2023 Parent Residency Program Updates
The application is now closed! Reviews are being conducted by program alumni and results will be announced by the end of the month.
If you missed this year’s application, be sure to follow our Newsletter and/or Instagram to stay in the loop.
Family-Friendly Residencies
At Elsewhere Studios, we recognize the limited accessibility to residencies as a parent artist. Thanks to support from the Sustainable Arts Foundation, Elsewhere Studios is happy to host a family-friendly residency every July.
This opportunity is open to national and international artists. Leaving behind your family can make attending residencies difficult; Elsewhere’s accepted artists have the choice to bring their spouse/partner and children or come on their own. They are provided with living and studio space and Elsewhere staff will assist in connecting parent artists to childcare, summer camps, and regional activities.
Residents and their families will have the opportunity for collaboration, shared childcare, meals, adventures, etc. We are happy to have the children pursue their own creative interests as part of the residency and will include them (if they desire) in critiques, open studios, and other events.
Learn more about what a residency at Elsewhere is like on these pages: the Studios, How to Apply, FAQ, and the Resident Blog.
Elsewhere and Paonia for Families
Elsewhere Studios exists in the heart of the small, vibrant mountain town of Paonia, Colorado. Located on the western slope of the Rockies, Paonia has a population of about 1440 with another 5000 people living in the surrounding area. The town is rich with creativity and is home to many organic orchards, farms and vineyards. Though small, Paonia has tons of things to do for families, especially during the summer!
The Paonia Library is just two blocks away and offers lots of kid friendly activities. The Paonia River Park and Paonia Town Park are both about 5 blocks away with great playground and shaded open spaces. Go check out a movie or music at the local theater, The Paradise, which is just right around the corner. The Blue Sage Art Center offers classes, workshops, and kids camps (such as circus arts or animation and movie-making). Delicious Orchards, two miles from Elsewhere Studios, is a great place for families to enjoy local delicious food and beverages while listening to live music as part of their summer concert series.
Watch this short documentary by María Velasco, 2019 parent resident artist, to see a glimpse of parent residency life.
2022 Parent Residents:
Alicia Brown - Born in 1981, St. Ann, Jamaica. Alicia Brown is a contemporary realist oil painter.She received her BFA in Painting, and a diploma in Art Education from Edna Manley College of the Visual Performing Arts and an MFA in Painting from the New York Academy ofArt in 2014. She has been a recipient of the Dawn Scott Memorial award from the Jamaica Biennial 2017, two Elizabeth Foundation Grants 2019 and 2021, the Joan Brady Foundation Grant 2013 and LCU Foundation Grants 2012 and 2014.
Rowena Alegría - Rowena is Chief Storyteller for the City & County of Denver, founder and director of the Denver Office of Storytelling and the citywide storytelling and cultural preservation project I Am Denver. She was the 2021 Ricardo Salinas Scholar in Fiction at Aspen Words and has won numerous writing fellowships and residencies. She is a member of Sandra Cisneros’ Macondo Writers Workshop. A filmmaker, career journalist, communications executive and speech writer, she is writing a novel that plays with form and the history of the Southwest.
Ching Ching Cheng - Space is the product of relations and is always in the process of becoming. How I perceive my own identity is bound to the space I have created. As an artist I am interested in the relationship between identity and space. More specifically how the physical environment is juxtaposed with gender, culture, society, economics and politics. Adapting, resisting, transforming, and accepting are the nature of what I call the “in-between” stages. This progression between stages has become an important focus of my work. The psychological transition of rethinking and revaluing global politics and economics from becoming a United State citizen after living in America for sixteen years.
José Ortiz-Pagan - As a printmaker, Ortiz-Pagán addresses how postindustrial and post-colonial communities, the use of time, economies, and spiritual practices as a cultural gateway to develop community strength and self-agency. He has received awards and developed projects with Second State Press, Taller Puertorriqueño, Chemical Heritage Museum and the Art Anthropology Museum at the University of Puerto Rico. His work has been featured in exhibitions including the 2015 Trienal Poligráfica in San Juan PR, the international printmaking biennial in Taiwan ROC, and the publication New American Paintings.
We hosted four families in residence with seven children-in-residence ranging from ages 2-10 in 2021.
Our selected artists were:
Mae Ramirez a latinx poet and mother originally from Los Angeles. She holds an MFA from California State University Long Beach and is currently working on her full-length manuscript, Moonward Delirium. She has been awarded the Writing Salon Scholarship, the Gerald Locklin Writing Prize, and was a finalist in the 2018 Not a Cult Press Poetry competition. She is a recipient of the 2020 Sustainable Arts Foundation Award and the 2021 San Francisco Foundation / Nomadic Press Literary Award. Her work has appeared in Frontier Poetry, The Acentos Review, and American Mustard. She has lived in the San Francisco Bay Area with her daughter, partner, and plants for the past 8 years, but is currently on her cross-country relocation to Western Massachusetts.
Laura Deutch is a Philadelphia-based artist, educator, and cultural organizer committed to using media as a tool for social justice, creative expression and community building. Her projects traverse digital and analog mediums to investigate the relationships between people, places and their stories. Her work has been showcased on television, at festivals and in galleries throughout the country. She currently works as the Education Director at PhillyCAM, and previously directed the Philadelphia Youth Media Collaborative. She serves on the board of Termite TV, and holds an MFA in Film and Media Arts from Temple University.
Lisa Corine von Koch, AKA The Baroness Elsa von, is an artist and educator, and is proud to have grown up in beautiful Moab, Utah, where she realized her passion for the land, color and light. She received her B.F.A. in Painting and Drawing from the University of Utah in 2005, and her M.F.A.
Her personal practice has expanded from painting and drawing to include sculpture, performance, installation and collaboration in the interest of incorporating ecological practices into art making.
During their residency time with Elsewhere Studios Residency, Buteyn and Nowell-Wilson will create a collaborative project that responds to the theme of “Maternal Ambivalence” (in part as a response to the books “The Monster Within, The Hidden Side of Motherhood” by Barbara Almond, and “Mother Is a Verb” by Sarah Knott). Too often we hear stories and view depictions of blissful mothering, or monstrous mothering (a title used by Almond). Kaylan and Lee will investigate the tension, pulling, and paradox felt within a mother’s mind while reflecting on the equivocal journey of the maternal body itself.
During the month of July 2019 we hosted six families total in residents with six children ranging from 2.5 years old to 13.
Our parent artists were:
Eric McMaster
Ellen Pierce
Ginny Kaczmarek
Maria Velasco
Ukhona Ntsali
Brigid McAuliffe
It was a rich month with presentations, potlucks and open studios happening each week. Every artist presented their work to the community, and we even had some of the children-in-residence do a presentation. Three of boys Alex (9), Adrian (9) and Emery (13) created a collaborative feature-length film during their residency and previewed it to the community during one of you events. The film is titled ‘Kung Food Masters’, watch the trailer below:
Resident Ginny Kaczmarek with her family: Ian, Emery, and Adrian, and Resident Maria Velasco with her son Alex. Sitting with Program Manager Henry Kunkel and Director Carolina Porras after a Sunday brunch at Delicious Orchards, a morning shared with tasty food, swings and hula hoops.
“[The residency was] refreshing in that it was also specifically for artists who are mothers and everything about was self-lead. I had the opportunity to step away from my everyday context to enjoy a tranquil environment and interrogate and explore my process at my own pace, I also did not have to pack away the aspect of myself that is a mother.”
Artist-in-residence Ukhona’s final performance, ukuzibuyisa: giving back to myself: an inter-generational conversation about the ways in which womxn are taught to give away or kill parts of themselves for the patriarchal world order to be maintaned.
Eric McMaster’s family: Kim, Rivers + Edith walking along the Gunnison River.
“While I wrote upstairs overlooking treetops, my family picked cherries, rafted a river, visited the swimming hole, and explored local parks. Halfway through our stay, another artist, Maria Velasco, and her son Alex, took up residency, and we spent happy hours in the evening talking about the joys and challenges of being parent-artists while the kids rode bikes and visited the kittens.”
Artist Ukhona Ntsali Mlandu with Sebi McAuliffe who was one of the children-in-residence.
Artist Maria Velasco and her son Alex and Tomatoes. Maria and Alex worked on a collaborative project creating a magical card game based on Elsewhere Studios and nooks and crannies they found while exploring Paonia.
Resident Brigid McAuliffe and her son Sebi. While in residence Brigid worked on a multimedia storytelling project will explore human connection, values, identity, and history of food in the North Fork Valley.
“...[While in residence I worked on a] big project I’m excited about and feeling much needed validation that I can be a mother and an artist simultaneously. I’ve had to find small ways to fulfill my creative self since becoming a mom through projects or exercises that don’t require a lot of time. However, I am most inspired during my projects (documentary/ethnographic social practice) that require a high level of immersion, dedication, and focus. I’ve often thought this style of working is no longer an option since I’m now a mother of a young child. This residency made it possible to have both.”
Edith and Rivers were lucky to be here during Paonia’s famous cherry season!
Brigid’s son, Sebi, walking with friend and babysitter, Hanna Doreen Brown behind Resident Maria Velasco and son Alex.
“The incredibly rich benefit for me was finding new ways to integrate my family and artistic lives, and along the way we infused the work of family life with a sense of creative play.”