Oolite Arts Celebrates 40 Years of Championing Miami’s Visual Artists with $600,000 in The Ellies Awards

More than 45 artists and arts educators to be honored at a vibrant community celebration on April 16

Oolite Arts is turning 40 and it’s celebrating with the community that made it all possible! As part of this milestone anniversary, the nonprofit is awarding $600,000 through The Ellies, Miami’s Visual Arts Awards, to support over 45 local visual artists and art educators. It’s the largest amount ever awarded in a single year of the program, bringing Oolite’s total investment in Miami-based talent through The Ellies to $3.6 million in just seven years.

Included in this year’s total is a special $100,000 allocation commemorating four-decades of nurturing Miami’s artists, proof that Oolite Arts’ commitment to artists is stronger than ever.

“Turning 40 is a big deal, and we wanted to do something meaningful,” said John Abodeely, Oolite Arts’ new President & CEO. “The Ellies are about helping artists bring their boldest ideas to life, and this year’s recipients are doing just that.”

The 2025 Ellies awards ceremony, set for Wednesday, April 16, from 6 to 10 p.m. at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, promises to be an evening to remember. Chaired by Mireille Chancy Gonzalez and Edouard Duval-Carrié, the evening will spotlight this year’s inspiring grant recipients and honor Jorge M. Pérez and Darlene Pérez for their extraordinary contributions to the arts.

Founded by the late potter and visionary Ellie Schneiderman, Oolite Arts began as the South Florida Art Center, providing affordable studio and exhibition spaces for Miami’s visual artists. Schneiderman’s initiative transformed vacant storefronts on Lincoln Road into artist studios, catalyzing the area’s revitalization and fostering a thriving arts community. Her guiding principle was to “help artists help themselves,” a mission that continues to drive Oolite Arts today. In 2018, the organization established The Ellies awards in her honor, recognizing her unwavering dedication to supporting artists.

The Ellies Awards span four categories:
The Michael Richards Award, named in honor of the late artist Michael Richards, recognizes an artist who has established and sustained their practice in Miami while giving back to the community
The Social Justice Award, for artists using their work to advocate for equality and change in their daily lives and artistic practice
The Creator Awards, for ambitious visual arts projects across a wide range of mediums
The Teacher Travel Grants, which send art educators across the globe for professional development they bring back to the classroom
The $75,000 Michael Richards Award goes to trailblazing artist José Bedia, who emerged in Cuba’s transformative “Volumen Uno” exhibition in the 1980s. His work, which blends anthropology, storytelling, and Afro-Caribbean influences, is part of prestigious collections including MoMA, the Guggenheim, Tate Modern and PAMM.

“I am proud and honored to receive this award, especially since it came as a pleasant surprise to me and I wasn’t expecting it,” said Bedia. “As a local artist it makes me feel that my work is being appreciated and recognized by my community. This award will help me finance my ‘field work’ journeys that directly inspire my work, motivations, and artistic output.”

The $25,000 Social Justice Award is awarded to T. Eliott Mansa, whose assemblage practice draws from ritual and memorial traditions to honor Black lives and challenge systems of violence. “Receiving the Ellies Social Justice Award helps give me confidence that the work is serving its purpose and I’m moving in the right direction,” said Mansa. “With the footing of this award, I want to pivot from just hope to actually prioritizing the community, and show that Miami is investing in and advocating for socially-oriented artists.”

This year’s Ellies winners showcase the creativity and cultural richness of Miami’s art scene. Projects range from a mobile printmaking studio bringing art to underserved neighborhoods to a drag performance series uplifting trans and non-binary artists, and a photo and oral history project reconnecting Black musicians with vanished Miami nightclubs.

The 40th anniversary celebration will feature live music by collector and DJ Jack Benmeleh and indie duo Pocket of Lollipops, along with an exclusive performance-art activation by Ellies alum Jillian Mayer, previewing her upcoming show at the Sarasota Museum of Art. The event is generously sponsored by ICA Miami, Tito’s Handmade Vodka, and Zonin.

Individual tickets are $250 and sponsorships begin at $1,000. To reserve your spot for this unforgettable night celebrating Miami’s creative community, visit theellies.org.

2025 Creator Award Winners:

Aqua Etefia – Save Black ART / Black Art Institute
For a dynamic creative arts program offering immersive courses in art and graffiti, fashion design, and African drumming, led by professional resident artists to foster artistic skills, cultural appreciation, and hands-on creative expression.

Frances Trombly – Dimensions Variable 15 Year Publication
For a book that encompasses all the projects Dimensions Variable has produced in its 15-year history, creating a lasting tribute to the ongoing dialogue surrounding contemporary art in Miami.

Karen Rifas – Karen Rifas: A Survey
For a comprehensive survey catalog documenting four decades of her artistic practice in Miami.

MyFi Studio (Aimee Rubensteen & Dr. Josh Eisenberg) – tie the knot: the twilight years connect us
For a multimedia exhibition and autobiographical documentary video shown between Japan and Miami, contextualizing Miami as a shared home for MyFi Studio and Nam June Paik.

Rosa Naday Garmendia – Miami Street Press: Printing on the Move
For a mobile printmaking initiative crafted to bridge Miami’s diverse communities through accessible, hands-on art experiences.

Cornelius Tulloch – Creole Collage
For a series of maquette sculptures and large-scale mixed-media paintings, developed through a community workshop series, that imagines what the future of Miami’s architecture should look like.

Ariesela Diaz – Doll LinkUp
For a women-run weekly drag show, providing a vibrant, inclusive space that uplifts trans and non-binary performers, fosters queer joy, and offers one of the city’s few open stages for emerging LGBTQIA+ artists.

Isabella Marie Garcia – The Photography Care Matrix
For a year-long film photography series and workshop program that will document and teach experimental photography to incarcerated, at-risk, and rehabilitated youth and adults in Miami.

Gregory Clark – I Played Here
For a photographic series, oral history, and archival collection reconnecting musicians with the transformed sites of Miami’s historic Black nightclubs.

Morel Doucet – Secrets That The Wind Carries Away
For a significant public art installation in Coral Gables depicting a family’s boat journey, which honors the contributions of Black and Bahamian immigrants that have shaped the community.

Sydney Rose Maubert – Still Tippin’
For an installation of full-scale car sculptures as industrial monuments to Southern Black life and an examination of Southern car culture.

Clara Toro – Crossing Cultures: Photography Exhibits Bridging Communities
For an in-demand continuation of her photographic series documenting the residents of Wynwood Norte and Allapattah, and extending the project to additional neighborhoods.

Jevon Brown – The Magic City BarberShop
For a series of site-specific installations that celebrate the rich cultural heritage of Caribbean hair and barbershop culture.

Sheherazade Thénard – Little Islands
For a multi-disciplinary platform that connects artists and stories across the Caribbean diaspora.

Cara Despain – heirloom
For a cinematically scaled, multi-channel video installation of glowing uranium glass breaking in slow motion, highlighting the nuclear legacy of her home region and this hidden part of American history.

Gabriela Gamboa – Mythological Cartographies
For a multi-sensory installation that combines tactile maps with sound to explore themes of displacement and exile.

Nicole Combeau – Miami’s Elders of Resistance
For an enduring, online visual archive and physical exhibition dedicated to the lives of elders who have fought for justice in Miami.

Fernanda Froes – Hidden River
For a mixed-media textile installation that maps Miami’s Little River, tracing its ancient path alongside the redirected course imposed by urban development, using botanical pigments connected to the site—bridging art, history, and the environment.

Denise Treizman – Stomping On Our Barriers
For a large-scale, evolving wire mesh installation that explores physical and psychological barriers and incorporates interactive elements.

Amanda Keeley – A Decade of EXILE: Celebrating 10 Years of Independent Publishing
For a commemorative 10th-anniversary book publication that captures the evolution of EXILE from its beginnings as a pop-up bookstore to its current role as a nonprofit publisher of artists’ books.

Marisabela Telleria – The Blue of Distance
For a new body of work that will include 4-6 large-scale wall pieces and two community-based installations exploring themes of migration, memory, and connection within Miami’s diasporic communities.

Gabriel Jean-Paul Soomar – Ah Lil’ Noise Later!
For a site-specific installation with sound as the formative influence, activating the cultural space and encouraging participants to engage with sound as tangible material.

Cynthia Cruz – Code and Corpus
For a series of sculptures and an interactive website shaped through an iterative process involving artificial intelligence, exploring human-machine collaboration.

Yanira Collado – Insurgencies: A Meditation on Encoded Textiles
For a research project focused on the subversive nature of textiles used by African Maroons that were instrumental in hundreds of uprisings throughout the Caribbean and later through the Underground Railroad in the Southern United States.

Clara Varas – In Progress
For a re-imagination of the still-life through the lens of mom and pop shops and bodegas in Miami’s diasporic, working class neighborhoods.

Liene Bosquê – SynchroniCity
For a solo exhibition showcasing a twenty-year survey of the artist’s career with works never shown in Miami, new works, and a catalogue.

Lissette Schaeffler – ¡Porque el Conejo me Arañó!
For a book of the artist’s personal photographic project exploring her family’s ancestry, lineage, memory, displacement, and immigration.

Angela Valella – The Nightclub
For a book that captures the essence and history of The Nightclub, a unique pop-up art platform started in 2012, as well as a new series of events for The Nightclub.

Luján Candria – Still More Fragile
For a site-specific, immersive installation that interweaves visual, auditory, and moving-image elements that evoke the essence of the sea.

Melanie Oliva – Accelerating Teen Dreams
For a two-part workshop series that will provide high school students and their caregivers with the tools necessary to be accepted into college art programs.

2025 Cinematic Award Winners:

Julia Zurilla – Environmental Orbits (Episodic and Semantic Memory)
For an immersive video installation that establishes a dialogue between family vacation images from the mid-20th century, and contemporary footage of climate disasters in South Florida.

Francess Dunbar – A Sense of Place: Catch-A-Wave
For a poetic tribute to Miami’s disappearing history, using experimental narrative to preserve the filmmaker’s family surf and skate shop and the memory of a city in constant transformation, to be added to the Miami-Dade Public Library’s 16mm film archive.

Karla Caprali – Rumpelstiltskin Meets Mozart at the NWS
For a captivating 12-minute animated musical adventure blending orchestral music, narration, and animation, created in collaboration with violinist Belinda Stohner, composer Oscar Bustillo, and the Budapest Scoring Orchestra.

Rachelle Salnave – DUAL CITIZEN
For a humorous, heartfelt documentary following a father-daughter journey to gain their Haitian citizenship, set against the backdrop of the 2020 U.S. Presidential election and Haiti’s political upheaval.

Berenicé Brino – Bury Me Under The Palms
For a film that follows a multigenerational family sheltering in place on the eve of a quinceañera as a hurricane approaches, uncovering buried tensions and generational truths while exploring with form across cinematic and theatrical mediums.

Robert Colom – Lefty
For a short narrative film depicting the story of a thirteen-year-old boy who is left-handed in a devoutly right-handed society.

Jayme Kaye Gershen – Adult Night: A Super / Hot Wheels Doc
For a documentary capturing the vibrant culture, deep community bonds, and evolving legacy of one of Miami’s most iconic roller rinks.

Kareem Tabsch – Save Our Children
For a documentary film drawing a direct line between Florida’s new anti-LGBTQ laws and their origins in the Save Our Children campaign, spearheaded nearly 50 years ago in Miami by local beauty queen Anita Bryant.

2025 Teacher Travel Grant Winners:

Jennifer Gifford – Death Defying
To travel to Vienna, Austria, the hometown of Sigmund Freud, and study Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, and Freud himself with a focus on the topics of life and death.

Carolina Cueva – Peruvian Heritage
To travel to Peru and be immersed in the rich architecture, pre-Columbian ruins, and traditional crafts of Cusco and Ayacucho.

Mary Larsen – Experimental and Non-Traditional Printmaking
To travel to Edinburgh, Scotland and attend summer workshops at Edinburgh Printmakers, a print and visual arts studio.

Stephanie Hurst – Baltic State Capitals
To travel to the capital cities of the Baltic States: Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, and study the contemporary art of these post-Soviet border countries.

Silvana Soriano – Kaaysá Art Residency
To travel to the Kaaysá Art Residency in Brazil’s Atlantic Forest and research the intersection of ecology and art.