For the last four years, N+T’s Public Art Accelerator, the year-long program in which N+T works with four Greater Boston-based artists who want to grow their public art practice, has resulted in public art that has asked us to reconsider solutions to climate change, reflect on cycles of building and unbuilding, offered encouragement when we needed it most, and celebrated ancestry in new ways. Neither a fellowship nor a grant—nor as simple as an academic course—it’s a hands-on, fast-paced learning experience designed to give artists everything they need to succeed in public art, including a grant of $25,000 each to make their projects a reality.
Guiding artists through their Accelerator year is one of the most challenging and exhilarating parts of my role as Curator at N+T. Challenging in that (spoiler alert) public art is hard; think permitting, outside elements, and chance. But exhilarating in that once the permitting hoops are crossed and materials tested for outside, the chance encounters that communities have with public art can lead to experiences that last a lifetime. New spaces and conversations open.
We are thrilled to announce the artists who have been selected for Cohort Five of the Public Art Accelerator: Krystle Brown, Eben Haines, Tanya Nixon-Silberg, and Ponnapa Prakkamakul. This Cohort works in a range of media, from installation to puppetry, painting, and performance, and is eager to work closely with Boston’s communities to co-create contemporary art. Together, we’ll open up more of Boston to public art.
Krystle Brown
Krystle Brown (they/them) is a multimedia artist based in Salem, MA. Their work explores the connections between class, ancestry, place, environment, and labor, often embracing the role of family archivist and community documentarian. Combining these themes, Krystle creates multimedia installations and photographs that explore the inherent power dynamics in these topics. They hold a BFA from Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Painting and Art History and an MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University.
While studying at SMFA at Tufts, Krystle was awarded the Montague Travel Grant to research in Northern Ireland to understand political strife through the 20th and 21st centuries. From 2019 to 2021, they were an Emerging Artist at Kingston Gallery and had their first solo show in March 2021. In 2022 they began a community art project, “Calling Home,” as an artist-in-residence with the Urbano Project in Boston, MA.
eben haines
Eben Haines' (he/him) works investigate the life of objects, emphasizing the constructed nature of history. Through figures and objects pictured against cinematic backdrops or in otherworldly settings, his paintings and installations suggest the passage of time and volatility. Set within displaced domestic structures, recent works consider themes such as climate change and systemic housing insecurity before and during the pandemic, exploring the illusionistic systems of privilege our society employs to mete out human rights like shelter, food, and healthcare. Comets race across the skies of bucolic landscapes, dying candles float before Roman portrait busts who stand in for the corrupting force of unchecked power.
Haines was born in Boston, MA in 1990, and he received his BFA with honors from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in 2013. Haines was a recipient of the 2018 Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Fellowship in Drawing, as well as the 2021 James and Audrey Foster Prize from the ICA Boston.
Tanya Nixon-silberg
Tanya Nixon-Silberg (she/her) is a Black mother, native Bostonian, educator, puppeteer and founder of Little Uprisings- an organization focused on centering artivism, racial justice, and liberation with kids. Her primary artistic identities lie in puppetry and storytelling and her work moves through the lens of liberation in Black identities focusing on body remembrances of childhood and joy. Her puppetry productions and creative research have been funded by The Jim Henson Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts,Puppet Showplace Theater, Boston Cultural Council and The Boston Foundation.
Tanya’s large-scale community-driven artistry has been exhibited at many Greater Boston institutions including the ICA, Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Peabody Essex Museum, and Fuller Craft Museum. She is currently in a multi-year partnership with Boston and Brookline Public Schools leading anti-bias/anti-racism professional learning and curriculum development. Tanya is also the co-leader of the Un-ADULT-erated Black Joy Collective with other Black mothers in Boston, and co-producer of Play for Change with the Gottabees. You will mostly find Tanya playing and learning from her 10-year-old daughter and imagining how we all get free together.
Photo of Ponnapa provided courtesy of Sasaki.
ponnapa prakkamukul
Ponnapa Prakkamakul (she/her) is a multidisciplinary artist and landscape architect based in Massachusetts. As a third-generation, ethnically Chinese born in Thailand, she relocated to Hong Kong then the United States. Inspired by her multinational background, Ponnapa’s work explores the relationship between humans and their environment, focusing on cultural displacement and sense of belonging. Using found materials foraged from landscapes and stories collected from local communities, Ponnapa aims to create place-specific artwork that truly represents their identity and cultivates a stronger sense of place.
Ponnapa holds a Master’s degree in Landscape Architecture with honors from the Rhode Island School of Design where she received the Lowthorpe Fellowship Award upon graduation. She has been a guest lecturer on creative placekeeping, participatory design, and hybrid drawing at University of New Mexico, Louisiana State University, University of Oregon, and Boston Architectural College. Currently, Ponnapa is a member at Kingston Gallery and a landscape architect at Sasaki.
The cohort was selected by a jury of public art experts, practitioners, past Accelerator artists, and enthusiasts. Composed of J Cottle (Dunamis Boston), Yng-Ru Chen (Praise Shadows Art Gallery), Sabrina Dorsainvil (City of Boston, Artist, N+T Board Member), Gabriel Sosa (Accelerator Artist ‘20), Johnetta Tinker (artist) –w they had the tough challenge of reviewing a record fifty-nine(!) applications submitted through an open call. The N+T Public Art Accelerator is generously funded by individuals who believe in the power of art + community, including Joyce Linde and James and Audrey Foster.
We’re only just beginning Cohort Five’s year. First, they’ll participate in fourteen workshops designed to offer all the practical and conceptual tools they’ll need to create public art. We’ll talk about what success means, consider questions around accessibility, equity and audience, and make sure they’re ready to manage large-scale budgets and fabrication timelines. Next, we’ll collaborate on public artwork concepts for a specific Boston neighborhood and ready everyone for pitches that simulate public art commissioning juries. And finally, we’ll see them through the completion of that concept, with projects launching by October 2023.
Want to follow along? Keep checking this page and follow @now_and_there on social media for updates and news on Cohort Five’s year. It will be challenging and exhilarating in all the best ways.
Header image: Cohort Four Accelerator artist Eli Brown’s Beam Me Down in East Boston