About the Grant
The IOS Willie Stoffer Visual Artist Grant is supported with an annually occurring gift from the Stoffer family. Willie battled a rare white blood cell disease called Histiocitosis X throughout his childhood and passed away at age 27 from brain cancer. He was fearless and spread joy wherever he went, always remaining positive, even in the toughest of times. He had many passions, including a love for the arts. The arts were a big part of his life, including attending art school in his young adult life. He felt lucky to have access to art classes throughout grade school and high school and would be grateful to support access for others. This grant honors Willie by providing funding for Inglewood artists to support their studio practice and to share their work with local youth.
Grant Requirements
Each grant recipient will receive $1800 to support their work and conduct a related arts workshop at an Inglewood school or youth organization during the upcoming school year. Artists must have participated in a previous IOS art walk or demonstrate a significant connection to Inglewood
Application Deadline September 15, 2025 11:45PM
Informational Zoom Session July 28, 2025 7PM
Meeting ID: 845 7392 3856
Passcode: 377093
Willie Stoffer Visual Artist Grant
Timeline
Application Opens: July 15, 2025
Informational Zoom Meeting: July 28, 2025
Submission Deadline: September 15, 2025
Awards Announced: November 2025
Past Grant Recipients
2024/2025
Rosalyn is a multidisciplinary artist who focuses on installation, photography, and collage. Repurposed wooden crates, recycled windows, doors, and chairs are combined with fabric and paint to create installations that engage the viewer. She explores stories about contemporary women and people of color. She investigates ignored concerns that plague communities of color and the disenfranchised, asking: How can we as a people move forward and find better ways of navigating the future?
Rosalyn Myles
Karen is inspired by the infinite array of beautiful forms and patterns in nature as well as the human figure. Her Paper Mosaics are a highly specialized form of collage using materials such as wrapping papers, batik, woodblock, washi, and pages from books and magazines. Shapes, forms and patterns are her language. Her work is a reminder that we are connected to each other and the natural world; just as each piece of cut paper is utterly unique and different yet essential to the whole, our variety is what makes this world strong and beautiful.
Karen Sikie
Hedy is dedicated to shedding light on the experiences of immigrants and street vendors in the United States through her artistic practice. Her mixed media portraits and paintings of hands in action capture a unique moment in the lives of vendors – one that often goes unnoticed by those being served. Her work is a tribute to the lives of street vendors, challenging prevailing prejudices, labels, and stereotypes that have historically marginalized these individuals.
Hedy Torres
Naima reflects her mixed cultural heritage by drawing from myth and reality, pop culture and tradition, and Middle Eastern and Western aesthetics to create multiple subjective experiences that interlace to form a narrative. Each piece is a form of storytelling, manipulated into a dreamlike experience, the purpose of which is to link fractured viewpoints and create a new whole. By using the concept of the family archive as a way of expression and questioning what holds meaning to an individual versus society, she examines the personal significance of what objects mean, the mythology they create, and how they are preserved.
Naima White
2023
As an artist, Kylie Ames sees the complex interconnectedness that all people share as scattered fragments of personal experiences and perceptions continuously gathered throughout history. Much of Ames’s work is formed from an interest in fragments and fragmentation; the isolated and incomplete parts that make up a whole. Each individual shapes reality by editing, rewriting, or omitting fragments of personal history. In the paintings, interactions between fragments appear as dense flecks of color, light against dark, muted against vivid; forming images that are both unified and fractured, reflecting alienation as well as connection to society.
Kiley Ames
Zeal Harris creates urban-vernacular visual stories. Her influences are highly eclectic and include; Southern Black folk art, Asian scroll paintings, Persian miniatures, Mexican ex-votos, and Afrofuturist literature. Her project, I Be Livin’ Black Love consists of black-feminist themed book-style illustrations of contemporary life