ANNOUNCING THE 2026 THE IDEA FUND GRANTEES
THE IDEA FUND AWARDS $60,000 to 13 GREATER HOUSTON AREA ARTISTS & COLLECTIVES
(Houston, TX, February 11, 2026) – The Idea Fund, a re-granting program administered by DiverseWorks, Aurora Picture Show, and Project Row Houses and funded by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, is thrilled to announce the selection of 13 projects by Houston-based artists to receive grants of $2,500 and $5,000.The Idea Fund Round 19 grant recipients are as follows: Saran Alderson; Salima Bowaniya, Sol Diaz-Peña & Ryan Hollaway; Mitchell Collins & Sofia Siluet Friends Gallery; Preston Gaines; Jessica Carolina González; Jennifer Marion; Tobe Mokolo; Quentin Pace; Joe Robles; Jesse Spiehler & Logan Tuttle; aisha tida; and Chris Wicker, Anna Taylor & Trent Teinert. Grantees will present their project proposals to the public at the 2026 Idea Fund Award Presentation on March 3, 2026, 7:00 PM, at Aurora Picture Show, 5601a Navigation Blvd, Houston, TX 77011.
The Idea Fund supports innovative, experimental, public-facing visual arts projects that expand our understanding of how art exists in the world or exemplify new ways of working in, for, and with community. A total of $60,000 will be distributed to 6 individual artists, 3 collaborative duos, and 4 collectives, selected from 115 eligible applicants by a three-member multidisciplinary panel composed of experts from the field. Since its inception, The Idea Fund has supported more than 169 visual art projects involving over 530 artists and collectives with grants totaling more than $902,000. Round 19 marks 17 years of regranting to artists in the Greater Houston Area.
Round 19 was juried by Lani Asunción, interdisciplinary multimedia artist and independent curator, Boston, MA; Sebastien Boncy, photographer, educator, and Round 18 Grantee, Houston, TX; and Alexis Wilkinson, Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tucson, Tucson, AZ.
“It was a pleasure to join the juror team for TIF Round 19, learning about the creative fabric that makes up the Greater Houston arts community and being a part of supporting artists doing important, community-engaged, focused work during challenging times.” – Lani Asunción
“When we say Houston with love in our voice, we certainly do not mean the tangle of highways governed by regressive politics. We are talking about the idiosyncratic, accomplished, uncompromising panoply of weirdoes building essential culture within its concrete folds. For years, The Idea Fund has been about encouraging suspect behavior by giving these good folks seed money for their cathedrals. It’s been wonderful to participate in the process.” – Sebastien Boncy
“It was an honor to participate on the The Idea Fund Round 19 jury. The volume of dynamic and competitive proposals submitted made the selection process a challenge, and speaks to the wealth of creative forces in Houston. Congrats to the Round 19 awardees!” – Alexis Wilkinson
For more information, including eligibility guidelines and frequently asked questions, please visit www.theideafund.org.
THE IDEA FUND 2026 ROUND 19 GRANTEES AND PROJECTS:
Saran Alderson – Rosin & Talc Community Printmaking Project
Rosin & Talc Community Printmaking Project seeks to develop a flexible, community-centered printmaking space. The project will establish a collapsible, hybrid printmaking studio that can be easily set up and taken down to accommodate shared use of space. The Idea Fund support will assist with equipment purchases, modular infrastructure, and a series of printmaking workshops. Centered on slow, analog processes, the project fosters conversation, collaboration, and collective “plotting.”
Salima Bowaniya & Sol Diaz-Peña with support from Ryan Hollaway – Pesadito
Pesadito is a multi-format project that unites a group of Houston-based artists navigating the social and political heaviness of our time with wit, sincerity, and action. Moving between comedy and critique, these artists will utilize their distinct perspectives to rebuild meaning and connection across physical and digital landscapes. The Idea Fund will support the exhibition component of Pesadito, which will be featured as a Fotofest Biennial 2026 Participating Space.
Mitchell Collins & Sofia Silueta – It’s a City Not a Choice
It’s a City Not a Choice is a feature-length film about young, working-class queer artists living their lives and trying to survive in Houston. The film will present an offbeat and underground look at the world of art in Houston through a hybrid documentary/fiction lens as a way of holding up a mirror to the physical realities that inform the creative choices of the many artists who live and work in our city.
Friends Gallery- a QTBIPOC community art space
Friends Gallery is a volunteer-run trans/queer/BIPOC-led collective stewarding a community art space in the Magnolia Park neighborhood of Houston. With support from The Idea Fund, Friends Gallery will expand its capacity by providing equipment and training for local artists, building an artist-curated reading library, tool school + tool bank, and strengthening infrastructure for community events.
Preston Gaines – IN Nature: A Living Tapestry
IN Nature: A Living Tapestry is a site-specific public art installation that transforms a section of Japhet Creek into a contemplative landscape composed of laser-cut steel floral sculptures and native plantings. The project examines the creek’s environmental history, its role in the Fifth Ward, and the lived experiences of nearby residents who have watched the waterway be alternately neglected and cherished over generations. Proposed programs include a walking tour and native planting zone, live storytelling by community members, and hands-on activities centered on ecology and memory.
Jessica Carolina González – Superneighborhood 27: The “Gulfton Ghetto”
González will examine the histories embedded in apartment complexes built during the 1970s oil boom, globally connected businesses catering to Central American immigrants, and communal squares through cameraless photography and on-site performance.
Jennifer Marion – A to B. B to A. Repeat.
With support from The Idea Fund, Marion seeks to transform a rental truck into a traveling exhibition space, projecting video documenting her bi-weekly custody exchange commute between Houston and Beaumont. The project will feature projections on the truck’s side at dusk in unexpected locations such as town squares, rest stops, and parking lots. As both subject and object are moving, the project highlights the transition between places while displaying images of movement itself. Inviting every viewer to become a passenger in someone else’s commute.
Tobe Mokolo – Amerikan Boy
Amerikan Boy is a short psychological thriller inspired by Mokolo’s lived experience emigrating from Nigeria to the United States in 2004. Set in Houston, the film explores identity, masculinity, and the search for belonging through the perspective of a young Nigerian immigrant navigating the tension between cultural duty and personal desire. Produced in collaboration with a fully Houston-based production crew of cinematographers, artists, and post-production creatives, Amerikan Boy is both deeply personal and community-driven. The Idea Fund support will be used to complete post-production, execute a targeted marketing campaign, and support screenings and distribution, ensuring the film reaches audiences in Houston and beyond.
Quentin Pace – Artist Archive Development Workshop
As an artist and archivist Pace recognizes the long-term importance of artists being able to properly archive their work, practice, and art career. Through The Idea Fund, Pace will create a series of workshops to share basic archival fundamentals with artists to better organize and document the history of their work.
Joe Robles – Still Growing Up Here
Still Growing Up Here is a photo narrative project of Robles’ hometown, Pasadena, Texas, specifically, the northside. With support from The Idea Fund, Robles will create a photo book documenting life in Pasadena, a city primarily acknowledged for its pollution and the oil and gas industry. The photo series and book will redirect the eyes of others to the beauty and humanity he has found in this area he calls home.
Jesse Spiehler & Logan Tuttle – Queer Estuaries
Queer organizers Jesse Spiehler & Logan Tuttle will produce a collaborative multidisciplinary project that will engage Houston’s Queer community and serve as a reminder that in an anti-LGBT state, Queer people will always belong in the South. The project will explore Houston’s diverse LGBTQIA+ intersections through open-call interviews with intergenerational Queer organizers to create a community patchwork banner with a hidden message, which will be developed by event attendees over the course of the project. The conclusion will be the completed banner and published zine of collected work by community members.
aisha tida – Diaspora Dumplings: Pantry Tours x Traveling Test Kitchen
Diaspora Dumplings: Pantry Tours x Traveling Test Kitchen is a social practice art project that travels to participants’ home kitchens. Through conversation, pantry tours, and collaborative dumpling-making, the project uses food as both material and metaphor to explore identity, migration, memory, and belonging. The resulting stories, images, and recipes are published as a growing, publicly accessible online archive that reframes everyday people as culture-bearers and ordinary items as artifacts worthy of study and preservation.
Chris Wicker, Anna Taylor & Trent Teinert – YARD
Chris Wicker, Anna Taylor, & Trent Teinert come together through The Idea Fund to develop YARD, an exhibition series in three Houston front yards. The series will feature curated artists, displaying a variety of mediums along with an accompanying publication and series of video interviews with each artist. YARD highlights innovative exhibition practices and thinking outside of traditional gallery spaces.
MEET THE ROUND 19 JURORS
Lani Asunción
Lani Asunción is a Boston-based queer Filipinx multimedia artist who explores the intricacies of identity and belonging with ritualized performance and public art that serve as acts of reclamation. In their work, they seek to create public spaces where alternative ethics of care, community healing, and social solidarity can thrive. Asunción was selected as a 2025 WBUR Maker showcasing their work at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA Boston), and is a recipient of the MAP Fund Grant (2024), Kala Fellowship Award (2023), Future Frequencies Fellowship from the MASS MoCA Studios (2022), and awarded the 2021 Public Art for Spatial Justice Grant from New England Foundation for the Arts. Asunción received their MFA from the School of Fine Arts at the University of Connecticut. They teach as a visiting lecturer at Massachusetts College of Art & Design in the Fine Arts 3D in the Sculpture Department, teaching public art and performance. Asunción was the Curator & Public Art Manager of the 2024-2025 Un-monument initiative projects at Pao Arts Center (BCNC) in partnership with the City of Boston Mayor’s Office of Arts & Culture, supported by the Mellon Foundation.
Sebastien Boncy
Born and raised in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Sebastien Boncy has called Houston home since the late nineties. He received a BFA from the University of Houston, followed by a detour in public education, then earned an MFA in photography from the University of North Texas. He has taught at the University of Houston, Lone Star Colleges, the University of North Texas, Houston Center for Photography. His writing has been published in Glasstire, Not That But This, Fotodok, Art + Culture, Fototazo, and Flat Files. His photographs and videos have been exhibited at Art League Houston, Visible Records, The Mystic Lyon, Galveston Art Center, Oak Cliff Cultural Center, and Aurora Picture Show.
Alexis Wilkinson
Alexis Wilkinson is a curator working across dance, performance, and visual art. She is currently Curator at MOCA Tucson. She served as Director of Exhibitions and Live Art at Knockdown Center in Queens, NY, from 2017 to 2021, where she organized interdisciplinary exhibitions, performances, and events. She was a 2017 – 2018 AIRspace curator-in-residence at Abrons Art Center, New York and the 2017 Curatorial Fellow at SculptureCenter, New York. Wilkinson has organized exhibitions and performances at SculptureCenter (NY), the Judd Foundation (NY), Abrons Art Center (NY), A.I.R. Gallery (NY), The Chocolate Factory (NY), the Luminary (MO), and NADA (NY), among others. Wilkinson has held research, administrative, and curatorial support roles at the New Museum, New York and the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. She holds an MA from the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College and a BA in Cultural Studies, Dance, and Art History from the University of California, Los Angeles.
ABOUT THE IDEA FUND:
The Idea Fund is a re-granting program administered by DiverseWorks in partnership with Aurora Picture Show and Project Row Houses and funded by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Since 2009, The Idea Fund has provided grants for artist-generated or artist-centered projects that exemplify unconventional, interventionist, conceptual, entrepreneurial, participatory, or guerrilla artistic practices.The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts Regional Regranting Program, launched in 2007, aims to support vibrant, under-the-radar and self-organized artistic activity by partnering with leading cultural institutions in communities across the country. The program reaches a sizable population of informal, non-incorporated artist collectives, and supports their alternative gathering spaces, publications, websites, events, and other projects. Together, this network of programs has funded more than 800 artist projects.
The Idea Fund is one of 39 Warhol re-granting programs across the nation supporting artists whose work falls outside the scope of traditional presenting organizations and/or funding opportunities. Regional Regranting Programs can be found in Mobile (AL), Albuquerque, Atlanta, Baltimore, Buffalo, Chicago, Cleveland, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Homer (AK), Honolulu, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Knoxville, Lakota Communities/ Western South Dakota, Los Angeles, Medford (MA), Miami, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Utica (MS), New Orleans, Newark, Oklahoma City, Omaha, Philadelphia, Tucson, Portland (OR), Portland (ME), Providence, Raleigh, Salt Lake City, St. Louis, San Francisco, San Juan (PR), Seattle, and Washington D.C.