spb Grant (Past Recipients)
2024 Grant Recipients
For 2024 we are thrilled to announce that four artists have been awarded grants, thanks in part to the generous sponsorship of the Center for @cartoonstudies! We are grateful for your support!
e gachupin
e gachupin (@fur.elisse) is a Houston-based multimedia artist that explores the intersection of traditional artistic practice with contemporary craft and the ever-changing digital world. By merging Chicana and lesbian history, humor, and emotional examination, gachupin creates zines that convey vulnerable topics and critique through an absurdist lens. Their zines range from long-form collage, diary entries, parodies of our overstimulating internet culture, and a fanzine of a popular German-language novelist.
Monae Jacobs
Monae Jacobs (@monaeism) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work is heavily influenced by their practice of divination and ancestral connection. Their work aims to be a celebration of life for the queer ancestors who could never examine the nuance in their way of being due to navigating the traumas of enslavement. Inspired by the historical and geographical context of their birthplace, Galveston, TX, Monae’s work encapsulates the pursuit of Black liberation using paints, oils and collages.
Will North
Will North (@willnorthstudio) is a cultural worker and community historian based in Houston, Texas. Through his writings and artwork, he helps to facilitate intergenerational dialogues in shared spaces. He develops curriculum as a mentor in a rites of passage program for teenage boys and has worked with children of all ages as a volunteer art instructor in area schools. He organizes cultural immersion trips for youth and elders in order to expose them to the world outside of their city of origin.
Sydney Selene
Sydney Selene (@sydyofstars) is a 23-year-old fat femme from Texas. They graduated Magna Cum Laude from the University of Houston Honors College, where they were first introduced to the world of Alternative Media. After volunteering with the literary arts nonprofit Writespace for over a year, Sydney has moved back to Houston to pursue her creative passions. She considers herself a newbie to the publishing space, but a lifelong curious creator. Selene particularly loves to make zines on paper she recycles herself, often using collage, erasure poetry, and researched manifestos. Among handbound journals and her typical zines, Sydney will debut “Hackneyed, Ersatz: The Anti-AI Zine”, a publication that she hopes to grow into a place for creatives to discuss the pitfalls of generative AI. You can find them at @sydyofstars on Twitter, TikTok, and Youtube, and on their website sydyofstars.com.
2023 Grant Recipients
Tyler Trevino
Tyler Trevino (@temptatszine), a native of Houston, Texas, is a multi-media artist with a passion for punk. One of his notable projects is Temp Tats, a magazine that aims to document the Houston music scene and preserve it for future generations. Throughout Trevino’s career as an independent journalist, he has produced 5 issues that feature hundreds of Houston-based bands and artists.
Nobel J. Harte
I’ve dreamed of being a writer ever since I was a little kid. My mom even taught me to get good at it for competitions in elementary school! I used to be scared to pursue my dreams, anxious that I would fail or that I’d be better off finding a “real job.” Finally, at age 22, I decided to just go out and try it! I love zines because they’re a simple and fun medium to show off my writing. Writing is my favorite form of self-expression and helps me communicate topics that may otherwise be difficult to talk about.
Yixiao Yao
Yixiao Yao (https://yaoyixiao.com/Info) is a Chinese post-media artist/researcher. They utilize texts, sound, images, paint, clay, letters, common substances, and their own body in work. Using real, constructed, mediated materials in and out of archives they are able to compose, curate intra-actional exchanges, and invite the participation of active viewership, readership and thinkership. They have curated/participated/published work in Ohklahomo, Mayfield, Open Art Studio, SITE Gallery, The LGBTQ+ Intergenerational Dialogue, and No Nation Art Lab.
Yixiao received their BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, they are a MA Religion student at Rice University.
Eman Khan
Eman Khan is very active in the Disability community in Texas and across the U.S. She gives keynote speeches about Disability, gender, and fashion. Eman makes zines to express their chronic pain experience.
Ripley Larue
Ripley Larue (@ripleylarue) is a multidisciplinary lesbian muralist, illustrator, and printmaker. Their work primarily explores dynamics within butch and femme relationships and intersections of lesbian and trans identity.
Mellany Medina
(@mellows.studio) I am a fellow Houstonian mixed media artist. Most of my life consists of collecting mail scraps, old magazines, and trash. I love to spend my time watching Real Housewives while I sit on the floor covered in paper cuttings, paint, and glue. I love to create art that makes people laugh and have interesting conversations with people. Creating art has helped me feel more confident in myself and has helped me be involved in amazing communities.
Jimmi Mendoza
My name is Jimmi Mendoza. I am a non binary Hispanic here in Houston Texas I’ve recently been trying to figure out my artistic skills and get further into the Zine and artist community. I really enjoy photography as a hobby and career and want to create self esteem on those who i take pictures and that they should love themselfs for who they are no matter what. i enjoy learning new things and exploring new medias and other things in the world I’m very adventurous. I hope to grow as a person and a artist in the near future and expand my art into different communities of the world.
Kai Aguirre
Hello I’m Kai Aguirre (@puppyslideflute) from San Antonio TX and currently 22 years old! I’m considered a Swiss Army knife as I can use different mediums to communicate stories and funny goofy drawings. I just graduated with a BFA in Fine Arts with a focus in Sequential Art, Storyboarding, and painting. When I’m not being an artist, I love reading, playing video games, and doing random exercises!
Mary McCall Pineda
Mary (@quite_mary) is an interdisciplinary artist that focuses on the exploration of accessibility in art, using common objects and found materials in conjunction with easily located instruments, like a cell phone or copy machine, to create as way to challenge the barriers that low socioeconomic artists are often faced in overcoming before being taken seriously as an artist.
Grayson Michael Harper
Grayson Michael Harper (@gmhriot) is a two-time Houston Youth Poet Laureate Finalist and aspiring journalist. He is a creative writing student with a focus in poetry and creative non-fiction, and has been previously published in outlets like Blue Marble Review, The Augment Review, and Paper Crane Journal. In Spring 2022, he was accepted as an executive editor at Cathartic Youth Literary Magazine after being published through them as an Editor’s Choice writer. This Collateral Body, a confessional poetry and prose compilation, was his first published collection of work.
Urethra Burns
Urethra Burns (@urethra_burns) (They/Them) is a Houston native non-binary multidisciplinary drag artist. They started their drag career in the Houston queer nightlife scene and have since transitioned to a multidisciplinary art practice that has no limits in medium or location. When not performing, they can be found working in textiles, photography, zines, and conceptual assemblage. Urethra recently had their first solo exhibition at Box 13 Artspace in October 2022. Their work has also been shown at ICOSA Gallery, Austin International Drag Festival, Blaffer Gallery, Match Theatre, and The Orange Show.
Nelly Akhmadikina
My name is Nelly Akhmadikina. I am a queer woman with PCOS living in Houston with my fiancée and 3 year old doggo.
2022 Grant Recipients
Tobi Carr
Tobi Carr (@sistagrrrlzine) is a Black queer creative from Houston, Texas. When not reading feminist theory, they work on their zine, Diary of a Sista Grrrl, which delves into their experience as a Black gender nonconforming person in the alternative scene. Tobi will use this money to create a zine detailing the history of Black people in punk. The intended audience of this zine would be both Black alternative people who have spent years in the scene and Black alternative people who are recently figuring out their place. This zine would include music recommendations, profiles of prominent Black punk musicians, and submissions contributed by Black punk artists.
Marcelo Gonzales
Marcelo Gonzales (@marcelomgonzales) is an author and illustrator. He uses inks, oil pastels, and even MS paint to tell stories of death, transforming, ghosts and ghostliness. He is currently residing in Corpus Christi, Texas where he enjoys the sunshine and the pelicans. Marcelo will use this grant to print I.S.A.A.C.2., his first full color 40-page book which will feature a collection of oil pastel illustrations and short stories about ghosts trapped in houses and bodies, and explore themes of dying and transformation. You can check out more of his work here: https://www.marcelomgonzales.com.
2021 Grant Recipients
Patrick Grady
Pat Grady is a Houston-based artist from Arlington, Texas. While Grady explores most visual mediums, lens-based expression is where he finds himself most comfortable. Love and gratitude have been themes of Grady’s work as of recent as he attempts to understand his day-to-day influences and what significance they hold. Expressing the importance of reflecting on these influences and extending gratitude to them, is a central theme of Grady’s work. He finds it important to recognize what truly fuels us and what makes life worth living. From the inherent beauty of nature to the casual coffee dates with friends, we are influenced and impacted daily by a vast variety of energies. Grady believes the key to love is understanding. If we work to understand these influences and how they shape us it can lead to quite a peaceful life.
Linda Mota
Linda Mota utilizes personal experience, trauma, and dreams/hallucinations to create art and stories to share with others. Discomfort and discovery through shades of grey while incorporating more unorthodox occult texts is a common theme among her work. Body issues from other queer friends and herself is shown through genderless cult figures, body horror, and a level of androgyny where people can see bits of their more desirable selves. Finding a common universal feeling among works through her stories is a personal goal that she hopes others can feel.
2020 Grant Recipients
Karina Killjoy
Karina Killjoy is a disabled queer femme artist, librarian, & community organizer who makes zines about radical self-love, trauma recovery, healing as resistance, & queer femme joy, all grounded in a practice of radical vulnerability.
Ruben Ramires
Ruben Ramires (@rubenramires) is a Houston-based Portuguese illustrator, and poet. He writes mainly poetry, prose and illustrates. His poetry and drawings are usually autobiographical, melancholic and nostalgic, but also talk about relationships and self-empowerment. A lot of his work is inspired by mental health and its challenges. He often employs rough lines and crude figures which are meant to capture raw emotions. His drawings incorporate different elements of verse, poetry, and humor. He has exhibited his drawings at art galleries in Houston. He attended zine fests in Houston and Austin. He illustrated “Elements of an adored mind,” a poetry book published by Rizapress. Also, he was featured in their Multimedia poetry and art journal. He has been a featured artist in PÒETISTHME #5, a French poetry magazine, with a whole section named “Rencontre” dedicated to his work. He was selected by UpArtStudio in Houston to design a window mural in downtown, that is currently being displayed on Main Street. He is the co-founder of FeministsForBreakfast, an ARTctivist project that uses illustration and social media platforms to give a voice to women, minorities, LGBTQA+ and POC people. He is currently working on his first Portuguese poetry book, and also on some partnerships with art galleries/projects in Portugal.
2019 Grant Recipient
Gianna Rendon
Gianna Rendon is the Founder of Echale Books, a pop-up bookstore in San Antonio, Texas. They began doing zines, at first for a school project and then because they realized the books/stories they wanted to provide their community didn’t exist yet. For more information on Echale Books, check them out on IG: @echalebooks!
2018 Grant Recipient
Kai Ramey
Kai is a recent graduate of the University of Texas at San Antonio and one of the founders of NWA Zine, along with friends Daryl Doggé and Amari Douglin. Follow @NWAZine on Instagram.
About shane:
Founder, torchbearer, historian, and guide of Zine Fest Houston from its early beginnings in the 90s, shane kept zine culture alive and created the foundations of the rich community. shane patrick boyle was a graduate of the University of Houston with a major in creative writing and a minor in LGBT studies. During his many years in Texas, he founded and helped organize the early years of Zine Fest Houston. He spent his time between Houston and Mena, AK, where he cared for his mother. He coalesced and held together a network of DIY artists and makers that still gather from all over southeast Texas and beyond for the festival he helmed. He published a self titled autobio zine, “shane,” for many years and was the founder/president of the Houston Area Comics Society. He was a gentle, nurturing soul and always put his friends and work first.