Meet the 2025 Makers

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Since 2019, we've undertaken a project called The Makers to highlight some of the most exciting artists working in Greater Boston. Throughout the year, we keep an eye out for work that intrigues us, but we also rely on other people in the arts community to tell us who they find exciting right now.

Over the years, we have featured so many talented emerging artists of color, and it’s been exciting to watch them thrive. Artists like Alison Croney Moses, Jonathan Suazo and Sneha Shrestha, have continued to ascend in spectacular ways. (Croney Moses and Shrestha were both awarded the Foster Prize this year, a biennial award given by Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art.) Watching the evolution of their work is exciting, especially as their roots in Boston continue to deepen.

For this year’s Makers cohort, we chose a theme — the environment — to guide our selection of artists. We’ve been continually interested in artists making work at the intersection of the environment and sustainability, like Jean Shin’s eco-art installations made as refuges for migrating birds, or Carolina Aragón’s floating sculpture made of lobster traps to show potential flooding as sea levels rise in Fort Point Channel.

The environment is a potent source of inspiration, and the 10 artists of The 2025 Makers each take their own enticing approach to interpreting the world around them. Interdisciplinary artist crystal bi uses the natural world as part of her immersive art-making; this summer, she created a floating bamboo sculpture with panels of fabric that rippled in the wind as it rode gentle waves at Carson Beach. Andre StrongBearHeart Gaines-Roberson Jr. is reviving Indigenous practices, like burning dugout canoes and building traditional homes. The natural materials he needs, like white pine and white cedar, can be difficult to source since they grow on land that’s often inaccessible. It has led StrongBearHeart, through his organization No Loose Braids, to advocate for increased Indigenous access from the trusts and state agencies holding the land.

Dancer Marissa Molinar draws on her background as a former ecologist to train and empower a new generation of leaders in dance. “I thought I was leaving ecology behind, but I actually brought it with me,” she told WBUR’s Solon Kelleher. She described the way in which the elephant — a keystone species — has an outsized impact on its environment. The notion informs her philosophical approach to dance and facilitating change in a tough industry.

What all of the artists have in common is that they explore their place in the wider world, while also envisioning a brighter future for themselves and the community around them. Their ingenuity and passion offer not only new perspectives but new possibilities for our relationship with the environment. Through the artists’ practices and engagement with issues of sustainability, tradition and identity, they map a path to spark dialogue and change. The work of The 2025 Makers challenges each of us to reconsider our place in the world and to imagine creative responses to the environmental complexities we face.