In alignment with Haystack’s mission to connect people through craft, the Artist Grant Initiative (AGI) is a 3-year program intended to provide financial support and mentorship for three annual cohorts of emerging and early-career artists. Each cohort collaborates on a capstone project designed to document and celebrate the evolution of their practice throughout the course of the program.

Selected artists are awarded $10,000 each in unrestricted grants and participate in both group and individual online mentorship sessions with mentor artists selected by Haystack. The mentors lead sessions dedicated to portfolio reviews, group work critiques, and topics such as branding, professional practice, and network development.

The Artist Grant Initiative is made possible by support from the Windgate Foundation.

PROJECT TESTIMONIAL

This award has helped me lay a stronger foundation for my artistic career, allowing me to shift from surviving to truly thriving. I used the funds to secure a dedicated studio space, giving me the physical room I need to expand my creative practice, literally and conceptually. Within this space, I have been creating and documenting a new body of work that preserves the legacy and life stories of my Sierra Leonean grandmother. By video recording a series of one-on-one conversations with her children, I am documenting their memories through the dishes they grew up with and how that food shaped their relationship to culture, heritage, and family. After collecting and transcribing these oral histories of my matriarchs, I have been experimenting with transferring text onto metal strips, which will be woven into basket forms that honor my grandmother’s impact and act as an archive of my maternal line.

BIO

Born and raised in Brooklyn, NY, Aminata Conteh (she/her)’s practice currently hybridizes the histories and traditions of metalsmithing with weaving and basketry. Conteh received a BFA in Metalsmithing & Jewelry from the Maine College of Art & Design (MECA&D) and was a 2021 Windgate-Lamar Fellow from the Center for Craft in Asheville, NC. She was recognized as a 2022 Early Career Artist by the Society of North American Goldsmiths and was most recently named as a 2023 Visiting Craft Fellow at SUNY New Paltz. Conteh maintains an active teaching practice and has led workshops at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, and Penland School of Craft. Her work has been exhibited across New York, Los Angeles, North Carolina, and Maine.

aminataconteh.com | @aminomnom

PROJECT TESTIMONIAL

This award has laid the foundation for a mobile hot shop that supports both my glassblowing practice and a larger mission: expanding access to the craft for regional high school students.

This initiative grows out of my deep belief that art is not only personal expression, but also a tool for empowerment and equity. The mentorship support has particularly helped strengthen my skills in program development, grant writing, and long-term sustainability planning. In a city like Los Angeles, where few institutions offer glassblowing instruction, this project has the potential to disrupt existing barriers—especially those related to cost, geography, and representation. This award has been an essential first step in bringing this vision to life—fueling both my creative growth and the creation of a more inclusive, connected future for glass art.

BIO

Rooted in glass since 2014, David Gutierrez (he/him)'s work explores existentialism, creation, death and destiny through sculptural and light-based forms. He blends technical precision with narrative intent, drawing from community, mentorship, and lived experience. His practice is grounded in persistence and collaboration, with exhibitions at Brea Art gallery, LA Glass Center, and more.

vidrionoir.com | @david_a_magnifico

PROJECT TESTIMONIAL

This grant gave me the opportunity to participate in a papermaking residency at Chicago Pulp, where I pursued pushing my current painting and collage practice into three-dimensional sculpture. The work reconciles feelings of being siloed, while also celebrating self through processes of self-examination. Some parts are highly recognizable and visually digestible, while other parts make viewers feel uncomfortable. My practice bridges traditional separators of Black portraiture, body politics, and communal Otherness, while simultaneously questioning lexicons of aspirational Black imagery. I sit in a one-room studio in a historical church in Woodlawn every day, supporting and at times co-creating with seven artists with various disabilities. Routinely, I consider the question, “What can I create?” It brings heaviness to my mind but also reignites a playfulness inside a new place of otherness.

BIO

Payton Harris-Woodard (she/her) is an artist investigating the emotional and psychological complexities of inhabiting a black female body. She received a BA from Columbia College Chicago. Prior to graduating, she was awarded a Haystack Mountain School of Crafts Fellowship. She received an MFA in Painting and Drawing from the School of the Art Institute. Harris-Woodard is the recipient of the New Artists Society Full Merit Scholarship, and her writing and artwork have been published in Hyperallergic Magazine and Hand Papermaking Magazine, where she received the Black Writers Fellowship to publish an interview with Howardena Pindell. Recent exhibitions include Human Resources at the Third Space Gallery at the Chicago Artists Coalition, Chicago, IL; Women on the Verge at Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago, IL; Golden Ratio at Art is Bond, Houston, TX; “Fantasticolismo,” Chiquimarca projects at Mana Contemporary, Chicago, IL; Ground Floor Biennial at the Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago IL., and Generations at Woman Made Gallery, Chicago, IL. Harris-Woodard lives and works in Chicago, IL.

paydeauxpaints.com | @paydeauxx

PROJECT TESTIMONIAL

With the support of the Haystack Artist Grant initiative, my exploration of material has not only evolved from a focus on collaboration and audience engagement but has shifted towards an interest in ritual and discipline by tracing parallels between spirituality and sport. This award supported both the growth of my artistic practice and the care of my family—two deeply interconnected parts of my life. My practice extends beyond the studio into the boxing gym, where I observe its rituals and disciplined routines. I examine how these embodied practices parallel spiritual frameworks and consider how those connections can be carried into the objects I create. A portion of the grant is dedicated to compensating collaborators and supporting material research, and strengthening the relationship between the objects I create and the environments that inform them.

BIO

Celina Hernandez (she/her) is a multidisciplinary artist based in Phoenix, Arizona, and an MFA candidate at Arizona State University. Her practice explores play, resilience, and social dynamics through ceramics, performance, sculpture, photography, and video. Hernandez received her BFA from Texas State University and has exhibited nationally, including at Northlight Gallery and the Humanities Institute at Arizona State University. She is a recipient of the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts Artist Grant Initiative and currently serves as a Graduate Teaching Assistant at the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts.

celinahernandez.com | @celi.hernandez188

PROJECT TESTIMONIAL

This award has provided support as I build a hot glass studio and a business that can sustain me and my artistic practice. I’ve used this time to develop a marketing strategy for a line of home decor and art glass, with a goal of reaching more wholesale and consignment accounts. Simultaneously, I am providing the studio as a resource for a safe, inclusive, curated community space where people, particularly BIPOC people, can come together to gain access to materials, tools, information, experience, and fellowship that might not happen otherwise.

BIO

Jason McDonald (he/him) is an artist working in glass whose interests in the material are many. He uses the vocabulary of glassworking: fragility, difficulty, fluidity, to express his lived experience, including: the systemic and social barriers that BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) people face in accessing creative spaces; the embodied trauma of living in a nation with deeply racist roots; and more joyful topics like material curiosity and the wild joy of technical pursuits. McDonald received a BFA from CCA and an MFA from Tyler School of Art and Architecture. He teaches internationally, was a contestant on the show Blown Away, and is currently a three-year resident at Penland School of Craft.

jasonmcdonaldglass.com | @jasonmcdonald42

PROJECT TESTIMONIAL

The Artist Grant Initiative has allowed me to further my neon education and begin assembling a neon studio in pursuit of my goal to illuminate stories and symbols from my community. This grant will fund a neon residency at Pilchuck Glass School this fall, where I will build community with other neon artists and develop my technical skills. I look forward to using this momentum to continue building relationships with fabricators, galleries, craft schools, and commercial entities for future collaborations and partnerships.

BIO

Alex Paat (he/him) is an artist who uses ceramic and neon to examine themes of connectedness, generativity, and the mysterious joy of life. He received a BA in Studio Art from Cedarville University, OH, and an MFA in Ceramics from the School of American Crafts at Rochester Institute of Technology, NY. In 2020, Paat completed a year-long assistantship to potter Justin Rothshank in Goshen, IN. Currently, he serves as the 2024–2026 Student Director at Large on the board of NCECA (National Council for Education on the Ceramic Arts).

alexpaat.com | @alex_paat

PROJECT TESTIMONIAL

Guided by a sculptural approach, I employ organic materials such as ceramics, metals, or glass for their transformative, tactile qualities, regarding the preservation of bodily autonomy and alchemical change as flesh becomes earth. This grant will directly support my uninterrupted practice during my long-term residency at The Steelyard. Further informing my work through a research trip to Vietnam to document the daily rituals and practices of women-led markets, as I investigate the parallels within Vietnamese-American nail salons. While applying new techniques offered within my program, such as blacksmithing, welding, and metal fabrication, I will expand my sculptural language in scale and quantity.

BIO

David Vuong (he/they) is fascinated by the construction of the human through memory and finding its connections across historical phenomena of societal displacement alongside earthly compositions. He currently resides in Providence, RI, continuing his sculptural practice as a long-term resident at The Steelyard. Through an interest in material and form, he explores the language of vessels for the human, and how processes of bodily preservation can carry through in our cultural narratives. He recently graduated from Alfred University with a BFA and completed a post-baccalaureate in ceramics at Tyler School of Arts. He is a Haystack Artist Grant Initiative Awardee and will soon attend the Archie Bray Foundation as a summer 2026 resident.

davidvuongstudio.com | @quantum.eax

PROJECT TESTIMONIAL

This grant has supported a pivotal chapter in the evolution of my independent design practice through working with New York design gallery Colony to develop a new collection. This opportunity is deeply aligned with my long-term vision as a designer committed to creating enduring, emotionally resonant work—and with Haystack’s mission to connect people through craft.

With the support of the grant, I have been able to purchase specialized tools, prototype new forms, and hire fabricators for custom components like metalwork and lighting. These resources are critical to achieving a level of craft, material resolution, and finish necessary for the collection to be competitive in curatorial and market contexts.

BIO

Tzyy Yi Young (Amy) (she/her) is a Taiwanese-born designer exploring the intersection of traditional craft and digital technology. Trained at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) and 3D4M at the University of Washington, she blends materials, such as clay and glass, with 3D tools to create minimalist furniture and installations that evoke human connection through form, function, and quiet emotional resonance.

tzyyyi.com | @tzmakerstudio