ORIGIN STORY
BolsterArts was founded in January 2025 out of Lydia Nobles’ former studio in Chinatown, New York City, with a clear mission: to give artists the time, space, and relationships needed to develop and sustain ambitious, uncompromising work. As a practicing artist herself, Nobles recognized that while connections often determine access and visibility, it’s the quality, care, and alignment behind those connections that matter most.
The BolsterArts Residency runs three times per year, supporting two artists per cycle with free studio space in Chinatown for four months. Public exhibitions of resident’s work are held in partnership with rotating venues across New York City on an annual/bi-annual basis. In tandem, the Continuum Fellows Program extends BolsterArts’ reach nationally by supporting two artists annually from outside New York through curatorial dialogue, visibility-building, and tailored introductions.
Together, these programs aim to reduce structural barriers, alleviate financial strain, and foster meaningful relationships between artists, curators, collectors, and institutions; relationships that not only support the work, but sustain the artist.
ABOUT OUR FOUNDER
Lydia Nobles is a New York-based conceptual artist and the founder of BolsterArts, a residency and fellowship program committed to supporting artists through free studio space, curated public programming, and relationship-driven opportunities. Grounded in the belief that artists thrive through meaningful, intentional connections, BolsterArts prioritizes long-term support over transactional networking, creating space for artists to expand their practice and visibility in sustainable ways.
Nobles’ own work explores materiality, embodiment, and social structures through sculptural abstraction. Her ongoing series As I Sit Waiting transforms functional forms such as chairs into evocative vessels for endurance, constraint, and care. The series, fiscally sponsored by the New York Foundation for the Arts and recipient of the 2025 NYSCA Grant for Individual Artists, has been exhibited in solo presentations at KAPOW (2024), SPRING/BREAK Art Fair (2023), Field Projects, and Ross-Sutton Gallery (2022). In 2023, two of her sculptures were featured in 50 Years Since Roe at the Brooklyn Museum.
Her work has been featured in group exhibitions at the Rochester Contemporary Art Center, Lyman Allyn Art Museum, and others, and recognized in ArtNet News, The New York Times, The Guardian, and HYPERALLERGIC. Nobles holds an MFA from Parsons School of Design and brings over a decade of experience in the arts across studio practice, exhibition production, and public engagement. She has organized and participated in public programming at institutions such as Pen + Brush, College Art Association, and the Brooklyn Museum, consistently advocating for reproductive justice, artistic autonomy, and structural equity in the arts.
As the founder of BolsterArts, Nobles brings her firsthand knowledge of the challenges artists face, particularly around access, visibility, and sustainability, and transforms that insight into a platform built to champion and elevate others.