Andy Li was dealing with impostor syndrome. It had been years since his first public art installation, and the Boston-based artist — known for creating pennants with humorous and uplifting phrases — was once again ready to challenge himself to reach a wider audience.
So Li applied for The Boston Public Art Triennial’s accelerator program, which helps local artists who are fairly new to the public art world make the leap by providing funding, training, and creative support. The program takes inspiration from accelerators in the business world that help startups grow quickly by providing training and funding in exchange for equity.
A few weeks later, Li got a call from Japer Sanchez, who runs the accelerator program. “I was really shocked when they said yes,” Li said. “I almost dropped my phone.”
Woodwork sculptor Alison Croney Moses and multimedia artist Evelyn Rydz also got the nod.
All three accelerator participants have the task of producing a public-art project with a budget of $50,000 that will debut May 22, 2025 in Charlestown Navy Yard. Their works will be three of 18 featured around the city as part of Boston’s inaugural public art triennial. Meanwhile, cities like Venice, New York, and São Paulo have had what Sanchez refers to as “‘ennials” — recurring contemporary art celebrations — for decades.
“‘Ennials are like the Super Bowl of the art world,” said Sanchez, noting that who gets to participate can feel “mysterious and inaccessible,” similar to the process of creating public art. “Our hope is not only to invite local artists into the closed-loop system of producing public art, but also into the system of a triennial, to learn what it is to be in a citywide festival.”
For Croney Moses, being selected is “a confirmation that you’re doing the work you should be doing; a confirmation that other people who are in the field, in the industry, have confidence in your abilities,” she said.
Since the beginning of September, Li, Croney Moses, and Rydz have met once a week to go through a public-art bootcamp of sorts. Over the course of 12 weeks, the curriculum covers everything from conceptual design discussions to the history of public art and the Navy Yard to practical workshops on skills like budgeting, permitting, and working with fabricators on large-scale projects.
Rydz, who is also a professor at Massachusetts College of Art and Design, said she sees the accelerator “as an opportunity to keep learning and to keep growing as an artist with amazing support both to be a student through the workshops that they offer, and also through the financial support to realize a project in public space.”
The budget for this year’s cohort is double the amount accelerator artists have traditionally gotten since the program was started in 2018 by triennial executive director Kate Gilbert.
This year, an open application was held and participants were selected by a jury, instead of being handpicked by a sole curator as they have been in the past. Applicants were judged based on four criteria: their openness and ability to engage with empathy, the benefit the fellowship would have for their practice, the quality of their portfolio, and their ability to scale their work.
The last point was crucial, said Sanchez, because these accelerator artists will have to produce on a level comparable to internationally acclaimed peers like street artist Swoon, Indigenous futurist Cannupa Hanska Luger, and landscape painter Patrick Martinez — who are also creating work for the triennial. Two accelerator alumni, text-based artist Gabriel Sosa and figurative artist Stephen Hamilton, will create public projects as part of the triennial as well.
Sanchez said it was important to the jurors that they selected artists who represent the “diversity in background and media that we also see reflected in the wider contemporary arts scene of Boston.”
Croney Moses’s rounded wood vessels often reflect experiences associated with Black motherhood. Sanchez said she was selected for “doing really powerful, beautiful work in the aesthetic realm as an artist, but also as a community organizer.” Rydz’s work, meanwhile, focuses on human relationships to water. Sanchez said Rydz’s work shows the promise to engage the Charlestown immigrant community and “to touch upon some of the site-specific history in relationship to water.” Li was selected because his textile art “brings positivity to the world,” said Sanchez. “It’s accessible, it’s light, it’s vibrant.”
For Croney Moses, who this year started working full time as an artist, the accelerator is a rare opportunity to stretch her skills and challenge herself creatively, “which can be hard to do when you are trying to make work to sell to be able to pay your bills,” she said.
Rydz is looking forward to working in the Navy Yard because it’s “where local rivers enter global waterways — the Mystic and the Charles meeting, converging there as they enter the Atlantic Ocean.” She said the opportunity “felt like a natural way to expand on my previous process,” while responding to this specific site.
Croney Moses has been reaching out to Black mothers in Charlestown to arrange conversations about their experiences, which will inform her final piece. Her goal, she said, is to give Black mothers “the honor, recognition, and space that is deserved, not just to grieve and process trauma, but to create joy together.”
Li wants to challenge what public art should look like in a historic city like Boston where “everything is so uniform in so many ways.” Instead of a traditional monument, he hopes to make a piece that is “hope-building” and “fun,” he said, adding that his piece will encourage self-reflection. At its best, Li said, art is “like a strange mirror.”
He also sees an opportunity to represent his hometown of Boston. “I’m excited,” Li said. “There’s a lot of pressure, but my dad always told me that pressure makes diamonds.”
Julian E.J. Sorapuru is an Arts Reporter at the Globe and can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on X @JulianSorapuru.
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