The Kingston Arts Council and Community Foundation for Kingston & Area are excited to announce that Lee Jones has been selected as the 2025 Nan Yeomans Grant for Artistic Development Recipient!
About Lee Jones
Lee Jones is a digital media and fibre artist who creates interactive textiles. E-textiles (or electronic textiles) might sound like science-fiction, but are actually a fun and easy way to learn all about electricity and physical computing. In her practice she works with craft communities and develops DIY toolkits so individuals can design and create interactive soft technologies to suit their own needs. She also loves running community e-textile workshops at art galleries and makerspaces, and creating interactive participatory artworks.
About the 2025 Nan Yeomans Grant for Artistic Development
The Nan Yeomans Grant is valued at $4,000 and made possible through an endowment fund held by the Community Foundation for Kingston & Area. The grant assists promising young artists and artisans in furthering their education and professional artistic growth. Nan Yeomans (1923-2004) was a prominent Kingston artist dedicated to supporting local and emerging artists in the visual arts. The KAC administers the grant and the recipient is selected by a peer jury of artists and arts professionals.
The 2025 jury included previous year’s recipient, Alanna Hakim, and local artists Michelle Reid and Harvey Doniego.
About Nan Yeomans
Nan Yeomans was a prominent Kingston artist dedicated to supporting local and emerging visual artists. In her late twenties, she enjoyed three summers at Queen’s University Summer School of Fine Arts, and subsequently lived most of her adult life in Kingston. For the rest of her 82 years she stayed busy with her art and other responsibilities, but always found time to contribute to the community. She died in 2004, leaving all of her art and almost all of her estate to the Community Foundation for Kingston & Area.
It was Nan’s wish to fund a grant for promising young artists and artisans developing their talents in the greater Kingston area. The Nan Yeomans Fund, established at the Community Foundation with her bequest, provides an annual award in her name.
Watch: Under My Shell: Profile of Printmaker Nan Yeomans
Under My Shell: Profile of Printmaker Nan Yeomans is provided courtesy of of director and producer Valerie Westgate
Eligibility
This grant is open to young emerging artists and/or artisans working in visual media who demonstrate financial need. Artists must be at least 17 years of age and no more than 40 years old at the time of the application. The Nan Yeomans Grant for Artistic Development defines an emerging artist as someone in the early years of their artistic practice or career. They must have produced a small body of work and they may have achieved some local recognition or limited public exhibition experience.
Applicants must be living in the geographic area served by the Community Foundation for Kingston & Area, namely: Loyalist Township, City of Kingston, Township of South Frontenac, Township of Central Frontenac, Township of North Frontenac, and Township of Frontenac Islands.
Further details can be found here: Application Guidelines and Application Form. Applicants are encouraged to contact Grants@ArtsKingston.ca with any inquiries or to book a one-on-one meeting with KAC staff.
Past Recipients
Alanna Hakim
2024 Recipient
Alanna Hakim is a multidisciplinary artist based in Kingston, ON. Drawing inspiration from the vibrant colours and shapes of nature and literature, she crafts unique pieces by combining textiles and stained glass. Dedicated to her artistic mission, Alanna seeks to encourage others to journey beyond their comfort zones when creating art.
This approach has fostered a vibrant community of learners eager to experiment and create alongside her. Alanna is an active participant in artisan events throughout Kingston, including the Kingston Holiday Market, Women's Art Fest, and the Skeleton Arts Festival. There, she shares her passion for glass and textiles and showcases her one-of-a-kind creations.
In addition to her artistic practice, Alanna teaches classes at the Kingston School of Art and the Kingston Senior Centre Association, with her glass workshops quickly becoming favourites among participants. Through her art and teaching, Alanna continues to inspire others to explore their creativity and appreciate the beauty that surrounds them.
Kelsey Dawn Pearson
2023 Recipient
Kelsey Dawn Pearson is an artist residing in Katarokwi/Kingston. They recently graduated from Concordia University with an MFA in Print Media and hold a BFA from NSCAD. Pearson is a multidisciplinary artist using print, natural fibres and puppetry/performance as their main media. Pearson’s work explores themes of gender and body dysmorphia in relation to bodily connection to land.
Their work is supernatural, chaotic and colourful swampwater.
They explore themes of distorted reality, confront personal ethics, battle dysphoria, bridge fiction and the present through the use of portals, touch, feel and play…
In a world bordering ours.
Kelsey McNulty
2022 Recipient
Kelsey is a Canadian collage artist and animator. Her art is influenced by her career as a travelling musician and a desire to construct new worlds and see things from new perspectives. She draws inspiration from Eduardo Paolozzi’s screen-printed collages and his suggestion on the way images influence our reality. With a focus online and colour, she creates vivid scenes and landscapes and attempts to balance humour and introspection in her work.
Natasha Jabre
2021 Recipient
Natasha Jabre is a Kingston-based teacher and artist whose most recent painting series fills scenes of children and toys with colourful light. Her work, which includes drawings, paintings, and sculptures, has been exhibited locally and internationally.
Tonya Corkey
2020 Recipient
Tonya will use the Nan Yeomans Grant for Artistic Development to attend a table loom class and a residency at the Icelandic Textile Centre, where she will research and create a new series of sculptural works.
GHY Cheung
2019 Recipient
The Nan Yeomans Grant supported GHY Cheung's project in Hong Kong — a love letter in the form of several interventions that take their cue from "Friendship as a Way of Life." This series is part of a larger exploration of intimacies formed in displacement (temporary travel, permanent migration) and relationships sustained over long distances as potential sites of queer world-making.
Ella Gonzales
2018 Recipient
The Nan Yeomans Grant supported Ella to expand her artistic practice across mediums, including painting, video and installation. Upcoming projects will explore themes of inhabited space(s), migration, temporalities and cultural identity.
Jennifer Demitor
2017 Recipient
Jennifer's work uses the built environment to adjust our perceptions of the natural world and connect us to our surroundings. As the recipient of the 2017 Nan Yeomans Grant for Artistic Development, Jennifer began a series exploring prevalent themes in her practice within the context of a new more permanent medium.