Media Release: Announcing This Year’s 3Arts/Artspace Southern Illinois Award Recipient, Luca Cruzat
For Immediate Release
Carbondale, IL & Chicago, IL — September 24, 2026
Media Contacts
Artspace Southern Illinois
Chuck Benya, EdD, CEO & Executive Director
Email: director@artspacesouthernillinois.org
Phone: 618-457-5100
3Arts (via The Silverman Group, Inc.)
Katy O’Malley/Nicole Rizzo, The Silverman Group, Inc.
Email: katy@silvermangroupchicago.com
Phone: 847-814-1940
Award Recipient Headshots Here
The Southern Illinois Award is a partnership between 3Arts and Artspace Southern Illinois, aiming to bridge the rural-urban divide in Illinois by supporting artistic talent across regions. Rooted in a shared commitment to empowering artists and strengthening communities, 3Arts and Artspace Southern Illinois have come together to spark lasting connections and creative opportunities across the region. The $30,000 Southern Illinois award is made possible through a matching contribution by both organizations and a shared commitment to support independent artists in Southern Illinois.
Artspace Southern Illinois CEO Chuck Benya stated, “I am excited to share that Luca Cruzat is receiving this year’s 3Arts/Artspace Southern Illinois Visual Art Award: $30,000 in unrestricted funds, along with access to residencies, professional development, and project funding through the 3Arts network.” Born in Chile and based in Southern Illinois, Luca explores the human condition through everyday experiences, transforming familiar materials—such as clothing, thread, and found objects—into impactful prints and installations. She earned her MFA in printmaking from Southern Illinois University and currently works from her studio in Murphysboro. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including in Chile, Germany, England, and Hong Kong.
See her work here.
As part of the 3Arts/Artspace Southern Illinois partnership, 3Arts also announced all 2026 recipients of its Chicago‑based 3Arts Awards at their ceremony.
3Arts, the Chicago-based nonprofit grantmaking organization, announced the recipients of this year’s 3Arts Awards: dance artists Silvita Diaz Brown and Kara Brody; musicians Marvin Tate and Tahirah Whittington; teaching artists Wisdom Baty and John Chapman; theater artists Tina Fakhrid-Deen and Ana Santos; and visual artists Diana Solís and Sandie (Chunshan) Yi. The organization will honor the new recipients on Monday, October 26, at 5:30 pm at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance, 205 E Randolph Street. Tickets to the 2026 3Arts Awards Celebration include a welcome reception, awards program, and a jubilant after-party. Tickets cost $50-$300 and are available at 3arts.org/tickets. Funds raised during the event will be split between 3Arts and Chicago nonprofit Center for Native Futures.
"When artists rise, communities rise with them,” says Cat Tager, Executive Director of 3Arts. "Because art is the foundation of any thriving community. In 2027, we will celebrate 20 years of 3Arts programming, work which has put over $10 million directly into the hands of Chicago artists. We look forward to continuing our mission to provide the critical support that helps them to experiment, to take risks, and ultimately to elevate our city."
Thirty-six artists will be honored at this year’s program, which distributes unrestricted awards across three categories: the 3Arts Awards ($30,000 each), Next Level Awards ($50,000 each), and the peer-selected Make a Wave Awards ($2,000 each). In partnership with Artspace Southern Illinois, the event also honors downstate artist Luca Cruzat with a 3Arts Award in visual art. The celebratory evening will feature powerful performances by three past 3Arts awardees: Keyierra Collins, Sparklmami, and Sandra Delgado.
3Arts has distributed more than $10 million in grants to more than 3,050 artists since 2007. 3Arts awardees reflect 66% women artists, 74% artists of color, and 17% Deaf or disabled artists.
About the Artists
Wisdom Baty (she/her) is a multidisciplinary artist, educator, curator, cultural organizer, and mother based on the South Side of Chicago. Her practice centers artist care, collaboration, and community-rooted civic engagement, exploring how cultural spaces can foster connection, creative sustainability, and collective well-being. Baty is the founder of WILD YAMS: Black Mothers Artist Residency, a residency and curatorial platform designed to provide Black artist mothers and caretakers with the time, space, and resources needed to sustain their creative practices. Through WILD YAMS, she has cultivated artist-centered programs, exhibitions, and public engagements that prioritize care, access, rest, and long-term cultural sustainability while uplifting intergenerational community voices and Black matrilineal care. She holds a BFA in Painting from the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) and an MA in Arts Administration and Policy from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Read more.
Kara Brody (any pronouns) is a Korean American movement artist and educator based in Chicago. Her work embodies social connection using dance as a site of queer belonging and collaborative inquiry. Approaching movement with a deep sense of tenderness and humility, she imbues a range of nuance with an explosive form of power. Brody’s work is multi-focused and collaborative, spanning genres from contemporary, to commercial, to experimental dance forms. A Bessie-nominated performer, she has performed works by Faye Driscoll, Lucky Plush Productions, Carlo Antonio Villanueva, Melinda Jean Myers, Erin Kilmurray, Alex Grelle, The Fly Honey Show, Paramount Theater, Kimberly Bartosik, The Cambrians, among others. She teaches frequently throughout the Midwest and is a lecturer at The University of Chicago. Read more.
Silvita Diaz Brown (she/her) is a Mexican American choreographer, dancer, movement educator, and yoga teacher based in Chicago since 2008. She is the founder and artistic director of Sildance/AcroDanza, a dance-theater company blending contemporary dance, physical theater, acrobatics, and storytelling. Born and raised in Puebla, Mexico, Diaz Brown holds a BFA in Dance from Universidad de las Américas Puebla and an MFA in Theatre/Movement from York University in Canada. Her interdisciplinary work explores identity, migration, memory, motherhood, resilience, and belonging through the lens of personal experience and collective history. Inspired by mysticism, folklore, and magic realism, she creates work that celebrates the complexity of women’s stories and the connections between generations. Her choreography has been supported and presented by many organizations, including Chicago Dancemakers Forum, DCASE, the National Museum of Mexican Art, Links Hall, Ragdale, and the Chicago Cultural Center. In 2026, Diaz Brown will premiere her most ambitious work, Ellas y Yo: Mexicanas, in October as part of a collaboration between Pivot Arts, the Physical Theater Festival, and the Chicago Latino Theater Alliance’s Destinos Festival. Read more.
John Chapman (he/him) is a Chicago-based teaching artist, musician, culture bearer, and co-director of Azania Drum Core. Through West African drumming, he creates spaces where young people can develop discipline, confidence, cultural connection, leadership, and a genuine sense of belonging. John grew up learning through Azania and returned as an adult to help teach and eventually carry forward the program that helped shape him. Today, he is helping build Azania into a lasting home for the next generation of young artists and culture bearers. He is also the co-founder of Camp Azania, a free summer youth program, and Azania Academy, a year-round training program for young drummers. Across more than 15 years of teaching in schools, community programs, colleges, and cultural institutions throughout Chicago, John has centered his practice on rigorous learning, mentorship, care, and the belief that culture is something young people should be able to inherit, belong to, and eventually carry forward. Read more.
Luca Cruzat (she/her) is a Chilean-born contemporary printmaker based in Southern Illinois whose practice centers on collagraphy, installation, and three-dimensional objects. Her work explores the human condition through questions, uncertainties, and everyday experiences, creating fragmentary portraits that reflect personal and collective stories. Characterized by simplified forms, restrained color palettes, and materials such as garments, her work finds meaning in the ordinary. Cruzat holds an MFA from Southern Illinois University Carbondale and an MA in Foreign Language and Literature. Her work has been included in university, museum, and private collections and has been presented at art fairs internationally in London, Germany, and Hong Kong. Read more.
Tina Fakhrid-Deen (she/her) cultivates spaces where we practice liberation together. Her work explores how we fracture, how we survive, and how we return to ourselves and one another, united by the belief that imagination is one of our greatest tools for creating abolitionist, peace-rooted, and more just futures. An award-winning playwright, author, educator, consultant, and LGBTQ+ family activist, Fakhrid-Deen works across artistic, educational, and civic spaces to create experiences that inspire dialogue, critical inquiry, and collective transformation. Fakhrid-Deen is a Distinguished Professor of English at Oakton College, where she teaches composition, literature, and creative writing. Her work as both artist and educator has been recognized through fellowships and residencies with The Studios of Key West, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Fulbright-Hays Program, MacDowell, Kimbilio For Black Fiction, and Voices of our Nations Arts Foundation (VONA). She is also the recipient of Oakton College’s Ray Hartstein Award for Outstanding Professional Excellence in Teaching and the AAWCC Award of Distinction for her service to both campus and community. Read more.
Ana Santos (she/her) is an actress, singer, director, costume designer, and teaching artist from Cidra, Puerto Rico. Her work is rooted in the belief that theater is a powerful vehicle for storytelling, cultural preservation, and social transformation. Throughout her career, she has built a multidisciplinary practice that bridges performance, music, education, and community engagement across Puerto Rico, Europe, and the US. A proud ensemble member of Aguijón Theater in Chicago, Santos continues to expand her artistry through collaborative and socially engaged work that centers cultural identity, connection, and collective storytelling. Her work has been recognized with honors including the 3Arts Make a Wave Artist Award, the Key to the City of Cidra, Puerto Rico, multiple ALTA Awards, and a Jeff Award for Performer in a Principal Role. Read more.
Diana Solís (she/they) is a Mexican-born photographer, artist, and educator whose practice includes photography, painting, illustration, public murals, and installation. Inspired by Mexican and Chicano culture, memory, cautionary tales, oral histories, and queer identities and narratives, her work explores place, identity, belonging, and community. As a documentary photographer, Solís has created an archive of LGBTQ+, Latinx, and feminist communities and movements in Chicago and Mexico City. In 2022, selections from this body of work, Diana Solís: Intimacies in Resistance, were presented at the Triennial of Photography Hamburg (Germany) as part of Ariel Goldberg’s lecture and essay “Lucid Knowledge: The Currency of the Photographic Image.” Her work was included in Images on Which to Build, 1970s–1990s (2023) at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art in New York. Recent exhibitions include Chicano Camera Culture: A Photographic History, 1966 to 2026 at The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture of the Riverside Art Museum, and City in a Garden: Queer Art and Activism in Chicago at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. Read more.
Marvin Tate (he/him/they/them) is a Chicago-based interdisciplinary artist, poet, musician, educator, and community arts activist whose work explores memory, Black identity, spirituality, improvisation, and radical imagination. For more than three decades, Tate has developed a distinctive practice rooted in storytelling, humor, experimentation, and community. Drawing from his experiences growing up in Chicago’s North Lawndale neighborhood, his work transforms personal memory into opportunities for collective reflection and connection. A pioneering voice in Chicago’s spoken-word and experimental arts communities, Tate was named Chicago Poetry Slam Champion in 1990 and is the founder and frontman of Marvin Tate’s D-Settlement. His work moves fluidly across artistic forms and traditions, creating space for dialogue, vulnerability, and creative freedom. An award-winning educator, Tate also uses art as a tool for connection and empowerment through workshops, residencies, and community-based projects. Read more.
Tahirah Whittington (she/her) is a Grammy-nominated cellist and founding member of D-Composed and the Ritz Chamber Players. She has performed with the Dear Evan Hansen Broadway National Tour and Hamilton: An American Musical in Chicago, and her recording credits include The Lion King (2019), Beyoncé’s The Lion King: The Gift, and albums by John Legend and PJ Morton. Her screen credits include A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood and Empire, and she recorded the cello solo for Rhiannon Giddens’ Cry No More, arranged by composer Michael Abels. Whittington holds degrees from New England Conservatory and The Juilliard School, where she studied cello performance. Read more.
About 3Arts
Founded in 1912 with a history centered on women artists and reimagined as an arts service organization in 2007, 3Arts supports artists in the Chicago metropolitan and greater Carbondale areas working in the performing, teaching, and visual arts, including women-identified artists, artists of color, and Deaf and disabled artists. The 3Arts Awards were launched in 2007 to provide unrestricted awards, project funding, residencies, professional development opportunities, and promotion to help artists take creative risks, build sustainable careers, and contribute to the cultural vitality of Chicago and the broader region.
3Arts extends special thanks to the 2026 Award Partners: The HMS Fund, The SIF Fund at the Chicago Community Foundation, Stan Lipkin & Evelyn Appell Lipkin, and MSU Federal Credit Union.
3Arts gratefully acknowledges the generous support of its 2026 event sponsors: Lead Sponsors, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Illinois and Morningstar; and Corporate Friend, Center for Advanced Emotional Intelligence.
One 3Arts Award is the 2026 3Arts/MSUFCU Community Award celebrates the collective generosity of artists and supporters across Chicago, whose contributions made the award possible.
3Arts also recognizes support for the Next Level Awards from an anonymous donor at The Chicago Community Foundation, the Paul Angell Foundation, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
For more information about 3Arts, please visit www.3arts.org.
About Artspace Southern Illinois
Artspace Southern Illinois is a nonprofit cultural arts organization serving the southern Illinois region with offices in Carbondale, Illinois. Founded in 1987 as a grassroots effort, Artspace Southern Illinois has grown to serve people from communities across the region, showcasing the arts and humanities through three dedicated venues and a network of partnerships. The organization offers services and resources to independent artists, provides grant funding for the cultural arts, and offers opportunities for people to experience and participate in the cultural arts, including in underserved communities and areas where it can have a significant impact. Artspace Southern Illinois receives support from the Illinois Arts Council, National Endowment for the Arts, Illinois Humanities, Giving Good Chaos, City of Carbondale, and generous donors throughout the region.
For more information about Artspace Southern Illinois, visit: artspacesouthernillinois.org
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