The Kresge artist fellows: First row: Cary Loren, Terry Blackhawk, Oren Goldenberg and Kate Daughdrill. Second row: Carl Wilson, Coco Bruner, Chace (Mic Write) Morris, Dunya Mikhail, Adrienne Maree, Marie T. Hermann and Jon Brumit. Third row: Arthur R. LaBrew, Carolyn Walker, Bryant Tillman, Michael Zadoorian, Jason Carter and Charlie O'Geen. Not shown: Andrea + Gary Urbiel Goldner. / Marvin Shaouni

Jason Carter had been hoping to hear from Kresge Arts in Detroit. But he wasn’t expecting the call notifying him that he was one of the Kresge Artist Fellows for 2013 to happen while he was at the Cranbrook Art Museum helping install a “Michigan Modern: Design that Shaped America” piece.

“I had to step away a moment,” said Carter, 38, whose paintings about light focus on the differences between the real and digital world. “I had to keep that excitement to myself.”

Announced Tuesday by the Troy-based Kresge Foundation, the no-strings-attached $25,000 grants are among the country’s most generous for individual artists. This year, the recipients included nine in the literary arts and nine in the visual arts. Two independent panels of five professionals judged more than 700 applicants.

■ PDF: 2013 Kresge Artist Fellows in the Literary and Visual Arts

Now in its fifth year, the Kresge program has awarded more than $2.5 million to 90 visual, performing and literary artists living in Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties and the organization’s five eminent artists — who received the foundation’s lifetime achievement award, which includes a $50,000 prize.

In January, Michigan Opera Theatre general director David DiChiera was named the 2013 Kresge Eminent Artist. It is metro Detroit’s most prestigious and lucrative cultural prize.

Carter, who has a 7-month-old daughter, said that the Kresge program is important to the city of Detroit and to the recipients. This year’s range from Adrienne Maree, who believes science fiction writing is a way to transform communities, to Marie T. Hermann, a Dutch-born experimental ceramics artist.

Administered by Detroit’s College for Creative Studies, the prizes will be awarded at an invitation-only reception in July at the College for Creative Studies’ Wendell W. Anderson Jr. Auditorium ins the Walter B. Ford II Building.

“It’s not easy to survive as an artist,” Carter said. “This is going to help a lot.”

Carter said that the Kresge news couldn’t have been better-timed, as he has a show scheduled to open in the fall at Paul Kotula Projects in Ferndale. The paintings he’s working on are meditations on the digital age and the perception of light brought on by our changing environment.

Kresge Arts in Detroit’s Erin Marie McDonald said that the Kresge program’s evolving, too. Beginning in November, artists will be able to apply for fellowships in the new film and theater discipline.

She said that the 2014 class will consist of fellows in two categories: dance/music and film/theater.

“Ultimately, we wanted all of the artists in the community served, that Kresge was inclusive,” she said.

In addition to individual artist awards, Kresge funds large, medium and grassroots groups and produces Art X Detroit, a biennial festival that drew more than 10,000 people to its debut in April 2011. The second Art X Detroit was held in April, but Kresge has yet to confirm if a third edition will return in spring 2015.

Detroit-born music scholar Arthur R. LaBrew is another 2013 fellow. He said the honor will help him with his work in progress, “International Dictionary of Musicians of Color: From Antiquity to the End of the 20th Century.”

It should help the city, too.

“Detroit cannot have a renaissance unless it has culture,” he said. “A city is noted for its cultural attainment.”