This is a virtual fellowship for artists in Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and Texas.

We will meet three times a month- in one on one’s with program founder Tamara to work on your financial knowledge base and individual plan; once as a group to help each other with core questions around our practices; and once with experts in the field. All fellows will receive a $500 stipend for their time.

the dots between Program Outline

Each month has a different focus around these core topics:

Investing in self- how to put your financial well being as a core element in every stage of your career.
Budgeting- creating a pie chart of your current revenue sources and one with your ideal- what are the steps you need to take to get from the current to the ideal?
Planning for the future- creating a nest egg that can support your artistic practice and investment vehicles to save for your retirement.
Strengthening key relationships and finding new ones- who are the institutions, organizations and individuals who are most aligned with your work and vision, how do you make a path towards them?
Language about your practice- deepening your vision statement, placing your work within a larger context to bring new allies and support systems. Why it matters that you are the one doing this work.

Olivia Brown

Olivia Brown is a mixed Black femme from Tulsa, OK. She is a maker and a do-er that advocates for the arts and creativity through her practice, educational outreach, and design thinking. Olivia believes in experimenting with New Media (University of North Texas, BFA 2015) to push the boundaries of what has already been created and to address the current moment with a fitting medium. Her work concentrates on unravelling complexities for her self and results in sharing her findings with others. She intends for these efforts to increase human connection and understanding. Olivia currently lives and works in Santa Fe, NM as a Senior Artist with MEOW WOLF, an immersive arts company. There, she focuses on the potential of immersive installation on a large and public scale and grows her skills in collaborative art-making.

Benjamin Muñoz

Benjamin Muñoz is an accomplished painter, printmaker and illustrator, born and raised in Corpus Christi. His work is often reflective of his heritage, upbringing and current surroundings. Benjamin paints primarily in watercolor, using singular imagery to illustrate defining moments in his life. In printmaking Benjamin works in large scale woodcuts and is the owner/operator of Casa Press. He has been educating artists for several years and has a passion for helping to cultivate community and collaboration among artists. His work has been displayed throughout Texas and he has curated several exhibitions over the years.

Bess Murphy

Bess Murphy was born and raised in the artist community of Santa Fe, NM. She holds a B.A. in Art History from Bard College and a M.A. and PhD in 20th Century American Art History from the University of Southern California. Her research focuses on the decentering of canonical narratives of American art by positioning art and artists of the Southwest, practitioners of craft and "traditional" art forms, and artists of color into the lens of mainstream art. She is currently the Curator at the Coe Center for the Arts where she works with leading Native artists, community members, and students to develop meaningful programs, exhibitions, and creative experiments. She has taught Art History and Museum Studies at the Santa Fe University of Art and Design and the Institute of American Indian Arts and has held positions at galleries, museums, and art centers as well as alternative artist-led art spaces. She is deeply dedicated to supporting the arts and artists of the Southwest, and of Santa Fe specifically.

Vicente Telles

Vicente Telles is a Santero (painter of saints) and Cultural Iconographer who is driven by the desire to honor the culture and traditions of his native New Mexico. He began painting traditional retablos (saints on carved wood) using natural pigments created from clays and minerals on homemade gesso, which is then sealed with pinon sap varnish. Always looking for ways to push boundaries, his style has evolved to include various reinterpretations of traditional Catholic iconography. His experimentation with different mediums such as textiles, high quality paper(s), found and repurposed materials are used to create more contemporary pieces. Telles’ work can be found in private and public collections both in the United States and abroad.

Frank Rose

Frank Rose is a creative conductor, passionate about facilitating avenues of support for artists and orchestrating events and experiences that cultivate community, beauty, and wonder. He founded Gallery 1724, a community art space in Houston in 2005. Frank holds a degree in Digital Media and has exhibited in several exhibitions in the US, China, and South Korea. He served as Press Coordinator for Foto Fest, the largest photography festival in the US and was the Publisher of Arts Houston Magazine before moving to Santa Fe in 2008. Frank co-founded form & concept in 2016 and opened Hecho a Mano in 2019. Frank loves expanding consciousness, hiking, good coffee, and tacos.

Babay L. Angles

Babay L. Angles (Angelica Janabajal Tolentino) is a Pilipinx interdisciplinary performance artist, educator, and activist based in Brooklyn, NY and San Diego, CA. She holds a B.A. in Ethnic Studies from UC San Diego and a Masters of Arts in Urban Education and Social Justice from the University of San Francisco. She has over ten years of experience as an educator, mental health worker, and grassroots organizer in South East San Diego and Oakland, CA. She also has over 10 years experience battling/cyphering throughout the West Coast of the United States in the styles of Breaking and Rocking with Time II Rock Crew and Soul Heavy Crew and 4 years of studying modern/contemporary movement. Babay practices deep listening and channels movements to express the inherited resilience and violence of the Pilipinx psyche. She fuses intuitive movements inspired by funk, bass, Philippine Percussion, environmental sound, breath, and site specific location. Weaving connections between the strength of Pilipinx of the diaspora, people of color, womyn, queer/trans communities, indigenous peoples and those at the margins, she builds community through shared creation of holistic artistic resistance and wellness. More at babaylangles.co

Marquise Stillwell

Marquise Stillwell, the founder and principal of Openbox, created a company that represents a culmination of 20+ years of experience. The Openbox vision is, above all,people-centered: focused on improving the lives of people in the communities its clients serve, whether through extensive business design work; deep resources for design research and innovation; or film. Marquise also brings his passion for supporting diverse cultures and bringing positive change through his many philanthropic and creative activities, from teaching at Danish design schools—CIID in Copenhagen and the Kaos Pilot in Aarhus; to co-founding Deem Journal, a publication focused on design and social practice; and also collaborating with his Openbox colleague Petter Ringbom on films including Shield and Spear (2014) and The New Bauhaus (2019). Marquise serves as a board member for the Lowline Underground Park, Stae, Artmatr, and Urban Ocean Lab. He is also a member of the High Line Advisory Committee.

Lauren Ruffin

Lauren Ruffin is Fractured Atlas’s co CEO and the founder of Crux. Prior to joining the team at Fractured Atlas, Lauren served as Director of Development for DC-based organizations Martha’s Table and the National Center for Children and Families. She was also fortunate to serve in various roles at and various positions at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Children’s Defense Fund, New Leaders, and AAUW. Before entering the nonprofit sector, Lauren held the position of Assistant Director of Government Affairs for Gray Global Advisors, a bipartisan government relations firm. She graduated from Mount Holyoke College with a degree in Political Science and obtained a J.D. from the Howard University School of Law. In her spare time, she served on the Board of Directors of Black Girls Code, and can be found mountain biking or gesturing wildly at the teevee in support of Duke University’s men’s basketball team.

Marla Allison

Marla Allison is a visual artist producing artwork inspired by traditions, cultural displacement and the human experience. Originally from Laguna Pueblo, New
Mexico, she is committed to participating in artist residencies that facilitate
collaborations with artists from around the world. In her words, “Through the
collaboration of artists, free thinkers and open-minded creative people, we can
strengthen each other and build greater bridges…no matter where you come from
or how you start, if you set a journey to learn, you will inspire and understand the
essence of a strong human race.”
Allison maintains a lifestyle committed to travel and participation in cultural
exchanges that have yielded lectures, murals, illustrations, and art exhibitions.
Allison has produced art in Bristol, UK; Abu Dhabi, UAE; Riyadh, in the Kingdom of
Saudi Arabia; Manama, Bahrain; Budapest, Hungary; and more locally in the USA in
cities such as Salem, MA, Washington DC, New York, NY, Providence, RI, Tucson and
Phoenix, AZ, and New Mexico.
You can find Marla’s work in Santa Fe, NM and Scottsdale, AZ at ww.kinggalleries.com, Tulsa, OK at www.lovettsgallery.com, Rain Maker Gallery in the UK at www.rainmakerart.co.uk, and the Abu Dhabi Art Hub in Abu Dhabi, UAE at www.adah.ae, or you can view more on her website www.marlaallison.com.

Jae Rhim Lee

Jae Rhim Lee is a transdisciplinary artist, designer, and entrepreneur. She holds degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Wellesley College and is the founder and CEO of funeral startup Coeio, Inc. In her early work as a grad student at MIT, she built systems that reworked basic human processes before turning to work on a compelling new plan for the final human process: decomposition. Her Infinity Burial Project explores the choices we face after death and how our choices reflect our denial or acceptance of death's physical implications. She's been developing a new strain of fungus, the Infinity Mushroom, that feeds on and remediates the industrial toxins we store in our bodies and convert our bodies into nutrients. She is a Creative Capital awardee, a Ted Fellow and Lecturer and Fellow at the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford (affectionately known as “the d.school”).

Kerri Schlottman

Kerri Schlottman is the Director of Institutional Advancement at Creative Capital where she manages the development department and oversees strategic initiatives and partnerships that generate investment into the creative economy. A native Detroiter, Kerri has served local, national, and international arts communities since 2000 in a variety of organizations, including ART21, Apexart, and Detroit Artists Market. She has been interviewed extensively about her arts and fundraising experiences, and has been an invited speaker at major conferences focusing on culture, technology, and education, including SXSWEdu, Games for Change, and the National Arts Education Association. Kerri holds a Master’s degree in Visual Culture from Wayne State University in Detroit and is currently a Masters of Legal Studies student at Arizona State University. She is also a published novelist, has participated in numerous performance art projects, and is a lover of documentary films.

Alicia Inez Guzmán

Alicia Inez Guzmán currently lives and works in Santa Fe. Her writing focuses on Indigenous and Chicanx art practices and histories of land use in the Southwest. She has taught over the past seven years in modern and contemporary art and visual culture of the Americas at the University of Rochester, Eastman School of Music, the University of Buffalo, and Santa Fe University of Art and Design. Alicia has also served as a consultant with various museums about exhibitions and collections and written several catalog essays, curated shows featuring queer artists and artists of color, as well as worked in publishing as the senior editor of New Mexico Magazine, where she regularly sought writers of color and authentic storytelling. She is a 2017 recipient of an Andy Warhol Foundation Creative Capital Arts Writers Grant for her website Tierra Firme Projects and a 2019 recipient of a Fulcrum Fund.

Olivia Brown

Olivia Brown is a mixed Black femme from Tulsa, OK. She is a maker and a do-er that advocates for the arts and creativity through her practice, educational outreach, and design thinking. Olivia believes in experimenting with New Media (University of North Texas, BFA 2015) to push the boundaries of what has already been created and to address the current moment with a fitting medium. Her work explains the things she doesn't know about the world to herself and shares that learning with others. She intends for these efforts to increase human connection and understanding. Olivia currently lives and works in Santa Fe, NM as a Senior Artist with MEOW WOLF, an immersive arts company. There, she focuses on the potential of immersive installation on a large and public scale and grows her skills in collaborative art-making.

about the dots between

Advisory Committee

Olivia Brown

Benjamin Muñoz

Bess Murphy

Vicente Telles

Frank Rose

Learning Circle Leader

Babay L. Angles

2021 Speakers

Marquise Stillwell

Lauren Ruffin

Marla Allison

Jae Rhim Lee

Kerri Schlottman

Alicia Inez Guzmán

Olivia Brown

About Me