Silver Spring, Maryland ($4,750)
Funding will support the creation of a contemporary dance inspired by Hawaiian oral histories about the volcano goddess Pele, with the mentoring support of Hula experts Kekoa and Pele Harman. This work celebrates a cultural exchange of artistic processes, offering a model for researching Indigenous dance cultures in a culturally sensitive manner.

Takoma Park, Maryland ($5,000)
Funds will be used to create an original children’s album fusing jazz, pop, electronic, and classical.

Silver Spring, Maryland ($5,000)

Funds will support SEEING WITHOUT SIGHT, a documentary film that includes stories of girls and women who have vision loss (blind, deafblind, or low vision).

Potomac, Maryland ($5,000)

Funds will support the post-production phase of the documentary film THE NATIONAL CAPITAL AREA: HOME TO THE WORLD, the first in the series A SACRED PIECE OF HOME, about places of worship in America constructed by distinct ethno-religious communities.

Kensington, Maryland ($4,900)

Funds will be used to develop a new body of artwork consisting of sculptural paintings and paint sculptures made with oil paint and bamboo sticks. Each work will feature interplay between the three-dimensional body of the piece, its surface image, and will echo the way our experience of the world can change with emotional and physical distance.

Wheaton, Maryland ($5,000)

Funds support The Materiality of Collage, a cohesive series of abstract artworks focusing on the material aspects of line and texture in the medium of collage.

Germantown, Maryland ($5,000)

Funds support the expansion a figurative oil paintings series, experimenting with scale and abstraction.

Silver Spring, Maryland ($5,000)

Funds support Silberman’s writing of a fiction book with themes of ancestral knowledge (i.e. foraging and herbal medicine) to awaken the reader to their own inner power, regain one’s sense of control, and connection to ancestry.

Takoma Park, Maryland ($5,000)

Funding will support the twelfth season of the Origins Concert Series featuring a new composition by the applicant, premiered at each concert.

Bethesda, Maryland ($5,000)

Funding will support a workshop performance of a new play, Breseis, a drama set in the present day based on a character from Homer’s Iliad.

Gaithersburg, Maryland ($5,000)

Funds support Man For The Job, a short film that follows Andrew on the day his father and sister come over for dinner. To overcome the generational trauma their father has caused, Andrew must decide if the life he wants exists only in his daydreams or in the real world.

Potomac, Maryland ($5,000)

Funds will be used to pay for sound editing and sound mixing of the documentary Bird Walk.  The film focuses on the birds and birders who have flocked to the RedGate Park in Rockville, Maryland, where 170 bird species have been identified.

Rockville, Maryland ($5,000)

Funds will be used for the creation new artwork of varying sizes, including oil paintings, watercolors, and plaster and resin sculptures.

Silver Spring, Maryland ($4,500)

Funds support the creation of a series of thematically linked poems that refer to a difficult two-year period in the grantee’s life, when their best friend was shot to death and their brother died of cancer.

Takoma Park, Maryland ($5,000)

Funding supports the production of a new body of abstract paintings for a solo exhibition, exploring the structure of weaving with the malleable properties of oil paint to produce tactile, visual, and associative abstractions.

Wheaton, Maryland ($5,000)

Funding will support a body of work elevating Black women, emphasizing their strength, resilience, highlighting the many roles of Black women as nurturers, providers, educators and more, while dispelling the “angry Black woman” stereotype.

Silver Spring, Maryland ($5,000)

Funds support Traceries, a video recording of works for solo piano and voice, featuring compositions by Florence B. Price and William Grant Still, largely unheard early compositions by classical Black American composers.

Silver Spring, Maryland ($5,000)

Funds will be used to complete a series of large-scale multi-media drawings in preparation for a solo exhibition, focused on layers of meaning in nature, in connection to human history and the environment.

Bethesda, Maryland ($5,000)

Funds support a new phase of a larger body of work, exploring shelter from the lens of those most affected by our current housing, immigration, and climate crises, exploring the journeys humans and birds take while searching for a home.

Burtonsville, Maryland ($5,000)

Funds support The Beat Goes On. Students will be led to play drums as healthy way to relax, process and deal with negative external pressures, and gain better control of their lives. This program will reinforce life skills such as teamwork, social cohesion, self-discipline, self-esteem, confidence, and perseverance.

Rockville, Maryland ($5,000)

Funds support the creation of paintings to be exhibited at VisArts, investigating how the language of abstraction, through chance and control, can evoke the sublime. The artwork will include imagery derived from Persian paintings and illuminated manuscripts.

Takoma Park, Maryland ($5,000)

Funding will support the recording of music composed by the grantee, influenced by Abbey Lincoln’s journals.

Bethesda, Maryland ($5,000)

Funds will be used for the creation of new acrylic paintings, acrylic collage, and/or mixed media works. The artwork often expresses (but is not limited to) feminist ideas.

Bethesda, Maryland ($5,000)

Funding supports the completion of a book length work-in-progress entitled The Dalton Brothers, a collection of linked short stories that tells the survival story of three brothers growing up with parents suffering from addiction.

Bethesda, Maryland ($5,000)

Funds support the creation of 8 charcoal drawings on wood, highlighting the unrealized dreams of those lost at sea. Using the Vietnamese view on ancestry, the artworks offers insight about American perceptions of migration, and blends ancestral altar elements with landscapes, representing the journeys of Asian and Latin American immigrants.

Chevy Chase, Maryland ($5,000)

Funds support a photography project located at the historic Silver Spring residence where Rachel Carson authored Silent Spring, a book that launched the modern environmental movement. Miller will photograph wildlife, trees, and native plants through the changing seasons.

Derwood, Maryland ($5,000)

Funding supports the recording of an album featuring original music.

Rockville, Maryland ($5,000)

Funding supports the creation of a written work about an artist struggling with his creativity and his past.

Montgomery Village, Maryland ($4,000)

Funds support an interactive performance about trickster tales from the Gulla Geechee Culture. In this cultural context, tricksters provide engaging, relatable, and instructive experiences for young audiences, highlighting community, cultural preservation, and the African Diaspora.

Rockville, Maryland ($5,000)

Funding supports Building the Engine, a dance work exploring Queer identity navigation. It is anchored by research in gender studies, rock and roll, Queer theory, and the applicant’s personal trans/non-binary experience.

Rockville, Maryland ($5,000)

Funding supports the creation of The Adventures of an Almost 50, Never Married Wannabe Wife, a book about never giving up on lasting love. In it, a woman passes her last marriage deadline, goes out on over 100 first dates, and finally finds the kindhearted man she marries.

Potomac, Maryland ($5,000)

Funds will support the creation and printing of 12 illustrated bookmarks, the reproduction of six architectural sketches through giclée printing, and the creation of a shop page to sell these products on the artist’s website.

Bethesda, Maryland ($5,000)

Funds will be used to create an interdisciplinary curriculum, talk-back guide, and accompanying edited clips of the applicant’s new documentary Call Me Dancer. Teachers, facilitators, and arts educators will engage Montgomery County students and adult learners with these project materials at screenings, in classrooms, and at other public presentations.

Rockville, Maryland ($5,000)

Funds support What did Nonna use to Say?, an illustrated picture book for a young audience. In English and Italian, the book celebrates the ties that bind us across generations, distance, culture, and time.

Chevy Chase, Maryland ($5,000)

Funding supports Tooth and Claw, dance set to a reimagined ABBA song. Inspired by metaphors of labor and success, the piece explores what it means to work and truly rest in America. The project includes original choreography, live music, opportunities for students, and a community workshop.

Montgomery Village, Maryland ($5,000)

Funding supports The Poppaw Queen documentary about the history of the Queen Family, rooted in colonial Maryland, centering on Mary (“The Poppaw Queen”) who endured a harrowing abduction into slavery that sparked a legacy of resilience.

Silver Spring, Maryland ($5,000)

Funding supports the creation of a graphic novel about motherhood, antisemitism, business, ethics, focused on Glikl, a Jewish businesswoman who lived in 18th century Germany.

Rockville , Maryland ($5,000)

To support a project exploring themes of resilience through the life stories and music of five remarkable composers. Despite facing immense personal and professional challenges, each of these composers persevered.

Rockville, Maryland ($5,000)

Funding supports the creation of Down by the Water, a heroine’s journey novel, Thelma & Louise-style, of a transformative canoe trip down the Mississippi River.

Kensington, Maryland ($5,000)

Funds will be used to design, create, and install a new, hand-carved stone bench for the use and enjoyment of the Montgomery County community at Glen Echo Park where sculptor Nizette Brennan works and has her studio.

Silver Spring, Maryland ($5,000)

Funding will support the creation of Appelbaum, a new graphic novel about dealing with emotional trauma, social anxiety, and understanding one’s Jewish identity. It is also a follow-the-clues mystery story, told in a neo-noir style.

Bethesda, Maryland ($5,000)

Funds will be used for the creation of 25 poems and drawings that will accompany the poems –which will appeal to both children and adults–inspired by the morning walks and the life of a small dog.

Bethesda, Maryland ($5,000)

Funds will support the creation of a short documentary examining the experiences of Deaf actors in Montgomery County, highlighting some of the unique challenges they face while also demonstrating the contributions they bring to artistic work.

North Potomac, Maryland ($3,850)

Funds will be used to produce a script for an original musical and to arrange for its’ premiere performance on a stage located in Montgomery County. Songs for the musical were composed last year with funding from a previous grant.

Potomac, Maryland ($5,000)

Funding will support the relaunch of a storytelling podcast last produced in 2022. Seemann will create new stories while maintaining the original format, showcasing the perspectives of a contemporary, observant Jewish woman, combating negative stereotypes, providing positive representation, uplifting women, and the community.

Gaithersburg, Maryland ($5,000)

Funding supports a visual arts project entitled Made from Scraps, a celebration of reusing, recycling, and repurposing. During enslavement, the African American family thrived on scraps from the enslaver. What we consider soul food today are recipes that are celebrated.

Silver Spring, Maryland ($5,000)

Funding supports the creation of Wolver Maroon, a dance theater work embodied in layers of Woman as artist, mother, object craven need, abject compromise lead, and howling animal.

Bethesda, Maryland ($5,000)

Funding will support the creation of Light Multiplies, informed by personal experience and more than a decade of community-based grief and trauma work. Light Multiplies asks: must trauma be passed down? Can we not only heal ourselves but heal up? How do we break the curses of our grandmothers? Through visual art and hybrid text, Light Multiplies is equal parts memoir/critical inquiry/self- examination.

Gaithersburg, Maryland ($4,636)

Funding supports professional development. West will obtain Vocology Certification, to deepen West’s understanding of the anatomy of the voice, how it produces sound and how to properly habilitate it, equipping West with the ability to properly analyze the voice, and finer tune their ability to train it.

Burtonsville, Maryland ($5,000)

Funding supports the development of professional pitch materials for a new TV series. These materials are a “mini bible”, which lays out the series visually in a slide deck, as well as a pilot script.

North Potomac, Maryland ($5,000)

Funding supports the creation of a new series of artwork based on diagrams, concepts and ideas from cosmology, human anatomy and neuroscience, juxtaposing images to explore the idea of the human body as a threshold between the cosmic and quantum realms.

Rockville, Maryland ($4,750)

Funds will be used for the completion of a polished manuscript of the debut literary novel, Freedom Does Not Fall From the Sky, which tells the stories of South African and American characters whose lives have been profoundly altered by apartheid, their efforts to end it, and the tremendous human cost of significant political change.

Gaithersburg, Maryland ($5,000)

Funds will be used to develop scripts for community theater and short films relevant to the South Asian immigrant experience. One script is tentatively titled Retribution, about the challenges faced by four aging South Asian actresses who have been rivals in their professional and personal lives.

Kensington, Maryland ($5,000)

To support the creation of ALLIANCE, a new film about a successful Jewish farming colony in America. ALLIANCEcenters on forty-three families who traveled across the ocean in 1882 to create a first-time social experiment—the Alliance Colony, fleeing from the persecution of a tyrannical Russian czar to the desolate fields of a new world.

Silver Spring, Maryland ($1,000)

Funding supports a professional development project. Wang will attend an Art Omi writer’s residency based in Ghent, NY to work on and complete their translation of a collection of short stories by acclaimed Chinese writer SU Tong (a finalist of the Man Booker International Prize in 2011 who is nicknamed “King of Short Stories” in China) titled Butterfly and Chess and Other Stories.

Silver Spring, Maryland ($5,000)

Funding supports filming, editing, and arranging original music for Patches and Friends, a television pilot and first season of a new show, with an emphasis on the music.