Bobby Anspach Studios Foundation Debuts Mobile Unit Housing Immersive Sculptural Experience at Detroit Warehouse Art & Design Fair
Activations Launches Flagship Grant Program for Artists & Researchers Working at the Intersection of Mindfulness and Creativity
Open call for visual arts applicants for unrestricted grants - 2 of $50,000 and 3 of $8,000 awarded to grantees announced in early 2026
DETROIT, MI (September 19, 2025) — Today, the Bobby Anspach Studios Foundation is on the move with a bold presence at this year’s Detroit Warehouse Art & Design Fair (September 19–21). Simultaneously providing an opportunity to experience Anspach’s Place for Continuous Eye Contact works and launch the Foundation’s inaugural grant program, the activation will debut a mobile unit inspired by the Walmart parking lot activations visionary artist Bobby Anspach engaged in during his lifetime.
The Foundation’s presence at the Detroit Art Fair is a converted box trailer, transformed into a roving installation space featuring one of Bobby Anspach’s iconic Place for Continuous Eye Contact works. Installed within the trailer’s interior, the immersive sculptural installation invites visitors into an intimate, immersive environment where carefully tuned light and sound create a heightened sense of presence and connection.
“Detroit’s creative landscape—and this parking lot activation—perfectly capture the spirit of what we’re trying to build,” said Paula Baldoni, director of the Bobby Anspach Studios Foundation. “We believe that serious ideas can come from unexpected places, and that investing in the inner and collective life of humanity is urgent work.”
Originally designed to facilitate moments of profound introspection or direct eye contact between participants, the sculpture transforms the mobile unit into a contemplative refuge—a place where Anspach’s vision of shared experience, sensory awareness, and radical empathy comes vividly to life. In line with Anspach’s ethos of combining everyday materials with transformative experience, this pop-up installation carries forward his legacy of DIY mysticism and social engagement.
This unconventional setup, which will later travel to venues across the country, heralds the launch of another initiative that aims to take Anspach’s ethos of creativity and engagement to a broader audience – the official launch of the Foundation’s flagship grant program. The initiative is designed to support creatives and researchers whose work deepens dialogue on meditation, psychology, creativity, and collective engagement as vital pathways to global harmony and health.
Juried by a diverse panel of thought leaders across disciplines, including Suchi Reddy and Anspach’s music collaborator, Eluvium, the program will provide unrestricted annual grants to individuals making exceptional contributions in fields such as art, science, music, ecology, wellness, and the human mind. Selected grantees will also be invited to participate in future Foundation programming aimed at amplifying and expanding their work.
Beginning on September 30, the foundation will accept applications for the inaugural round of grants on its website, through December 30, 2025. Open to all, the program supports individuals whose work advances dialogue around meditation, psychology, creativity, and collective engagement as pathways to global harmony and health. In its first year, the focus will be on the visual arts, with two unrestricted grants of $50,000 and three grants of $8,000 awarded. Grantees will be announced in early 2026. In addition to funding, recipients will be invited to participate in Foundation programming throughout the year, designed to celebrate their work and share their research across disciplines and audiences.
About Bobby Anspach
Bobby Anspach was an American artist whose work centered around the creations of sculptural installations designed to deliver transcendent experiences to viewers, all part of a series titled Place for Continuous Eye Contact. As much a sculptor as an inventor, these devices are currently undergoing a patenting process. Employing a DIY-technique through all of his work, Anspach was focused on creating brilliant, unexpected, and sublime experiences that blend common objects with high craft, ranging from pom-poms to hand-blown glass to medical beds, aiming to inspire viewers to look within and discover everyday beauty and the natural world. These works create an experience that at first appears scrappy and chaotic, and quickly blends into a seamless, all-encompassing, and otherworldly space. His work was informed by a deep respect for the environment and meditation, and founded on a belief of the interconnectedness of all things that was aimed to create a cared experience between all viewers of his work.
During his lifetime, Anspach’s work was celebrated and exhibited across the United States, most notably at the Spring/Break Art Show, New York, 2018 and 2020, the 2019 BRIC Biennial: Volume III. Brooklyn, NY, and the 2019 Governor’s Island Art Fair, as well as in numerous gallery exhibitions across Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and California. In the public sphere, he presented his Place for Continuous Eye Contact installations and made them available for visitor experiences at a pop-up space in Beacon, NY in 2021; in a Walmart parking lot in Newburgh, NY in 2022; and on Fifth Avenue outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York in 2022.
Bobby Anspach was born in 1987 in Toledo, OH, and died in 2022 in Beacon, NY. He received his BA from Boston College in 2011, studied at California College of the Arts in San Francisco, and received an MFA in sculpture from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2017. There, he produced the earliest versions of the Place for Continuous Eye Contact series of sculptural works.
About the Bobby Anspach Studios Foundation
The Bobby Anspach Studios Foundation (BASF) is a not-for-profit arts organization dedicated to preserving and providing access to the work of Bobby Anspach, who built sound and light sculptures with, on the one hand, the ambitious aim of preventing the world from destroying itself and, on the other hand, the more modest aim of providing individuals with singular aesthetic experiences.
Continuing Bobby’s mission, the foundation grounds itself in the same principle that fueled Bobby’s work: a conviction regarding the power of meditation and art. Alongside continuing to preserve and share Bobby’s work, the foundation engages and supports artistic and mindfulness programming, as well as artists, educators, and meditation practitioners, all with the aim of offering people the opportunity to encounter and express something singular in their human experience.
About the Detroit Warehouse Art & Design Fair
Taking place from September 19–21, 2025, at the iconic Boyer Campbell Building in Detroit, the Detroit Warehouse Art & Design Fair is a three-day event spotlighting contemporary, affordable works by emerging to mid-career artists and designers. Set within one of the city’s landmark industrial spaces, the fair serves as a dynamic platform for creative exchange, bringing together artists, collectors, curators, and the public. As part of Detroit’s celebrated Month of Design—and in the heart of a UNESCO City of Design—the fair channels the city’s rich legacy of innovation, music, and making into a vibrant celebration of art, design, and community.
Media contact
Sara Griffin
+1-917-656-6348