• Creative Capital Emerging Fields, 2013

  • Kindle Project, Northside Workshop – Pruitt-Igoe Bee Sanctuary

  • The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation

    2012 - US & Canada Competition
    Creative Arts - Fine Arts

  • Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts

    GRANT YEAR 2012

  • Pruitt-Igoe Bee Sanctuary

    he Pruitt-Igoe Bee Sanctuary is a proposal for the City of St Louis to transform the urban forest where Pruitt-Igoe housing development once stood into a public space that cultivates community through urban agriculture. Drawing parallels to the depleting population of bees and shrinking cities, this interdisciplinary project-in-progress has the unique opportunity to reignite the conversation about urban abandonment and creative strategies for addressing it. facebook.com/pruittigoebeesanctuary

  • Northside Workshop

    NorthSide Workshop (NSWS) is an art space dedicated to cultural and community issues in North Saint Louis. Our programming focuses on incorporating socially engaged art and education with the goal of fostering social progress in North Saint Louis communities.

    In collaboration with the Old North Restoration Group, Chavez has successful staged an intervention and helped saved a historic North St. Louis brick building that was in danger of being destroyed. Renovation of the building will begin in 2012.

  • Boots Contemporary Art Space

    Boots Contemporary Art Space is an art-laboratory on the south side of Saint Louis, Missouri. Located in the historic Antique Row District on Cherokee Street, this shotgun brick building was once a shoe repair shop in the early 1900's. The fading images of boots on the storefront served as the inspiration for the name.

    Boots was founded in April 2006 by Juan William Chávez (St. Louis, MO) in collaboration with artists Bryan Reckamp (San Francisco, CA), Georgia Kotretsos (Athens, Greece / Johannesburg, South Africa) and Jon Peck (Miami, FL).

    As an artist run space our mission is to provide emerging to mid-career artists and curators, local, national, and international, with an art lab that will support them in creating and showcasing new work. Through programming and exhibitions we attempt to stimulate a creative dialogue between the Saint Louis art community and the contemporary art world. Saint Louis was our choice of location due to the contemporary art boom in the community over the last few years. We wanted to invest and contribute in that growth.