Taking Up Residence: Notes on the Complicated Experience of Being an Artist-in-Residence

  In 2016, I went to my first artist residency. After spending months preparing applications, nursing rejecction wounds, and celebrating a few victories, I accepted the invitation from Santa Fe Art Institute to be a part of their thematic ‘Water Rights’ cohort.

  I was hot off the heels of Agile Rascal’s inaugural cross-country trip, and no longer stuttered or got weird when someone called me an artist. I was finally ready to take up residence!

  I showed up in October of 2016 with my laptop, a pile of books and a bicycle, ready to completely immerse myself in the script I had proposed rewriting in my application.  

 But once there, I found myself in a fertile, but totally distracting, hub of artists, with the kitchen as the social center. Two international artists—a visual artist from Turkey and a writer from China—could reliably be found nearly all day, every day, at the kitchen table. The writer said she was burned out from going from residency to residency, focusing entirely on her novel. She had decided to use this time, instead, to immerse herself in the creative project of inventing new ways to cook apples. (They had recently gone apple-picking.) Daily, there would be some new treat for us to try, and at the end of our residency, we each got a little folded paper cookbook with the findings of her creative experiments. I think I still have mine. 

  At the time, I couldn’t decide whether the writer’s choice to focus on apples, instead of novels, was sensible self-care, or a huge waste of time and resources. I had taken time off work and spent a decent amount of money to be in a creative environment with other artists whose energy and focus were supposed to enhance creative output, not be a distraction. Or at least, so I thought. 

  However, during that residency, the situation at Standing Rock reached a fever pitch, and a group of us decided to travel up to the Dakotas to participate in the actions there. It suddenly didn’t seem useful to focus on the Water Rights in my imagined world, when the issue was so pressing and present in real life.

 I think back on that time as a moment of intense community, connection and fuel for creative inquiry—but honestly, not a lot of output.

    I never did finish the rewrite I had proposed, so, in the end, I really wasn’t that different from the kitchen artists who had chosen to make their time about something else. 

 Over the past decade, I’ve been to a number of other residences—one on a circus commune, one in a National Park, more than one on off-the-grid farms (Ask me to rank their compost toilets!). I’ve paid for residencies and gone for free. I’ve been the only arist-in-residence, and I've been in a cohort. I’ve been with my company, and I've been a solo artist. Over time, I’ve learned that each residency is its own universe, and how to select those that will support my current need. 

Me, trying to write a play during an acro-workshop at Lookout Arts Quarry

My theater company, Agile Rascal, rehearsing a new show as Artists-in-Residence in the Everglades

Agile Rascal enjoying some downtime while in residence at The Sable Project

   As a scrappy, DIY theater artist, I seem to gravitate toward the sweet and scrappy all-you-can-eat-garden-veggies-and-bulk-oatmeal residencies, and I have balked at the price tag of some of these, until I see how shoe-string these operations are, what a labor of love it is to offer artists space, support and community, and how they are obviously want to find a more equitable financial model, but haven’t quite figured it out yet. 

     Of course, there are other kinds of residencies too - Residences where they pay you a stipend and prepare all your meals for you, but these are usually a bit harder to get into. And while there are many super-talented, young artists who get into these residencies on their first application, the reality is, for many of us, it takes a long time to develop our work, and even longer to learn how to think, talk, and write about that work, to the point where we have competitive applications. So the irony is, of course, that the residencies with the finances to be equitable, are often so selective that they still favor those who have already had the time, training, and support to learn how to navigate these systems.

      Last year, I decided to throw my hat in the ring again, and did a round of applications.  After being rejected (again) by a bunch, and chosen by a few, this year, I’ll be going to two residencies: The Wassaic Project in upstate New York in March, and MacDowell in New Hampshire in August.

    MacDowell is a funny one. In addition to your own little cabin with storied lore about past artists who’ve stayed there, each artist gets three prepared meals a day and reimbursement for travel and time off (if needed). Whenever I tell people I'm going, they seem to treat it like a cult, or a rite-of-passage.  Whatever it is, people seem to be impressed by it.  

     And I feel…weird about that.  Like I’ve finally graduated from a scrappy DIY artist trudging to the outhouse (and sometimes paying to do so) to the kind who gets served all their meals, because god forbid I waste any of my creative energy making a sandwich. Will everyone there have done their time in an outhouse, or will they have always inhabited this world in which people told them their creative output was worthy of offloading their daily labor onto others? 

    The economics of residencies are, like the world they exist in, not fair, but what I know now—what I didn’t know in 2016—is that there is residency for almost every stage of an artistic career, and ones suited to almost every budget (as long as you don’t mind a compost toilet).

      And an artist residency can serve many purposes: It can be a time for creative output, but it can also be an opportunity for research, or even rest, or an opportunity to connect with other artists, and with the local art illuminati. 

   And as for MacDowell, I'll still be grateful for the time. And the sandwiches. And the reimbursement for my train ticket. And the access to beautiful nature and creative people.  May all artists find a way to be given—and to take—this time.

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Artist Residency Resources

There are almost as many kinds of artist residencies out there as there are artists.

Here are a few online databases to search for opportunities:

Artist Communities Alliance is site dedicated to residencies—whether you are looking to apply to one, or start your own. Their database is full of useful filters that can help narrow your search down.

Res Artis is another site with a variety of residency opportunities, many international.

Although I have never used this site, Host An Artist seems to be a connection point for artists and those looking to host them in their homes and extra spaces. I'm intrigued by this option and am curious if anyone has ever used it before.

If you would like help figuring out if an artist residency is right for you, even if you don't know what you're looking for, I can help. Especially if you’ve never done anything like it before, and are residency-curious.

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