NC Emerging Artists in Residence
The NC Emerging Artist Residency provides emerging, North Carolina-based artists with a year of free studio space at Artspace, giving them time and space to explore their work in a supportive and thriving open studio environment. Artspace offers two residencies every year.
HBCU Artist Residency
This year-long residency focuses on recent graduates from historically Black colleges and universities (HBCU) in North Carolina. Upon graduation students often lose resources, equipment, colleagues, and mentors. This HBCU Alumni Residency seeks to remedy those issues by extending the learning process and broadening the experience for recent graduates to build their career as a visual artist. There are more 4-year HBCUs in North Carolina than anywhere else in the country, and the Artspace HBCU Alumni Residency aims to highlight and support the many talented artists graduating from these culturally rich institutions. This career-stimulus residency for an emerging artist includes a private, rent-free studio for one year with 24-hour access within a collaborative environment with 30+ other professional artists and art administrators.
Summer Artist Residency
The Summer Artist Residency provides an established artist with a month-long studio opportunity to work on a specific project in Artspace’s Gallery 1 during the summer, culminating in an exhibition at the end of the month.
Universal Access Artist Residency
The Universal Access Residency is exclusive to artists who identify as having a disability. This residency is designed to be flexible and can be easily modified to accommodate different disabilities.
The residency was initiated in 2019 and was made possible through the actions of past Operations + Finance Manager, Megan Sullivan, who received The Betty Siegel Universal Access + the Arts Award; which recognizes the substantial achievements of Arts Learning Community for Universal Access members who complete all three years of the program. Sullivan chose to use the grant included as part of the award to fill a need in our community.
Katie Knoeringer
Gallery 1
Residency: June 28 – August 1
Exhibition: August 4 – September 24
Katie Knoeringer received an MFA from Louisiana State University, and is currently a full-time instructor of drawing at Murray State University, KY.
Knoeringer shares, “Space, color, and shape drive my work. I make painted paper collages based on observational drawings. I’m interested in capturing the truth of the moment, and my interaction with the space occupied by the figure. Rather than having people pose for me, I prefer to watch them engaged in an activity. When I approach a new subject, I make many gestural drawings and more drawings of the space in my sketchbook. I construct my collages directly from the drawings. In the absence of the subject, color and specificity become dictated by the needs of each composition according to space and contrast. Negative and positive shapes are equivalent powers. I build them up simultaneously (rather than laying down a ground first and working on top of it). This allows the image to grow organically and meander around towards its eventual outer bounds.”
I’m interested in capturing the truth of the moment, and my interaction with the space occupied by the figure.
Jimena-Vergara Sanz
Upfront Gallery
Residency: June 29 – August 1
Exhibition: August 4 – September 24
Jimena Vergara-Sanz is an artist from Colombia and is also a product designer, innovator, mediator, and art explorer.
Vergara-Sanz shares, “The artwork that I’ve been working on for the past year is called 13 Moons and it is an exploration on how to heal physically and emotionally through art, creativity, and communication. On June 2021, I was experiencing an abnormal uterine hemorrhage [and] was diagnosed with ‘giant uterine myomatosis.’ The medical recommendation was immediate hysterectomy, which was avoided after three months of inner reflection and art creation through the blood stains collection…Initially, when I realized that my uterus could be taken out, I didn’t want this part of my life taken away and wanted to try some alternatives to heal naturally. I decided to find ancestral knowledge to do this…So during every menstrual period, I decided to collect my blood in pieces of cloth, to keep it as a valuable treasure, because every time might have been my ‘last moon stain.’ The idea…brought many fears, sadness, nostalgia and reflections to my mind…what does it mean to come from a uterus, what does it mean to be a woman, what does it mean to have a uterus, what is motherhood, what is the creative potential, how our relations shape our life, what is the importance of our ancestors, our mom, grandma?”
13 Moons is an exploration on how to heal physically and emotionally through art, creativity, and communication.
Jalen Jackson
Studio 202
Artspace is excited to welcome Jalen Jackson as our inaugural HBCU Resident. Jackson will be in Studio 202 from January-December of 2023. Jackson is passionate about inspiring people with his naturalistic figurative paintings. He celebrates his African American subjects as role models, to inspire and motivate viewers who face daily adversity in their own lives.
This residency is supported in part through the generous support of individual donors and the Charlotte Miller Russell Family Fund.
Jalen Jackson graduated from North Carolina A&T State University with a BFA in painting in 2021. His work has since been featured in Walter Magazine and in various group exhibitions across NC.
Oil painting has given me the opportunity to tell stories about how/why I’ve become the person I am today. My goal is to create a sense of nostalgia while giving representation of Black soul for whomever interacts with my work.
Isabel Lu
Studio 215a
Isabel Lu is a visual artist and public health researcher born and raised in North Carolina. Their professional and community interests include food sovereignty and Asian American health. Lu is interested in an interdisciplinary career that incorporates art and activism into public health and Asian American justice. Their research focuses on equitable access to culturally relevant foods for Asian American populations, and investigates how community, ethnic identity, and space contributes to well-being. Lu’s artwork is a way to share their own experiences and relationships to identity and food. Their current body of work focuses on how Asian American identity intersects with public health, food, and artistic expression, specifically on intergenerational relationships and Chinese American history.
Artist Statement
“Currently, I am developing a body of work that explores Asian American identity through food, specifically investigating intergenerational relationships and Asian American history. I co-develop my paintings with Asian American individuals; I invite them into the studio, and we have conversations about their identity and connections to food. Through those conversations, we form a concept that we both connect with, and I photograph them in a way that tells their stories. Additionally, I research and paint foods used in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) practices and contrast those ideas against Western nutrition standards, gender norms, and cultural practices. The purpose of these paintings is to not only document the diversity of experiences, identities, and histories of Asian Americans and our foods in North Carolina, but also to capture the ways in which these foods interact with our identities and relationships.“
Food is often a grounding element we can share with ourselves and our communities, when other aspects of our identity are tainted by the Model Minority Myth, xenophobia, and navigations of biculturalism.
Anna Previtte
Studio 215
Anna Previtte is a passionate painter and muralist determined to engage society through the creation and exhibition of thoughtful work. She is a creative entrepreneur dedicated to growth in community, education, and expression.
She has a large portfolio of private commissions nationwide, public artworks in the Raleigh-Durham area, and has exhibited across the state of NC. She has created murals for Bee Downtown, Durham ID, Craft Habit, and Gateway Plaza. Previtte is a recipient of the George Kachergis Memorial Scholarship, Undergraduate Art Awards, UNC-Chapel Hill, 2013, and the Sharpe Scholarship, Undergraduate Art Awards, UNC-Chapel Hill, 2013.
Artist Statement
“The underlying inspiration for my work across all media and motif is light; the spectrum light radiates, the metaphors of positivity it creates and the fragility of life in our current solar circumstance. Harnessing this inspiration to affect change allows the more emotive and expressive elements of my work to reveal themselves, where I acknowledge the imperfections of life, the contrasts that creates, and find a true desire to better myself and the world around me.
I am constantly seeking to create a narrative in my works to accomplish this through recognizable visual language. Narratives of place in the creation of public works and use of perspective architecture. Narratives of time through varied exposures and expanding lines. Narratives of acceptance through transitioning color and connected compositions. Narratives of value in manipulating recycled materials and utilizing natural resources. Narratives of aspiration through cohesive concepts and gradient growth. And although often complete in narrative design, rarely is my work completely resolved in message. Negative space, denied symmetry, broken forms, drips and imperfect points of origin speak to the lack of resolution we experience daily, the constant struggle and navigation required to tend towards the light.”
For the sake of my practice, I would argue that humanity's shared, sought truth is finding purpose, and in an effort to respond to this, I ask myself often: 'Why am I here and why must I create?'