Welcome July Artists-in-Residence!

Meet this month’s artists-in-residence!

Residency session: July 10 - August 5, 2024

MARK YOUR CALENDARS FOR this session’s open studios:

Thursday, august 1, 5-7PM

Amanda Lovelee

Minneapolis, mn

Amanda Lovelee is an artist who works in civic systems as a translator between government and community with the goal of building equitable places where everyone belongs. Lovelee spent seven years as the Artist in Residence for the City of St Paul creating art projects that changed systems and highlighted underserved voices. She currently works as the Parks Ambassador for the Metropolitan Council based in the Twin Cities where her job is to connect people to the outdoors with a focus on equity. The creative tools Lovelee has created for community engagement and connection have been used and replicated across the US. She is interested in how people connect and the spaces in which they do. Lovelee holds a MFA in Visual Studies from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and BFA in Photography from University of Hartford. Lovelee has received funding from ArtPlace America, Jerome Foundation, Knight Foundation, McKnight Foundation, MN State Arts Board, Salzburg Global Seminar and the National Endowment for the Arts. She was a 2022/23 McKnight Visual Artist Fellow, 2022 Design for Civic Change Fellow at the Center for Urban Pedagogy and 2019 Next City Vanguard.

Headshot by Richard Schabetsberger

Berny Tan

Singapore

Berny Tan (b.1990, Singapore) is an artist and curator who explores the tensions that arise when she applies systems to – and unearths systems in – her subjective experiences. Her strategies often reflect a fundamental interest in language as it is read, written, and spoken by her. In her curatorial work, she nurtures an artist-centred practice grounded in empathy, sensitivity, and collaboration.
 
Tan holds an MA (Dist) in Contemporary Art Theory from Goldsmiths, University of London, and a BFA (Hons) in Visual & Critical Studies from the School of Visual Arts. Between 2021 and 2024 – while continuing to present her artwork in solo and group exhibitions – she organised 8 curatorial projects in Singapore, including a publicly accessible residency as part of Singapore Biennale 2022. She was awarded the 2022 IMPART Art Prize in the curator category in recognition of her independent practice. In 2024, Tan joined the Singapore Art Museum as Curator of its new Design Collection.

Headshot by Charmaine Poh

Daniel T. Gaitor-Lomack

Los angeles, CA

To some, Gaitor-Lomack is ahead of his time, which makes him the artist of our time. The dwellings and inner reflections of his work rest upon every cornerstone of our lived experience. From the decoded chapters of street culture to the evolving forms of existence. He established an elevated approach to art-making in his own right. Imbued with a level of sophistication unparalleled to the programmed success of art world academia. A student of the journey who walks us through timelines of celebrated and forgotten eras of worldly histories, mythologies, and modern-day realities. His thought-provoking work transforms metaphor into an education of the present. The brilliant use of found objects and poetic inversion of materials and scales, place him in a space not many have successfully navigated. Artwork as a vehicle of time travel. An iconography beyond the image. A rhyming language of serendipity and flashes of the spirit. Tapped by the natural joys of exploration, there isn’t a possibility of art making that goes unknown. Everything becomes a resource to the narrative.

While being in collections with elite contemporaries like David Hammons, Senga Nengudi, Betye Saar, Henry Taylor, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Derek Fordjour, and Titus Kaphar, to name a few - Daniel’s works are included in sought-after collections throughout the world. From America to Europe, and from Asia to the UK. The most recent institutional acquisition was in 2023 by The Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, CA. Gaitor-Lomack rose to visual prominence in 2020 during one of the most difficult times the world has ever faced. Through a limitless process and genre-bending mentality, he worked through it all, inspiring those who needed it most. Gaitor-Lomack mounted back-to-back solo exhibitions in New York City while exhibiting bi-coastal in selected exhibitions with Night Gallery; LA, Jeffrey Deitch Gallery; LA, James Cohan Gallery; NY and PPOW Gallery; NY. All while in attendance as an Artist Fellow at one of the most prestigious Fellowship programs to date, NXTHVN in New Haven, CT. His visual timeline is undoubtedly distinguished.

Gaitor-lomack has blazed a trail of eminent value, paying homage to the greatest artists and art periods of our time, while subtly nodding to an astonishing plateau of longevity. Today, he continues to saunter a fine line of remarkable balance empowering his conversations and continuing the honor of historical contexts that have been passed down before him.

Desmond Beach

New York, NY

Desmond Beach is a New York City-based artist and educator who holds an MFA and BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art, His career has been adorned with fellowships at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Skidmore College, and the Bayard Rustin Art Fellow in New York City. His residencies at the Women Housing Coalition in Baltimore, Pyramid Atlantic Art Center in Silver Spring, and as a Teaching Fellow at the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine, further underscore his commitment to education.

Beach, the middle son among three brothers, hails from Baltimore, Maryland. His identity as an interdisciplinary artist is deeply rooted in his personal history and experiences as a Black man. He embarks on each project by confronting specific societal problems or tragedies, channeling his artistic energy to create spaces where the spirits of his ancestors and those of the African Diaspora can find solace. Through a diverse array of mediums—including sculpture, costume, fiber arts, installations, performances, and mixed media—Beach forges connections with his audience. His work transcends aesthetics; it is a calling, imbued with the fervor of an activist, the wisdom of a preacher, the compassion of a healer, and the vision of a prophet.

Headshot by AJ Stetson

Josue Castro

guatemala

Kat Thompson

centreville, VA

Kat Thompson is a multidisciplinary Afro-Jamaican American artist based in Virginia, who works with photography, textiles, sculptural collages, and installations. Her work combines these mediums to explore notions of Black selfhood within the African Diaspora. Being of Jamaican heritage, Thompson confronts her dual identity through recent projects that depict traces of her family’s journey through personal and found materials. Her focus is to uncover stories that mirror parts of ourselves back to us, including our histories, current realities, and future possibilities. Her works have been exhibited at the Fenwick Gallery and Gillespie Gallery at George Mason University in Fairfax, VA, and the Tephra Institute of Contemporary Art in Reston, Virginia. She was the 2021-2022 recipient of the Young Alumni Commissioning Award, College of Visual and Performing Arts: George Mason University and was also awarded the 2023-2025 Hamiltonian Artists Fellowship.

Thompson holds her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography from George Mason University and her Master of Fine Arts in Photography & Film from Virginia Commonwealth University.

Kirk Maynard

Evansville, In

Kirk Maynard is an artist and educator who is originally from Brooklyn, New York. A second-generation Guyanese-American, Maynard’s paintings and drawings detail the political undercurrents of culture and identity in America through portraiture and composition. Often referencing American social history, his work explores the intersection between identity and politics through juxtaposition and the use of the profile.

larí garcía

richmond, va

larí garcía (b. 1994 in Miami, FL) is an artist and writer that combines historical research, personal narratives, and magical realism through a comparative and ethnographic approach. Staging detailed assemblages reveals inherent limits of material meaning while subverting how we see objects and spirituality. garcía completed a BFA from Columbus College of Art & Design (2017) and an MFA in Sculpture + Extended Media from Virginia Commonwealth University (2021). In 2022, garcía participated at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Their work has been shown throughout the US, recently in a collaborative exhibition, Snowing, at D.D.D.D. in New York City, NY (2023).

Melissa Brandt

Rochester, mN

Writer, Melissa Brandt, grew up in rural Minnesota and worked for several years before completing her M.A. in Literature and M.F.A. in Creative Writing. Her feature-length screenplay, Cordelia, was optioned in 2009.

In 2012 and again in 2022, she was awarded the McKnight Fellowship in Media Arts. Her screenplay Chicken Day received a Minnesota State Arts Board Grant and was selected as part of the Emerging Narrative Program for Independent Film Week in New York City. She won the McKnight Fellowship a second time in 2022 for her screenplay, The Life of Lizzie Frank, and for her episodic script, The Heaven Key.

Melissa has two children's chapter books published under the Jake Maddox series, and she is currently working on a new episodic screen story and a young adult novel.

Natalia Bosques Chico

Quique Lee

Guatemala City, Guatemala

Quique Lee (Guatemala) was born in Antigua Sacatepéquez in 1977 and currently resides and works in Ciudad de Guatemala. He began his artistic journey in the late 1990s alongside the post-war generation, initially focusing on literature and later expanding into visual arts, installation, and performance. During this period, he studied under Guatemalan-American artist Daniel Schafer. After completing studies in marketing, Lee delved into costume design as a means of expression, leading him to explore textile art with an artistic approach in 2011. It was during this year that he commenced his production using embroidery, a technique for which he became renowned. Since then, Lee has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions, as well as international biennials. He is a founding member of the art collectives Sitio/Seña and Fábrica de Bombas. Additionally, he has been involved in audiovisual projects and written publications. His projects often address social themes, involve community collaboration, and span multiple disciplines.

"I create art to foster social change. My expression thrives through textiles, with embroidery being my preferred technique, alongside interdisciplinary projects. Currently, I am dyeing fabrics using metal oxides and earth. In the past, much of my work revolved around individual and collective memory, mapping physical time/space and migration. Over the last year, my research delves into masculinity construction and social pressures."