The Blank Canvas Arts Grant supports experimental, contemporary projects by emerging and mid-career artists based in San Luis Obispo County. Funded projects should represent a playful exploration of artistic expression that strays from traditional art-making conventions and gallery installation. Proposals should be conceptually oriented to provoke audience response and questions by providing thoughts, images, sounds, and physical arrangements in unexpected places. Applicants are encouraged to submit work in mediums including but not limited to visual arts, performance, literary arts, music and sound, dance, and cross-disciplinary collaborations.

Applications are now closed for 2026.

Blank Canvas Arts Grant

A new funding opportunity for SLO County artists

2026 Grant Guidelines

2026 Grantees and Projects

  • Owen Blackwell

    superposition

    Three paintings on found canvases (24"x30") built around geometric forms (gridiron, concentric circles, convergent polygons). Blackwell sets up in public spaces — grocery parking lots, trailheads, parks — with paint and brushes available for passersby to contribute. Locations unannounced. Process photographed throughout. Paintings sanded to reveal layers. Final exhibition at Art After Dark, December 2026.

  • Charlie Rugg

    Tragedy of Episteme

    Three sculptures using distorted domestic objects — a vintage TV, a 1950s dining set, and a clock — to examine how humans organize reality through inherited structures and shared images. TV rebuilt in wood and metal; dining set flattened into a wall-hanging; clock extended with bending metal rods and photo collage. A major departure from Rugg's painting practice into three-dimensional, object-based work.

  • Caleb Nichols

    A Feeling of a Feeling of a Feeling: Spoken Word from Lithic

    A spoken word album featuring poems from Nichols's debut collection Lithic: A Hyperballad (Harbor Editions, 2026) — remixed, reordered, and rewritten into composite works performed over original soundscapes co-created with SLO musicians. Field recordings from SLO County woven in. Formats: digital album; 100-copy vinyl pressing with locally designed/printed booklet; live launch event. Includes Welsh-language poems and spoken performance by Rhys Tribmle, the Bard of North Wales — translingual slippage as a formal device.

History

ARTernatives, a Visual Arts Forum, was an organization that operated for over a decade between the years 1986 and 1998 and was entirely volunteer-run. The goals of ARTernatives were to stimulate discussion and active participation and to promote education in the visual arts by providing an exhibition space for contemporary art forms and to increase public awareness of contemporary art issues by education, challenging, inspiring, and entertaining both residents and tourists of all ages.

The collective presented year round programs and events consisting of exhibitions, educational lectures, field trips, classes and collaborations. They also ran a gallery in the Central Coast Mall and additional events took place in SLO City library, parks, schools, campuses, and businesses.

Questions?

Contact us using the form below if you have any questions about this grant and the application process or if you would like to make a donation to the grant fund to support future projects and we will be happy to assist you.

Special Thanks

This grant program is made possible by a generous gift from Elizabeth Lamont Johnson in Summer 2025.

Elizabeth Lamont Johnson is a visual artist who integrates environmental, cultural, and spiritual themes in her 2D and 3D abstract mixed media artwork. She has worked with non-profits on SLO county and state historical research and exhibit design, as an exhibit curator, creating ceremonial earth sculpture, and as a contemporary fine art researcher for the Ruth Fash Art Talks. A longtime organic gardener, in 2007 she founded SLO Seed Exchange, a local seedsavers group with demonstration gardens and community educational events. She assisted the county library in setting up their seed library program. Elizabeth has studied habitat in Kenya, backpacked in the Sierra Nevada, trekked in Nepal’s Himalaya, and participated in The Altai Project’s pilot study of Siberian montane corridors that support snow leopard habitat. Undergraduate college studies were fine arts, architecture, and design.

“I am on this earthwalk to evolve, grow my skills, and inspire others to see greatness in themselves when they focus on their individual passions to create what hasn’t been seen or heard before. The Blank Canvas Arts Grant is intended to inspire artists to explore experimental expression beyond their normal practice.” ELJ