Art Faculty Jen de los Reyes and Oscar Rene Cornejo Awarded 2025 Creative Capital Project Grant

Jen de los Reyes and Oscar Rene Cornejo, both faculty in Cornell AAP's Department of Art, are among the 55 artists awarded 2025 Creative Capital grants totaling $2.45 million. Providing up to $50,000 in unrestricted project support, this round of funding supports individual artists in the creation of 49 new works across the visual arts, technology, performing arts, film/moving image, and literature, as well as multidisciplinary and socially engaged forms in all disciplines.

Selected from a pool of 5,653 applications, Cornejo and Reyes's project Opens an external linkLANDOpens an external link "combines histories of artists' engagement with land-based practices and techniques with environmental regeneration and conservation to cultivate sustainable futures." Working on a 4.2-acre site northwest of Cornell's Ithaca campus, their proposal encompasses outdoor art and ecology studios, community-driven agriculture, artist interventions, and educational programming. Planned work will demonstrate regenerative forestry, permaculture, collective stewardship, and site-responsive agriculture.

In 2024, LAND also received a seed grant from the Cornell Mui Ho Center for Cities which supported foundational work to create outdoor infrastructure for public programs as well as planning and supplies to build sample gardens and establish saplings on the site.

In parallel with the development of the funded project, Reyes will lead a new course at AAP — LAND: Art, Ecology, and Environmental Activism. This class will participate in the cultivation and maintenance of a mini-forest and develop installation, collaboration, fieldwork, and social practice skills through hands-on projects. Students will also gain a familiarity with a wide range of international artists addressing land-based practices, including issues of biodiversity and climate crisis.

The overall project emerged from a desire to reconcile the disconnection between people and their environment, both physically and psychologically. "Data around climate reveals catastrophic realities that often alienate people away from their practical role in shifting paradigms of contemporary living," notes Reyes. "By utilizing the practices and the cognitive function of art, we can provide the grounds for compassionate inquiry and heal human connection by advocating for the perception of the wealth of live ecosystems we share the world with."