Luis Tapia

National Endowment for the Arts Announces 2023 NEA National Heritage Fellows: Lifetime Honorific Celebrates Artists and Culture Bearers

Washington, DC | February 28, 2023 

The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is pleased to announce this year’s NEA National Heritage Fellows, recipients of our nation’s highest honor in the folk and traditional arts. For more than 40 years, the NEA has annually presented these lifetime honors in recognition of the diverse cultural traditions that comprise our nation and the individuals whose dedication and artistry contribute to their preservation and growth. Each fellowship includes a $25,000 award. Details will be released in the future about an event to honor the 2023 fellows.

“The 2023 National Heritage Fellows exemplify what it means to live an artful life,” said NEA Chair Maria Rosario Jackson, PhD. “Their rich and diverse art forms connect us to the past, strengthen our communities today, and give hope to future generations in ways that only the arts can. Our nation is strengthened through their meaningful practices, expressions, and preservation of traditional artistry.”

The 2023 NEA National Heritage Fellows are — 

Luis Tapia, Sculptor, Hispano Woodcarving Tradition from Santa Fe, New Mexico
For nearly five decades, Tapia has helped to revitalize and transform the art of the santero (saint-maker)—a centuries-old Hispanic tradition practiced in New Mexico and southern Colorado—through efforts such as reintroducing color and crafting social critiques into his modern-day sculptures.

R.L. Boyce, Hill Country Blues Musician from Como, Mississippi
Boyce was born into the African American fife and drum tradition and grew up playing with and learning from many great musicians. His North Mississippi blues approach to playing and song structures are rooted in past traditions, yet his music is uniquely contemporary.

Ed Eugene Carriere (Suquamish), Suquamish Basketmaker from Indianola, Washington
Carriere learned the art of basketmaking from his great-grandmother and has researched and replicated styles of Suquamish basketmaking dating back as many as 4,500 years. The clam-gathering baskets he creates are used to help others learn about the deep-rooted cultural and arts heritage of the Salish Sea and peoples.

Michael A. Cummings, African American Quilter from New York, New York
In the tradition of the African griot (storyteller), Cummings’ quilts tell the stories of African American life, incorporating historical, cultural, and philosophical themes into the vibrant colors, patchwork, and hand embroidery of his quilts.

Joe DeLeon “Little Joe” Hernández, Tejano Music Performer from Temple, Texas
Hernández has helped pioneer Tejano music, becoming one of the most prominent figures in the tradition today with more than 70 albums and five Grammy Awards, with his band, Little Joe y La Familia.

Roen Hufford, Kapa Maker from Waimea, Hawaiʻi
Hufford carries on the labor-intensive traditional art of ka hana kapa (making barkcloth) with designs inspired by the richness of her Hawaiian environment and is a leading figure in the reclaiming of this nearly lost art.

Elizabeth James-Perry (Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head, Aquinnah), Wampum & Fiber Artist from Dartmouth, Massachusetts
James-Perry combines careful preparation of natural materials, exquisite skill, and beauty of form with historical research and family knowledge to create a body of work that is revitalizing Eastern Woodlands/Algonquian traditional arts, including hand-sculpted wampum beads, soft fiber basketry, and ancient forms of woven wampum.

Wu Man, Pipa Player from Carlsbad, California
Wu Man’s vivid brilliance, commanding personality, and range of expression has redefined the pipa—a centuries-old, pear-shaped, four-stringed Chinese lute—bringing it to new audiences both in the United States and the wider world of music.

Nick Spitzer, Folklife Presenter, Educator, and Radio Producer from New Orleans, Louisiana
Spitzer’s whole life has been spent documenting, broadcasting, and writing about the vitality and innovation of American culture—the local, the non-official, the folkloric, and the vernacular.

Free Events September 28 - 29 Celebrate NEA National Heritage Fellows

Washington, DC | September 13, 2023 

Since 1982, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) has honored more than 450 individuals with the NEA National Heritage Fellowships, the nation’s highest honor in the folk and traditional arts. For its first in-person Heritage Fellowship events since 2019, the NEA will honor the most recent class of honorees and also bring them together with the 2020-2022 honorees to explore the legacy and impact of this lifetime honor. The ceremony is available through a webcast at arts.gov/heritage.

National Heritage Fellowships Awards Ceremony

WHAT: An awards ceremony will honor the 2023 National Heritage Fellows and recognize the 2020-2022 recipients. Hosted by the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, the ceremony will open with a performance by Irish flute player and 2021 NEA National Heritage Fellow Joanie Madden with guitarist Zan McLeod.

WHO: National Endowment for the Arts Chair Maria Rosario Jackson, members of Congress, 2023 National Heritage Fellows, and Joanie Madden 

WHEN: Friday, September 29, 2023, from 5:30–6:30 p.m. ET

WHERE: Library of Congress's Coolidge Auditorium in the Thomas Jefferson Building, 10 First Street SE, Washington, DC.

National Endowment for the Arts ArtWorks Podcast Conversations with Wood: The Art of Luis Tapia

Washington, DC | September 19, 2023 

Sculptor and 2023 National Heritage Fellow Luis Tapia has helped to revitalize and transform the art of the santero (a person who makes religious imagery), a Hispanic tradition practiced in New Mexico and southern Colorado that goes back more than 400 years. In this podcast, Tapia discusses his artistic journey. He began by reproducing traditional santos (carved and painted statues of saints). But the Chicano movement, which revolved around farm workers' rights, was significant in his artistic development. He became curious about his cultural and historical identity and the result of that curiosity became apparent in his art. He began incorporating bright colors and modern figures into his work, which continued the forms and styles of traditional religious iconography while reflecting contemporary issues. He placed his “saints” among us—as immigrants crossing a border, a man in jail, a grandmother protecting her grandchild. His blending of tradition with the contemporary, the sacred with the quotidian, was, at the time, controversial but now has been adopted by other santeros.

Tapia also talks about his approach to sculpting which ensures his pieces are viewed from all angles, allowing them to reveal complex stories from multiple perspectives. He describes his process as a dialogue between himself and the wood, starting with a concept and asking questions as he carves until the piece evolves. He also discusses the diverse range of art he creates: from religious icons to vibrant pieces inspired by pop culture, like his sculptures inspired by lowriders which have great cultural significance in New Mexico. Tapia finally emphasizes the paramount importance of cultural memory, observation, and storytelling that resonate through every piece he creates.

Joan Mitchell Foundation Announces Inaugural Recipients of Joan Mitchell Fellowships: 15 Artists Will Receive $60,000 in Unrestricted Grant Funds and Professional Support Over a Five-Year Period

New York, NY | October 13, 2021 

The Joan Mitchell Foundation today announced the inaugural recipients of its new Joan Mitchell Fellowship, which annually awards 15 artists working in the evolving fields of painting and sculpture with $60,000 each in unrestricted funds, distributed over a five-year period. Announced in February 2021, the Foundation’s new Fellowship program re-envisions and enhances the impact of its earlier Painters & Sculptors Grants by significantly increasing the financial award and expanding the professional development offerings that are a hallmark of the Foundation’s approach to supporting working artists. The 15 artists receiving Fellowships range in age from 35 to 71; 80% are artists of color—and 40% identify as Hispanic, Latinx, or Chicanx—while 47% identify as female and 13% as gender non-conforming. The artists were selected in a multi-phase, juried process from 166 applicants who were identified by a diverse pool of nominators from across the country and who reflect a wide range of backgrounds in the arts. 

The 2021 Joan Mitchell Fellows are: 

María Berrío, Brooklyn, NY, Margaret Curtis, Tryon, NC, Adam de Boer, Los Angeles, CA, Raúl de Nieves, Brooklyn, NY, Justin Favela, Las Vegas, NV, Chie Fueki, Beacon, NY, Emily Gherard, Seattle, WA, Angela Hennessy, Oakland, CA, Mie Kongo, Evanston, IL, Guadalupe Maravilla, Brooklyn, NY, Kambui Olujimi, Queens, NY, Ronny Quevedo, Bronx, NY, Rose B. Simpson, Santa Clara Pueblo, NM, Liza Sylvestre, Champaign, IL, Luis Tapia, Santa Fe, NM 

Under the new, five-year award structure, the Fellows receive an initial payment of $20,000 this year and annual installments of $10,000 each year for the subsequent four years. This more than doubles the $25,000 awards from the Foundation’s earlier Painters & Sculptors Grants—while extending the impact of that support by spreading it over a five year period to sustain longer-term financial and career planning. In total, each new yearly cycle of Fellows reflects an investment of $900,000 directly to artists. The decision to transform the Foundation’s approach to grantmaking is an outgrowth of a strategic planning process undertaken in 2019 and 2020 that in part evaluated the best possible use of the Foundation’s resources—as informed by the national landscape of support for visual artists and the types of support that artists most need. 

“We are excited to share the names of our inaugural Joan Mitchell Fellows, whose backgrounds and work capture an incredible range of creative vision, approach, and experience,” said Christa Blatchford, Executive Director at the Joan Mitchell Foundation. “The new fellowship program continues the Foundation’s decades-long commitment to providing unrestricted resources directly to individual artists working in painting and sculpture, while expanding to a five-year model that strengthens the financial and career-development support we will provide. This Fellowship, which bears Joan Mitchell’s name, deepens the way we fulfill her wishes for the Foundation to give artists the agency needed to sustain a life-long studio practice.”

Folk Art Road Trip: Travels with Modernism’s Utility Infielder at the Columbus Museum of Art

Columbus, OH | Opens February 1, 2020 

Folk Art Road Trip connects the dots in the story of folk art to some of the many familiar dots in the epic of modernism, presenting the Columbus Museum of Art’s folk art collection—including works by Luis Tapia—in a direct conversation with the vanguard artists that have championed vernacular art for over a century.

In three successive eras of modern art history, different definitions of folk art have come into the American art conversation. Folk Art Road Trip seeks to juxtapose vanguard and vernacular art in a historical narrative wherein modern Americans have repeatedly “found” and “invented” political, aesthetic, and spiritual utility for the art of folk and self-taught artists.

In response to the massive cultural destabilizations that attended the first decades of the 20th century, many Americans longed for a world in which art was “just itself.” In the simple, handmade tools, toys, stitchery pictures, landscape paintings and trade signs produced in frontier America, certain modern artists discovered straightforward styles of art that they called “folk art.” Among these artists Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Charles Sheeler and Elie Nadelman all found the formal simplicity and distinctive American “style” of their nation’s pre-industrial folk art to be an inspiration for their own vanguard modernism. 

Throughout the middle decades of the 20th century, “folk art” produced by anonymous frontier craftsmen no longer excited the art world.  Instead, the work of contemporary, self-taught, artists came to symbolize the regional and ethnic vitality of a pluralist America newly seeing itself more as a “tossed salad” than as a melting pot.  Modern artists ranging from Doris Lee in the 1940s to Andy Warhol in the 1970s collected the work of living, self-taught, “folk” artists whose creativity spoke to them about the vitality of “work-a-day” modern America. 

As the 21st century approached, American modernists identified yet another body of non-academic art that became the folk art for their time. This genre was comprised of idiosyncratic art gestures produced by “outsiders” (incarcerated prisoners, women, ethnic minorities, and others) seeking a place in an increasingly diverse society challenged by its own historic passion for individualism.

Today, contemporary artists like Luis Tapia, Michael Noland, and Lee Garrett, have all been inspired by marginalized self-taught artists finding identity in modern American life. 

Luis Tapia: Sculpture as Sanctuary at the National Museum
of Mexican Art

Chicago, IL  |  October 27, 2017 - April 15, 2018

For many, sanctuary can signify a holy place, a refuge, a ritual, a haven, or an oasis. It can also mean home, family, community, religion, and identity.

Luis Tapia: Sculpture as Sanctuary engages and critiques contemporary global themes of sanctuary and highlights the hand-carved masterworks of Luis Tapia,  a Chicano artist from Nuevo México.