15 artists will be selected for our 2026 Capacity Building Grant Program Cohort. Applications are juried by a panel of creative peers who have achieved success in their field, and understand the needs of Cape artists and the challenges they face. This program promotes equal opportunity and seeks diversity in its applicants and participants. If you have never received an artist grant, we encourage you to apply – this program is intended for you!
2026 Cohort Announced!
2026 Cohort Announced!
A Creative Ecosystem Where Artists Thrive
The Capacity-Building Program empowers artists to embark on meaningful careers aligned with their values; enhance their creative endeavors; build purposeful networks to support their work; and access resources necessary to attain sustained success.
A 5-month program that guides artists in creating a roadmap that identifies goals for their creative business and action steps for achieving them. Artists in the cohort have access to workshops focused on strengthening and growing their business; one-on-one and group coaching in the creation of a business plan; connection to other creatives to support one another on their professional journeys; and a $1,000 stipend upon program completion.
virtual information sessions
2026 Applications Closed.
Check back Fall 2026 for the 2027 cohort.
PROGRAM TIMELINE
January — April 2026
September 8, 2025
Application opens
November 12, 2025
Application closes (deadline to apply)
November – December 2025
Applications reviewed and cohort selected
January 2026
Cohort onboarding
January – April 2026
Cohort workshops and peer meetups
End of April 2026
Program completion and release of $1,000 working capital grant
2026 Creative Exchange COHORT
Capacity-Building Grant Program Application
Check back Fall 2026 for the 2027 cohort.
2026 Capacity-Building Grant Recipients
Deyan Gerginov
Performance Artist & Musician
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Deyan (Deviber) is a self-taught singer-songwriter and beatboxer whose main instrument is guitar, with piano as a secondary focus. He builds community through collaboration, produces music for himself and other artists, and uses live performance to create meaningful connections between people.
Carly Smith
Visual Artist (Mixed Media)
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Carly Smith is a multidisciplinary artist and native Cape Codder. An avid traveler and life-long learner, she takes inspiration and materials from home and abroad to influence her artmaking. Her mediums include painting, drawing, ceramics, metals, and glass. She creates predominantly small works and functional pieces that are meant to be shared to spark joy in the daily lives of others. Examples include small display items, stationary, functional ceramics, or jewelry pieces. Carly also works as an art educator and is passionate about helping others to experience the joy of creativity.
Jennifer Stratton
Visual Artist (Painter) & Arts Educator
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Jennifer Stratton is a visual artist and educator specializing in expressive and creative arts. Alongside her artistic practice, she is a musician and provides face painting services. Based in Hyannis, Massachusetts, Jennifer lives with her husband.
Jennifer’s artistic journey began in early childhood with drawing and painting, supported by private and group lessons from various New Jersey artists. Upon graduating from high school, she was awarded the Art Prize. Despite expectations, she chose to pursue organic agriculture at the collegiate level, an academic path that led her to live and work in Papua New Guinea, Israel, and Brazil.
Upon returning to the United States, Jennifer experienced personal challenges that catalyzed a renewed engagement with her art. This period marked a shift toward a more introspective and life-connected mode of expression, resulting in a distinctive and expressive artistic style. She began exhibiting her work publicly in 1998, establishing a successful career with numerous salesJennifer’s profound experience with the therapeutic potential of expressive arts inspired her to support others in discovering their own creative capacities. In 2009, she earned a Certificate of Graduate Studies in the Professional Application of Expressive Arts for Healing from Salve Regina University in Newport, Rhode Island. Since then, Jennifer has collaborated with various organizations, groups, and individuals, facilitating expressive arts programs aimed at deepening creative connection and personal growth.
Naya Bricher
Visual Artist (Painter) & Arts Administrator
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Born in Trenton, NJ, and raised in South Kent, CT, Naya Bricher moved to Provincetown, MA, to live and work year-round in 2014. As a painter, Naya revels in the magical light and energy of Outer Cape Cod. She loves vibrant color palettes, toasty schnauzer smells, and sweet marzipan treats.
Her art invites viewers to experience the effervescent pops of delight within the deepest, most fulfilling joy. With each piece, she blends saturated colors and playful forms inspired by mid-century charm and a sense of whimsy. She explores the joy in everyday moments, honoring them in ways that spark curiosity and connection. She hopes her art becomes a source of light, a touch of wonder, and a reminder of beauty.
Naya is a proud alumna of Kent Center School (‘05) and Miss Porter’s School (‘09). In 2012, she completed a summer internship at the Fine Arts Work Center. In 2013, she graduated Phi Beta Kappa with highest honors in studio art from Smith College and received a residency at the Vermont Studio Center. In 2014, she returned to the Fine Arts Work Center as a full-time, staff-in-residence. She is currently the Administrative Director.
As an artist and arts administrator, Naya supports creative communities. Since 2017, she has managed the Peaked Hill Trust, coordinating residencies in the historic dune shacks within Cape Cod National Seashore. An advocate for well-being, she has over a decade of experience teaching movement classes, such as Zumba, for adults and seniors.
In 2025, the Provincetown Public Art Foundation commissioned her to paint a mural on centrallylocated MacMillan Pier. She is currently represented by Four Eleven Gallery.
Naomi Czupryna
Visual Artist (Mixed Media)
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Naomi Czupryna is a Cape Cod-based mixed media artist, Army veteran, and storyteller. Her work blends abstract expressionism with gentle figures, animals, and coastal charm. Each piece is a celebration of resilience, memory, and everyday magic.
Naomi’s vibrant palette and symbolic style evoke nostalgia and feminine strength, drawing inspiration from nature and myth. She believes art can be both a refuge and a rallying cry.
Through her work, Naomi invites you to bring home a piece of peace, transformation, and story.
Joy George
Visual Artist (Painter)
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Joy George is a visual artist whose work centers on the human figure as a site of structure, movement, and emotional presence. Her practice moves fluidly between representation and abstraction, exploring the figure as both form and metaphor. Through drawing and painting, she seeks to reveal the body’s underlying architecture while allowing intuition, gesture, and material to guide the work.
George earned her BFA from the University of Houston, where she studied architecture and fine arts, and her MFA from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston. She also studied communications design at the Newhouse School at Syracuse University. Continuing her commitment to growth, she works regularly with mentors Martin Campos of Philadelphia and Cape Cod artist Laura Shabott.
Her artwork has been exhibited nationally and throughout Cape Cod, where she lives and works.
Jennifer Langhammer
Ceramic Sculptor
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Jennifer Langhammer is a ceramic sculptor inspired by nature and nostalgia. By imperfectly recreating the everyday she asks you to look at things anew through the lens of memory, which is, itself, imperfect.
This winter she will exhibit her recent project "Significant Objects”, life sized ceramic sculptures of everyday objects that serve as touchstones and talismans in our lives. The reference objects and the stories about their personal meaning were submitted by friends and strangers both near and far. This series is ultimately about connection. Connection to the past, connection to the people and places we love, and, through sharing the pieces, connection to each other.
Jennifer is also known for her housewares based on common pantry packaging, particularly hand built and painted vessels that resemble the tomato cans found at many roadside flower stands on Martha’s Vineyard, where she lives. Akin to Jennifer’s fine art, these pieces are inspired by a fascination with the everyday object and a love of ephemera.
Jennifer has a BFA in Industrial Design from California College of Arts and a Post Baccalaureate degree from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. She has shown her work in both public and private galleries, nature centers, museums, and is in private collections around the world.
@jlanghammer
Sarah Manion
Fiber Artist
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Sarah (she/her, dharma name True Light of Courage) believes in joy as a spiritual pursuit. She is a fiber artist, spiritual ecologist, and Cape Cod native. Sarah has worked globally on the back-end of sustainable and ethical fashion production and supply chains on behalf of leading American brands. For many years, she was based in Africa where she collaborated directly with artisan cooperatives and textile producers including the management of a handbag production facility in Rwanda supplying Kate Spade's On Purpose program. Working side-by-side with global artisans showed her how making things with our hands embodies our innate sense of being interwoven with the world. She is a student of countless teachers including Zen master Thích Nhat Hanh, Robin Wall Kimmerer, David Abram, Mary Oliver, the Brewster flats, adrienne maree brown, Kate Fletcher, Dr. Larry Ward, her grandmother and aunt (both master knitters), her dog Lari, and all alpacas everywhere. She is an ordained member of Thich Nhat Hanh’s Order of Interbeing and holds an M.A. in Nature-Culture Sustainability Studies from the Rhode Island School of Design. Recently, she was the Executive Director of the mindfulness education nonprofit Calmer Choice. Currently, she is the founder and director of The Interwoven Institute. She lives on the ancestral lands of the Wampanoag (Cape Cod, Massachusetts, US) with her partner, her spinning wheel, and all her yarn.
Heather Pillar
Photographer & Educator
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Heather Pillar, photographer and teacher, has lived, taught and photographed in seven countries over four continents during the past 25 years. Her personal and collaborative photographic projects reveal her ongoing interest in women, girls' education, and aging.
In 1995, Heather collaborated with Morrie Schwartz during the last six months as he battled ALS. Her first monograph, Memento Morrie: Images of Love and Loss (Daylight Books, 2024) illustrates Morrie's philosophies through photographs of him interacting with family, friends, and caregivers and building community. Over a quarter-century later, Morrie's wisdom resonates with people around the world due to the best-selling memoir: Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom. Morrie taught people, including Heather - how to live fulfilling lives with love. “It is by facing fears of death that we learn how to live.”
Heather's photographs have been exhibited internationally as well as published in numerous newspapers and magazines such as People Magazine and The Boston Globe; books include The Wisdom of Morrie, Tuesdays with Morrie and Morrie: In His Own Words. Her work has also appeared on television (CBS Sunday Morning, Today Show) and online – NPR, Next Avenue (AARP) and on PBS’s Inside E Street.
Jackie Reeves
Visual Artist (Mixed Media)
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Jackie Reeves is an acclaimed Cape Cod–based mixed-media artist working out of the Old Schoolhouse Studios in Barnstable Village. Her work is inspired by both internal and external influences, including family history, personal memory, and broader cultural and societal forces.
Reeves is a co-creator of The InkLine Project, a collaborative animated film series that combines animation, poetry, and music to explore themes of vulnerability, resilience, and human connection. The project extends her figurative, process-driven studio practice into time-based media.
Figurative in nature, Reeves’s large-scale, layered works emphasize visible marks and accumulated surfaces that reflect movement and lived experience. Beginning her career as a professional mural painter, she developed a confident, physical approach to scale. Reeves has exhibited widely throughout New England, as well as in Washington, D.C., and North Carolina.
Lauren Wolk
Poet, Visual Artist, Filmmaker & Author
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Lauren Wolk is a published poet, artist, filmmaker, and the NYT bestselling author of the novels Wolf Hollow, My Own Lightning, Beyond the Bright Sea, Echo Mountain, and Candle Island. She anticipates the May 2026 release of The Outermost Mouse, her first picture book (and two others, thereafter). Lauren is also an educator and arts advocate who served as Associate Director of the Cultural Center of Cape Cod for 15 years. With the artist Jackie Reeves, she is co-founder of The InkLine Project, a collaboration involving animation, poetry, and music. As a visual artist, she is represented by the Larkin Gallery (Harwich Port, Provincetown). Lauren lives in Centerville.
Nick Zaremba
Visual Artist (Mixed Media)
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Nick Zaremba is a Multimedia Artist with a diverse background spanning graphic design, mural work, branding, illustration, pottery, painting, sculpture, video, and animation. In addition to his studio practice, he works for hire on commercial art projects, collaborating with brands and organizations to create custom visual work across physical and digital platforms. Zaremba’s studio art fuses bold color, layered textures, and playful abstraction across paintings and sculptural assemblages, often incorporating spray paint, acrylics, and found wood. His work channels a raw, intuitive energy—balancing street art aesthetics with fine art sensibilities—creating pieces that feel both spontaneous and deeply personal. His work has been exhibited in galleries across New York, Japan, and Canada and has led to commercial collaborations with globally recognized brands, including Pepsi, Vans, Converse, Bodega, Toy2R, Grillo’s Pickles, Cisco Brewers, Endstate, and Neiman Marcus.
Jay McDermott
Visual Artist (Painter)
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Jay McDermott is an artist with a primary focus on painting - using oil and acrylic. Originally from Massachusetts, he has lived in many parts of the US, including Santa Fe, New Mexico and the Central Coast of California (San Luis Obispo). Like Provincetown, his current home, these locations have had a significant influence in forming his artist’s voice. All three have a fertile artist community with tremendous regional uniqueness.
Early training was a self-directed curriculum at Mass Art and The Museum School of the MFA, both in Boston MA. Later training was through the Provincetown International Art Institute (PIAI), a local school in Provincetown, later incorporated into PAAM. Ongoing artistic development has been with multiple mentors, including live teachers and a stable of deceased greats such as Marsden Hartley, Blanche Lazell and Clifford Still
His current practice is painting abstract shapes and forms to generate visual structures, most with a mildly recognizable component. His work is often defined by the use of color blocks, utilizing the relationships of those colors to generate engagement and hopefully joy or comfort.
Alexis Charles
Digital Brand Storyteller & Visual Artist (Mixed Media)
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Alexis Charles of AC Creatives is a neurodiverse artist of color and educator whose work is rooted in curiosity, experimentation, and community. A forever learner and creative explorer, Alexis enjoys working across mediums and is constantly trying new forms of art as a way to learn, connect, and evolve.
Her work is created for the weirdos, outcasts, stoners, people who have felt “othered” and are seeking representation, joy, and belonging. Through handmade crafts such as zines, lighters, and jewelry, Alexis invites audiences into a whimsical, inclusive world that encourages self-expression and reflection on the roles we play within our local communities and society as a whole.
James (Jim) Vincent
Visual Artist (Painter)
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Jim Vincent started painting in the 1990’s when he first moved to Provincetown. He was working for the town of Provincetown as the Harbormaster and he was exposed to the beauty of the land and harbor. He was very drawn to the paintings of local artist Dan Rupe with his use of bold exaggerated fauvistic colors and playful looseness of his brushwork. Dan became Jim’s first painting teacher.
Jim continued to paint over the decades, while working multiple careers in engineering, psychotherapy and criminal justice. His mediums moved between oil, acrylic, gouache water color and ink. He recently starting studying with the Cape School of Art and he has expanded his ability to see color and to use it more confidently. He is learning to exaggerate the colors to come to see their “true” color.
Jim paints every day, mostly in the basement of his home in Truro, MA. He continues to explore ways of playing with light and color and creating interesting and dynamic landscapes, figures and still life paintings. He is currently playing with pointillism techniques and using bright exaggerated fauvistic colors with female figures in interior spaces.