Cycle 4 Jury

  • H Boone

  • Megan Lee

  • Zack Boehler

  • TBD

Cycle 3 Jury

  • Black and white headshot of Devin Mays

    Devin T. Mays

    Devin T. Mays (b. Detroit, MI) is an artist interested in the here and there of things. He uses sculpture, installation, performance and pictures for pleasure. He often refers to his practice as a place for things to become Things.

    Mays has exhibited and performed at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Galerie Martin Janda, Vienna; The Power Station, Dallas; The Renaissance Society, Chicago; gta exhibitions, Zürich; Sweetwater, Berlin; F Gallery, Houston; SculptureCenter, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Regards, Chicago among others. 

    Mays is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Art Rice University. 

    Photo: Morgan Mueller

  • John Riepenhoff, a white man with long hair, glasses, and a beard, sits in a studio chair wearing a blue sweatshirt, paint-splattered pants, and a black baseball cap that reads “Broadway.” Behind him are several abstract, textural paintings in a soft

    John Riepenhoff

    John Riepenhoff was born and resides in Milwaukee, where he founded The Green Gallery. Riepenhoff engineers art to serve as connective tissue between cultural entities. He established the Beer Endowment in 2014 to support and advocate for artist-run organizations. Riepenhoff pays homage to other artists, creating renditions of their work. As an artist, he uses his own platform to uplift others and acknowledges the influences of community and collaboration in the process of making. Riepenhoff also ideated Double Cream Colby Cheese, started the Milwaukee International Art Fair, administers The Open Fund, and paints the night sky in the dark.


    Photo: Daniel McCullough

  • Rachel Shelton, a woman with long dark wavy hair, stands confidently with arms crossed in front of a plain light-colored background. She wears a fitted black t-shirt and gazes calmly at the camera with a slight smile.

    Rachel Shelton

    Rachel Shelton centers an experimental and process-based practice around printmaking, expanding into book arts, enamel, public art, and sculpture. She received her BFA from the Cleveland Institute of Art and her MFA from SUNY at Buffalo. Her work has been most recently exhibited in the Buffalo AKG Art Museum and at Hunt Art Gallery. 

    Rachel is also a Co-Founder and collaborative printer at Mirabo Press, a fine art printmaking studio in Buffalo, NY. While she spends a good deal of time making solo work in her studio, collaboration and facilitation are also at the heart of Rachel’s practice. From making collaborative work with fellow artists to facilitating and printing the work of many artists through her print shop, the collective energy of community drives her practice forward and outward.

  • Dana Murray Tyrrell

    Dana Murray Tyrrell is an artist, curator, and writer from Niagara Falls, New York. Tyrrell was a 2024 Kinetic Grantee with the Buffalo Institute for Contemporary Art's Generator Fund. His artwork is in the permanent collections of the Castellani Art Museum, Roger Tory Peterson Institute, University at Buffalo Department of Art, and the Pride Center of Western New York.

    Recent solo exhibitions include Love Canal at the Earl W. Brydges Library (2024-25), Floater at Kingfish Gallery (2021), and Blue at the Castellani Art Museum (2017). He has contributed to group exhibits across Western New York including at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery (2014), the Burchfield Penney Art Center (2021, 2023), and ECHO Art Fair (2016). He currently works at the Burchfield Penney with past roles at Rivalry Projects, the Niagara Arts & Cultural Center, Castellani Art Museum, and former Albright-Knox Art Gallery. 

Cycle 2 Jury

  • Njeri Rutherford

    Njeri Rutherford is an arts administrator, entrepreneur, and dance artist from Detroit, MI. After graduating from Johnson C. Smith University with a B.A. in Communication Arts and Dance, Njeri moved to New York City where she worked for many arts organizations including Lar Lubovitch Dance Company, Brooklyn Arts Exchange, Movement Research, and Dance/NYC among others. She danced professionally for Davalois Fearon Dance where she ultimately served as both Development Manager and dance artist. In April 2020 at the height of the global pandemic Njeri founded The Barre, an artist services company that caters to the administrative and performative needs of BIPOC artists. In April 2023 Njeri graduated from the University of Michigan’s School of Music Theatre & Dance with her Masters in Dance and certificates in World Performance Studies and Arts Entrepreneurship and Leadership. She is the program manager over events and grantmaking at CultureSource where she continues in her mission of serving artists in tangible ways.

  • Jenine Marsh

    Jenine Marsh (b. 1984, Calgary AB, works in Toronto ON) is an artist who uses sculpture and installation to explore illicit and intimate responses to the shared conditions of end-stage capitalism. Marsh’s work has been exhibited at Morris and Helen Belkin Gallery, Vancouver (2024); Prairie, Chicago (2024); Ashley, Berlin (2024); Cooper Cole, Toronto (2023); Joe Project, Montreal (2023), Gianni Manhattan, Vienna (2023); Union Pacific, London (2023); Night Gallery, Los Angeles (2022); Essex Flowers, New York (2020); Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2019), Franz Kaka, Toronto (2019); and Lulu, Mexico City (2015). Marsh lives and works in Toronto, Canada.

  • Ryan Arthurs

    Ryan Arthurs is a visual artist and the founder of Rivalry Projects, a commercial art gallery and arts production space located in Buffalo, NY. Founded in 2021, Rivalry exhibits emerging, mid-career, and underrepresented artists working in all media, with an emphasis on unique approaches to materiality, non-traditional photo practices, and queer voices.

    He received his M.F.A. in Photography from Massachusetts College of Art and Design and holds a B.F.A. in Studio Art from Carleton College. His work has been exhibited at The Buffalo Institute for Contemporary Art (Buffalo, NY), Radial Survey, Vol. II at Silver Eye Center for Photography (Pittsburgh, PA), The National: Best Contemporary Photography at the Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Indiana. His solo exhibitions credits include Carleton College (Northfield, MN) and Room 68 (Provincetown, MA). His work was selected by The Magenta Foundation Flash Forward Top 100 in 2018. In 2017 he was shortlisted for the Oseroff Memorial Purchase Prize administered by CEPA Gallery, and in 2015 was nominated for the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Artist Award. He has participated in residencies at the Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Snowmass Village, Colorado and The Bothy Project, Isle of Eigg in Scotland. Ryan was a visiting professor at Carleton College, and was a photography teaching assistant at Harvard University.

CYCLE 1 Jury

  • a portrait of a black woman with black hair and glasses.

    Tiffany Gaines

    Tiffany D. Gaines is a curator, writer, photographer, and multimedia creator. Stemming from her experiences as a Black woman in America, her multidisciplinary practice focuses on the most fundamental elements of the human experience to engage new, diverse perspectives and activate the past in ways that can lead to a more understanding and empathetic future. Currently, she is the Curatorial and Digital Content Associate at the Burchfield Penney Art Center. She holds a BA in Journalism from SUNY Buffalo State and an MA in Visual Studies from the University at Buffalo.

  • a black and white headshot of a man with dark hair and glasses.

    Pablo Guardiola

    Pablo Guardiola is a visual artist. His work points to different modes of narration and how these are perceived and understood. Recently he curated with Yina Jiménez Suriel, one month after being known in that island (ways of working in the Caribbean). He is co-director of Beta-Local, an arts non-profit dedicated to support and promote contemporary art practices and aesthetic thought in Puerto Rico.

  • a headshot of a smiling woman white blonde woman.

    Julia Dzwonkoski

    Julia Dzwonkoski is a visual artist based in Buffalo, NY. She studied at SUNY Buffalo and UC San Diego. Living in Los Angeles for many years, she collaborated with Kye Potter on paintings, books and the record label, Orion Read. Her recent work explores the highs and lows of modern life though the lens of ghosts, stars, snails and inventions for the end-times.