Columbia Alums and Faculty Awarded 2026 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowships

On July 23, 2026, the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) announced the recipients of their 2026 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship program, and among them were five alums and a former faculty member of the School of the Arts. 

For the past 41 years, with support from the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA), the program has awarded $37.4 million in unrestricted cash grants to 5,726 artists across 15 disciplines, recognizing five disciplines per year on a triennial basis. This year, NYFA awarded a total of $903,000 in the form of unrestricted cash grants to 132 artists throughout New York State working in Craft/Sculpture, Digital/Electronic Arts, Nonfiction Literature, Poetry, and Printmaking/Drawing/Book Arts who were selected from 3,985 applicants in discipline-specific peer-review panels. Columbia artists have demonstrated a deep interest in materiality and process—five of the six recipients were awarded fellowships in Craft/Sculpture. Let's meet the fellows.

Visual Arts alum Sasha Fishman '24, a sculptor and researcher based in New York, works with materials such as hagfish slime, algae, and cicada shells to investigate marine biomaterial extraction, toxicology, and genetic engineering as points for critical analysis and mechanisms for sculpting. Fishman has shared and exhibited her work internationally at galleries and institutions such as the Indian Ceramics Triennale, Caltech, Printed Matter, and the Jewish Museum in NYC. Her work has been supported by residencies at Smack Mellon, ACRE, NAHR, Art Ichol, and High Desert Observatory; Fishman is a Pratt Foundations Lab Art + Sci Visiting Artist, a 2025 artist in residence at ILY2 in Portland, and a 2024 Puffins Grant recipient.

Born in Ayiti and raised in the Bahamas, Visual Arts alum Jeffrey Meris '19 works across sculpture, installation, conceptual activations, and drawing to consider ecology, embodiment, and various lived experiences while healing deeply personal and historical wounds. Meris has exhibited at François Ghebaly, New York (2026), David Kordansky, Los Angeles (2025); Prospect NOLA 6 (2024); Williams College Museum of Art, Massachusetts (2024); MoMA PS1, New York (2023); the Amon Carter Museum, Texas (2023); Lehmann Maupin, New York (2022), among other galleries, museums, and institutions. Meris was a 2020-2021 NXTHVN Studio Fellow, a 2022–2023 Studio Museum in Harlem Artist-in-Residence, a 2025 Vilcek Creative Promise Prize Awardee, and is the 2025–2028 Jerome Hill Artists Fellow. 

Visual Arts alum Anna Ting Möller '23 lives and works in New York City and Växjö, where she makes living sculptures that explore the corporeal potential of kombucha, the sexualized and grotesque, and the fetishized "other." Möller's work has been exhibited internationally; supported by institutions such as MASS MoCA, The Here and There Collective, and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council; and has appeared in the Brooklyn Rail, Hyperallergic, and Vogue Scandinavia, among other publications. She is an August–September 2026 MacDowell Artist-in-Residence.

Hailing from Chicago, Visual Arts alum and Adjunct Assistant Professor Patrice Renee Washington '14 lives and works in Newburgh, NY. A multidisciplinary artist working across ceramics and textiles, Washington has shown in solo and group exhibitions across the US, including solo exhibitions at Institute of Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University (2024), KinoSaito (2023), Marinaro (2021, 2019), Underdonk Gallery (2018), and a 2018 solo museum exhibition at The Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, Denver, CO. In 2020, Washington was included in Barring Freedom at the San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, CA, which traveled to the Institute of Arts and Sciences at UC Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA. Additional group exhibitions include Williamson Gallery at Scripps College, Claremont, CA; Mindy Solomon, Miami, FL; Reyes Finn, Detroit, MI; Jenkins Johnson Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; We Buy Gold, Brooklyn, NY; Sculpture Center, Queens, NY; Abrons Art Center, New York, NY; 47 Canal, New York, NY; Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts, Brooklyn, NY; and the LeRoy Neiman Gallery, New York, NY.

Kabir Carter, a former Guest Artist in the Sound Art program, makes work through performance, installations, writing, and related discursive activities. He shapes sound's residues and traces the flows of spatial intensities between humans, nonhumans, architectural structures, and communication architectures. He has performed, interacted with, and installed work within a variety of sites and environments, including bodies of water, parks, industrial sites, theaters, art exhibition spaces, walkways, passages, staircases, elevators, and more. His work has been presented and exhibited at Diapason Gallery, New York; HKW–Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; Inter Arts Center, Malmö; ISSUE Project Room, Brooklyn; Museet for Samtidskunst, Roskilde; Overgaden Institute of Contemporary Art, Copenhagen; Pageant, Brooklyn; and Studio Museum in Harlem, New York. He has participated in Bergen Assembly, CTM (club transmediale), Festival Bonn Hoeren, Full Pull, Performa Biennial, Sonic Acts Festival, Tuned City Brussels, and Unsound Festival New York. Carter has been a Danish Arts Council DIVA Programme awardee, a fellow at Hochschule Für Bildende Kunste Braunschweig, and a resident at LMCC Workspace Program, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. He received his MFA from Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College, where he now serves as Co-Chair of Music/Sound.

Writing alum Beth Raymer '08, who was awarded the fellowship in Nonfiction Literature, is a journalist, screenwriter, and the author of the memoir Lay the Favorite (Random House, 2010), which was adapted to a feature film, the novel Fireworks Every Night (Random House, 2023), Head of Household: A Journal for Single Moms (Princeton Architectural Press, 2023), and Nuclear: Family and its Aftermath (Random House, 2025). She has written for The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, and Sports Illustrated, and has received fellowships from MacDowell (2010, 2013), Yaddo (2016, 2019), and Fulbright (2009), among others.

"When NYSCA's partnership with NYFA started over 40 years ago, no one could have predicted that it would recognize almost 6,000 artists," said Erika Mallin, Executive Director of NYSCA. "This year's grantees are receiving more than funding; they are joining a legacy of New York artists who have shaped our world and inspired our future. Congratulations to each of our 2026 grantees, we look forward to following your accomplishments."

See a full list of grantees here.