12 Miami Arts Share in $60,000 For Locust Projects’ WaveMaker Grants

Bex McCharen was one of the recipients of a grant for New Work for the experimental documentary project “Queer Atlantics” as part of Locust Projects 2026 WaveMaker Grants. (Photo courtesy of Locust Projects)

A dozen Miami artists and collectives will receive a total of $60,000 to develop projects ranging from art on basketball courts and Miami beaches to an experimental radio installation and an exhibition inside a Coral Gables bar.

The 12  are recipients of Locust Projects‘ 2026 WaveMaker Grants, the 11th year of a program designed to support experimental work created outside traditional arts spaces. The grants, supported by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts’ Regional Regranting Program, provide artists with awards of up to $6,000.

Since the program began in 2015, WaveMaker has awarded $750,000 to 152 Miami artists, curators and collectives, according to Locust Projects.  There were 115 applicants who submitted projects  that were evaluated for their artistic rigor, connection to Miami-Dade, community impact, feasibility and accessibility to the public.

Larí García and Sue Montoya, “Reasoning and Feeling” at Seven Seas Bar. (Photo courtesy of Locust Projects)

The seven artists receiving $6,000 New Work/Projects grants offer a particularly wide-ranging look at where Miami artists are turning their attention. The projects are intended to eventually move beyond the grant stage and into public view.  WaveMaker specifically supports work presented in unconventional spaces and made accessible to the public, with this year’s projects planned for locations including beaches, basketball courts, parking lots, transit hubs and a neighborhood bar.

Artists larí garcía and Sue Montoya will create “Reasoning and Feeling,” a two-person exhibition at Coral Gables’ Seven Seas Bar that considers the disappearance of informal community gathering places, or “third spaces.”

Lisa Kusanagi’s “Until My Ocean Dries” will take place along Miami’s coastline, where the artist will use a monumental calligraphy brush and ocean water to write words on concrete pathways that gradually disappear in the heat.

Lisa Kusanagi, “Until My Ocean Dries.” (Courtesy of Locust Projects)

Najja Moon will turn outdoor basketball courts throughout Miami-Dade into classrooms for “Movement Studies,” a lecture-performance series that uses basketball as a way into art history.

Enrique Villacreses’ “NIJI: BLUE,” meanwhile, transforms a sports field into an outdoor installation and performance viewed both from the ground and through aerial drone footage.

Other New Work recipients are Bex McCharen for the experimental documentary project “Queer Atlantics”; Ọmọlará Williams McCallister for “CREAM (Community Rules Everything Around Me),” a project built around a speculative local paper currency; and Luka Gotsiridze for “GO TO BED,” an interactive public art project exploring rest, memory and what it means never to have had a bed of one’s own.

Teri Watson, “SEED Erosion Blocks. “(Photo courtesy of Locust Projects)

Isabella Bru will receive a $6,000 Long-Haul Project grant for “We Are Permitted,” the monthly series that turns parking lots and transit hubs into free pop-up galleries. Research and development grants of $2,000 each go to Nicole Combeau, Orlando Estrada and Oscar Rieveling, while Teri Watson will recieve a $4,000 implementation grant for “SEED Erosion Blocks,” which repurposes invasive sargassum seaweed into modular concrete blocks designed to help stabilize shorelines while functioning as public art.

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