On Aug. 12, Carbondale Arts announced the six local creatives receiving the latest round of grants through its Artist Fellowship Program. Each will receive $2,000 thanks to support from the Wolfpack Foundation and additional, anonymous donors. Awardees Gabriela Mejia, Anders Carlson, Andrea Orrego, Zuleika Pevec, Jill Scher and Morgan Williams will be able to use the grants to fund active projects. They will share progress updates throughout the year, then present the final results next summer.
In conversation with The Sopris Sun, Carlson, Orrego, Scher and Williams said they felt deeply honored to have been selected. Each said they are actively working hard on their projects and they look forward to the final presentations. Mejia and Pevec were unavailable for comment.
Filmmaker Carlson plans to use his fellowship award to help fund a film about the reintroduction of wolves in Colorado, in collaboration with Dr. John Hughes of the Sacred Wolf Foundation.
“With the reintroduction of the wolves, we have a dynamic causing tension within our community and various groups,” Carlson described. “We have individuals who make their livelihood on the land with livestock, and we have others who want to see the natural environment restored to its former functioning. This issue presents an opportunity for us to engage in a dialogue in our community on an issue that divides us. I see this film as a valuable communication opportunity.”
Williams said his band, Sweet Jessup & The Dirty Buckets, will use this opportunity to work on a full-length studio album. The project launched in 2023 and several singles and a demo album produced by Cool Brick Studios are already available for streaming. With a growing and dedicated fanbase, the band aims to find a studio to collaborate with after narrowing down the tracks to include.
“When we play live, we have two and a half hours of music to share, so that leaves us a lot to work with,” he said. “We’re super grateful to have received the money from the grant. We already know we’re supported in this community, but having some money to support that is pretty powerful, and it’s really neat how Carbondale Arts can support all different genres of art in this community.”
In the spirit of highlighting creative diversity in Carbondale, Orrego — a multidisciplinary artist with an extensive background as an architect who has also worked in design and technology — will use her fellowship grant toward publishing a coffee table book that highlights a myriad of creatives and builders within Carbondale.
“I was and am very excited to be selected,” she said. “It was great to see a vast cohort of people win, and it was especially great to see how different everyone’s projects were. My idea for the coffee table book is to be graphic and have different chapters in which I showcase the community builders or the people moving and doing things here. Let’s say, a chapter for people in building and construction, one for dancers, one for plastic artists and one for people in the restaurant and hospitality business. I want to include a little bit of everyone.”
Scher, who has been a fiber artist since she was 9, plans to create a line of wearable art pieces for the 2026 Carbondale Arts Fashion Show. Her work has included puppetry and textiles, and the inspiration for this project came from taking an online course from a hatmaker in Amsterdam.
“I have this image in my head of nuno-felted capes with a matching hat, and what I have decided is to go through each month in the year and have a corresponding ensemble for each month,” she explained. “I’m really into color; I love working with it. This line of clothing is just one direction for me. Felting is one of those things that is open-ended. You can go in so many directions, and I don’t want to be stuck in just one area, but I always want whatever I do to be beautiful.”
For more updates, visit www.carbondalearts.com