Congratulations 2025 SFLX Fellowship Awardees
The ARTS Council of the Southern Finger Lakes (The ARTS Council) is thrilled to announce the inaugural recipients of the Southern Finger Lakes (SFLX) Artist Fellowship, a $3,500 unrestricted, cash award funded and supported by The ARTS Council’s Endowment!
The 2025 fellows are:
- Gigi Alvaré
- Hayden Haynes
- Meghan O’Toole
- Fileve Tlaloc (Palmer)
Addressing the historical and ongoing inequity in fellowship funding awarded to Upstate artists, the SFLX Artist Fellowship allows artists to focus solely on their art-making. Free from the need to fulfill specific project requirements, artists instead are encouraged to experiment and develop their creative voices. Read below for more details about the 2025 fellows.
Gigi Alvaré was, from 2001 to 2018, the Director of Education at The Rockwell Museum in Corning, NY and prior to that, a teaching-artist, actor, illustrator, and playwright, conducting programs in schools and art centers. Through the Museum she initiated and developed projects in the community including the Alley Art Project in collaboration with Corning-Painted Post School District High School Learning Center. As an artist, her work has been exhibited throughout New York State at galleries and art centers. She was awarded the Lifetime Service Award by The ARTS Council of the Southern Finger Lakes in 2018.
Hayden Haynes is antler carving artist working deeply in cultural arts revitalization and teaching. Born in Claremore, OK, Hayden grew up on the Seneca-Cattaraugus Territory in Western New York. It is from here where he draws inspiration related to land, history, and culture for his artwork, which gives his pieces strong personal components. Whether his art touches on the Native experience, identity, or resiliency, Hayden’s work is always created through a self-perspective framed Native lens sharing his experiences, knowledge, and observations of living among his community. A citizen of the Seneca Nation and Deer Clan, Hayden is a self-taught artist. His current art practice involves working across the mediums of antler, mixed media, and digital photography. Hayden currently lives and works in Seneca-Allegany Territory.
Meghan O’Toole is a theatre artist based in Corning, NY, with over 30 years of experience as an actor, director, producer, and teaching artist. Passionate about building community through the arts, Meghan focuses on creating collaborative, multidisciplinary experiences that inspire engagement and connection. In 2020, she earned a Creative Placemaking certificate from NJIT and spearheaded the public art park demonstration event IMAGINE! in Corning’s Civic Plaza, involving 12 cultural organizations and hundreds of artists. Recent projects include directing new works by local playwrights, curating SoFLX Pride festival and events, and leading the Identity & the Artist program for HSLC students at The Rockwell Museum since 2021.
Fileve Tlaloc (Palmer) is a multigenerational, creole-South African American artist and anthropologist who has lived and worked amongst Haudenosaunee for over 15 years. Fileve grew up in New York City. She is a trained anthropologist with a propensity to capture human existence through representation of human and animal bodies using cultural symbols to reflect relationships. Her work speaks to the emotional and physical condition of human struggles between power and peace, injustice and freedom, and the intersections of race, geography, and nature. As a multicultural, multinational, and multiracial person, Fileve explores journeys into human identity and uses her anthropological training to engage the public. Her goal is to communicate human experience(s) through visual representations that explore the facets of being human through the examination between historical moments and memories of the subaltern. Fileve has exhibited her work extensively throughout New York, Indiana, and Pennsylvania. She is a Fulbright Scholar and a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar to South Africa. She is the recipient of funding through NYSCA’s Statewide Community Regrant and Support for Artist Grant programs. Fileve is a current Appalachian Leadership Institute Fellow where she continues to develop her leadership skills to inspire and empower individuals and communities to thrive rather than just survive.
The SFLX Artist Fellowship is supported and funded by The ARTS Council’s Endowment allowing for the support of regional art making in perpetuity. Thank you to all our Endowment Contributors.
