Welcome Massachusetts Statewide Artists!

Assets for Artists is pleased to announce the latest group of artists to join our Massachusetts cohort! From a variety of cities and towns across the state, these amazing artists, designers and musicians wow us with the breadth and depth of their creative pursuits.

In the upcoming weeks, we'll also be announcing new enrollments in Boston, Holyoke, and Lawrence, MA. Stay tuned!

Roya Amigh, the world is that kind of sleep, 2016

Roya Amigh, the world is that kind of sleep, 2016

By configuring cut paper with materials such as lace, dandelions and cardboard, Roya Amigh’s installations take storytelling into a physical and non-linear realm. Using imagery based on Persian miniatures, she creates line drawings built from bits of glued thread and intertwines them throughout her fragile structures. Drawing on her identity as an Iranian woman, her work reveals suspended moments of memory in order to realize the uncertain border between meditation and rumination. Roya currently lives and works in the Boston area.


Taylor Apostol's sculpture is rooted in the desire to capture memories of place and body as they continually expand, contract, blur and contort. Two years living in Florence and Carrara, Italy ignited her passion for stone carving and plaster casting. Her process often leaves imprints of her body at work or traces of the environment where the objects take form. With intricately carved surfaces and bold color treatments, her work gives physical form to the transformation of a memory. She currently lives and works in the Boston area.

Taylor Apostol, You're Growing on Me, 2017

Taylor Apostol, You're Growing on Me, 2017


Lea Chiara

Lea Chiara

Lea Chiara is a folksinger and songwriter who grew up in the rich music scene of Western Massachusetts. Her music affords her an increasingly mobile lifestyle, and Lea spins soulful story-songs and boot-stomping, waltzy vignettes about her travels. Lea is also a visual artist who makes paintings, masks and colleges. These practices inform each other and occasionally exist together in performance pieces. With painting as her first love and activism at her core, her songs have a visual quality, combining poetry and natural imagery to carry important messages about the unsung heroes of everyday life. She currently calls Easthampton home.


Studying the violin since the age of five has enabled Michael Hustedde to cultivate an exciting musical career for himself a professional violinist. Originally from Lexington, KY, he has established himself as a sought-after soloist, chamber musician, and orchestral player in the greater Boston area, playing with ensembles such as the Boston Modern Orchestra Project and Marsh Chapel Collegium. Michael’s creative explorations have led him to varied repertoire and styles and allowed him to perform around the world with orchestra tours. Next he plans on recording a high-quality solo album.

Michael Hustedde

Michael Hustedde


Felipe Ortiz, Port Charlotte, 2017

Felipe Ortiz, Port Charlotte, 2017

Travels between his native Colombia and the United States have inspired Felipe Ortiz’s practice as a painter and muralist. In his series ““Explosive Nature” he draws elements from Colombia’s vibrant culture, colors, sounds and dense natural scenery. Other work focuses on the vast landscape and fast-paced urban environments of the United States. By plucking elements from both locations and merging them with different painting themes and styles, he creates his own idealistic pictorial visions. Felipe lives and works in the Boston area.


Nicholas John Winkler was introduced to glass at a very young age due to his father’s career as a ceramic engineer in the glass lighting industry. In 1994 his family moved to Corning, NY where he was exposed to renowned glass artists from around the world at the Corning Museum of glass, awakening his own interest in glass as an art medium. Glass allows Nicholas to take something that is intangible, an idea or a feeling, and make it tangible. By cutting and carving the glass to reveal interior layers, his work suggests that our present consciousness is based entirely off of past experiences. The layers of color in his work represent a timeline of these experiences. Nicholas lives and works in Northborough.

Nicholas John, Juicy Fruit

Nicholas John, Juicy Fruit


Amelia C. Young, Flamingophones, 2016 (ongoing)

Amelia C. Young, Flamingophones, 2016 (ongoing)

Amelia C. Young is a visual artist and sculptor of “devices” - objects and installations that change the way people interact with their worlds. Based in the Boston area, her work uses the cultural languages of consumer objects, waste materials, and the body to explore experiences of mental health and sustain-ability. Her process begins by examining a banal or harmful situation, such as plastic packaging or depression, then redesigning the central object or architecture into a plaything or explorable space.


Adrienne Harris is a Lowell based artist who creates illustrations for notebooks, binders, folders, and other school products. Her illustrations are fantastical in nature and focus on mythological creatures such as dragons and griffins. With her work she hopes to captivate a younger audience of school-aged children and adolescents who also enjoy dreaming up fantastical creatures.

f2c0bd57899887.59e7ea9de2606.jpg

Our 2018 programming in Massachusetts is possible because of our wonderful funders & partners, specifically the Barr FoundationMassachusetts Growth Capital CorporationSurdna Foundation, and the United States Department of Agriculture.