NEA Studio Artist Residencies

We love sharing our spaces with other artists and watching what takes shape!

August 25, 2023

At their best, Studio Artist Residencies stimulate new creative processes and ideas for participating artists. They allow time and space to explore or expand on projects or ideas, often in facilities that artists would not otherwise have access to. The KBAC studios are a rich resource for local artists, providing the equipment and workspace for handmade papermaking processes, letterpress and other press-printing, and bookbinding!

This past year, the KBAC was able to offer our studio resources to two Michigan-based artists through an NEA grant that funded Studio Memberships during the 2022 Fall and 2023 Spring semesters. What an exciting opportunity to explore new techniques and media and continue working on existing ideas and projects!

Colleen Woolpert has a photography and video-based art practice, with a recent body of work involving stereoscopic imagery accompanied by devices for viewing these images in 3-D. Expanding on a project that started with her twin sister at the old Lee Paper Mill site in Vicksburg, Colleen originally sought to utilize KBAC studio facilities for a primarily letterpress print-based project. Her project took a bit of a turn of direction as she fell in love with the tactile process of making paper at the start of her residency, "I felt like I fell into the vat!" Our letterpress facilities play an integral role in her upcoming exhibition, however. The work in this exhibition connects back to the roots of the papermaking industry in surprising ways, combining archived photography in laminated handmade paper artworks, printed text-based pieces, video, and original stereoscopic photography.

Mary Whalen has a photography-based art practice and came to the KBAC studios with specific goals last fall. She was particularly interested in utilizing our letterpress studio to set type for a poem by Dave Marlatt to be featured in a in a hand-bound book of photogravures. Mary described her experience with setting metal type as "Meditative." Our studio manager, Katie Platte, was there to teach and guide this project, from setting type to binding the final books. In Mary's words, "There are no shortcuts; letterpress is all about PROCESS, and [KBAC's Studio Manager] Katie Platte's expertise all the way through made it all so elegant." The book will be on exhibit along with various iterations of photographic cyanotype images incorporating encaustic techniques.

We won't give it all away now; we are super excited to see these two artists' visions come together next week for a joint exhibition! We invite you to bring a friend and join us for the reception on Friday, September 1, 5:00 – 8:00 PM during the Kalamazoo Art Hop. The show runs September 1–29.