CINTAS Foundation Announces 2018-19 Fellows in Architecture & Design, Music Composition and Visual Arts

CINTAS Foundation Announces 2018-19 Fellows in 

Architecture & Design, Music Composition and Visual Arts

Miami, October 2018 – CINTAS Foundation Board of Directors made the announcement at
the annual Awards Ceremony during a special reception held October 10th at the Lowe Art

Museum, University of Miami. The 2018-19 Fellowships were presented to:

CINTAS Foundation Fellowship in Architecture & Design
Javier Galindo

CINTAS Foundation Brandon Fradd Fellowship in Music Composition
Sabrina Peña Young

CINTAS-Knight Foundation Fellowship in Visual Arts
Tomás Esson

In addition, a Lifetime Achievement Award was given to Juan A. Martínez, Ph.D., Professor
Emeritus of the Department of Art & Art History at Florida International University for his
contributions to Cuban art and culture. It marks the first time that CINTAS has honored and
recognized an academic in the field.

The reception, with sponsorships from Bacardi as well as El Carajo restaurant, was attended by
over 200 guests including finalists, fellow artists, colleagues, collectors, and family and friends
of those honored that evening.

ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN:

Javier Galindo is an architect and designer based in New York City. He was born and raised in
Havana, Cuba.

His practice investigates the role of impermanence and fragmentation in architectural discourse
and expression. Using form and color as allegorical instruments, the work aims to produce
incomplete, ambiguous and simultaneous readings, accompanied by sublime effects.
Galindo has been the recipient of the 2015 Rome Prize in Architecture from the American
Academy in Rome, the KPF Traveling Fellowship, and several competition awards and
recognition. His professional experience includes time as Senior Associate Principal and Lead
Designer at Kohn Pedersen Fox in New York, working in the design and construction phases of
several national and international urban projects, ranging from super-tall towers, residential and
commercial mixed-use buildings and masterplans. He has also practiced professionally in other
design firms in Miami and San Francisco.

As an assistant instructor at Cornell University, Galindo has taught Visual Studies and
Representation courses. He is often an invited lecturer and guest critic and his work has been
featured in several publications including A+U, Concept Magazine and Threshold journals.
He received a Masters of Architecture from Cornell University, where he was the recipient of the
Best Thesis Prize, and a Bachelors of Architecture from FIU in Miami.

MUSIC COMPOSITION:

Sabrina Peña Young became involved with SYCOM (Systems Complex for the Recording and
Performing Arts), an experimental enclave of composers and media artists while at University of
South Florida in Tampa in 2000. She worked with Emmy-winning director Charles Lyman at
Atlantic Productions before leaving Tampa to study music technology at Florida International
University in Miami in 2003.

Combining her love of music and love of science fiction imagery, in 2011 Young received a New
Genre Award from the International Alliance for Women in Music for her futuristic multimedia
oratorio Creation. In 2012 Young composed scores for Emmy-winning Rob Cabrera‘s animated
short Monica (2012) and Sean Fleck’s time-laps film Americana. Wanting to explore film further,
Sabrina Peña Young began production on Libertaria: The Virtual Opera, a science fiction
machinima opera produced entirely online. In 2013 Libertaria: The Virtual Opera was premiered
in Lake Worth, Florida. In 2014, Young gave a TED Talk at TEDxBuffalo on “Singing Geneticists
and EPIC Machinima Opera”. In 2015 Young published her debut novel Libertaria: Genesis as
an addendum to her groundbreaking opera and collaborated with composer Lee Scott on his
interactive social media opera The Village. Young is currently writing her third novel in the
Libertaria Chronicles series and is in preproduction for the children’s opera Alicia and the White
Rabbit, and in preproduction for her second feature length sci-fi animated film. Young is a
member of the New York Women Composer’s Association, the International Alliance for Women
in Music, Madrinas, Vox Novus, and the Buffalo Movie and Video Makers.

VISUAL ARTS:
Tomás Esson, nicknamed El Bicho, was born in Marianao, Cuba. He spent several years
working living and working in New York before moving to Miami, Florida in 2000. He studied at
the Academia de Artes Plásticas San Alejandro, as well as the Instituto Superior de Arte in
Cuba. Esson’s art has been featured in solo and group exhibitions internationally since the
1980's and can be found in collections around the world. They include the Whitney Museum of
American Art in New York; the Ludwig Forum for Internationale Kunst in Aachen, Germany; the
John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation in Chicago; the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo in
Monterrey, México; the Pérez Art Museum in Miami; and the Hirshorn Museum & Sculpture
Garden in Washington D.C.; among numerous others. His work consists of “tormented,
mythological beings, erogenous plant life, and other motifs that populate his art’ as described by
Janet Batet in A Fertile Universe: Tomás Esson’s Miami Flow (Cuba Art News, April 2017).
About the CINTAS Fellowship Program

The CINTAS Fellowship Program encourages creative development in architecture & design,
creative writing, music composition and the visual arts. The Foundation was established with
funds from the estate of Oscar B. Cintas (1887-1957), former Cuban ambassador to the United
States, a prominent industrialist and patron of the arts. The CINTAS Fellows Collection is
comprised of nearly 300 pieces by artists of Cuban descent who have received prestigious
CINTAS Fellowships, awarded since 1963. The Fellows range from masters José Mijares, Mario
Carreño, Carmen Herrera, Carlos Alfonzo, to Felix González-Torres, María Martínez-Cañas,
Teresita Fernández, Pulitzer Prize winner Oscar Hijuelos, multiple-Obie winner María Elena
Fornes, architect Andres Duany, Latin Grammy finalist composer Tania León and many others.
Visit www.cintasfoundation.org

About the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
Knight Foundation supports transformational ideas that promote quality journalism, advance
media innovation, engage communities and foster the arts. We believe that democracy thrives 
when people and communities are informed and engaged. For more information, please visit
knightfoundation.org.
For more information about the CINTAS program, please contact Laurie Escobar at
info@cintasfoundation.org