Space Between (2022); With Liberty and Justice (2021) at Charlotte Street, Kansas City; and where we came from & where we are going at Transformer, Washington DC (2019), among others. Kitada received a BA in Art History and Classics from Bucknell University and an MA in Museum Studies from NYU.

Louise Martorano is the Executive and Artistic Director of RedLine, a non-profit contemporary art center and artist residency located in Denver, Colorado. RedLine’s mission is to foster education and engagement between artists and communities to create positive social change. Under her leadership, RedLine has received Denver Mayor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts (2014 & 2015), the Greenway Foundation’s “Partner in Change” award, and recognition from Denver Public Schools for excellence in community engagement and 2021 Business for the Arts honoree. In 2017, she was awarded a Livingston Fellowship for leadership from the Bonfils-Stanton Foundation. Martorano holds a M.H. from the University of Colorado at Denver with a focus in Contemporary Art History & Music. She is new Trustee for the Bonfils-Stanton Foundation, Board Chair for the Harmony Hammond Trust, Board Treasurer of the National Performance Network, and Secretary for the Denver Center for African Art.

Devon Tsuno is an artist and fourth generation Angeleno. His recent spray paint and acrylic paintings, installations, and public art focus on Japanese American history. Tsuno’s recent work is a yonsei story, a Los Angeles story, indissociable from the complexities of intergenerational and collective trauma, fences and cages, gentrification, displacement, water and labor politics, and how and where we choose to live. Tsuno’s interests have been central to his work with the Museum of Contemporary Art, Topaz Museum, Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art, Hammer Museum, Candlewood Arts Festival, LA Metro, and Gallery Lara in Japan. His work has been featured in the Los Angeles Times, NPR, KCET, Artillery Magazine, and X-TRA Contemporary Art Journal. Tsuno is a 2017 Santa Fe Art Institute Water Rights Artist-In-Residence, is the 2016 SPArt Community Grantee, and was awarded a 2014 California Community Foundation Fellowship for Visual Art. He is represented by Residency Art Gallery in Inglewood and is an Associate Professor of Art at California State University Dominguez Hills.

Rosha Yaghmai (Lives and works in Los Angeles) received an MFA from California Institute of the Arts (2007) and a BFA from School of Visual Arts, New York (2001). Solo exhibitions have been held at Commonwealth and Council, Los Angeles (2023); Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara (2022); Kayne Griffin Gallery, Los Angeles (2021); Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art, San Francisco (2019); Cleopatra’s, Brooklyn (2016); and Weiss, Berlin (2016). Selected group exhibitions have been held at Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2023); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2018); The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield CT (2017); Tate St Ives, Cornwall (2017); Pallant House Gallery, Chichester (2018); The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (2018); Marciano Foundation, Los Angeles (2018); Human Resources, Los Angeles (2016); Public Fiction, Los Angeles (2014); and Transmission Gallery, Glasgow (2008). Yaghmai is a recipient of California Community Foundation Fellowship for Visual Artists (2019), Villa Aurora Fellowship, Berlin (2016), and Terra Foundation Fellowship (2009). Yaghmai’s work is in the collections of Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; and Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

SUPPORTERS

The Lightning Fund is administered with lead support from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts as part of the Regional Regranting Network of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. LACE recognizes our local partners who share the Lightning Fund opportunity with artists in their communities.

ABOUT THE WARHOL 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. When the pandemic entered its 8th month, the Foundation doubled the number of re-granting partners in its network; 16 new programs provided emergency funds to artists in their regions while many of the original 16 programs have already begun a second round of emergency grants.

ABOUT JACKI APPLE (1941-2022)

Jacki was an artist, an educator, a critic, an expert on performance art, and a beloved LA art world figure. Her collection of essays, Performance/Media/Art/Culture: Selected Essays 1983-2018 edited by Marina LaPalma (Intellect 2019) was celebrated in 2019 at LACE with a book launch and conversation with John Fleck. More about Jacki’s life and work can be found in her obituary in Artillery.

ABOUT THE JACKI APPLE FUND

The Jacki Apple Fund was established by her sister, publisher/educator Marjorie Bank, working with performer/writer/educator Jeff McMahon, performer/producer/educator/curator Deborah Oliver, diplomat/editor Stuart Jackson-Hughes, and Emily Waters, as her legacy project to give back to the Los Angeles Art Community she championed since the early 80’s in her writing, teaching, radio shows and artist practice. Matching efforts are established in New York and New York City artists may check for information in 2024 about the Jacki Apple award administered by Franklin Furnace.