Announcing the 2026 Cohort
The Center is delighted to announce the six artists selected for the fourth annual Artists Residency at the Center, taking place this September in New York City. Please join us in congratulating these remarkable artists whose work spans artistic disciplines and continents. Learn more about each resident by clicking on their photo below.
Camille Charbonneau, Canada, visual art
Meg Dodini, Texas, choreography
Tyler Gathro, Utah, visual art
Laura Hatch, Texas, literature
Emily Pack, Arizona, music composition
Ahmed Jamal Qureshi, Norway, visual art
Development
GRANT WINNERS
Underwritten and awarded by the Center’s Board of Directors, six $1,000 grants were also awarded to one applicant in each artistic discipline.
Barrett Burgin (film, Tennessee)
Talavou Fitisemanu (visual art, Utah)
James Goldberg (literature, Utah)
Bronté Hopkins (choreography, Utah)
Ellie Prisbrey (graphic design, Indiana)
Justin White (music composition, Florida)
The Jury for the 2026 Artists Residency
Astrid Tuminez
SCHOLARSHIPPresident, Utah Valley University (Utah)
Cameron King
DESIGNVP of Creative at CASE design agency (New York)
Curt Holman
CHOREOGRAPHYChair, BYU Department of Dance; Artistic Director, BYU Ballroom Dance Company; 2026 Karl G. Maeser Distinguished Faculty Lecturer (Utah)
Jared Cardon
FILMEmmy-winning writer, director, producer, and game designer (Utah)
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America’s Violinist, Jenny Oaks Baker, is a GRAMMY-nominated, Billboard No. 1 performer and recording artist. She received her Master of Music degree from The Juilliard School and her Bachelor’s degree from The Curtis Institute of Music. Jenny has performed as a soloist at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, The Library of Congress, and as a guest soloist with The Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square, and the Jerusalem, Pittsburgh, Utah, and National Symphonies. Jenny has released twenty albums, including her latest, The Redeemer Deluxe Edition, which have sold over a million copies and consistently chart on Billboard. Music from her Grammy nominated album, Wish Upon a Star: A Tribute to Walt Disney is featured at Disney World and Disneyland to introduce the nightly fireworks show.
In her efforts to share the light of Christ with more of God’s children, Jenny is now producing and touring Christ-centered shows across the US. She also recently founded SoulFill Music Foundation to enable her faith-based productions, educational initiatives and musical diplomacy endeavors to reach wider audiences and bring more communities together. Jenny, her husband, Matthew, and their four children (musical group Family Four) are from Salt Lake City, Utah.
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Monica received an undergraduate degree in Art History from the American University of Paris in France. She then worked at an international auction house and a major art gallery in New York City prior to obtaining a JD from the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law and an LLM in Taxation from New York University School of Law. She currently leads the Goldman Sachs Family Office Art & Collectibles Strategy practice, where she advises collectors on a wide-range of art-nuanced tax, philanthropy and estate planning issues. She is a member of PAIAM (Professional Advisors to the International Art Market) and also serves as a Director on the Board of the American University of Paris Foundation.
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Cameron King is an advocate for collaborative creative communities and is obsessed with branding.
As the son of a creative director and dad to three NYC art students, design runs in the family. After graduating with a BFA in Graphic Design, he directed photoshoots and helped design Martha Stewart Living magazine, earning multiple awards from the Society of Publication Designers.
Currently as VP of Creative at CASE, Cameron pushes the creative team, hosts weekly inspiration share-outs, and co-creates with global megabrands and small start-ups to produce strategy-driven, award-winning, visually rich design solutions.
Clients include: e.l.f. Beauty, Havaianas, Disney, Pepsi, Herman Miller, Johnson & Johnson, Bloomingdale’s, W Hotels, Saks Fifth Avenue, Sheraton, Estée Lauder Companies, and Shiseido.
He serves the local design community on the education workgroup of the AIGA NY Board of Directors, partnering with local design leaders to champion emerging talent.
You can usually find him getting inspired by a long run in Central Park.
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In 2018, following a rich and storied career in business, philanthropy, and academia, Dr. Astrid S. Tuminez became the seventh president of Utah Valley University. She is the first woman to serve on a full-time basis as UVU president. Raised in the slums of the Philippines, Tuminez rose to become a world leader in the fields of technology and political science, most recently serving as an executive at Microsoft. She is also the former vice dean of research and assistant dean of executive education at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore.
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Jared Cardon is an Emmy Award-winning filmmaker whose productions have garnered over 3 billion views worldwide and the praise of the New York Times, BuzzFeed, Huffington Post and many others. Cardon co-created the Webby-Award-honored interactive conspiracy thriller, "The Book of Jer3miah", which The New York Times called, “a tight, suspenseful series...real drama, with real stakes and real consequences''; wrote and created the original comedy series "Pretty Darn Funny" and launched the hit family sketch comedy series "Studio C". His sitcom "Higher Ed" was named a Semi-Finalist in NBC’s national Comedy Playground competition, and his drama "La Linea" was selected as a Finalist for Sundance Institute’s Episodic Story Lab. Funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation in partnership with NASA and the Smithsonian, Cardon co-created two interactive experiences/ARGs, "DUST" and "The Tessera", the latter of which was an Official Selection at Indiecade.
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Curt Holman is Chair of the Department of Dance at Brigham Young University and Artistic Director of the internationally renowned BYU Ballroom Dance Company. He is widely recognized as a leading choreographer in ballroom dance, noted for integrating large-scale theatrical production with traditional ballroom technique. His peer-reviewed and juried works have been presented internationally across Europe, Asia, and South America, including a recent commissioned production presented for the King and Queen of Thailand. Holman’s choreography has earned an unprecedented number of World Championship titles, and he is regularly sought by top professional ballroom dance couples to create competitive works. He is the recipient of BYU’s highest faculty honor, the Karl G. Maeser Distinguished Faculty Lecturer Award, and is a frequent invited lecturer on the intersection of the arts, faith, and disciple scholarship.
Monica Heslington
VISUAL ARTHead of Goldman Sachs Family Office Art & Collectibles Strategy (New York)
Jenny Oaks Baker
MUSIC COMPOSITIONGRAMMY-nominated violinist, producer and founder of SoulFill Music Foundation (Utah)
Zinta Jaunitis
VISUAL ARTArtist, Creative Producer at Historic Royal Palaces, and 2025 Center Artist-in-Residence (United Kingdom)
Tara Westover
LITERATUREAmerican memoirist, essayist, historian, and New York Times-bestselling author (New York)
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Zinta Jaunitis is a London-based artist and creative producer whose practice spans drawing, print and public facing contemporary art projects. With a background in art and design—holding a BA in Graphic Design and MAs in Visual Culture and Visual Arts—her practice draws on art history, literature, memory, and the everyday.
Blurring the boundaries between observation and imagination, Zinta works with responsive materials such as ink, charcoal, and pastel, allowing movement and mark-making to arise. She is particularly drawn to folding formats—including the leporello and, more recently, the folding screen—which enable imagery to unfold through space and time. These structures invite associative narratives to emerge, revealing and concealing meaning through rhythm and sequence inherent in the fold.
The interplay between chance and control significantly informs her practice. Zinta uses playful constraints—such as drawing with her non-dominant hand or responding to arbitrary prompts—to build up layers and invite the unexpected into her process.
Since 2020, she has exhibited nationally and internationally. Alongside her studio practice, Zinta is a creative producer with Historic Royal Palaces, commissioning major public-facing, cross-disciplinary art projects within historic sites, including the Tower of London. She is represented by Woolwich Contemporary Editions for her original prints, and her work is held in private and public international collections. In 2025, she was awarded the national Women in Print prize. Zinta is also a member of Monday Night Collective, an international group of artists who met online producing collaborative zines focused on art and storytelling.
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Tara Westover is an American historian and memoirist. Her first book, Educated, debuted at #1 on the New York Times bestseller list and remained on the list, in hardcover, for more than two years. A memoir of her upbringing in rural Idaho, the book was a finalist for a number of national awards, including the L.A. Times Book Prize, the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. To date it has been translated into 49 languages. The New York Times named Educated one of the 10 Best Books of 2018, and the American Booksellers Association voted Educated the Nonfiction Book of the Year. In 2019, Time Magazine named Westover one of the 100 Most Influential People. Westover holds a PhD in intellectual history from Trinity College, Cambridge, and in 2019 she was the Rosenthal Writer in Residence at Harvard University. In 2023, she was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Biden.
Out of Ashes: An Artist’s Witness from Grand Blanc
The creation of Scorched by Thayer Jonutz
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Come, Follow Me
ART COMPANION
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Featured Artwork
JONATHAN GIBSON: Contribute
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Mormon Horror
MASON KAMANA ALLRED: The Body is the Message
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The Center's Studio Podcast
S8E9: A Leap Into Darkness
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Latter-day Saint Art:
A CRITICAL READER
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Art in Conversation
ORIGINAL ART
About the Program
The purpose of the Residency is simple: To help the artist make their best work. Each year, the Center brings a group of artists (writers, composers, choreographers, designers, architects, filmmakers, and visual artists) to New York. Artists soak in the city’s abundance, have dedicated time to work on new projects, and form a community with other Latter-day Saint artists.
The Residency offers a tailor-made experience for each participant's creative and professional development. Those interested will describe the project they intend to work on in their application materials, and the Center for Latter-day Saint Arts will curate workspaces to facilitate the participants' specific needs. (For instance, a composer may work in a Juilliard practice studio while a painter requires a sunlit studio in SoHo. We are interested in artists who are working at all stages of their career).
Selected artists will receive travel to and from New York City, living accommodations, tickets to curated group and individual events and entertainment, and a daily stipend to cover food and travel in the city for those accepted to the Residency.
A key feature of the Artists Residency is the community built between cohort members throughout the week of their stay. In addition to their individual time working, artists-in-residence bond over meals, outings, and end-of-day gatherings and share their ideas and experiences together.
Announcing the 2025
Artists in Residence
Keynote Speaker Announced:
Richard Bushman
Prolific writer, historian, and author of Rough Stone Rolling, and co-founder of the Center will deliver the closing plenary on the topic of divine creativity at the Center Virtual Festival on May 30-31st, 2025.
