2025 Visiting Artist and Designer Fellowship
2025 Visiting Artist and Designer Fellowship
The UrbanGlass Visiting Artist and Designer Fellowship will provide one artist or designer the opportunity to develop a new work using the medium of glass. To explore the use and appreciation of glass as a creative medium, fellows will have access to the UrbanGlass studios, instruction, technical support, fabricators, an unrestricted honorarium as well as a budget to cover material costs. UrbanGlass’ 17,000-square-foot state-of-the-art glass studio offers a complete glassworking studio with a hot shop, cold shop, flameworking studio, neon shop, mold shop, and kiln shop.
As part of our continued mission to amplify underheard voices and perspectives in the field, we strongly encourage individuals that have not been historically represented in the arts to apply.
Previous fellows include Carly Mandel, Dean Erdmann, Doug Johnston, Aki Sasamoto, and Nooshin Rostami, among many others.
The fellowship is a combination of experiencing glass directly as a material of expression and a proposal driven exploration by pairing with glass artists to craft objects. Fellows also share their ideas and practice with the glass community by presenting a lecture, attending events and in being a visiting artist or designer for a day with our university classes held at UrbanGlass.
Fellows receive up to $15,000 in combined support for the proposal which is inclusive of:
- Scheduled access to UrbanGlass studios
- Project guidance and technical support
- Hiring glass artists and fabricators
- Enrollment in classes and/or private lessons
- Materials and supplies for the proposed project
- A $2000 honorarium dispersed in parts throughout the fellowship
The fellowship time frame is from October, 2025 to March, 2026. There is an introductory session for planning and learning about the different methods of working with glass. It is possible to complete your proposal or expend your budget before the end of the fellowship period.
Eligibility
- Artists or designers who work independently, or a pair of artists or designers who have established a collaborative practice (no more than two). Only one application is completed to apply as a duo and all items should be edited together under the collaboration.
- Applicants should not be currently enrolled in a degree-granting program or its equivalent during 2023. Please wait to apply until the next application cycle after your program completion.
- Glass experience is not required. This opportunity is ideal for applicants with minimal glass experience.
- Availability to complete the fellowship within the designated time frame.
- Availability to be onsite at the studio for classes, lessons, meetings and fabrication of work for the proposal.
- Not a current UrbanGlass employee, UrbanGlass board member, or a past UrbanGlass studio resident or fellow within the last five years.
Materials to submit
Prepare the following for submission through Zealous to complete your application
- Current resume or CV
- Current bio [150 words]
- A one to two page proposal including the nature of the work you would like to create and how glass may tie to the larger theme(s) within your practice or aesthetic
- An image, concept sketch or rendering of your proposed work
- Five examples of your art or design practice, either as images, writings or time based files
How to Apply
Please submit a completed application though our online platform
Firm Deadline: September 19, 2025 by 11:59PM est.
This fellowship is a funded project experience that is gently guided with a lot of self directed freedom built in. While applicants living outside the New York City region may apply, this opportunity is not a full-time residency, there is no room and board or studio space to occupy. To engage with the material and to work with other artists in the studio to realize your proposal, it will require being onsite at the studio at different days of the week and times of day. It is possible to work around your other projects or work schedule since this does not require full-time, onsite participation.
Judging Criteria and Notification
Applicants will be chosen on the basis of past work and on a new project as described in their proposal. An outside jury, consisting of experts in the field of art and design, will review all applicants through the online platform and then meet virtually to select the finalists.
Applicants will be notified by September 30th.
For further questions, please email Kate Dowd at kate@urbanglass.org
