When Lex R Thomas looks at members of the LGBT community in Louisiana, they see wildflowers.

Thomas is a visual artist based in Lafayette, and a 2023 ArtSpark grant recipient for their work seeking to further representation of Acadiana’s queer community.

“When you think of traditional Cajun culture, the LGBT community is often not depicted as part of that culture,” said Thomas, who identifies as nonbinary. “But similar to wildflowers, even if you manicure your lawn, try to get rid of them, they are always going to pop back up.”

ArtSpark, offered by the Acadiana Center for the Arts and the Lafayette Economic Development Authority, is in its 10th year of supporting Acadiana-based artists, musicians and creatives with one-time grants and a year’s worth of entrepreneurial coaching on how to advance creative careers. Thomas was one of 10 winners announced last week.

Thomas will use the award to hire live models who represent Acadiana’s diversity, pairing them with native wildflowers to showcase both the beauty and the resiliency of the subject.

“It’s about queer representation and personal catharsis,” said Thomas, who noted feelings of disconnection while growing up in Kaplan. “You’re not alone, these things that you’re feeling inside that you can’t communicate, like grief or trauma. When someone looks at my paintings, I hope they see that this person is experiencing them, too, even if it’s not a direct conversation verbally. They can see my paintings and feel like they’re not the only one experiencing this.”

ArtSpark was founded to help advance regional artists who may otherwise have a difficult time funding new work. ACA Community Development Manager Anna Kojevnikov cited former recipient Dirk Guidry, a Lafayette artist and muralist, as an ArtSpark success story.

Guidry was the official visual artist for last year’s Festival International. He also sells his art on apparel such as yoga leggings and fanny packs.

“Now we see his work everywhere,” said Kojevnikov, speaking of the program’s goal of supporting artists while giving them business coaching.

Filmmaker and screenwriter Chasah West will use the ArtSpark grant to support her directorial debut in “Never Even.” The short film explores the roles of aggressor and victim in reverse chronology, leaving the audience with a changing perception of the film’s events as it works backward to the start of the conflict.

West was born in Acadiana but raised in Johannesburg, South Africa and Lusaka, Zambia. In coming back to Louisiana to attend the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, she found inspiration from seeing people work to keep the region’s diverse cultures and traditions alive.

“We are technically of Creole language heritage,” said West, who often works with her sister, Charliese, on film projects. “If our grandparents were alive today, we would not actually be able to communicate with them because that was their first language and we do not speak more than three to five words of Louisiana Creole. That got us really exploring what we wanted to write, just by seeing how the Creole language is still being held onto even while it’s endangered.”

The role of the artist is often to explore issues of identity and belonging — among individuals and groups, and also in relationships to nature and place. While many of the grant recipients have deep ties to Acadiana, a number of projects explore the complex nature of those ties. West also sees this question of identity as a key element of her art.

“We see ourselves as ‘insider-outsiders,’” she said. “Technically feeling like we come from here but actually still learning things about the culture.”

Through ArtSpark, Acadiana residents have the opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of the region’s culture and creative impact as reflected through this year’s diverse panel of artists, musicians, filmmakers and other creatives.

Other grant recipients are:

• Virgile Beddock with A Filipino Louisiana Story, a 26-minute documentary film about the loss of history in marginalized Louisiana communities.
• Becca Begnaud with Traitement, a three-part documentary series on healing featuring dialogue with an anthropologist, a folk medicine practitioner, and a French modern language specialist, hosted by Begnaud.
• Grant Michael Dermody with Trouble Down Teche, his sixth recorded album that will dive into the acoustic music of Acadiana while incorporating gospel, Creole, Jure, Louisiana blues and more.
• Dustin Dale Gaspard with a conceptual bilingual folk album highlight the story of his ancestors’ exile from Nova Scotia.
• Whitney Willis Hebert with Ten Tiny Dances, a performance series that experiments with confined space and fosters inventive dance and performance art.
• Louis Michot with a music video for “Boscoyo Flo,” a single from his new album Rêve du Troubadour. “Boscoyo Flo” is about his mission as an artist to feature sustainability and environmental awareness through music.
• Rachel Nederveld with an audio storytelling series that explores the relationship between humans and the natural world in and around Acadiana.
• Kathleen Reed, who will be part of the nature and art residency at Basin Arts, working to promote a deeper awareness of nature in daily encounters through art-making.