Fellowship - Erik Brunetti Foundation for the Arts

The Applied Arts Fellowship

A Fellowship for Unconventional Mastery in Functional Disciplines

The Applied Arts Fellowship is a program of the Erik Brunetti Foundation for the Arts dedicated to honoring forms of mastery that exist outside conventional aesthetic canons—disciplines where utility, embodiment, and craft converge.

The Fellowship supports individuals whose work inhabits the space between functionality and poetics: from traditional trades to radical fabrication, from martial disciplines to industrial subcultures. These are practitioners who treat form as a form of thinking.

Examples include:

— Experimental luthiers and analog instrument makers

— Tattooers and sign painters preserving outlaw calligraphies

— Martial artists advancing lineage, pedagogy, and discipline

— Builders, welders, or machinists whose work transcends function

Purpose

While conventional institutions tend to prize conceptual abstraction, the Fellowship emphasizes applied skill, cultural transmission, and lived aesthetic intelligence. It provides recipients with a stipend and strategic platforming within the Foundation’s public framework.

Eligibility

The Fellowship is by nomination only. Candidates are identified through a confidential advisory process composed of artists, fabricators, designers, and cultural strategists. There is no open application.

Timeline

Nominations open January 2027. Selected Fellows will be announced Summer 2027.

Support

The Applied Arts Fellowship is funded through the generosity of aligned individuals, cultural philanthropists, and private foundations committed to preserving the dignity and innovation of applied mastery across disciplines.

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To Inquire About Funding the Fellowship

Contact: foundation@erikbrunettifoundation.org

A 501(c)(3) public charity. Contributions may be tax-deductible.