Applications open August 12, 2026 on Submittable
Information session July 28, 2026, 1–2 PM PDT – Register here
LACE is thrilled to announce our seventh LACE Lightning Fund open call, a regional regranting fund made possible by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. The LACE Lightning 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 2026 Lightning Fund 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 Tuesday, July 28, 2026, 1–2 PM PDT, 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 2027 Lightning Fund and Jacki Apple programs, and will be recorded and posted on our website.
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/documentary filmmaking, and/or nonprofit organizations and LLCs established for commercial enterprise are not eligible to apply. Those who have been previously awarded a Lightning Fund or Jacki Apple Award are eligible to apply again, but must wait two cycles following the year they were awarded.
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 August 12, 2026 and close September 23, 2026 at 11:59 PM PST. This deadline is firm. Applicants will be notified of decisions and funds will be issued by the end of January 2027. For questions, please contact lightning@welcometolace.org.
PANELISTS FOR 2027 LIGHTNING FUND SUBMISSIONS
Donnie Cervantes is the Curator and Director of Aupuni Space, one of the only venues in Honolulu that provides a global contemporary art lens on Hawaiʻi while serving as a physical gathering space for locally engaged, experimental, and critical voices. He enjoys working with and creating opportunities for Kanaka ʻŌiwi and Hawaiʻi-based artists, as well as supporting collaborations that connect Hawaiʻi to broader international artistic communities.
Hugo Cervantes is a writer and curator based in Los Angeles. They have held curatorial positions at Human Resources-Los Angeles, Los Angeles Contemporary Archives, and Los Angeles Nomadic Division (LAND). Currently they are a curator at The City of Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery.
Greg Ito is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice spans painting, sculpture, installation, and digital media. Through these interconnected mediums, he constructs symbolic environments that merge personal narrative with broader cultural histories. His work often draws from his Japanese American family history, using storytelling rooted in this history as a point of entry to reflect on memory, resilience, and the shared complexities of our human condition.
Ito’s work has been presented at institutions including the Frye Art Museum (Seattle), the Cantor Arts Center (Stanford), K11 Musea (Hong Kong), the Long Beach Museum of Art (Long Beach), the Institute of Contemporary Art San Diego (San Diego), and Rockefeller Center (New York) with Art Production Fund. His work is included in the collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), the Hammer Museum (Los Angeles), the Institute of Contemporary Art Miami (Miami), the Crocker Art Museum (Sacramento), the K11 Art Foundation (Hong Kong), East West Bank, Progressive Art Collection, and Cedars-Sinai, among others.
Rebecca Matalon is Senior Curator at Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (CAMH), where she has organized solo and group exhibitions with Garrett Bradley, Mariah Garnett, Leslie Hewitt, Lisa Lapinski, Leslie Martinez, Diane Severin Nguyen, Cauleen Smith, and Jordan Strafer. In 2021 she organized Wild Life: Elizabeth Murray & Jessi Reaves, the first in a series of exhibitions bringing together the work of two artists across generations. She is currently at work on the second in the series, Divination: Beverly Buchanan & Dionne Lee (2026), as well as the first survey exhibition of work by Mary Ellen Carroll, for which she was awarded a Teiger Foundation Grant. Previously, Matalon was Assistant Curator at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA), where she organized permanent collection and temporary exhibitions including Tongues Untied (2015), Mickalene Thomas: Do I Look Like a Lady? (2016), Welcome to the Dollhouse (2018), Décor: Barbara Bloom, Andrea Fraser, Louise Lawler (2018), and Zoe Leonard: Survey (with Bennett Simpson, 2018), among others. Matalon is a Co-Founder, and from 2015–2018, Curator, at JOAN, a not-for-profit exhibition space in Los Angeles that is dedicated to presenting the work of emerging and under-represented artists. She has contributed writing to multiple publications and regularly lectures on contemporary art and curating. Matalon currently serves on the board of Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI).
Adee Roberson is an interdisciplinary artist working across painting, performance, video, and sound. Her practice explores symbolism, texture, and vibration, tracing Black diasporic movement through sonic and familial archives, landscape, rhythm, and spirit. She is the founder of CELESTITE RECORDS, a platform for experimental sound and sonic healing, and also works as a healing arts practitioner. Roberson has exhibited and performed at institutions including the Getty Museum, MOCA Los Angeles, and the California African American Museum. She is a recipient of the Artadia Award and has participated in residencies including the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (PICA).
Sandy Rodriguez (b. 1975, National City, CA) is a Los Angeles-based Chicana artist and researcher. Her ongoing series Codex Rodríguez-Mondragón is made up of a collection of maps and paintings about the intersections of history, social memory, contemporary politics, and cultural production. Her works are in the permanent collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, AR; Amon Carter Museum, TX; The Huntington Library, Art Museum & Botanical Garden, CA; Denver Art Museum, CO; the Mellon Art Collection, NYC, and others. She has been honored with multiple fellowships and awards, including the 2025-2026 Kully Distinguished Fellowship in American Art from The Huntington Library, Art Museum & Botanical Garden, a 2024 US Latinx Art Fellowship, the 2023 Jacob Lawrence Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the 2023 Hermitage Greenfield Prize, the Caltech-Huntington Art + Research Residency 2020-2021, and the Creative Capital Award 2021. Rodriguez and her work have been featured in New York Times, The Art Newspaper, Art News, ARS Magazine, El Pais, BBC News: In The Studio, Hyperallergic, Los Angeles Times, Spectrum News 1, and others.
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 2027 about the Jacki Apple award administered by Franklin Furnace.
PAST LIGHTNING FUND AWARDEES
2026 Lightning Fund and Jacki Apple Award Recipients
2025 Lightning Fund and Jacki Apple Award Recipients
2024 Lightning Fund and Jacki Apple Award Recipients
2023 Lightning Fund Recipients
