WEST PALM BEACH, FLA.- Five recipients of a new grant program designed to help emerging Palm Beach County-based artists will receive studio residencies at the Norton Museum of Art, in addition to other benefits.


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The recipients of the Cultural Council for Palm Beach County’s Emerging Artist Prize are Hodaya Louis of Loxahatchee; Jamie Rodriguez of West Palm Beach; Laura Tanner of Boca Raton; Sitki Dogan of Lake Worth Beach; and Kelvin Small of Jupiter.

Part of the Council’s Year of Extraordinary Support, the award is intended for creative professionals across all artistic disciplines and includes a nine-month program focused on professional development. The five recipients will each be paired with mentors who are arts professionals and receive ongoing training and advice. They also receive a $3,000 stipend for materials or supplies and a working studio space for four weeks each at the Norton Museum of Art studios.


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“We are constantly exploring ways to support creative professionals at each stage of their careers,” said Jessica Ransom, the Council’s director of artist services. “This is an opportunity for artists in the early stages of a professional career to focus on developing their artistic ‘voice’ while also establishing a business foundation, creating a cohort of individuals in a similar phase of their career, and accessing mentorship to aid in successfully building a pathway for the future.”

Selected through a competitive application process, the five recipients were chosen from a significant number of applicants by a committee of regional and national arts professionals.

Louis, whose residency continued through June 27, is an interdisciplinary artist working across sculpture, drawing and video. She drew inspiration from being surrounded by the art of the Norton, as well as a landmark tree around which the Museum building was designed.

“I have created drawings and sculptures based on the continuous lines formed by the fascinating growth of the banyan tree,” she said. “I particularly admire its canopy growth, hugged by the museum's architecture, and its fringes—suspended aerial roots, which are on an unwavering, decades-long mission to connect with the Earth.”

Her work explores the cyclical rhythms of natural growth, metaphysical inquiry, and the invented logic of systems such as board games, she says.

“Bilingualism and a Kabbalistic understanding of Hebrew letters as vessels of meaning inform my fusion of linguistic symbols into sculptural forms, cultivating an infinite, unspeakable language. I work with materials that carry embodied histories—irrigation tubing, handmade paper, animal skin—to build intimate to human-scale sculptures,” she said. “These works function as self-contained systems with internal rules, evoking both the self-rooting banyan tree and the structured unpredictability of play. Through geometric paradoxes and spatial shifts, I invite viewers to uncover hidden energies and alternate modes of perception.”

Tanner is an artist who works with interdisciplinary forms of storytelling, including drawing, printed catalogues and film. Her residency is June 30-July 25. Rodrigues is a mixed media artist whose works (including installations) are inspired by the historical significance of the landscape and the universality of the human condition and environment. His residency is June 30-July 25. Dogan, whose residency is August 4-29, is a muralist and artist with a passion for public art, specializing in trompe l'oeil and 3D chalk murals. Small is a fine art photographer and contemporary visual artist focused on navigating the realms of reality and surrealism. His residency is August 4-29.

The program will guide the artists as they create business plans, focus on growing and sustaining their businesses and pursue future exhibitions, residency and gallery opportunities. The artists will each have access to group coaching sessions, one-on-one mentoring and business training sessions. Each artist will be working at the Norton Museum of Art studios from June through August (and each will have a dedicated month in the studio).

“Equity is essential to a sustainable arts and cultural sector and a vibrant and thriving community, and we’re proud to celebrate and serve artists at all stages of their careers,” said Dave Lawrence, president and CEO of the Cultural Council. “Our emerging artists are an important part of our community, and we’re so happy to be able to offer this new grant program through the Council’s Year of Extraordinary Support.”

The Council’s Year of Extraordinary Support, or YES!, was launched by the Cultural Council in November 2023 as a celebration of the record funding for Palm Beach County’s arts and cultural sector, the largest in the Cultural Council’s 47-year history. Other new Cultural Council programs include an Arts Administrator of Color Fellowship program and a third round of the Council’s popular Artist Innovation Fellowship program.