Administering the Fellowship Locally
For artists in Central California, Silicon Valley Creates served as the Administering Organization for the CAC Individual Artist Fellowship program, managing the application process, adjudication, and award administration across the 17-county region from Santa Clara County to Ventura County.
The Santa Barbara County Office of Arts & Culture served as a proud to partner with Silicon Valley Creates as the Lead Agency for the micro-region that includes Kern, Santa Barbara, Ventura, and San Luis Obispo Counties. Through this leadership role, our office extended outreach, technical assistance, and localized support to artists in Santa Barbara County and neighboring communities.
Through unrestricted funding and state-wide recognition as a California Arts Council Artist Fellow, this program is meant to uplift individual artistic practice. It is intended to recognize and increase artists’ capacity for continued contribution to the field and our state. Fellowships will support artists of all disciplines at key career stages: Emerging, Established, and Legacy.
The Individual Artist Fellowship (IAF) is a prestigious statewide program of the California Arts Council (CAC) that uplifts and celebrates exceptional artists across disciplines and traditions. Through unrestricted funding and statewide recognition, the fellowship supports artists in deepening their creative practice and elevating their contribution to cultural life in California. The program is designed to honor artistic excellence, commitment to creative work, and meaningful engagement with community and culture.
Santa Barbara County Artists Recognized as CAC Individual Artist Fellows
Subtext: The 2023-24 cohort of California Arts Council Individual Artist Fellows for the Central California Region included a remarkable group of artists from Santa Barbara County. These fellows represent a wide range of artistic practices and career stages, spanning emerging voices, established practitioners, and a distinguished legacy artist.
Legacy Artist
Artists in the Legacy tier can point to a significant body of work, produced over a substantial period of time, that has engaged their communities and that has made significant social impact.
Sojourner Kincaid-Rolle
Sojourner Kincaid Rolle is a poet, playwright, cultural and environmental educator, and peace activist. An accomplished literary artist, Rolle served as Santa Barbara Poet Laureate. Her illustrated children’s book, “Free at Last: A Juneteenth Poem,” received national acclaim from Kirkus Reviews, PBS, Publisher’s Weekly, and Booklist. Rolle was recently honored as Congressional Woman of the Year for her storied record of grassroots and global community engagement. She holds a J.D. from UC Berkeley.
Established Artists
Artists in the Established tier regularly make their work public and engage the larger community in their practice. Individuals in this tier are able to provide multiple examples of artistic and/or cultural works that have made significant social impact.
Jack Forinash
As a rural dweller in his home community of the Cuyama Valley, California, Jack Forinash brings empathy and consideration to the practice of applied arts, architecture, community development, and good old-fashioned fun. He’s a cultural producer, community connector, builder, list-maker, spreadsheet artist, and amateur stargazer.
Jennie Reinish
Jennie Reinish is a documentary filmmaker; her production company is Tidepool Pictures. Her films center human stories: those impacting community, encouraging action, and inspiring understanding and compassion. Through the lens of very human experiences, her films have addressed climate, health, and social justice, all of which seek to inspire engagement in the community. Her current film I Cannot Be a Bystander addresses the power of speaking out against antisemitism and hate, featuring Holocaust survivors and community leaders.
Debra Herrick
Debra Herrick is the editor and co-founder of Lum Art Magazine, the associate editorial director of UCSB’s The Current magazine, and serves on the board of trustees for the Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara. She holds a Ph.D. from UCSB, where she completed her doctoral studies in Latin American literature before pursuing a career in writing and publishing. Debra has held teaching positions at UCSB, Santa Clara University, University of Miami and la Universidad Autónoma de Benito Juárez de Oaxaca and was guest curator at Santa Barbara Center for Arts Science and Technology.
Emma Trelles
Emma Trelles is the ninth Poet Laureate of Santa Barbara, and a Poet Laureate Fellow at the Academy of American Poets. The daughter of Cuban immigrants, she’s the author of Tropicalia (University of Notre Dame Press) and winner of the Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize. She curates the Mission Poetry Series and is the series editor of the Alta California Chapbook Prize, awarded to Latina/e/o/x poets in the U.S. and published in bilingual editions by Gunpowder Press.
Emerging Artists
Emerging artists are those in the beginning stages of making their work public and engaging the larger community in their practice.
Tai Rodrig
Tai Rodrig’s art merges mathematics and computation, unveiling infinite patterns. Drawing inspiration from systems that generate endless splendor in nature, Tai delves into uncharted territories. By understanding these foundational rules, he encourages a deeper appreciation of both art and math. This innovative fusion educates and inspires, fostering a profound love for the interconnectedness of our world.
Cheri Owen
Cheri Owen is an artist with a penchant for tactile mediums like ceramics and printmaking. She aspires to share her work with a world she can no longer see: touching people emotionally through piercing, poetic phrases and the beauty of the natural world, all of which she can still hear, deeply and fully. She is a blind U.S. Air Force Veteran who served during the Persian Gulf War and lives and works in Goleta.
Tama Takahashi
Asian Americans are underrepresented in our visual culture. Tama Takahashi is half-Japanese and creates vivid, richly textured paintings using traditional design elements to illustrate contemporary issues. Takahashi graduated from UC San Diego with a double major in art and cinema and began working in Hollywood on features and TV before moving to Santa Barbara. Takahashi returned to painting during the pandemic. Their work was recently shown at international shows, including at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum.
Kai Tilley
Kai is a visual artist, illustrator, healing advocate, photographer, musician, connector and collaborator. Kai specializes in healing through creativity and creative mediums. He believes life mimics art and art mimics life, which is why he continues to create anything he feels inspired to. He has a Master’s in Counseling Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute that adds a deep and unique perspective to his creative process and art development. He is a self-taught, highly-talented, and skilled artist. Visual art mediums most familiar with: digital, graphite, colored pencil, watercolor, acrylic, and gouache. Proficient use of Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom and used extensively as a freelance photographer.
Adrienne de Guevara
Adrienne De Guevara’s work weaves the solitary practice of the assemblage, deconstructing and reconstructing disparate objects, into the social practice of assembly of people into experiential situations with the intent to reveal how form informs our perceptions and how those biases can be remade into new narratives. The work aims to invite curiosity and reflection through sensory experiences to affect change and to seek alternatives to open doorways and invite exploration.
Spenser Jaimes
Spenser Jaimes is a Šmuwič and Island Chumash tomol paddler and caretaker of the Xax’ ‘Alolk’oy and ‘Eleye’wun, two traditional tomols. His family comes from the villages of Syxutun (Santa Barbara) and Swaxɨl on Limuw (Santa Cruz Island). As a paddler and caretaker, his focus centers on the continued natural relationships with his homelands, the revitalization of cultural practices such as traditional fishing, and advocating for fishing rights for his tribe. His documentary short “Connected by Water” premiered at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival in 2021 and highlighted the traditional connection in paddling between coastal tribes in the Southern California area. He is currently working on several projects that highlight and document ancestral and modern ways of life and untold history of his tribe.
About the Fellowship
The Individual Artist Fellowship is structured around three tiers of career support, each offering unrestricted funding to assist artists at pivotal moments in their practice:
- Emerging Artist Fellowship: Supporting early-career artists.
- Established Artist Fellowship: Enabling seasoned practitioners to expand their impact.
- Legacy Artist Fellowship: Honoring artists with long-standing influence and leadership.
The fellowship celebrates artistic excellence and leadership, and recipients are chosen through a competitive application and peer-review process that reflects the diversity of creative practices across the region.
Learn More
For details about the Individual Artist Fellowship program, criteria, and future opportunities, visit the California Arts Council website or the Silicon Valley Creates fellowship page.