Introducing the Residencies in our new book: the Southwest, Part II

We’d love to introduce you to the residencies (and their facilitators) featured in our new book, Piney Wood Atlas Volume VI: The Southwest, Part II. (Click here to cut to the chase and pick one up!)

These ten residencies cover three states: Texas, Louisiana, and Florida.

Brownsville, Texas

“Part of it is showing the outside world how cool Brownsville is, that it isn’t just a sensationalized article or political point. There’s definitely a humanitarian crisis and things happening on the border, but it’s also home, and it’s beautiful, and there’s so much more to the space and the people.” - Jesus Trevino

Kingsbury, Texas

“It’s all about the conversation for us. It’s about bringing [artists] in from wherever, and getting them talking to the farmers and local people here and the interactions that happen around that. We’ve been at it for [over a decade] now. You figure out what the scene is and where the conversation can go… It’s an amazing community of creative and quite unusual people. I love the people here. They’re honest, they’re sweet, even if we can’t always agree politically.” -Alison Heinemeier

Lockhart, Texas

“It’s a queer-centered residency based around rest. There’s no productivity requirements here… When an artist is here, your space and time is as secret as you need it to be, or as open as you want it to be. I’m really trying to make a lot of space for the creative process or the rest process. I think it’s really vital sometimes to get bored, or lie around naked, or lie on the floor, or close our curtains, or open your curtains, or look at the sky, or not. It’s very unstructured.” - Jordan Smith

Austin, Texas

“The point is to make net art an accessible option to more people. A lot of it is showing people who are like puppeteers or mental health care workers or painters, all kinds of folks. Maybe this is their first time building a website… You can make work that can be easily seen internationally because it’s online, and provide some context, like how to make it sustainable, ethical, accessible.” - Rachel Stuckey on MoHA’s Welcome to My Homepage residency program

Corsicana, Texas

“The building [a historic Oddfellows Hall] needed so much more work than I could have imagined. It’s been an education in architectural preservation and restoration. We’re sculptors and furniture makers and people who make things and so we’re going to do the work… We’re gonna do it because the building became the sculpture, it became the project.” - Kyle Hobratschk

New Orleans, LA

“When I bought the house in 2011, it was completely gutted. It was ruined after Katrina, which was in 2005. So six years later, it was still gutted and had no roof, but that meant it was affordable. I built out the first four rooms and put a roof on, and opened up as Aquarium in like, four months. I built it room by room, and I was almost done in 2016, when it burned down. And then I started over and I rebuilt the whole thing… The whole time I was making artwork on the side.” - Jacob Reptile

New Orleans, LA

“What really changed everything for us was Hurricane Katrina, and just the upending of everything we knew here locally, for all of us, personally. Shortly after returning, we learned from our botanist that the forest was recovering, it knew what to do in a way that none of the humans knew what to do. We rallied some money to get some artists in here, and we called them Restoration Residencies; they were just for folks from the area who had had damage or loss. It was so profound what happened for them and for us, and we understood that being in this natural environment was so key.” - Ama Rogan

Pensacola, Florida

“We look for strong contemporary practice in things like zines and DIY print, photography, installation, experimental sound, and crossover work–fashion, film, performance, music, writing. We prioritize artists who can engage with the community, who are curious about working with our archive, and whose proposals are feasible in our space and aligned with our values.” -Val George

Fort White, Florida

“I think this space is really important and vital, because Florida is under attack from a lot of angles in this moment, and there’s not a lot of places that people feel safe anymore. And I really, really strive to make this a place that people can feel safe to be themselves: to express themselves, and to have grieving time, have happy time, and not have to be witnessed by other humans… And yeah, Florida queers are here, and we aren’t going anywhere. And we want to welcome people to come take in Florida and really try to understand the history here and the plants and animals that need people to fight for them.” -Shoog McDaniel

Canaveral National Seashore, Florida

“Soundscape ecology is something that has been kind of swept under the rug as something that’s neither an art form or a science–but it’s just as important as clean air and clean water. I thought, wouldn’t be cool to have a residency program that would be socially minded for the environmental arts, but also involve the community?” -Eve Payor

If you’d like to learn more about these residencies and their amazing facilitators, grab a book from our online bookstore: blurb.com/user/pineywoodatl

Or click here to buy!

We also have books covering many other parts of the country: The Northwest, Southwest, Midwest, Northeast, and Southeast Pt. 1.

You can also find these in our online bookstore!

Thanks for reading,

Alicia & Carolina