2025 James and Audrey Foster Prize

Alison Croney Moses (born 1983, Fayetteville, North Carolina; lives and works in Roslindale, MA, and Allston, Boston, MA) creates wooden objects that reach for your senses—the smell of cedar, the glowing color of honey, the round form that signifies safety and warmth, the gentle curve that beckons to be touched. Born and raised in North Carolina by Guyanese parents, Croney Moses remembers making clothing, food, furniture, and art as part of her childhood. She cares deeply about why and how things are made and has carried these values and habits into adulthood and parenting, creating experiences, conversations, and educational programs that cultivate the current and next generation of artists and leaders in art and craft. She holds an MA in Sustainable Business and Communities from Goddard College and a BFA in Furniture Design from Rhode Island School of Design. Croney Moses has been included in group exhibitions at Houston Center for Contemporary Craft (2024–25); Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2024); Center for Art in Wood, Philadelphia (2022–23); MassArt Art Museum, Boston (2022); and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2021–22), among others. She is a recipient of the 2024 Black Mountain College International Artist Prize, the 2023 Boston Artadia Award, and the 2022 USA Fellowship in Craft, and a finalist of the 2024 LOEWE FOUNDATION Craft Prize. Croney Moses will debut her first public art installation at the Boston Public Art Triennial in 2025 through their Accelerator program.

Yorgos Efthymiadis (born 1972, Halkidiki, Greece; lives and works in Somerville, MA) is an artist and curator who works in photographic media. Drawing from his experience as an architectural photographer, Efthymiadis has explored portraiture of kin. In recent series. His large-scale, exploded portraits depict his friends and family in Greece, Boston, and beyond, alongside portraits of their surrounding architecture, natural environments, and material culture. In 2015, Efthymiadis created a gallery in his kitchen entitled The Curated Fridge to celebrate fine art photography and connect photographers with established and influential curators, gallerists, publishers, and artists from around the world through free, quarterly curated calls. The Curated Fridge recently celebrated 10 years of exhibitions featuring more than 1,500 artists across 40 shows. Efthymiadis has had solo exhibitions at Gallery Kayafas, Boston (2016, 2019, 2024) and the Griffin Museum of Photography, Winchester, MA (2016); and has been included in several group exhibitions including at Danforth Art Museum, Framingham, MA (2013, 2015, 2016, 2022); Somerville Museum, Somerville, MA (2019); and Photographic Resource Center, Boston (2015), among others. Efthymiadis is an awardee of the Artist’s Resource Trust A.R.T. Grant (2024); a finalist for the Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship (2017); and a board member of Somerville Arts Council (2017–present). 

Damien Hoar de Galvan (born 1979, Northampton, MA; lives and works in Milton, MA) has developed a unique output of painted sculpture made primarily from recycled wood for nearly 20 years. His sculptures range from smaller tabletop objects to larger wall-sized installations. Some of the wood Hoar de Galvan uses is reclaimed from his time as a preparator at the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln, MA, and from his father’s carpentry projects, which he began in the 1970s as an immigrant to Massachusetts from Argentina. Hoar de Galvan recently completed a sculpture-a-day series over the 365 days of 2024 and plans to incorporate recycled wood from ICA installations into new works. Hoar de Galvan holds a Post-Baccalaureate Certificate from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and a BA from Green Mountain College in Poultney, VT. He has exhibited in group exhibitions at Concord Center for Visual Art, Concord, MA (2024); Drive-By Projects, Watertown, MA (2023); and has had several solo and group exhibitions at galleries in New York, Seattle, Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and across Massachusetts. 

Sneha Shrestha (born 1987, Kathmandu, Nepal; lives and works in Kathmandu, Boston, and Somerville, MA), also known as Imagine, creates paintings, works on paper, sculpture, and larger-than-life murals that harmoniously blend her native Nepali and Sanskrit languages, mantras, sacred sounds used in meditation and prayer, and American graffiti hand styles. There are hundreds of Nepali scripts, and Shrestha’s work actively pushes against the monolithic notion that they “all look the same” – a generalization that often extends to entire ethnic groups and cultures. Shrestha celebrates the beauty and diversity of Nepali language throughout her practice. She received her MA in Education from Harvard University. Shrestha has had a solo exhibition at Cantor Arts Gallery, College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, MA (2024) and participated in group exhibitions at Wrightwood 659, Chicago (2024–25); Nepal Arts Council, Kathmandu (2024); and Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art, New York (2024). Her additional honors include a commissioned 30-foot sculpture at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston (2024); a grant from the Collective Futures Fund (2024); becoming the first contemporary Nepali artist the be included in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston’s permanent collection (2023); inclusion in WBUR The ARTery’s 25 Millennials of Color (2019); and recognition as one of the 100 most influential women in Nepal by the Nepal Cultural Council (2018). Shrestha was recently selected for a studio residency at Boston Center for the Arts.