Three Columbia University School of the Arts alums have been named 2025-2028 Jerome Hill Artist Fellows: Pamela Council '14, Jeffrey Meris '19, and Asif Mian '18. The fellowship provides $60,000 over three years to support early-career artists.
The Jerome Foundation selected 45 artists total from Minnesota and New York City for this year's cohort, with panels composed of artists, curators, artistic leaders, and arts administrators reviewing 895 applicants. The selection process prioritized artists who take creative risks and demonstrate innovative approaches in their practice.
Council creates works focused on veneration and playful catharsis through multi-sensory installations. Their series Fountains for Black Joy has been commissioned by institutions including The Studio Museum in Harlem and VOLTA NY. Council is also a recipient of the 2017 Joan Mitchell Painters & Sculptors Grant and a 2023 Guggenheim Fellowship.
Meris, a multidisciplinary artist born in Haiti and raised in the Bahamas, has exhibited widely since graduating from Columbia, including shows at François Ghebaly, Los Angeles; Williams College Museum of Art; MoMA PS1; and the Amon Carter Museum. His practice explores materiality and larger cultural phenomena through sculpture, installation, and performance. He was recently awarded a 2025 Vilcek Prize for creative promise.
Mian uses video, installation, performance, and sculpture to investigate connections between life-shaping events. His work has been featured at the Whitney ISP, The Shed, Queens Museum and BRIC. His multi-chapter project RAF was exhibited in a 2021 solo show at the Queens Museum. He previously earned a Queens Museum-Jerome Foundation Fellowship.
"This Fellowship recognizes the essential roles artists play in cultivating thriving and evolving communities and seeks to nurture their imaginative artistic pursuits," said Eleanor Savage, President and CEO of Jerome Foundation. "Jerome Foundation is honored to welcome this group of creative changemakers."
The fellowship provides not only financial support but also professional development opportunities, including one-on-one coaching, and peer gatherings through the MAP Fund's Scaffolding for Practicing Artists program. Fellows also receive financial well-being workshops with artist and adviser Amy Elaine Smith.
