Lawrence creatives among recipients of 2025 Rocket Grants for community-driven art projects

LAWRENCE — Charlotte Street and the Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas have announced the 10 recipients of the 2025-2026 Rocket Grants awards, a re-granting program of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. The program supports inventive, public-facing work in nontraditional spaces and encourages artists to engage with new audiences and expand their studio practices.

This fall Rocket Grants awarded 10 project-based grants of $6,000 for a total of $60,000 in funding. The awardees from across the Kansas City and Lawrence region were selected from a highly competitive pool of 114 applications. This year’s awards include several projects with strong Lawrence connections, reflecting the program’s ongoing commitment to supporting innovative, community-engaged art outside traditional venues.

This year’s selected projects address urgent social and cultural themes, including the intersection of art, science and music; the power of the written word; and resources for LGBTQ+ communities. The 2025 jury panel included Lisa LaRue-Baker, artist and director of 785 Gallery, Topeka; José Garza, artist and academic programs coordinator at Kemper Art Museum, St. Louis; and Brittany Noriega, co-director, InterUrban ArtHouse, Overland Park.

Four projects with direct ties to Lawrence are among this year’s recipients:

Kay Holland, Tyler Hall and Trans Lawrence Coalition

“TLC: Building Trans Community” is an experimental documentary that brings together archival footage, mixed media, professional interviews and public testimonies to portray the multitudes of perspectives, experiences and methodologies that make up Trans Lawrence Coalition's past, present and future.

Brendan McInerney

“Land Back to the Future” is a short documentary film about the cyclical nature of history and the many centuries-long relationship between Native American peoples and the wetland ecosystem on the campus of Haskell Indian Nations University. McInerney will organize an outdoor screening for the Haskell community in front of the Haskell Wetlands.

Jeanne Vaccaro

“Reading is Transcendental” is a site-specific public art installation that transforms the bathroom into an intergenerational reading room and community library. Organized by Jeanne Vaccaro, KU assistant professor in the Department of Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies, with artist Chris E. Vargas, the work will be a printed wallpaper of original drawings representing the real-life bookshelves of Vargas’ community.

Alex Kimball Williams, Leah Evans, Tai Amri

Featured artists from the BLACK Lawrence artist collective will host a public presentation and anniversary celebration of BLACK Lawrence’s community contributions. This project will explore how the work of these artists catalyzes uniquely positive impacts in Kansas and ties their contemporary practices to similar work of historic Black Kansas artists.

Additional awardees:

• Camry Ivory
• Rachel Krause
• Evan Maddox
• Miguel Morales
• Anthony Rea and Isaac Tapia
• Michael Smith.

For more information and a complete list of the 2025 Rocket Grants recipients, visit the Rocket Grants website.