Esy Casey

Interdisciplinary Residency, Five-Week, Session IV

At seventeen Esy went to Mexico to secretly join the Zapatistas, but was distracted by the murals of Siqueiros and ultimately received an MFA from Hunter College in Integrated Media Arts. Her film, video and print work considers the ways that symbols and objects in a landscape maintain the presence of past events and belief systems.

She has worked as a cinematographer on films including BORN TO FLY (Outstanding Arts and Culture Programming Emmy nominee, Independent Lens with DPs Albert Maysles and Kirsten Johnson, Dir. Cat Gund) and BEFORE YOU KNOW IT (Dir. PJ Raval, America Reframed).
Her directorial debut JEEPNEY premiered on PBS, was nominated for Best Documentary at CAAMFest and won the jury prize for Best Cinematography at the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival. She is the recipient of awards and fellowships from organizations including The New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA), The Creative Work Fund, The Princess Grace Foundation USA, The Flaherty Seminar, The Ford Foundation, The New York Film Festival, MacDowell, Yaddo, The Center for Asian American Media, and The American Association of University Women.

Emily Hauman

Interdisciplinary Residency, Five-Week, Session IV

Emily Hauman, is a conservation horticulturist based in Pensacola, Fl.

Caitlin Vitale-Sullivan

Interdisciplinary Residency, Five-Week, Session IV

 B.S. in Ecology and Conservation biology. Recent work includes implementing sustainable small scale agriculture in local elementary schools, and assisting with research of alpine plant and microbe communities, ecosystem soundscapes, and self assembly of bio-inspired materials using in situ AFM. 

2018-2019 Fulbright U.S. Student Finalist. Studied in Sweden and studying the connection between folk music and landscape. 

Currently completing a Masters in Agroecology at University of Wisconsin-Madison. Studying the use of music in agriculture and the impact of music on multispecies relationships in agricultural landscapes.

Emily Pegues

Interdisciplinary Residency, Five-Week, Session IV

 Emily Pegues Is an assistant curator of sculpture and decorative arts at the National Gallery of Art. She shapes exhibitions and research works that date from 5th century BC to the Renaissance to the modern era.

Yaminah Abdur Rahim

Interdisciplinary Residency, Two-Week

Yaminah Abdur-Rahim is a multimedia artist based in Oakland, California, U.S.A. She holds a BA from Antioch University Seattle and is currently an MFA Candidate in Visual Arts at Mills College in Oakland. She was a 2021 Kearney Street Workshop Fellow, and has received residencies with Still Here San Francisco, Radar Productions and the San Francisco Library. 

View her work here or on Instagram. 

J.D. Ho

Interdisciplinary Residency, Five-Week, Session IV

J.D. Ho has an MFA from the Michener Center at the University of Texas in Austin. J.D.’s work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in Georgia Review, Missouri Review, Shenandoah, Ninth Letter, and other journals. She lives and writes in Virginia and has successfully grown pawpaws from seed.

Sofia L.C. Dias

Interdisciplinary Residency, Five-Week, Session IV

Sofia Lotti Carvalho Dias, a multidisciplinary artist based in São Paulo, Brazil, showcases a diverse range of works reflective of her experiences and influences. Her career highlights include solo and collaborative  exhibitions, and participation in renowned artistic residencies.

In 2022, Sofia presented a solo exhibition titled "AO REDOR" at Massapê Projetos and participated in the two-person show "CORES VIVAS" alongside Andrea Brazil. Her artistic journey has been enriched by residencies at institutions such as the Oak Spring Garden Foundation and Kunstkvarteret Lofoten, contributing to her global perspective and artistic development.

Sofia's achievements include receiving the acquisition award at the 48º Contemporary Art Salon "Luiz Sacilotto" of Santo André in 2020, recognizing her contributions to the contemporary art scene.

William Keefer

Interdisciplinary Residency, Five-Week, Session IV

Digital Artist in Residence, Fall 2020

William Keefer is a writer and private investigator based in Brooklyn, NY. He is the author of Anamnesis, a novel that takes place in the Amazon rainforest, and publishes essays on plant medicine and other topics at www.williamkeefer.com. He is currently working on White Bear, a sequel to Anamnesis, which “continues the story of global consciousness evolution with an emphasis on the role of the plants in the process.” To read some of his work, visit our Fall 2020 Residencies Exhibit.

Latifat Apatira

Interdisciplinary Residency, Five-Week, Session III

Latifat Apatira is a visual artist exploring botanical printmaking and watercolors based in South San Francisco, California, U.S.A. From her website, “As a Muslim-woman, my faith is imbedded into my creativity. The intention behind my work is to cultivate an ever-deepening admiration for the wonder that is the botanical world.”

View her work here, or on Instagram.

Lorena Cruz

Interdisciplinary Residency, Five-Week, Session III

Lorena Cruz is a photographer, videographer, and installation artist based in Detroit, Michigan, U.S.A. Her work is informed and inspired by her family’s indigenous origins in Oaxaca, Mexico and “covers topics of migration, assimilation, labor, and more recently, collaborative image-making with her parents as a form of indigenous autonomy.”

View her work here, or on Instagram. 

Henry Obeng

Interdisciplinary Residency, Five-Week, Session III

Henry Obeng is a papermaker and photographer based in Madison, Wisconsin, U.S.A. 

View his work here, or on Instagram. 

Melissa DeSa

Interdisciplinary Residency, Five-Week, Session III

Melissa DeSa works in the non-profit sector focused on community food systems.  She is the Plant Program Director of WorkingFood, their mission is “To cultivate and sustain a resilient local food community in North Central Florida through collaboration, economic opportunity, education, and seed stewardship.”

Learn more about WorkingFood or view her other works here. 

Elizabeth Webb

Interdisciplinary Residency, Five-Week, Session III

Elizabeth Webb is an artist and filmmaker originally from Charlottesville, VA. Her work is invested in issues surrounding race and identity, often using the lens of her own family history of migration and racial passing to explore larger, systemic constructs. She is currently co-editing an anthology with Roberta Uno and Daniela Alvarez entitled FUTURE/PRESENT: Culture in a Changing America (Duke University Press, 2023). 

View her work here or on Instagram. 

Jackeline Salazar Lorenzo

Interdisciplinary Residency, Five-Week, Session III

Jackeline Lorenzo is a botanist based in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic and is a professor at Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo.

LinkedIn. 

Manjula Martin

Interdisciplinary Residency, Five-Week, Session II

Manjula Martin is a creative nonfiction writer based in Sonoma County, California, U.S.A. 

Instagram. 

Joseph Mizhakiiyaasige Zordan

Interdisciplinary Resident, Five-Week, Session II

Joseph Zordan is a student at Harvard University in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A. His studies are focused on history of art and architecture, North American, and Indigenous art.

Rosa Sung Ji Chang 장성지

Interdisciplinary Residency, Five-Week, Session II

Rosa Chang is an indigo based artist in Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.A.  Her interdisciplinary art focuses on natural dye/indigo and its culture as a form of art practice and visual storytelling contents. Rosa created the Indigo Shade Map, which started as a way to map the use of three different kinds of indigo grown around the world. Rosa also currently teaches a course called "Mindful Colors: Natural Dyes from Korea and Beyond" in the Fiber Department at the Maryland Institute College of Art.

View her work here. 

Naoko Wowsugi

Interdisciplinary Residency, Five-Week, Session II

Naoko Wowsugi’s work centers around community engaged art and she is based in Washington, D.C., U.S.A. She also teaches at American University. 

View her work here. 

Kathleen Gutierrez

Interdisciplinary Residency, Five-Week, Session II

Kathleen Gutierrez is an Assistant Professor at the Center for Southeast Asian Coastal Interactions (SEACoast), Science & Justice Research Center of UC Santa Cruz. 

Her research interests are centered broadly on the politics of plant life and floral world-making in modern histories of the Philippines and Southeast Asia. She is currently developing a book manuscript, Sovereign Vernaculars in the Philippines at the Dawn of New Imperial Botany, that expands the "vernacular" in the history of colonial botany and examines ongoing epistemological tensions during the science's internationalist acceleration.

Faculty Profile. 

Wren Renquist

Interdisciplinary Residency, Five-Week, Session II

Wren Renquist is an ecologist based in Iowa City, Iowa. 

Instagram.