2025 GRANTEE INTERVIEWS
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Lillian creates fantasy worlds where imagined beings and tangled narratives collide, unravel, and reassemble with humor in new inventive stories. The detail and complexity of her drawings create magical narratives that feel at once playful and profound. In this studio video, Lillian Ansell, a 2025 Tallichet Freedman Foundation micro grant artist, shares insight into her practice of world building through illustration, drawing, and animation.
Links
Artist Website | https://lillianansell.com/
Artist IG | @lilliansell
Favorite Ridgewood Spot | Forest Polish Grocery & Deli | Map
Credits
All images and video courtesy of the artist. © Lillian Ansell, all rights reserved.
Music Credits
Song: later time provided by mobygratis
Song: also ran provided by mobygratis
Song: Houses provided by mobygratis
Song: Breathe It Out | Music by: CreatorMix.com
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Nickolas Calabrese’s practice unfolds from conceptual propositions, transforming ideas into physical form through experimentation with materials. His works reveal a deep engagement with process and the act of thinking through making.
In this studio video, Nickolas, a 2025 Tallichet Freedman Foundation micro grant artist, reflects on transforming ideas into physical artworks and experimenting with materials. Rooted in curiosity and process, his practice embraces experimentation and a punk ethos that resists easy definitions.
Links
Favorite Ridgewood Spot | Valentino Food Market | Map
Credits
All images and video courtesy of the artist. © Nicolas Calabrese, all rights reserved.
Music Credits
Song: later time provided by mobygratis
Song: jul 31 provided by mobygratis
Song: name the places provided by mobygratis
Song: Houses provided by mobygratis
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With her camera always in hand, Apolline Guillerot-Malick is ready to catch the moment when chance transforms into story. Her work distills journeys, encounters, and questions into images that hold unexpected truths.
In this studio video, Apolline, a 2025 Tallichet Freedman Foundation micro grant artist, shares how she considers her photography a form of gleaning, gathering overlooked and forgotten narratives across landscapes of inequality and resilience. Her images are not only powerful and striking, often beautiful, they beg the viewer to ask questions and look deeper.
Links
Artist Website | https://apollineguillerot.wixsite.com/website/e
Artist IG | @unpdeuxailes
Favorite Ridgewood Spot | Topos Bookstore Cafe | Map
Credits
All images and video courtesy of the artist. © Apolline Guillerot-Malick, all rights reserved.
Music Credits
Song: later time provided by mobygratis
Song: name the places provided by mobygratis
Song: Houses provided by mobygratis
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Anne Hart’s paintings expose the margins of life and perception, focusing on everyday spaces like waiting rooms, offices, and domestic interiors. What might seem invisible or mundane becomes a site of energetic tension, where the absence of people suggests quiet propositions of abandonment and discomfort.
In this studio video, Anne, a 2025 Tallichet Freedman Foundation micro grant artist, shares how she finds inspiration in overlooked places and transforms them into invitations to see the world differently. She paints at a desk in front of a glorious window in her light-filled studio.
Artist Website | ahartworks.org
Artist IG | @linelaundering
Favorite Ridgewood Spot | Paradise Aquarium | Map
Credits
All images and video courtesy of the artist. © Anne Hart, all rights reserved.
Music Credits
Song: later time provided by mobygratis
Song: liminal provided by mobygratis
Song: Houses provided by mobygratis
Song: Windy City | Artist: Owl Nest | Music by: CreatorMix.com | Video: https://youtu.be/BJbzT89Hl48
Song: Avatar | Artist: Kia | Music by: CreatorMix.com
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Amelia Heintzelman is pushing the limits of the body to expose both its power and vulnerability. She moves freely between comedy and intense dramatic scores. In this studio video, Amelia, a 2025 Tallichet Freedman Foundation micro grant artist, reflects on her choreographic practice and her piece Scratcher. She also talks about Comedy Pilates, an exercise class structured like dance but infused with improvisation and clowning. It is lighthearted, hilarious, and yes, you can feel your muscles burn while you are doing it.
Links
Artist Website | www.ameliakh.com
Artist IG | @annonomus_rex
Favorite Ridgewood Spot | Everyone Yoga | Map
Credits
All images and video performance clips courtesy of the artist. © Amelia Heintzelman, all rights reserved.
Comedy Pilates | 93 Canal | Vimeo
new moves (work in progress) | Kestrels Studio | Music performed by Dorothy Carlos | Brooklyn, NY | June 26th, 2024 | Vimeo
work in progress | Stone Circle Theater | Music performed by Dorothy Carlos | Ridgewood, Queens | Vimeo
Scratcher | Issue Project Room | Dancers: Amelia Heintzelman, Clara Kim | Music performed by Dorothy Carlos | Costumes: Sylvie Hayes-Wallace | Dramaturgy: Tess Michaelson | Brooklyn, NY | May 29th, 2025 | Vimeo
Music Credits
Song: Water Rail | Artist: Kia | Music by: CreatorMix.com
Song: name the places provided by mobygratis
Song: Houses provided by mobygratis
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Michelle’s sculptures have a special power in their half-scale human form. They possess a certain unsettling intimacy. In this studio video, Michelle, a 2025 Tallichet Freedman Foundation micro grant artist, shares insight into her recent exhibition Hello Goodbye at Dimin Gallery. Inspired by the exacting exterior polish of Korean Air flight attendants, her figures blur the line between grace and endurance. Positioned on pedestals, they capture a static moment of performance, revealing the quiet discomfort and questioning what it looks like and means to be at your service.
Links
Artist Website | www.ratxchicks.club
Artist IG | @michelle.s.im
Favorite Ridgewood Spot | Mini Mart | Map
Credits
All images and video courtesy of the artist. © Michelle Im, all rights reserved.
Music Credits
Song: later time provided by mobygratis
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Devin Osorio creates artifacts of the first-generation Dominican American experience, blending symbolism, magical realism, and personal narrative. Their work exudes warmth and generosity while reflecting on queer and trans histories in Washington Heights and honoring family and community. In this studio video, Devin, a 2025 Tallichet Freedman Foundation micro grant artist, shares how painting, embroidery, and ceramics become acts of world building, rebellion, and connection.
Links
Artist Website | http://www.devinosorio.com/
Artist IG | @devinosorio
Favorite Ridgewood Spot | E & U Grill & Deli Corp | Map
Credits
All images and video courtesy of the artist. © Devin Osorio, all rights reserved.
Music Credits
Song: Sunsets | Artist: Owl Nest | Music by: CreatorMix.com | Video: https://youtu.be/75R8ptgFr9U
Song: Sweet And Deep | Music by: CreatorMix.com
Song: Houses provided by mobygratis
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TJ Proechel’s projects use time, history, and duration to expose what is overlooked amid the obvious narrative. He documents his subjects like a private detective, piecing things together over years to reveal how histories persist, change, and leave a footprint. In this studio video, TJ, a 2025 Tallichet Freedman Foundation micro grant artist, shares insight into his project 448 Monuments, a photographic survey of Confederate monuments across the United States, and 28 Feet 8 Inches, a book project that began as his search for the man who defrauded him during the foreclosure crisis and grew into a meditation on responsibility, performance, and historical memory.
Links
Artist Website | tjproechel.com
Artist IG | @tjproechel
Favorite Ridgewood Spot | Friezes on Catalpa Ave. | Map
Credits
All images and video courtesy of the artist. © TJ Proechel, all rights reserved.
Music Credits
Song: also ran provided by mobygratis
Song: argon provided by mobygratis
Song: molecules provided by mobygratis
Song: Houses provided by mobygratis
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Jeanette is a fearless and uncompromising photographer giving visibility to the lesbian community with complexity, generosity, and nuance. She is able to capture the female body in a truly unique way that is both bold and vulnerable.
In this studio video, Jeanette Spicer, a 2025 Tallichet Freedman Foundation micro grant artist, shares insight into her long-term projects To the Ends of the Earth and What It Means to Be Here. She also reflects on her shift back to darkroom practices, where photomontage, double exposures, and other techniques bring layers of surrealism to her work.
Links
Artist Website | https://jeanettespicer.com/
Artist IG | @jsp_icer
Favorite Ridgewood Spot | Gottscheerhall | Map
Credits
All images and video courtesy of the artist. © Jeanette Spicer, all rights reserved.
Music Credits
Song: Lullaby | Artist: Owl Nest | Music by: CreatorMix.com | Video: https://youtu.be/OeBPTXZdaoY
Song: Water Rail | Artist: Kia | Music by: CreatorMix.com
Music: air boa provided by mobygratis
Music: also ran provided by mobygratis
Song: Houses provided by mobygratis
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At the heart of Alina Tenser’s work is a mix of materiality, movement, and play, showing up in sculpture, performance, video, or all of the above. Her sculptures suggest the multiple ways shapes can perform through zippers, hinges, and graphic meanders. In this studio video, Alina, a 2025 Tallichet Freedman Foundation micro grant artist, shares insight into her practice and her latest project, Boundary Aggregation. And she has the tiniest welder we have ever seen!
Links
Artist Website | https://alinatenser.com/
Artist IG | @alina_tenser
Favorite Ridgewood Spot | Grover Cleveland Park | Map
Credits
All images and video courtesy of the artist. © Alina Tenser, all rights reserved.
Images of historic meanders: Link
Music Credits
Song: Sunsets | Artist: Owl Nest | Music by: CreatorMix.com | Video
Song: Sweet And Deep | Music by: CreatorMix.com
Song: Houses provided by mobygratis