2025 GRANTEE INTERVIEWS
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Queens artist Ricardo Aca is a 2025 Tallichet Freedman Foundation micro grant artist whose photography captures life across New York City.
Ricardo’s work draws from his lived experience as a Mexican immigrant, activist, and member of New York’s queer community. His images move across different spaces, capturing struggle alongside the pride, love, and resilience that hold these communities together.
During our studio visit, what stood out immediately was how direct the work feels and how passionately Ricardo speaks about the people behind it. His images confront questions of belonging, using language like “dreamer” or “not a criminal” to speak to the bias immigrants face in this city.
That same energy carried into his reflections on the sacrifices of immigrant families, photographing a movement for street vendor reform, and the drag performances he attends, where joy becomes a form of visibility, connection, and resistance.
As Ricardo shares, “My photography grows out of my journey of being an immigrant, being Mexican, being queer, being Latinx.”
Links
Artist Website | https://www.ricardoaca.com
Artist IG | @ricardoacanyc
Favorite Ridgewood Spot | Cholita | Map
Credits
All images and video courtesy of the artist. © Ricardo Aca, all rights reserved.
Music Credits
Song: get it provided by mobygratis
Song: dec 26 living room provided by mobygratis
Song: Playa del Sol - latin lofi | Music by: xethrocc
Song: Houses provided by mobygratis
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We visited Bambi’s studio on a cold winter day and were instantly warmed by their luminous paintings and expansive visual world. The work we viewed was grounded in conversations with queer and trans elders, informed by archival material and reinterpreted through Bambi’s own lens. As Bambi reflects in the interview, “I think of queer history as a moment that stretches both backwards and forwards through the past and into the present.”
During our visit, Bambi shared the extensive research behind the work and how closely it connects to the people and histories it reflects. Gathering source material directly through their network, largely through social channels, they build a living archive that informs both the compositions and content of the work.
Bambi will often paint themselves into these constructed scenes, embedding their own presence within the work itself. Through saturated color and layered passages of oil paint, archival fragments transform into expansive visual worlds where memory, lived experience, and collective histories become intertwined.
Bambi Alder is a 2025 TTFF microgrant recipient.
Links
Artist Website |www.bambialder.com
Artist IG |@femboy___supremacy
Favorite Ridgewood Spot | Harry Houdini’s Gravesite (Machpelah Cemetery) |Map
Credits
All images and video courtesy of the artist. © Bambi Alder, all rights reserved.
Music Credits
Song: Water Rail | Artist: Kia | Music by: CreatorMix.com
Song: air boa provided bymobygratis
Song: head sound provided bymobygratis
Song: Houses provided bymobygratis
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It was lovely seeing Courtney Childress’s needle-felted artworks in her light-filled studio. There is a quiet humor in encountering what initially reads as a “fuzzy painting.” However, that immediate sense of softness soon recedes and matters less, as the strength of her decisions comes through.
Working in needle-felted wool on canvas, Courtney applies the material largely blind, building each work over hundreds of hours. During our visit, it became clear how closely her process is tied to the material itself, with each piece responding to what the wool allows and demands.
During our visit, it became clear how closely her process is tied to the material itself. The increasing depth of her stretchers comes directly from her observation of the wool over time, with each piece responding to what the material allows and demands. Listening to Courtney speak about this evolution offered an insightful window into how the work develops through endurance and her ongoing dialogue with the material.
Courtney Childress is a 2025 TTFF microgrant recipient.
Links
Artist Website |www.courtneychildress.com
Artist IG |@courtneychildress
Favorite Ridgewood Spot | Bakeri |Map
Credits
All images and video courtesy of the artist. © Courtney Childress, all rights reserved.
Music Credits
Song: later time provided by mobygratis
Song: jul 31 provided by mobygratis
Song: Avatar | Artist: Kia | Music by: CreatorMix.com
Song: lofi-jazz-398289 | Artist: DELOSound
Song: Houses provided bymobygratis
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Working across a wide range of subjects, her use of character avatars contributes to the illusory, surreal environments they inhabit. In response to a growing dependence on AI and the realities of climate change, the work explores digitization, the loss of the human touch, and the emotional weight of digitally connected lives.
Vyczie also shared her series of Tamagotchis, painting internet friends she may only know through social media with a tenderness that makes these distant digital relationships feel strangely intimate and real. As she shared, “when you’re witnessing or seeing tragedy, you need to find a bit of humor to live.”
This balance between heaviness and lightness carries throughout the work. Vyczie’s soft, breezy visual language transforms even the darkest subjects into scenes that feel strangely approachable.
Vyczie Dorado is a 2025 TTFF microgrant recipient.
Links
Artist Website | https://vycziedorado.wixsite.com/vycc
Artist IG | @vyczie
Favorite Ridgewood Spot | Cafe Pri | Map
Credits
All images and video courtesy of the artist. © Vyczie Dorado, all rights reserved.
Music Credits
Song: Bobby Astro | Artist: Kia| Music by: CreatorMix.com
Song: meaningless provided by mobygratis
Song: mondamusic-upbeat-upbeat-music-491688 | Music by MondaMusic from Pixabay
Song: nveravetyanmusic-futuristic-beat-146661 | Music by Nver Avetyan from Pixabay
Song: Houses provided by mobygratis
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Dr. Evilletown’s work engages ecological concerns, human rights, childhood memories of nature, sensory accumulation, and mediated social experience through painting, sculpture, installation, sound, video, and performance.
During our studio visit, what stood out immediately was how naturally these different mediums coexist within her practice, all appearing to hold equal weight and each feeding into another rather than existing separately.
In the interview, Dr. Evilletown reflects on accessibility, experimentation, and making work that reaches beyond traditional art audiences. Throughout her work, there is a strong sense of movement and motion, from the gestural mark-making within her paintings to the layered montage and collage of her video and performance work. The same frenetic, vibratory energy carries across mediums, creating environments that feel constantly in flux. Her work resists hierarchy, prioritizing connection, experimentation, and spaces where different audiences, references, and forms of expression can coexist.
Dr. Evilletown is a 2025 TTFF microgrant recipient.
Links
Artist Website |www.brainplanrecords.com
Artist IG |@drevilletown
Favorite Ridgewood Spot | Valentinos |Map
Credits
All images and video courtesy of the artist. © Dr. Evilletown, all rights reserved.
She’s So Vain | 2026
Lady Doth Exist too Much | 2025 | YouTube
Before it’s too Late | Sep 30, 2025 | Court square theater, LIC, Queens NY | YouTube
Shadow Creatures Take Me Away | 2023 | This project was funded by Greenspace, Long Island City, NY | Costuming by: Shy Natives, Judi Rosen, and Fox and Fawn by Marisa Johnson | YouTube
Music Credits
Song: Get Right | Artist: Owl Nest | Music by: CreatorMix.com
Song: fever dreams provided by mobygratis
Song: eastern provided by mobygratis
Song: Houses provided by mobygratis
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Cary Hulbert’s paintings emerge from daydreams, fantasy, grief, and a deep connection to animals and the natural world. Through hybrid forms where flora, fauna, and human presence merge together, she creates surreal environments suspended between dream, memory, and imagination.
Years of sustained engagement with image-making and material experimentation are evident throughout the work, especially in Cary’s silkscreen process for her Mylar paintings. Even the arrangement of paint tubes across her working table reflects the same sense of care and intentionality present throughout the studio.
Encountering the paintings in person shifts the experience of the work entirely. Transparency, saturation, and layered surfaces become physically immersive, while her luminous use of color gives the paintings a lush and almost hypnotic presence.
Cary Hulbert is a 2025 TTFF microgrant recipient.
Links
Artist Website | www.caryhulbert.com
Artist IG | @cary_hulbert
Favorite Ridgewood Spot | Rolos | Map
Credits
All images and video courtesy of the artist. © Cary Hulbert, all rights reserved.
Music Credits
Song: liminal provided by mobygratis
Song: Palm Springs | Artist: Kia | Music by: CreatorMix.com
Song: Upbeat | Music by NastelBom from Pixabay
Song: Houses provided by mobygratis
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During our conversation, Genesiss spoke about the importance of creating environments where people feel comfortable enough to be fully themselves in front of the camera. The photographs carry a quiet intimacy shaped by trust between the artist and subject, allowing the work to move beyond documentation and into something deeply personal.
In projects like Boys Do Cry, Genesiss creates portraits that expand narrow ideas of masculinity. As Genesiss shared in the interview, “Being able to highlight specifically black and trans people through portraiture and represent us in a way that we normally aren’t, by us and, like, for us.” The images resist simplification, creating space for tenderness, softness, and emotional complexity within the frame.
Genesiss Mejia is a 2025 TTFF microgrant recipient.
Links
Artist IG |@ojosdealmndras
Favorite Ridgewood Spot | Taqueria Cocoyoc |Map
Credits
All images and video courtesy of the artist. © Genesiss Mejia, all rights reserved.
Music Credits
Song: The Honey Trap | Artist: Owl Nest | Music by: CreatorMix.com
Song: Pistachios | Artist: Kia | Music by: CreatorMix.com
Song: jaystacksbeats-blue-lights-trapsoul-type-beat-472000 | Music by Jacob Potison from Pixabay
Song: Houses provided by mobygratis
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There is a pulsing vitality to Andrea Moreno’s work. Through sculpture, sound, and performance, she builds environments that seem to exist somewhere between organism and object.
The body remains a central point of engagement for Andrea. In performances involving tattooing and physical endurance, there is a visceral choreography that draws viewers directly into the sensory experience of the work itself. Even her sculptural forms appear animated or unstable, as though they are still in the process of transforming.
By creating immersive spaces through materials, sound, and bodily interaction, she invites viewers into unfamiliar ecosystems that remain open, offering alternative futures.
Andrea Moreno is a 2025 TTFF microgrant recipient.
Links
Artist Website | www.andreammoreno.com
Artist IG | @y0shaang
Favorite Ridgewood Spot | The Seneca | Map
Credits
All images and video courtesy of the artist. © Andrea Moreno, all rights reserved.
Music Credits
Song: bunt poll provided by mobygratis
Song: create 4 audio provided by mobygratis
Song: lizards provided by mobygratis
Song: Houses provided by mobygratis
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Barb Smith’s studio is a dizzying array of objects, densely arranged across shelves, tables, and surfaces. Some appear as parts of larger sculptural systems, while others seem temporarily placed, stored, or waiting to be reconfigured. The space is saturated with sculptural elements, some so small yet carrying the weight of monuments.
Barb approaches materials as collaborators, allowing interaction with the material to inform the development of the work itself. Her practice moves fluidly across sculpture, video, poetry, and performance, maintaining an intricate internal structure that connects these forms together.
Barb Smith is a 2025 TTFF microgrant recipient.
Links
Artist Website |www.barbarasmithart.com
Artist IG | @barbject
Favorite Ridgewood Spot | Linden Hill United Methodist Cemetery | Map
Credits
All images and video courtesy of the artist. © Barb Smith, all rights reserved.
Music Credits
Song: Ice Cream Truck | Artist: Kia| Music by: CreatorMix.com
Song: Lofi Hip Hop | Background Lofi Music | Music by Mikhail Smusev SigmaMusicArt from Pixabay
Song: also ran provided by mobygratis
Song: Houses provided by mobygratis
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Central to Lu’s work is a profound relationship to somatic movement and the adaptability of the body itself. Their performances are informed by the different needs and abilities of each performer, allowing movement and choreography to emerge through bodily responsiveness rather than rigid structure. Throughout the work, bodies move together and apart, at times colliding, supporting, or dissolving into one another within imagined landscapes that exist as fractured parts of a whole. Sound, narration, movement, and gesture become intertwined, producing works that feel intimate, disorienting, sensual, and psychologically charged.
Lu Yim is a 2025 TTFF microgrant recipient.
Links
Artist Website | www.lu-yim.com
Artist IG | @lu_yim
Favorite Ridgewood Spot | Ridgewood Reservoir |Map
Credits
All images and video courtesy of the artist. © Lu Yim, all rights reserved.
Bottom Edge Air | Movement Research at Judson Church | Performers: Cynthia Chang, Ella Dawn W-S, Nami Yamamoto, Takahiro Yamamoto, Yining Chi, Kiera Bono, Lu Yim | Costumes: Laurel Atwell | New York, NY | 2025 | Vimeo
Bottom Edge Air | Pageant | Performers: Cynthia Chang, Ella Dawn W-S, Nami Yamamoto, Takahiro Yamamoto, Yining Chi, Kiera Bono, Lu Yim | Costumes: Laurel Atwell | Lighting: Maggie Heath | Installation: DB Amorin | Brooklyn, NY | 2026
금마타리 (Infinite Love) | A.I.R. Gallery | Performers: Stine An, Kate Williams, Lu Yim | Brooklyn, NY | 2025 | Vimeo
Music Credits
Song: old season provided by mobygratis
Song: name the places provided by mobygratis
Song: juniper provided by mobygratis
Song: Houses provided by mobygratis