Meet Our Residents
Meet Our Residents
2023
Noor van der Brugge
Dutch Artist & Writer
During a sabbatical from her job as an art teacher, Noor van der Brugge decided to make the time for a new creative project of her own, to devise an artist book inspired by the English poet and novelist, Philip Larkin. Noor’s books combine text with illustration in order to deepen the experience of exploring her stories, so her residency was spent reading and researching, writing first drafts and making sketches for this new piece of work.
Photo by Colin Usher at Studio Faire.
Julie Price Carpenter
American Writer
Julie Carpenter wants to ‘bend reality one story at a time’, her latest work being a horror novel about hell. As a lifelong southerner and former evangelical, she feels well-versed in the subject matter! She is also aware though that she can write best about these when she has some distance from that world and that’s what made her look to France for a residency. Her needs were simple, a quiet space where she could work undisturbed throughout the day and space to wander in the evenings. She found this at Studio Faire.
Photo by Colin Usher at Studio Faire.
Judy Major-Girardin
Canadian Artist
Through her work, Judy Major-Girardin’s strives to raise awareness of the beauty and ecological significance of water, land, flora and fauna. Judy gathered abstract and recognisable forms from the nearby river Baïse, making sketches, taking photographs and collecting plants to bring back into the studio. By printing, painting and layering transparent fabrics and painstakingly stitching with vibrant threads, Judy created works with a depth just like the river’s own.
Photo by Colin Usher at Studio Faire.
CL Fisher
Canadian Artist
CL Fisher is a code-based artist who studied in the Fine Arts Studio program of Centennial College, Toronto. With an impending deadline for an exhibition, CL had to stay focused during her residency. Her recent visits to the UK, where she walked Hadrian’s Wall (past the tree at Sycamore Gap, now lost to vandals), and then to Paris, ‘The City of Light’, offered up the inspiration and this residency the supportive space to complete new works in time for the printer.
Photo by Colin Usher at Studio Faire.
Sara Gaines
American Writer
Sara Ann Gaines is a writer, artist, and shamanic practitioner, who creates essays and stories out of personal memories. Memories that are specific yet universal. During her residency she continued to develop a collection of personal “slice of life” essays and short stories, which she accompanied with sketches, illustrations, and photographs, akin to a children’s storybook but recontextualised through an adult lens.
www.instagram.com/saraanngaines
Photo by Colin Usher at Studio Faire.
Ann Marti Friedman
American Writer
Holding a Ph.D. in art history, with an emphasis on French art of the 17th-19th centuries, it made perfect sense for France to be the ideal location for Ann Marti Friedman to visit for a residency to work on her latest historic novel. While much of this novel is based in Paris, part of the novel will take place in a country chateau and the Lot-et-Garonne could be just the region in which to set it.
Photo by Colin Usher at Studio Faire.
Katie Mawson
English Artist
With a fascination for colour, Katie Mawson works with the cloths from the covers of vintage books, first skinning these beautifully marked and faded cloths from their boards to then arrange, combine and balance shapes and colour combinations into new works of art. She spent mornings walking in Nérac, absorbing and photographing the colours and textures of the local French architecture, before returning to her studio to spend time arranging and rearranging once more.
Photo by Colin Usher at Studio Faire.
Julie Bell
Canadian Artist
Breaking away from her usual way of working, creating mixed media collage on glass, Julie Bell challenged herself to work on paper and canvas during her residency. She developed multiple small pieces, as well as one larger work, something she’s not able to do usually in her small studio in Canada. Drawing from the local textures in architecture, food markets, cultural interactions and the pets at the property, completed works included “Marché en Plein Air“, “Comment Parler Francais Aucun Comprend” and “Good Boy Dougie“.
Photo by Colin Usher at Studio Faire.
Rachel Jamison Webster
American Writer
Rachel Jamison Webster is a poet and author of fiction and creative nonfiction. Her works include ‘Benjamin Banneker and Us: Eleven Generations of an American Family’, a novel which explores ancestry, race, gender, and justice in American history. During her residency she continued to work with these themes for a new novel, this time focusing on her maternal ancestors, who lived freewheeling lives as feminists, artists, and queer people in the twentieth century.
Photo by Colin Usher at Studio Faire.
Bailey Martin
American Writer
Bailey Martin was looking for a residency to carry her creative writing forward following graduating with a Masters of Fine Arts degree from Boston University. Her ultimate goal was to complete her first poetry collection, but to achieve this she needed a change of pace and some unstructured free time to take a breath, regroup her thoughts, and engage in the kind of experimentation that the freedom of our residencies supports.
Photo by Colin Usher at Studio Faire.
Scott D. Peterson
American Writer
Having combined his interests in sport literature, sports journalism, and sports history to earn an interdisciplinary PhD. in American Literature and Culture at the University of Maine, Scott D. Peterson has continued to focus on sport as a creative writer, media researcher and teacher. He allocated specific time for his creative writing once again at Studio Faire, having visited for a residency back in 2022.
Photo by Colin Usher at Studio Faire.
Chris Lock
British Artist
During Chris Lock’s two week residency she developed a series of small, concertina ‘sketch’ books, working with a palette knife, water soluble oil paint, acrylic and watercolour to create vibrant, textural landscapes on paper, inspired by the colour and light of the region. These little books also contained fragments of inspirational text by Author Celia Rees and were finished off with balsa wood start and end pieces.
Photo by Colin Usher at Studio Faire.
Johanna Pfau
German Costume & Set Designer
Johanna fell in love with the garden here at Studio Faire, and spent the majority of her time outside, deeply lost in her fascinating history in order to create an illustrated memoir. Throughout the writing process the story took on a life of its own and began to alter. Real memories mixed with invented details and characters. The story begins when the main character is 6 years old and ends a few years after she is 11 when her parents took her and her brother from East Germany, where she lived, on holiday to Hungary. They never went back.
Weblink: www.johanna-pfau.de
Photo by Colin Usher at Studio Faire.
Suki Valentine
American Artist
Professional tarot reader, front-line activist, one of the founders of Riot Grrrl, metalsmith and jeweller, Suki Valentine has much to draw on for inspiration. During their time in residence, Suki took particular advantage of the French summer sun to create their own designs for a set of Lenormand Oracle cards, created in Cyanotype prints. These cards were originally created by Marie Anne Lenormand, a French fortune-teller in the Napoleonic era.
Weblink: www.YourBloodyValentine.com
Photo by Colin Usher at Studio Faire.
Emily Flouton
American Writer
The residency allowed Emily Flouton to put her literary work front and centre of her day, where usually she must divide her time between working as a freelance writer, a writing teacher, and a writing tutor from her home in Brooklyn, NY. Her coming-of-age novel combines a realist portrayal of boarding school life with elements of a haunted house novel. It was written and ready for final revision and the residency offered up the perfect opportunity for quiet reflection and reconsideration.
Weblink: emilyflouton.com
Photo by Colin Usher at Studio Faire.
Patrick Schmidt
American Artist
Working as a Professor of Art at Washington & Jefferson College takes up much of Patrick Schmidt’s time during the term, so in the summer months he makes space for travel and a continued exploration into the relationship between colour and pattern and their relationship to cultural and social identity, through abstract geometric painting. It was this that he developed during his residency, experimenting with transparency in particular, whilst allowing Nérac to inspire new combinations of colour, texture and pattern.
Weblink: www.patrickschmidtstudio.com
Photo by Colin Usher at Studio Faire.
Andrew J Rodriguez
Dominican/American Filmmaker
Andrew J Rodriguez is a Dominican filmmaker from the Bronx, whose work strives to ‘demystify the experiences of underserved communities through nuanced, character-driven stories with a touch of magical realism’. Whilst in residence he completed a rough draft of the script for his feature film about a young Dominican boy who is forced to leave school after his Dominican citizenship is revoked due to his Haitian ancestry.
Weblink: www.instagram.com/DrewAdventures
Photo by Colin Usher at Studio Faire.
Sabryna Ekstein
Canadian Writer
Encouraged by feedback for her final piece of work created for an MA in Creative Writing at the University of Toronto, Sabryna Ekstein dived headlong into developing the work into a full blown novel, which she completed during her residency! With a keen interest in writing articles about food and beer (currently she’s the food and beer writer for The Growler, Ontario’s only craft beer magazine) food often plays a central part in her narratives, as is the case in this novel about a host at a four-star restaurant in downtown Toronto.
Photo by Colin Usher at Studio Faire.
Garry Craig Powell
English Writer
Garry Craig Powell travelled to Studio Faire from his home in Portugal to work on his third book, an historical novel about “A love affair between two monstrous egos”, the celebrity couple Gabriele D’Annunzio, an Italian writer, who occupied a prominent place in Italian literature from 1889 to 1910, and Eleonora Duse, an actress, particularly renowned for her roles in his plays.
Weblink: www.garrycraigpowell.org
Photo by Colin Usher at Studio Faire.
Jane Tolerton
New Zealand Writer
Returning for her second residency at Studio Faire, this time Jane Tolerton’s focus was on the biography of Mary Taylor, a woman born in West Yorkshire, England in 1817. Mary Taylor was a lifelong friend of Charlotte Brontë and wrote a novel of her own, Miss Miles, or A Tale of Yorkshire Life 60 Years Ago. Through her extensive research, Jane Tolerton’s book aims to highlight some false histories around Mary’s life.
Photo by Colin Usher at Studio Faire.
Christina Burtner
American/Chinese Artist & Writer
Christina Burtner came away from her work as a commercial photographer, graphic designer and video producer to focus on a very personal project. Usually, her creative works take the form of paintings that depict stories through careful arrangements of toys and household items into dramatically lit dioramas, but this project was different! The residency allowed Christina private time out to write a very personal novel based on her own midlife crisis.
Weblink: christinaburtner.wordpress.com
Photo by Colin Usher at Studio Faire.
Elizabeth Rosen
American Writer
Following a long period of study, during which she obtained an M.F.A. in creative writing, and a Ph.D. in literature, Liz Rosen returned to her true passion for writing short fiction. Nine years later, she started to recognise the need to practice long-form, and so decided to create a collection of stories that would work together as a short story cycle and it was this that became her focus during her residency at Studio Faire.
Weblink: www.instagram.com/thewritelifeliz
Photo by Colin Usher at Studio Faire.
Alex Palumbo
American Filmmaker & Photographer
Alex Palumbo is a freelance cinematographer and photographer with his own company, Slack Tide Films, based in San Diego, California. In addition to his commercial work for clients such as Spotify and Harley-Davidson, Alex creates narrative films about people or stories he believes should be told. Alex rented a bike during his residency and, in addition to catching up on some existing editing work, spent several hours documenting the surrounding landscape and dramatic Spring weather.
Weblink: www.slacktidefilms.com
Photo by Colin Usher at Studio Faire.
Deborah Whitney
American Artist, Writer & Curator
When Deborah Whitney first came to Studio Faire for a month long residency in 2019, we got on like a house on fire, so we were overjoyed to welcome her again in 2023. Her project this time was to create embroidery drawings on vintage linen handkerchiefs. By highlighting elements of photo transfers of women of the burlesque, Deborah draws attention to the concept of ‘the male gaze’, the alleged power that men have over women. ‘The women of burlesque maintain that the power is theirs, that by choosing the stage they defied social and gender norms to assert themselves and their bodies.’
Weblink: deborahwhitney.com
Photo by Colin Usher at Studio Faire.
Triin Paja
Estonian Writer
Triin Paja is an award-winning poet, who particularly loved gazing out of the window from her ‘writing nook’ (The Bureau), while she worked on her new poetry collection at Studio Faire. She was also surprised to be inspired to write one and a half short stories, an area she had seldom delved into through writing before. We are grateful to the Cultural Endowment of Estonia for supporting her 3 weeks at Studio Faire.
Photo by Colin Usher at Studio Faire.
Sonia Zaghetto
Brazilian Writer
Sonia Zaghetto is a Brazilian journalist and writer, now based in San Jose, but born in the Amazon region of Brazil. It is this saga of her family’s emigration to the Amazon region (the overseas territory, French Guiana), that is the subject of the novel she was working on during her residency. Time was spent thinking through the plots, honing the characters and creating the dramatic arcs that link the 20 short stories together to tell this fascinating story.
Weblink: www.soniazaghetto.com
Photo by Colin Usher at Studio Faire.
Linus Wever Andersson
Swedish/German Artist & Luthier
While studying philosophy in Berlin, Linus met a luthier whilst hitchhiking and, just four months later, he made the decision to move to the UK to study at the Newark School of Violin Making, from where he graduated with distinction. Now based in Glasgow, he works on his violins whilst studying for an MFA. During his residency he divided his time between carving a violin neck and creating delicate drawings for a graphic novel.
Weblink: www.linusweverandersson.com
Photo by Colin Usher at Studio Faire.
Bing Chen
Chinese Artist
Bing Chen started her creative career as a ceramic sculptor in China, working in ceramic production, but moved to Scotland to study at the Glasgow School of Art from where she graduated with a BA Hons in Sculpture & Environmental Art and an MFA. Bing’s familiarity with clay and interest in using found natural materials led to her creating multiple site specific installation works in our park during her residency. See some images of ‘Gardening Work‘ here.
Weblink: www.instagram.com/bingcubed
Photo by Colin Usher at Studio Faire.
Melissa Aranzamendez
American/Filipino Writer
Though Melissa Aranzamendez spends much of her time working at the intersection of technology and the humanities, developing ethical solutions towards responsible AI, her contrasting training and passion is for creative writing, with a focus on the experiences of Filipinos and other immigrants in America, from a personal and shared perspective. Her short stories focus on the mentally ill, the domestic help, the overseas foreign workers,…in her words: the people who are invisible in society.
Photo by Colin Usher at Studio Faire.
Steph Del Rosso
American Writer
Steph Del Rosso is a playwright, film and television writer, and educator, currently teaching Playwriting at New York University in NYC. She has had her work produced or developed in multiple theatres across the US and was a winner of the Steinberg Playwright Award, honouring early-to-mid career playwrights of exceptional talent in 2020. Her residency allowed time to focus on a series of darkly humorous short stories, which explored gendered power dynamics and the myth of meritocracy.
Weblink: stephdelrosso.com
Photo by Colin Usher at Studio Faire.
Hannah Terwin
American Photographer
A residency at Studio Faire proved to be just the break Hannah Terwin needed from her work in Michigan as a professional wedding photographer, allowing her a short period of time to focus on her fine art photography instead. With fairy tales and folklore as the inspiration, Hannah developed a series of works using the house, gardens and town as the settings for her visual stories.
Weblink: handesignedcreative.com
Photo by Colin Usher at Studio Faire.
Victoria Dickenson
Canadian Writer
Victoria Dickenson has worked extensively in multiple museums in Canada, including working for eleven years as Executive Director of the McCord Museum of Canadian History in Montreal. She has curated numerous exhibitions and has written extensively on documentary art and the visualisation of landscape in North America. During her residency, she focused on her culinary memoir, an account of how she and her family cooked and ate from the 1950s through to the early 2000s.
Photo by Colin Usher at Studio Faire.