The Brother Thomas Fund was established at the Boston Foundation in 2007 to honor the legacy of Brother Thomas Bezanson, a Benedictine monk and world-renowned ceramic artist, who wanted the sale of his work to help other artists, as his friends had helped him.

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Toward the end of his life, Brother Thomas joined forces with Sue and Bernie Pucker, owners of the Pucker Gallery on Boston’s Newbury Street, to continue his legacy. 

The goal of the biennial Brother Thomas Fellowship program is to support and celebrate a diverse group of Greater Boston artists working at a high level of excellence in a range of disciplines—the visual, performing, literary, media and craft arts—and to enhance their ability to thrive and create new work. The Boston Foundation also hopes that fellowship winners will have greater access to a variety of markets, including galleries, residencies and commissions, and that the importance of artists to the vitality of Boston will be more broadly recognized.

To continue to support Greater Boston artists working at a high level of excellence, we are excited to announce that each Brother Thomas Fellow will now receive an unrestricted award of $20,000 as well as the opportunity to attend up to two Brother Thomas Fellow convenings between grant cycles.  Previous recipients of the Brother Thomas Fellowship cannot apply as this is a one-time opportunity. 

Award Process

Brother Thomas Fellows are selected in alternate years based on an inclusive, two-step process of application and panel review. In the past, the initial pool of artist applicants was selected by a diverse group of nominators from Boston’s large pool of nonprofit arts leaders, academics, gallerists, collectors, and for-profit arts presenters. 

This year, we are pleased to announce the addition of an open application to the nomination pool. Applicants, as well as individuals identified by nominators, should identify as mid-career or established artists; this ensures that fellowships are awarded to individuals who have made a firm commitment to their creative practice and are working at a high level of achievement. Applicants and nominators should also consider artists who are at a catalytic moment in their life and career when a fellowship could have a transformative impact.

Applications will be reviewed and discussed by a multi-disciplinary panel convened at the Boston Foundation. All panelists complete a conflict-of-interest disclosure form to ensure a fair and equitable process. Should a conflict-of-interest arise, these individuals do not participate in this portion of the panel process. 

The deadline to apply or nominate for the current cycle was January 5, 2025.

Sónia Almeida

Visual Artist

Sónia Almeida is a visual artist whose work explores how language is learned, shared, and transformed through processes of fragmentation and multiplicity. Her practice draws heavily on the book format, engaging with concepts of knowledge production, sequence, and duration, while incorporating structures influenced by theatrical devices. Challenging conventional assumptions of museum display, Almeida foregrounds the tension between resistance and action, often inviting viewers to physically interact with her paintings, prints, textiles, and artist books. She has exhibited widely both nationally and internationally, including at the MIT List Visual Arts Center (Cambridge, Mass.), the Serralves Museum (Porto, Portugal), Culturgest Foundation (Lisbon, Portugal), and Kunsthalle Bielefeld (Bielefeld, Germany). Almeida is a Guggenheim Fellow, a recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant, and a professor at Brandeis University.

Adrian Anantawan

Violinist

Adrian Anantawan holds degrees from the Curtis Institute of Music, Yale University, and Harvard Graduate School of Education. As a violinist, he has studied with Itzhak Perlman and Pinchas Zukerman, and Anne-Sophie Mutter; his academic work in education was supervised by Howard Gardner. Memorable moments include performances at the White House, the Opening Ceremonies of the Athens and Vancouver Olympic Games and the United Nations. Adrian helped to create the Virtual Chamber Music Initiative at the Holland Bloorview Kids Rehab Centre. The cross-collaborative project brings researchers, musicians, doctors, and educators together to develop adaptive musical instruments capable of being played by a young person with disabilities within a chamber music setting. He is also the founder of the Music Inclusion Program, aimed at having children with disabilities learn instrumental music with their typical peers. He is the current Chair of Music at Milton Academy, the Artistic Director of Shelter Music Boston, and is a faculty member at Berklee College of Music. Throughout the year, Anantawan continues to perform, speak and teach around the world as an advocate for disability and the arts.

Juan Jose Barboza-Gubo

Visual Artist
www.barboza-gubo.com

Barboza-Gubo is an interdisciplinary artist. His work begins with the idea of overflow as a way of living and creating. He is interested in crossing boundaries— both physical and emotional—and navigating uncertain territories. Each piece is a return: to the jungle, to the body, to the essential. He gathers materials that connect him to the cycles of nature and his own experiences. From these elements, he creates compositions that explore how the natural and the constructed can coexist and transform together: Roots break through concrete, water reshapes the landscape, light reveals and conceals. He draws inspiration from the circular time of the jungle, where everything returns, but never in the same way. He does not seek definitive answers but rather aims to open spaces for feeling and reflection. His works invite viewers to pause, observe, and inhabit that space between who we were and who we are becoming. He has held solo exhibitions at institutions such as the Museum of Contemporary Art (Peru), the Museum of Memory (Peru), the Colonial Museum (Bogotá, Colombia), and Praise Shadows Gallery (Boston), among others. Barboza-Gubo is a full professor at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design.

Geoffrey Booras

Ceramic Artist

Geoffrey Booras is focused on producing experimental ceramics, painting, and sculpture in many forms. His practice contemplates the puzzling relationship humans have with nature, looking specifically to land use and resource extraction, as well as the history of science, exploration, and philosophy. His work has been shown at Gildar Gallery, Denver; Haw Contemporary, Kansas City; and The Museum of Longing and Failure in Germany. Booras has been artist-in-residence at Mass MoCA, Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, Anderson Ranch Art Center, Arctic Circle Residency, Wassaic Project, Banff Art Centre, and The Rockefeller Foundation’s Pocantico Residency. Booras is a former apprentice to renowned sculptor Toshiko Takaezu. He holds master’s degrees from Harvard University (EdM) and State University of New York at New Paltz (MFA), and studied geology and art at Skidmore College (BA). Booras is a 2025–26 Fulbright U.S. Scholar for artistic research in Iceland and Greece.

Alison Croney Moses

Craft

Boston-based artist Alison Croney Moses creates wooden objects that reach out to the senses—the smell of cedar, the color of honey or the deep blue sea, the round form that signifies safety and warmth, the gentle curve that beckons to be touched. Born and raised in North Carolina by Guyanese parents, making clothing, food, furniture, and art is embedded in her memories of childhood. She carries these values and habits into adulthood and parenting— creating experiences, conversations, and educational programs that cultivate the current and next generation of artists and leaders in art and craft. Her work is in the collections at Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, and Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. She received the 2022 USA Fellowship in Craft, 2023 Boston Artadia Award, and was a finalist of the 2024 LOEWE FOUNDATION Craft Prize. Her work has appeared in American Craft magazine and Boston Art Review. In 2023, WBUR included Moses in its list The Makers, and the Boston Globe reviewed her first solo. Moses holds an MA in sustainable business & communities from Goddard College and a BFA in furniture design from Rhode Island School of Design.

Holly Curcio

Ceramic Artist

Holly Curcio makes ceramic figures that live somewhere between a real and imagined world. She likens them to a diary entry, or a poem that others are privy to, giving viewers a glimpse of the story. Working with personal narratives allows her to find connection with various states of being, process emotions, and reflect on living. Originally from Massachusetts, Curcio received her BFA from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and MFA from Arizona State University. She has exhibited locally and nationally, completing public art commissions in Sacramento Calif., with artist residencies at Anderson Ranch Art Center, Red Lodge Clay Center, and Mudflat Studio, among others. She is a recipient of an Artist Fellowship in Sculpture from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Curcio works as an art restorer of objects by day and maintains her studio at Mudflat Studio in Somerville, Mass.

v. nico d'entremont

Transdisciplinary Artist, Educator, and Organizer

Through sculpture, experimental documentary, ritual/ performance, inter-species collaboration, and socially engaged art, v. nico d’entremont’s creative practice blurs the edges of studio art, spiritual practice, and traditional research, placing equal value on embodied, ancestral, and academic knowledge. Exploring systemic concerns through personal stories, their work seeks counter-narratives and challenges preconceived notions of Queerness, mental illness, and disability, creating pathways for individual healing and aiming toward collective liberation. D’entremont graduated from Massachusetts College of Art with a BFA in sculpture and art education, and from UCLA with an MFA in sculpture. With commissions and solo exhibitions at Institute of Contemporary Art Los Angeles and Commonwealth & Council, d’entremont has also exhibited at anonymous gallery, Human Resources, Pasadena Museum of California Art, Boston Center for the Arts Mills Gallery, Chapman College Art Gallery, Cerritos College Art Gallery, and Palomar College’s Boehm Gallery. D’entremont has held residencies at MacDowell, Yaddo, BANFF, The Joan Mitchell Center, Art Omi, Lighthouse Works, ACRE, SPACES Cleveland, Berwick Research Institute, and Boston Center for the Arts, and received grants from the Joan Mitchell Center, the Social Practice Art award, and the Collective Futures Fund.

Ifé Franklin

Black/Queer/ Interdisciplinary Artist/Elder

Ifé Franklin is an interdisciplinary artist who lives and creates in Roxbury, Mass. A graduate of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1989, Franklin currently holds a Boston Center for the Arts Studio Residency. She also owns and operates IfeArts®, which includes ancestor slave cabin installations, drawing, collage, photography, fiber arts, ancestor processions, and hush harbors. She often works collaboratively with other artists and organizations. Franklin’s work has been exhibited in South Carolina and throughout the Boston area and is in the permanent collection of The Fitchburg Museum of Art in Massachusetts and The National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. She believes it is her destiny to create and use her talents to convey that she is an ambassador of ancestral healing, wellness, truth, and joy. She conjures these frequencies through her art practice.

Earl Howard

Ceramic Artist

Earl Howard is a Massachusetts-based ceramic artist whose work blends craftsmanship, innovation, and deep respect for process. His wheel thrown vessels reflect an ongoing exploration of material, form, and the relationship between heat and glaze. Howard began working in ceramics in the early 1990s at Feet of Clay, a cooperative pottery studio, and further developed his practice through studies at Massachusetts College of Art and Design. From 2002 to 2005, he operated Barn Studio Pottery in West Medford, producing work and teaching classes in wheel throwing, hand building, and glaze formulation. Howard is a co-founder of West Medford Open Studios, which was established in 2000 and is a vibrant community art event that brings visibility to artists at all stages of their careers. His background as a Cambridge fire lieutenant, with degrees in fire administration and fire science, brings a distinctive perspective to his ceramic practice, particularly in understanding the transformative role of heat and materials. A longtime member of Jerome Street Studios and an active exhibitor, Howard continues to pursue new possibilities in clay, driven by a lifelong passion for craftsmanship and creative discovery.

Danielle Jones

Poet/Multimedia Artist

Danielle Jones is a poet, artist, and educator. Her work has appeared in Beloit Poetry Journal, Best New Poets, Memorious, Rattle, and elsewhere. She is a recipient of a Rona Jaffe Writer’s Award, a St. Botolph’s Club Artist Award, and a Mass Cultural Council Artist Fellowship. She teaches writing at UNH, where she directs the Nossrat Yassini Poetry Festival and manages YAS Press. Jones’s first full-length collection, Hunger, will be published this fall by Bordighera Press. Born in Italy, raised in Alabama, Jones has lived in Salem, Mass., for the last 15 years. She’s a member of the Salem Writers’ Group and the Salem Athenaeum Lit Committee. She also has a decade-long history with Mass Poetry, and has been involved with the Mass Poetry Festival, the Poet-in-Residence program, and is co-founder of the Teen Spoken Word Program. She directs the Boston Book Festival poetry track in collaboration with Mass Poetry. Jones has taught writing workshops in classrooms across Massachusetts, as well as in museums, libraries, prisons, and on the streets of Salem. A visual artist as well, she has organized four public art installations, including the “Poetry Dress,” which emphasized mentorship and included the work of over 70 female writers. daniellejonespoet.com.

Brian Lim

B-Boy, Founder and Director of The Flavor Continues

Brian Lim is a first generation born Teochew-Chinese Cambodian American; Lynn, Mass. native; and lifelong B-Boy. Known best as Brian Pistols, an alias given by a mentor following a Breaking tradition of being named by keepers of the culture, his experience began as a pre-teen competing and performing across Massachusetts. This journey culminated in competition titles spread over 14 years at home, nationwide, abroad, and two seasons as a resident performer at Boston Celtics home games. Through a US Department of State initiative, Lim served as a diplomat and cultural ambassador fostering cross-cultural exchange through Hip Hop artforms in Russia and Portugal. He is passionate about community organizing; determined to pay it forward and pay it back, to give back and give more to the communities, culture, and artform that have empowered him. His passion project jam Entering ShaoLynn (an ode to his ancestry, hometown, and Hip Hop’s love affair with Kung Fu) brings a Hip Hop feel back to Breaking jams, emphasizing the cypher and culture in a time where there is too much focus on the competition. Today, he is a proud Founder & Director of The Flavor Continues, a nonprofit organization enacting social change through Street & Club dance.

Rui Lopes

Filmmaker

Growing up in Cape Verde, Rui Lopes was nurtured by his single mother’s support of his artistic talents, which, he says, “kept me safe and engaged.” After moving to the U.S. in 1997, he won a gold key at the 2005 Boston Globe Scholastic Arts Award. He studied fine arts at the Art Institute of Boston but realizing that sustaining a career as a fine artist would be difficult, he decided to leave school. This led him to San Francisco, where he discovered a passion for filmmaking, blending storytelling, visuals, and activism. He returned to Boston to pursue filmmaking seriously, founding Anawan Studios to create equity for BIPOC filmmakers in Massachusetts.Lopes produced two films that appeared in the Roxbury International Film Festival at the Museum of Fine Arts in June 2025, and Anawan was among the first 10 grant recipients of the Boston Creator Incubator + Accelerator, founded and supported by NBA players Jaylen Brown and Jrue Holiday’s nonprofits.

Thato Mwosa

Writer/Director

Thato R. Mwosa is an award-winning filmmaker, screenwriter, illustrator, and professor whose work centers Black and African immigrant narratives with emotional depth and social impact. Originally from Botswana and now based in Boston, she brings over two decades of experience telling stories that amplify marginalized voices—especially those of Black women and girls. Her debut feature, Memoirs of a Black Girl, premiered at the Boston Globe’s Black History Month Film Festival and won Best Feature at both the Hamilton and Roxbury International Film Festivals. Her films explore themes such as youth violence, mental health, and immigration. A 2024 alum of both the Stowe Story Labs Narrative Lab and The Writers Lab, Mwosa also served as a mentor at the 2024 Pan African Screen-writing Lab. She is the creator of SAWA Trivia, an educational game celebrating African history and culture, and author of 14 African Women Who Made History. She is also the creative force behind the Black Girl Joy Book Club, a reading community she co-founded to inspire Black and Brown girls through literature. Mwosa is an Assistant Professor of Screenwriting at Emerson College and has taught screenwriting at Boston University and Lesley University.

Dave Ortega

Cartoonist

Dave Ortega is an award-winning cartoonist whose work explores history, memory, and identity. He is the author and illustrator of Días de Consuelo, a graphic novel based on his grandmother’s childhood during the Mexican Revolution. In 2024, he was invited to be a Visiting Artist at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Ortega’s comic art is in the permanent collections of the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art and the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum. In 2016, he was invited by the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston to create Comics: Frame by Frame, an interactive project featured in its Art Lab. He has exhibited widely at comic and art book fairs across North America, including the Toronto Comic Arts Festival, Massachusetts Independent Comics Expo, Chicago Alternative Comics Expo, New York Art Book Fair, Small Press Expo, and Latino Comics Expo. Currently, he is developing Hacienda, a self-published comics series praised by The Comics Journal as “Ambitious Comic book writing doesn’t get much smarter than this.”

Felipe Ortiz

Public Muralist & Fine Artist

Felipe Ortiz is a Colombian artist specializing in painting, from traditional easel work to murals and public installations. He earned his BFA in 2D Fine Arts from Massachusetts College of Art and Design in 2009. Ortiz has exhibited in prestigious venues such as the Fuller Craft Museum, Punto Urban Art Museum, and DeCordova Museum’s corporate loan collection. His installations have been part of projects with the Knight Foundation and Northeastern University. Ortiz was selected to showcase his work at the Governor’s office as a part of Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month, recognizing his positive influence on the state. He was awarded the 2018 Mass MoCA Assets for Artists Grant and the 2023 Massachusetts Cultural Council’s STARS residency grant to continue to lead the Harvest mural project in East Boston. He also founded FORA, a company fostering cross-country cultural exchanges through exhibits, public art, and workshops. In 2025, he launched Eastie Rising, a MOAC-funded public art initiative that reactivates East Boston’s public spaces through temporary installations and community-led events.

James Perry

Multidisciplinary Artist and Photographer

Based in Boston, James Perry is known for his powerful storytelling and dedication to preserving Black history through visual art. A proud graduate of Boston Arts Academy, Perry draws deep inspiration from his Mission Hill roots, channeling the city’s diverse cultural landscape into work that is both raw and emotional. As the founder of J. Perry Fine Art and the author of the Living Artfully newsletter, Perry has built a respected platform that amplifies local voices and engages the public in meaningful conversations about art, identity, and community. His portraits have been featured in exhibitions across Boston, including the Museum of Fine Arts, where one of his pieces was shown alongside the Obama portraits and now resides in the museum’s archives. Perry has collaborated with institutions like the Dillaway Thomas House, and the Department of Conservation and Recreation to create permanent installations honoring Boston’s historic Black figures. He has also partnered with Pfizer, LabCentral, Turning Art, and Lendlease to help curate rotating local art exhibitions. Perry continues to use his art as a vehicle for healing, legacy-building, and community empowerment.