spb Grant (Past Recipients)

2024 Grant Recipients

For 2024 we are thrilled to announce that four artists have been awarded grants, thanks in part to the generous sponsorship of the Center for @cartoonstudies! We are grateful for your support!

e gachupin

e gachupin (@fur.elisse) is a Houston-based multimedia artist that explores the intersection of traditional artistic practice with contemporary craft and the ever-changing digital world. By merging Chicana and lesbian history, humor, and emotional examination, gachupin creates zines that convey vulnerable topics and critique through an absurdist lens. Their zines range from long-form collage, diary entries, parodies of our overstimulating internet culture, and a fanzine of a popular German-language novelist.

Monae Jacobs

Monae Jacobs (@monaeism) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work is heavily influenced by their practice of divination and ancestral connection. Their work aims to be a celebration of life for the queer ancestors who could never examine the nuance in their way of being due to navigating the traumas of enslavement. Inspired by the historical and geographical context of their birthplace, Galveston, TX, Monae’s work encapsulates the pursuit of Black liberation using paints, oils and collages.

Will North

Will North (@willnorthstudio) is a cultural worker and community historian based in Houston, Texas. Through his writings and artwork, he helps to facilitate intergenerational dialogues in shared spaces. He develops curriculum as a mentor in a rites of passage program for teenage boys and has worked with children of all ages as a volunteer art instructor in area schools. He organizes cultural immersion trips for youth and elders in order to expose them to the world outside of their city of origin.

Sydney Selene

Sydney Selene (@sydyofstars) is a 23-year-old fat femme from Texas. They graduated Magna Cum Laude from the University of Houston Honors College, where they were first introduced to the world of Alternative Media. After volunteering with the literary arts nonprofit Writespace for over a year, Sydney has moved back to Houston to pursue her creative passions. She considers herself a newbie to the publishing space, but a lifelong curious creator. Selene particularly loves to make zines on paper she recycles herself, often using collage, erasure poetry, and researched manifestos. Among handbound journals and her typical zines, Sydney will debut “Hackneyed, Ersatz: The Anti-AI Zine”, a publication that she hopes to grow into a place for creatives to discuss the pitfalls of generative AI. You can find them at @sydyofstars on Twitter, TikTok, and Youtube, and on their website sydyofstars.com.

2023 Grant Recipients

Tyler Trevino

Tyler Trevino (@temptatszine), a native of Houston, Texas, is a multi-media artist with a passion for punk. One of his notable projects is Temp Tats, a magazine that aims to document the Houston music scene and preserve it for future generations. Throughout Trevino’s career as an independent journalist, he has produced 5 issues that feature hundreds of Houston-based bands and artists.

Nobel J. Harte

I’ve dreamed of being a writer ever since I was a little kid. My mom even taught me to get good at it for competitions in elementary school! I used to be scared to pursue my dreams, anxious that I would fail or that I’d be better off finding a “real job.” Finally, at age 22, I decided to just go out and try it! I love zines because they’re a simple and fun medium to show off my writing. Writing is my favorite form of self-expression and helps me communicate topics that may otherwise be difficult to talk about.

Yixiao Yao

Yixiao Yao (https://yaoyixiao.com/Info) is a Chinese post-media artist/researcher. They utilize texts, sound, images, paint, clay, letters, common substances, and their own body in work. Using real, constructed, mediated materials in and out of archives they are able to compose, curate intra-actional exchanges, and invite the participation of active viewership, readership and thinkership. They have curated/participated/published work in Ohklahomo, Mayfield, Open Art Studio, SITE Gallery, The LGBTQ+ Intergenerational Dialogue, and No Nation Art Lab.

Yixiao received their BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, they are a MA Religion student at Rice University.

Eman Khan

Eman Khan is very active in the Disability community in Texas and across the U.S. She gives keynote speeches about Disability, gender, and fashion. Eman makes zines to express their chronic pain experience.

Ripley Larue

Ripley Larue (@ripleylarue) is a multidisciplinary lesbian muralist, illustrator, and printmaker. Their work primarily explores dynamics within butch and femme relationships and intersections of lesbian and trans identity.

Mellany Medina

(@mellows.studio) I am a fellow Houstonian mixed media artist. Most of my life consists of collecting mail scraps, old magazines, and trash. I love to spend my time watching Real Housewives while I sit on the floor covered in paper cuttings, paint, and glue. I love to create art that makes people laugh and have interesting conversations with people. Creating art has helped me feel more confident in myself and has helped me be involved in amazing communities.

Jimmi Mendoza

My name is Jimmi Mendoza. I am a non binary Hispanic here in Houston Texas I’ve recently been trying to figure out my artistic skills and get further into the Zine and artist community. I really enjoy photography as a hobby and career and want to create self esteem on those who i take pictures and that they should love themselfs for who they are no matter what. i enjoy learning new things and exploring new medias and other things in the world I’m very adventurous. I hope to grow as a person and a artist in the near future and expand my art into different communities of the world.

Kai Aguirre

Hello I’m Kai Aguirre (@puppyslideflute) from San Antonio TX and currently 22 years old! I’m considered a Swiss Army knife as I can use different mediums to communicate stories and funny goofy drawings. I just graduated with a BFA in Fine Arts with a focus in Sequential Art, Storyboarding, and painting. When I’m not being an artist, I love reading, playing video games, and doing random exercises!

Mary McCall Pineda

Mary (@quite_mary) is an interdisciplinary artist that focuses on the exploration of accessibility in art, using common objects and found materials in conjunction with easily located instruments, like a cell phone or copy machine, to create as way to challenge the barriers that low socioeconomic artists are often faced in overcoming before being taken seriously as an artist.

Grayson Michael Harper

Grayson Michael Harper (@gmhriot) is a two-time Houston Youth Poet Laureate Finalist and aspiring journalist. He is a creative writing student with a focus in poetry and creative non-fiction, and has been previously published in outlets like Blue Marble Review, The Augment Review, and Paper Crane Journal. In Spring 2022, he was accepted as an executive editor at Cathartic Youth Literary Magazine after being published through them as an Editor’s Choice writer. This Collateral Body, a confessional poetry and prose compilation, was his first published collection of work.

Urethra Burns

Urethra Burns (@urethra_burns) (They/Them) is a Houston native non-binary multidisciplinary drag artist. They started their drag career in the Houston queer nightlife scene and have since transitioned to a multidisciplinary art practice that has no limits in medium or location. When not performing, they can be found working in textiles, photography, zines, and conceptual assemblage. Urethra recently had their first solo exhibition at Box 13 Artspace in October 2022. Their work has also been shown at ICOSA Gallery, Austin International Drag Festival, Blaffer Gallery, Match Theatre, and The Orange Show.

Nelly Akhmadikina

My name is Nelly Akhmadikina. I am a queer woman with PCOS living in Houston with my fiancée and 3 year old doggo.

2023 Grant Recipients