Twenty Oregon artists have been awarded $25,000 each in the new Spark Awards from the James F. and Marion L. Miller Foundation. It’s the first round of a three-year pilot program by the Miller Foundation that eventually will award $25,000 each to 60 Oregon mid-career artists, for a total of $1.5 million. This year’s awards are in the performing arts. In 2025, twenty awards will be given in the literary and media arts, and in 2026, twenty awards will be granted to visual artists.

The highly competitive grants, chosen from among 299 applicants, are a step for the foundation into giving individual awards. Miller has been active in funding the arts in Oregon for more than 20 years, primarily by awarding grants to arts organizations across the state.

“We were thrilled with the range and diversity of the applications that we received across all the performing arts disciplines,” Carrie Hoops, the foundation’s executive director, said in a prepared statement. “We are heartened by the reminder of the rich and ambitious artistic work happening in our state, and excited to see the positive impact this funding will have at pivotal moments in these artists’ careers.”

Sixty percent of the Spark Award recipients identify as women or nonbinary, the foundation’s announcement said, and half of the recipients identify as Black, Indigenous, or People of Color.

The 20 initial Spark Award recipients, listed alphabetically:

Sara Jean Accuardi, Theater. Playwright Accuardi’s works have been produced across the country, including at Portland companies such as Portland Center Stage, Shaking the Tree, and Theatre Vertigo. Her Christmas play Fezziwig’s Fortune, written with Josie Seid, continues at Portland’s Twilight Theater Company through Dec. 22.

Okaidja Afroso, Music. Born into a family of musicians and storytellers in Ghana, Okaidja Afroso began his career as a dancer with the Ghana Dance Ensemble and has toured internationally, expanding his skills as an instrumentalist, singer-songwriter, and musical arranger.

Sponsor

Laura Allcorn, Interdisciplinary performance. Allcorn produces performances as the Institute for Comedic Inquiry. “She’s hosted a game show about AI-authored emails, designed a mini-market about algorithmic profiling, and led an absurdist workout for thwarting surveillance technology,” the Miller Foundation says. Her work has been staged in places ranging from The Victoria & Albert Museum to the Dublin Fringe Festival and the Risk/Reward Pavement Festival.

Marisa Anderson, Music. A classically trained guitarist who’s played in country, jazz and circus bands, Anderson has been called “one of the most distinctive guitar players of her generation” by The New Yorker magazine. She’s working on a mid-20th century archive of recorded music from the Islamic world, Southeast Asia and the former Soviet Union.

Amber Kay Ball, Theater. Ball, a member of the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians, is a theater and visual artist and community advocate whose work explores, honors, and weaves Native pasts, presents, and futures. They were assistant director for Renegade Opera’s new opera Little Ones, and their play Finding BigFoot was awarded a Grow Grant and selected for the Fertile Ground PDX New Play festival as a premiere staged reading.

Adam Eccleston, Music. Eccleston, a conductor, All Classical Radio producer and host, educator, and flutist, has conducted in Panama, Dominican Republic, Belize, Canada, and across the United States. He teaches music at Reed College, conducts ensembles at the Metropolitan Youth Symphony, and is principal flutist for the Portland Columbia Symphony Orchestra.

Michelle Fujii, Interdisciplinary performance. Fujii is a gifted taiko drumming artist, co-director of Unit Souzou and former artistic leader of Portland Taiko. A fourth generation Japanese American, she graduated from UCLA with a degree in ethnomusicalogy, and studied in Japan with the theatrical folk dance company Warabi-za. She’s been a guest artist with taiko companies across the U.S. and inernationally.

Ethan Gans-Morse, Music. Southern Oregon composer and producer Gans-Morse is known for his opera The Canticle of the Black Madonna and several others, including Tango of the White Gardenia, which Oregon ArtsWatch’s Angela Allen called “a triumph,” adding: “Composer Ethan Gans-Morse’s Argentine-influenced music and the touching tango-centered libretto by artistic and life partner Tiziana DellaRovere addressed bullying, identity and the spiritual healing power of art — in this case tango.”

Francisco Garcia, Theater. A director, playwright, actor, and educator of Mexican and Indigenous descent, Garcia, the Miller Foundation notes, “strives to create art that amplifies BIPOC voices and storytelling.” Recent playwriting commissions include Maya Ruiz Rises for Oregon Children’s Theatre, 545 for Portland Playhouse’s Wonderland Festival of New Works, and Sube y Baja for Artists Repertory Theater. He’s directed for Stumptown Stages, Milaggro Theatre, Profile Theatre, Oregon Children’s Theatre and others.

Sponsor

Allie Hankins, Dance. Dancer, choreographer, and sound artist Hankins is known for her experimental works, which have been produced from San Francisco and New York to Berlin and Cork, Ireland. She co-initiated the Queer performance cooperative Physical Education (PE) with keyon gaskin, Takahiro Yamamoto, and Lu Yim, and has had works commissioned by the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art and Seattle’s On the Boards. Her five-part performance series By My Own Hand will conclude with Part 4: MELODY in the fall of 2025, and Part 5: INVISIBLE TOUCH in the fall of 2026.

Jimmie Herrod, Music. Singer, composer and arranger Herrod has performed frequently with the touring Portland band Pink Martini, and sings with symphony orchestras across the United States. He’s performed on Oregon Public Broadcasting, All Classical Portland, PBS, and Jimmy Kimmel Live, and was a finalist on the television talent show America’s Got Talent, later starring in the Las Vegas show America’s Got Talent – Live at Luxor.

Anthony Hudson, Interdisciplinary performance. Hudson is a Grand Ronde/Siletz artist and writer well-known for their performances as “Portland’s premier drag clown Carla Rossi,” a role that they’ve played internationally and that has earned them sainthood from the Portland Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. They’ve written for American Theatre, BOMB Magazine, Arts and International Affairs, and Oregon ArtsWatch, and are adapting their show Looking for Tiger Lily into a book.

Carlyn Hudson, Dance. Hudson is an independent choreographer who danced with Connecticut Ballet before moving to Portland in 2010, where she co-founded the women’s contemporary dance collective SubRosa before moving on to produce work under her own name. Her ballet-based contemporary choreography has been produced by colleges and dance companies across the U.S.

Hannah Krafcik, Dance. Krafcik is a transdisciplinary neuroqueer artist and dancer, and part of a group of Queer Contact Improvisers who create performances together and take turns facilitating community dance space. They often collaborate with artistic partner Emily Jones. Krafcik is also a writer whose work appears regularly in Oregon ArtsWatch; you can see their ArtsWatch pieces here.

Talilo Marfil-Tran, Music. Marfil-Tran is a West Bisayan, Filipino-American hip hop artist from Portland who, the Miller Foundations says, has “a passion for illustrating social issues, cultural island heritage, and raw grit … His dynamic rhyme schemes and choppy lyrics serve as a vehicle for storytelling, shedding light on both personal experiences and broader societal narratives.”

Lamiae Naki, Music. Born in Morocco, Naki studied Andalusian music and other forms of classical Arabic music in Fes, and includes the sounds of many other traditions in the ensemble she leads, Seffarine. She comes from a family of metal workers, and the rhythmic sound of blacksmiths’ hammers helped inspire her music. She and Seffarine perform in Portland and across the U.S. as well as in Morocco, Canada, Indonesia, Spain, Turkey, and at venues and festivals including the Chicago World Music Festival and Toronto’s Koerner Hall.

Sponsor

Jesse J. Sanchez, Theater. Composer, lyricist, writer, and music director Sanchez has had work commisioned by Boston Lyric Opera, Oregon Cabaret Theatre, Portland Opera, and others. His works include Sueños: Our American Musical; Zapata: A Folklorico Superhero Musical; We Three Queens and others, and he’s collaborating with the Dr. Seuss Estate and San Diego’s Old Globe Theatre to create a Spanish version of their Broadway musical How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

Rachel Slater, Dance. An interdisciplinary artist specializing in dance, film and storytelling, Portland-based Slater is also director of Dance Film at BODYART’s International Dance Festival NOLA, in New Orleans, and is co-artistic director with Suzanne Chi of Portland’s Muddy Feet Contemporary Dance. Three of her award-winning dance films produced with Muddy Feet have been screened in 16 countries and at 45 festivals worldwide.

Andrea Stolowitz, Theater. Playwright and librettist Stolowitz has won three Oregon Book Awards and is an artist in residence at the Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education and a national resident playwright at New Dramatists in New York City. Her play The Berlin Diaries, which ArtsWatch called an “engrossing and surprisingly funny theatrical detective story … about memory and loss and the force of history, and about the limitations and possibilities of the theater itself,” is being produced in five cities in 2024-25.

Luke Wyland, Music. Portland interdisciplinary artist, composer, and performer Wyland has been releasing recordings for 20 years with labels including New Amsterdam, Beacon Sound, Balmat, The Leaf Label, and Aagoo Records. He’s toured nationally and internationally and performed at the Whitney Museum, Ecstatic Music Festival, Issue Project Room, PICA’s Time-Based Arts Festival, End of the Road Festival, Les Nuits Botanique, and others.