Located in Studio 9 and 319
This competitive juried residency provides meaningful support to emerging artists who have recently completed formal academic training in the visual arts. It is an opportunity to address the critical post-graduation juncture in an emerging artist’s career.
Residents have three months of exclusive access to a studio in the Art Center. Therein, they can create and sell work, interact with the public, and connect with other arts professionals. It’s an opportunity for professional development, networking, and a chance to define a practice outside of the academic context.
Applications are open to recently graduated students who earned a bachelor’s or master’s art degree from an accredited university. Submissions were accepted from across the U.S., provided artists submit proof of their permanent residence in the area and/or commitment to contributing to the future of the region’s arts scene.
Welcome to the 2023 Post-Grad Residents
Aliana Grace Bailey • January – March
Maryland Institute College of Art
M.F.A. in Community Arts
Website: alianagracebailey.com
@alianagrace
Artist Bio
Aliana Grace Bailey was born and raised in Washington, DC. She is a multidisciplinary artist, designer, socially-engaged art practitioner, and passionate advocate for radical self-love, wellness, and healing. Aliana is the founder of vibrant grace studio, where she marries her life passions and identities as the lead artist and designer. She received her BFA from North Carolina A&T State University, where she double-majored, earning a Bachelor of Social Work and a Bachelor of Art in Visual Arts Media Design.
Artist Statement
“I focus on deepening connections to love, spirituality, intimacy, and healing. While intimacy is not something to force, it is something that can be intentionally explored, better understood, practiced, celebrated, and strengthened between individuals, ancestral lines, and communities. Intimacy is an essential part of living, loving, survival, and healing. Through fiber, I weave layers of interconnection, comfort, and storytelling.
My artwork is a juxtaposition of beauty, a sense of optimism, at times, traumatic realities. I use art as a means to explore and manifest awareness of self, Black womanhood, the world, and all things sacred to me. My work is bold and warm, quiet, soft, private, and full of details that intimately engage the patient viewer. I have learned that by creating artwork that focuses on self-exploration, gratitude, intuition, and vulnerability—audience members join in the journey. My work embraces artmaking as a vehicle for growth, building closeness, and creating inner peace.”
–Aliana Grace Bailey
Lianna Zaragoza • April – June
The George Washington University,
Corcoran School of the Arts and Design
M.F.A. in Fine Arts
Website: lianna-zaragoza.squarespace.com
@lianna_paints
Artist Bio
Lianna Zaragoza is an interdisciplinary artist from South Florida and based in Northern Virginia. In her work, natural pigments ground from soil, rocks, and charcoal are transfigured into ephemeral, site-responsive artworks, paintings, and installations. She recontextualizes spaces of belonging by constructing structures found at outdoor gathering sites, like docks and fire pits, within galleries. Her work examines the intersection of geologic, cultural, and temporal conditions which humans have relied upon for generations to build their communities and sense of belonging. She earned an MFA in Studio Arts from the George Washington University’s Corcoran School of the Arts and Design where she was awarded the Morris Louis Art Student Endowment Fellowship, and a BFA in Painting from the University of Florida. Since receiving her MFA, her work has been exhibited across the DMV region, including The Athenaeum, Brentwood Arts Exchange, and Glen Echo Park Partnership for Arts and Culture.
Artist Statement
“I am drawn to sites in nature that present an invitation for gatherings, places that have the potential for reactivation and demonstrate the capacity for continual transformation. I preserve and collect the traces of human presence left behind at fire pits, grills, and beaches and transform these materials into pigments for paint. Drawing from experiences of displacement in my adolescence, I use skills passed down between generations in my family to lay a symbolic and material foundation for a new sense of belonging. I record sites with pigments through paintings, installations, sculptures, and site-responsive works, documenting and collecting evidence of ever evolving places of cultural significance. My practice enables me to forge a relationship of reciprocity with my surroundings, repurposing discarded materials to map the cultural overlay found at these sites. I consider the way we imprint ourselves upon the earth and how it shapes us in return.”
–Lianna Zaragoza
Wes Holloway • July – September
The George Washington University,
Corcoran School of the Arts and Design
M.F.A. in Social Practice
Website: weshollowayart.com
@wes_and_jess
Artist Bio
In 2003, after one year of undergraduate work at The University of Texas @ Austin, Wes broke his C5-C6 vertebrae in a driving accident, suffered a spinal cord injury, and thus became paralyzed from the chest down. He later returned to complete both his BA and BFA in Studio Art. In professional capacities, he has held leadership and teaching roles at ArtReach and Texas Children’s Hospital Arts-In-Medicine program. In 2019, Wes was awarded a Creative Access Fellowship and became an artist in residence at The Santa Fe Art Institute. In spring of 2022, Holloway completed his MFA in Social Practice at The Corcoran School of the Arts and Design at The George Washington University. Wes has exhibited across Texas, in Houston, Austin, and Dallas; Gallery 1969 in New York City; Fiendish Plots in Lincoln, Nebraska; The Smithsonian’s Ripley Center in Washington DC; Art Basel in Miami, Florida; and Manchester, United Kingdom.
Artist Statement
“My artwork has been exploring identity and the structures that influence the formation of said identity. I pull questions from my past and personal histories in an attempt to navigate the “how” and the “why” of the personas I have created. Currently, my work is in flux between painting, collage, conversation, research, learning, and installation. I have no set medium that I see as the best mode of parsing these themes, however, painting seems to be where I land most often. This medium usually leads to a more accessible conversation. I am also now more interested in the intersections of intent/reception and personal/public work. In these visual explorations and conversations, the social and policy topics that have come up revolve around equity in healthcare, presentation of disability, LGBTQ+ cultural preservation/celebration, community living, and access to spaces/services. The phrases “emancipatory practice” and “existence as resistance” resonate with me the most. By sharing personal experiences, I am joining & adding to a lexicon of marginalized voices seeking connection and validation. My goal is to construct a succinct, clear, and confident body of work that will be equal parts education, protest, and future policy ideation.”
–Wes Holloway
Kyle Scadlock • July – September
Williams College
B.F.A in Studio Art
Website: kylepsdfile.com
Artist Alibi
[Chorus]
Yeah, theres no answer and you called twice!
Nobody be at my house
I was at the studio all night
Last night I slept on the couch
I might wake up and do it all again
Theres a world goin crazy outside
But lets pretend, that its alright *
*Lyrics from “Buttons” by Mac Miller
Artist Statement
“Art is an outlet toward regions which are not ruled by time and space.“
–Kyle Scadlock
Ngoc ‘Naomi’ Le • October – December
American University
M.F.A in Studio Art
Website: NaomiLe.weebly.com
@NaomiLeArt
Artist Bio
Naomi (Ngoc) Le was born in Vietnam in 1995. In 2020, she received her BFA from Towson University, in Baltimore, MD, and was honored with the Ro and Marius Award. Naomi has exhibited her work in the NextGen 7.0 Exhibition at VisArts, Out of Order at Maryland Art Place, and Katzen Art Center. She earned her MFA from American University in 2023.
Artist Statement
“My work is about showing the inherent potential of materials we might otherwise view as mundane. I use unconventional materials that are store-bought or found, including Styrofoam, vacuum bags, and sponges. My investigations are rooted in the idea of exploring and transforming the use of everyday objects into something that is examined as art to studying our ability to observe the real world. The imagery for my work is mostly inspired by nature. I want to trigger viewers’ imagination to think about a moment that they witness or interact in nature. Lastly, by attaching them all or letting them present individually together, the final vision for the piece is always in some way mimicking nature. For instance, they could be crawling on the wall like how ants follow each other.”
–Naomi Le
Lucas Rougeux • January – March 2024
Alfred University
B.A in Interdisciplinary Art
Website: lucasjrougeux.com
Artist Bio
Lucas J Rougeux, born in Niagara Falls, NY in 1995, is a queer interdisciplinary artist currently living and working in Washington DC. They acquired a Bachelor of Arts in 2017 at Alfred University with a focus in interdisciplinary art. She has exhibited in galleries along the U.S. east coast, virtual settings, zines, and art publications. THE SOUL GRAVITY GUIDED TO BLACK, Lucas’s first solo exhibition, was mounted at Rhizome in DC in 2022. Through his practice, Lucas explores themes of the queer body, chronic pain, spirituality, light, and astrophysics. True to their interdisciplinary education, Lucas utilizes a multitude of media including oil paint, ink, charcoal and graphite, spray paint, performance art, installation sculpture, textiles, and printmaking.
Artist Statement
“I am a cloud of space dust. I am a body knotted in on itself. My multifaceted practice is the product of immense existentialism, a coping mechanism for chronic pains, and a bullhorn for poetry. Through the use of a variety of media and processes, my work draws attention to the most uncomfortable and most unknowable aspects of our lives. There is profound loneliness, grotesque vulnerability, and disturbing interrogations about the meaning of our existence laced throughout my work.
I am a visual poet. Stenciled and handwritten text becomes a vessel for the concepts whirling around the image. In my practice, text communicates lines of poetry, weighted sentiments, calls to action, charged cries, and futile searches for answers. I purposefully play with ideas of silence: be that through created environments that cannot carry sound, or language that seems to fall on unhearing ears and uncaring minds.
I am a prophet-less disciple; mine is a religion of doubt, accountability, and the inevitability of change. My practice is religious, psycho-therapeutic, and urgent. I use symbols like nebulas and black holes to find spirituality in physics and science in the divine; turning celestial phenomena into religious presence. Soft, colorful, amorphous folds are tensions of a straining body yearning for a cure, for treatment, for relief. Pillars of smoke are warning signs and a representation of a world struggling through chaos. My work is an alluring portal into physically personal and existentially intimate mysteries of the unknown. It is a challenge to face the uncertainty of the future.“
–Lucas Rougeux