In a year when public funding for the arts continues to face significant challenges, the Utah Division of Arts & Museums has awarded $5,000 fellowships to 20 Utah artists across four categories—Visual Arts, Design Arts, Literary Arts, and Performing Arts (Theatre). The 2025 Utah Artist Fellowships recognize exceptional creativity and promise at a pivotal moment in each artist’s career.
Selected by out-of-state jurors with national reputations, the fellowships are not lifetime achievement awards or project grants. Rather, they are investments in artists whose work demonstrates both depth and urgency—practitioners who are poised for growth, exploration, and impact.
The fellowships represents both financial support and vital affirmation. “This support arrives at a pivotal moment in my artistic practice—during a time of transition and growth,” says visual artist Ariel C. Wilson. “It also serves as a powerful affirmation of the role artists play in our state, especially amid so much instability.” Others, like Nancy Rivera, see it as a signal of continued possibility despite diminishing resources: “In light of the steady decline in funding for the arts, receiving this support is especially meaningful.”
Pushing Mediums, Rooted in Place
The visual arts category, juried by Lana S. Meador, showcased what she described as “an incredibly rich artistic community.” Meador emphasized that the selected fellows “displayed a clear vision and commitment to their practice” and often worked “at a critical juncture” in their careers, with strong conceptual frameworks that engaged both local and global themes.
Christopher Lynn, one of this year’s visual fellows, brings an interdisciplinary approach to his practice—combining video, sound, writing, and curating. His recent work, “The New Songs” (2025), uses archival material to explore the intersections of industry, landscape, and social history. “Receiving the fellowship places me with my friends and art heroes who have made and continue to make Utah an interesting place to live,” Lynn says.
Eugene Tapahe, who draws upon his Diné (Navajo) heritage in photography, installation, and land-based performance, uses soil, sand, and natural materials to honor tradition while engaging contemporary issues of identity and belonging. “This fellowship will magnify my intent to celebrate and honor the identity and culture of Native Americans,” he says. “I will continue to seek this balance between the past and present by using my people’s traditional stories and philosophy — to always walk in beauty.”
Xi Zhang, whose bold, expressive paintings explore immigrant experience and emotional complexity, sees the award as a transformative moment: “This fellowship will elevate my work, expand its impact, and further develop my artistic voice.”
The other visual arts fellows—Nancy Rivera and Ariel C. Wilson—explore personal history and visual perception through inventive uses of photography, fiber, and digital imagery. Rivera’s stitched portraits and sculptural installations combine autobiographical narratives with geological materials like salt from the Great Salt Lake. Wilson’s blurry, low-res cell phone images of sunsets and moons examine our mediated experience of the natural world.
Designing with Community in Mind
Juror Ramon Tejada highlighted the Design Arts fellows’ commitments to collective experience and social imagination. “These artists use their imaginative and artistic perspectives to facilitate shared and collective experiences,” Tejada noted, praising their ability to challenge norms “with joy, love, and respect.”
Recipients such as Laura Boardman and Alise Anderson plan to use the funds to expand community-centered projects, while others, like Zak Jensen and Kimo Watanabe, spoke of how the award provides time—time to experiment, to risk, and to reflect.
Writing the Personal, Political, and Playful
In the Literary Arts category, juror Ira Sukrungruang brought lyrical insights to his assessments, describing how each writer engages deep emotional and intellectual terrain. From Patrick Madden’s experimental essays to Paisley Rekdal’s poems on fractured identity and ecological longing, the five fellows illustrate the breadth of Utah’s literary voices.
The joy in the fellowship is also palpable: “I’m going to Disneyland!” declared Christian McKay Heidicker, who writes dark and fantastical books for young readers. “And I’m going to find some kids there, and I’m going to tell them much better stories than any Disney is currently telling them.”
Reimagining the Stage
Theatre juror Franchelle Stewart Dorn described narrowing down the performing arts applicants as “much more difficult than I anticipated.” Those selected had aspirations and artistry that stayed with her long after the applications had been read.
Among them is Sarah Shippobotham, who described receiving the fellowship as a reminder that her career, even after 60, is “blossoming rather than shriveling.” Fellow recipient Janine Sobeck Knighton sees it as “the gift of time”—to sit with ideas and allow them to unfold.
From traditional Native storytelling (as in Judy Mansfield’s work) to creating full orchestral accompaniments for small opera companies (Lynnette Owens), the Theatre fellows reflect a wide and inventive range of performance-based practices.
Below is the list of this year’s fellowship recipients. Our longtime readers will recognize many of these names from our reviews, profiles and other articles. We’ve linked their names to some of those.
2025 UTAH ARTIST FELLOWSHIP RECIPIENTS
Visual Arts
Christopher Lynn
Nancy Rivera
Eugene Tapahe
Ariel C. Wilson
Xi Zhang
Design Arts
Alise Anderson
Laura Boardman
Zak Jensen
Matthew Pedersen
Kimo Watanabe
Literary Arts
Christian McKay Heidicker
Kimberly Johnson
Lynn Kilpatrick
Patrick Madden
Paisley Rekdal
Performing Arts (Theatre)
Sarah Shippobotham
Janine Sobeck Knighton
Eric Sciotto
Judy Mansfield
Lynnette Owens
For more information about the Fellowship program visit https://artsandmuseums.utah.gov/fellowship.
UTAH’S ART MAGAZINE SINCE 2001, 15 Bytes is published by Artists of Utah, a 501 (c) 3 non-profit organization headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Categories: Recognized
Thank Shawn for acknowledging this great group of inspiring people. I’m hoping to create a gather in Teasdale at Rabbit Studio of this group to see how we might learn from each other as Utah artists.