Artist in Residence (AiR)
Time + Space to CreateArtist in Residence (AiR)
The residency program at Casa provides an opportunity for artists from across all disciplines to pursue their practice in a supportive, concentrated, community-based atmosphere. Open to artists with diverse experience levels, backgrounds and a variety of media including those in or recently graduated from undergraduate programs.
Workshops, installations, open houses and artist talks are part of AiR community engagement program. Informal and friendly workshops allow you to create alongside artists. Open houses and artist talks with visiting artists allow for learning new perspectives and ways of seeing.
Follow the AiR programming within the seasonal Casa Program Guide and events calendar for upcoming events.
Current Artist in Residence:
Arlene Westen: June 2 – 30
During her residency, Westen will focus on traditional techniques such as hand-stitching on resist-dyed and cyan-printed textiles. She looks to create intricate patterns and textures that resonate historical significance, while incorporating contemporary design elements influenced by the natural world and the rhythms of nature.
Artist Statement:
Ever since she can remember, Arlene Westen has been drawn to the colour blue. This fascination has led her to explore the realms of indigo and cyanotypes through surface-designed textiles.
Indigo, with its rich history and cultural resonance, offers a profound metaphor for change and renewal. The alchemical process of dyeing with indigo—where the fabric emerges greenish-yellow and transforms to a deep blue upon exposure to air—symbolizes metamorphosis and rebirth. Cyanotype, with its enchanting simplicity and serendipitous outcomes, complement the exploration of blue. By placing objects or drawings on light-sensitive surfaces and exposing them to sunlight, she will create ethereal blueprints that capture the essence of light, shadow, permanence, and impermanence.
Stitch, Gather, Knot and Dye – Indigo and Shibori Workshop – FULL
Sunday, June 22 from 10 am – 4 pm
Open House in the Atrium:
Thursday, June 26 from 5 pm – 7 pm
Upcoming Artist in Residence:
Casa will be hosting artist Mailey Horner from June 12 – July 10:
We look forward to welcoming Mailey Horner as our Artist in Residence from June 12 – July 10. Throughout her residency at Casa, Mailey seeks to expand her current painting practice with a new body of paintings that incorporate sculptural elements. Specifically, she is interested in using the woodshop at Casa to create sculptural bases and artist frames for her paintings. She’s highly interested in her residency here because of the topography and flora of southern Alberta. Having lived in southern Ontario her entire life, she was only recently introduced to the Coulees when her family relocated to Lethbridge last year. Mailey has been keen to revisit this geography to incorporate its colours and contours into her work ever since.
Artist Statement:
My painting practice examines the interplay between abstraction and figuration, reducing the world to its most essential traces, images, and archetypes. I take stylistic inspiration from folk art, and thematic inspiration from the domestic sphere, fables, and the loose quality of memory. I use a loose style of paint handling and items plucked out of the domestic, to be framed in an imaginary, colourized landscape that I come to intuitively. Throughout this process, the paint often establishes its agency when the image becomes through an externalization of my inner most archetypal, cultural, and imaginary figures. Fundamentally, my practice revolves around the questions of how an image can have pictorial agency and how paint can be used to establish narratives and tap into personal and cultural mythologies. Various tensions I explore in my work includes those of narrative agency and intuition, human-animal or interspecies relations, and the dichotomy between ‘domestic craft’ and ‘fine art.’
Workshop:
Patio Painting: Intuition and Imagery
Ages 16+, $20+GST
Artist Talk:
Thursday, June 19, 7 – 8 pm
Meeting Room, Casa
Open House:
July 3, 5-7pm
Rotary Square, Casa
Application Process
Emerging artists find the Casa AiR program to be a welcoming place for those wanting to experience the residency process. Mid-career and established artists are also encouraged to apply as Casa provides space free of charge and will help to co-ordinate a number of public engagement opportunities.
Please seek funding for travel, lodging and per diems from granting agencies as necessary. Successful candidates may request letters of support for their grant applications.
Application due dates:
Application due dates occur January 15 and June 15 of each year.
Submissions for the January 15 intake will be programmed for a residency between June and December.
Submission for the June 15 intake will be programmed for a residency between January and June of the following year.
