Next Level Awards

The 3Arts Next Level Awards offer our past award recipients the opportunity to receive second awards at a higher level, reflecting our organization's belief that one-time investments are not always enough for artists to build lasting momentum, and that they thrive with continued support at critical junctures as their practices and careers evolve.

In 2025, the Next Level program will provide six $50,000 awards to artists working in the following categories:

Next Level Teaching Arts Awards: With support from Good Chaos adn the John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, 3Arts honors three teaching artists. In 2025, these awards were open to artists in the Chicago metropolitan region who had received a past 3Arts Award in Teaching Arts or a 3Arts/Bodies of Work Residency and whose practice is in teaching arts.
Next Level Visual Arts Awards: With support from an Anonymous Donor at the Chicago Community Foundation, 3Arts honors three women visual artists. In 2025, these awards were open to women visual artists in the Chicago metropolitan region who had received a past 3Arts Award, a Make a Wave Award in 2017-2020, or a 3Arts/Bodies of Work Residency.

Profiles of Next Level Award recipients are accessible further below on this page, or download an awardee list in PDF here.

Selection Process

3Arts artists who meet the category and eligibility requirements above are invited to submit an online application. A panel of distinguished jurors for each award category convene to review the applications and select the recipients. Recipients are artists who are actively making distinctive and compelling work; have plans to advance their next creative leap and/or project; and are at a critical juncture when an award of this size and nature could have a significant impact.

Meet the jury panel for the 2025 3Arts Next Level Teaching Arts Awards.
Meet the jury panel for the 2025 3Arts Next Level Visual Arts Awards.

2025

Ricardo Gamboa
Teaching Artist and Activist

Ricardo Gamboa (they/them), PhD, is an award-winning artist, activist, and scholar based in their native Chicago. For over 20 years, Gamboa has created art, media, and theater that is radically produced, presented, and politicized, and aims to provide radical …
Leyda "Lady Sol" Garcia
Teaching Artist and Mentor RH, Restoration Hardware Awardee

Leyda “Lady Sol” Garcia (She/Her/Ella) is a humble Mexican-American-XICANA, a globally recognized street dance professional, mother of Jasir, and Maria's daughter from Chicago's proudest community, Humboldt Park. She was trained within Chicago and New York City's Black Dance community among …
Maria Gaspar
Interdisciplinary Artist

Maria Gaspar (she/her) is a Chicago-born, first-generation, interdisciplinary artist negotiating the politics of location through installation, sculpture, sound, and performance. Gaspar’s body of work addresses issues of spatial justice to amplify, mobilize, or divert structures of power through individual and …
Janhavi Khemka
Interdisciplinary Artist

Born in 1993 in Varanasi, India, Chicago-based artist Janhavi Khemka (she/her) is an interdisciplinary artist who graduated with a B.F.A. in Painting from the Faculty of Visual Art, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi in 2015. She studied MFA in Graphics from …
Andrés Lemus-Spont
Designer, Educator, Fabricator, and Teaching Artist HMS Fund Awardee

Andrés Lemus-Spont (he/him) is an artist, designer, educator, fabricator, and proud child of Mexican immigrants. Much of Andrés' work engages with themes of community empowerment, equity, and creative exploration, particularly focusing on how collaborative play, craft, and experimentation can lead …
Lan Tuazon
Sculptor

Born 1976 in Mabalacat, Philippines, Lan Tuazon (she/her) is a Chicago based sculptor making tools, sculptures, and installations as test-sites for collectivity, resilience, and a reimagination of the present. Tuazon's current "test-site" projects are five chances to test and transform …