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Each year, Creative Capital awards risk-taking and underinvested artists creating new work in their field with grants to fund their projects across the fields of visual arts, performing arts, film/moving image, literature, technology, and more. Though the number of applicants exceeded 5,600 this year, the selective grants were only awarded to approximately 55 artists.

Amber Bemak, associate professor in Meadows’ Division of Film & Media Arts, was one of just a handful of artists in her discipline to receive one of these prestigious grants in 2025. The Creative Capital Awards specifically seek to support artists creating innovative work that pushes formal, conceptual, or social boundaries, and Bemak’s current film project does just that.

Her project is a feature length documentary film that focuses on Peter Valentine, who was diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic but chose not to take medication. Instead, he developed what he called Electromagnetic Arts, a psychic defense system. Valentine became embroiled in a long battle with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in a fight to stay in his apartment while they demolished his neighborhood to develop University Park. He claimed he couldn’t leave the dwelling because it was his electromagnetic laboratory, and MIT eventually sold him the entire building for a dollar, moving it entirely to another street.

“Receiving a Creative Capital Award is one of the highest honors I could receive as an artist in my lifetime,” says Bemak. “I am humbled and grateful to have this kind of support for my work.”

Creative Capital’s unrestricted project grants can be drawn down over a multi-year period and can provide bespoke professional development services and community-building opportunities. This year, the organization awarded 49 innovative projects focused on painting, drawing, sculpture, architecture, video, installation, dance, theater, jazz, opera, multimedia performance, narrative film, experimental film, documentary film, poetry, fiction, and nonfiction.