Check out our 2026 Post-Grad Resident Artists
Now Located in Studio 314
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. 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.
Tara Youngborg (she/they)
May – July 2026
Website: tarayoungborg.com
Artist Bio
Tara Youngborg is a Maryland-based artist, educator, curator, and arts administrator. She has a BA in Art and Art History from St Mary’s College of Maryland and an MFA in Studio Art from Towson University. Her work uses digital technologies to create video and audio compositions that are combined into immersive installations that explore place, memory, and technology. She is also the manager of the Stamp Gallery and Studio A at the University of Maryland, College Park, where she directs the exhibition and educational programming and advises the Contemporary Art Purchase Program. Youngborg is a 2025-2026 Jack Straw New Media Gallery resident, 2025-2027 Hamiltonian Fellow, was awarded second place for the 2025 Trawick prize, and was a 2018 Artist-in-Residence at the St Mary’s College Artist House. She has presented her work in exhibitions at the George Washington Carver Center for the Arts and the University of Mary Washington Media Wall, and in group exhibitions in the United States and abroad.
Artist Statement:
“My installations, video, and interactive electronic artworks are rooted in questions of how our technological processes reflect human experience. I use digital technologies to respond to ideas around specific sites, and the ways that physical and digital worlds interact and overlay. I conduct research and collect archival or scientific records, take video and auditory field recordings, and then use technological processes— handwritten computer programs, machine learning, datamoshing, and video or audio editing software—to translate and interpret the site and the technology I am using. They then are incorporated into the art installation as non-linear, abstract light and sound pieces where space, time and memory are compressed, layered, and translated. The physical installations include video projections, custom electronics, LEDs, and materials that both reflect and let light pass through them, such as chiffon and plexiglass.
I am a voracious investigator and experimenter, and I hope to bring this into my work, enabling the viewer to experience that same sense of discovery as they explore the physical space of the work. The work asks the viewers to spend time deciphering and unpacking meaning to the point of discomfort, and to consider our assumptions that underlie the ways these technologies are built and discussed.”
—Tara Youngborg
Lisa Brown (she/her)
August – October 2026
Website: healherphotography.com
Artist Bio
Lisa Brown is an artist born and raised in Washington, D.C. Her work explores the intersections of community, memory, and resistance, centering the experiences of Black women whose narratives are often silenced by systemic oppression. She works across sculpture, analog photography, and installation. This balance reflects both the structural violence Black women endure and the resilience, joy, and care that persist as acts of survival.
Her practice extends beyond the studio into workshops, storytelling, and collaborative making, where she uses art as a tool for connection and transformation. Brown has taught and exhibited internationally, including in Ghana at Nuku Studio and the Omaha Centre for Contemporary Art, and completed a residency in Senegal. She has an MFA in Community Arts from the Maryland Institute College of Art.
Artist Statement
“My work explores the intersections of memory, resistance, and care within the lives of Black women. Through sculpture, analog photography, and video installation, I examine Black women culture within the moral compass, this includes immediate families, kinfolk, sisterhood, and communities, while also revealing the deep resilience to assimilation and beauty that persist in the face of these conditions. My practice is both personal and collective, using material, storytelling, and engagement to highlight the strength found in everyday acts of survival and love.
I am drawn to materials that hold memory, raw metals from the earth, common objects within African traditions because they carry the physical and emotional weight of the stories I seek to tell. In contrast, I use gestures of tenderness such as stitching, layering, and imagery to represent care and healing. This balance between heaviness and softness mirrors the duality of struggle and hope that defines Black women’s experiences across generations.
My goal is to create work that functions as both mirror and catalyst, reflecting lived truths while sparking conversation, connection, and transformation.”
— Lisa Brown
Avery Schoenberger (they/them)
February – April 2026
Website: schoenbergerart.com
Artist Bio
Avery Schoenberger is an emerging queer artist raised and based in Northern Virginia. Avery graduated from the University of Pittsburgh in 2025 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in both Studio Arts and Classics. This combination gives their art a unique perspective, as they draw inspiration from ancient civilizations and a visual language from early Baroque painters, which they apply to their fascination with the human form. Avery’s preferred medium is oil paint for its ability to achieve a bold, yet controlled manipulation of powerful lights and shadows. They aim to combine beauty with thought-provoking imagery, creating work that is impactful both emotionally and intellectually.
Avery’s art has been displayed in the Cathedral of Learning and the Hillman Library at the University of Pittsburgh. Their work has also been in several juried shows and published in the Harvard Undergraduate Classics journal.
Artist Statement
“As a queer artist, I bring to light the vast range of largely ignored and underrepresented queer experiences that have always existed throughout history. Depictions of diversity within ancient culture, history, and mythology have fallen victim to Western cisgender stereotypes that perpetuate discriminatory and exclusionary beliefs. I am changing the narrative by reinterpreting classical Greco-Roman imagery and exploring the concept of ancient queerness by applying academic research to thoughtful works of art. Some pieces create dissonance by collaging modern and ancient elements. Others are more subtle, where the ease with which they blend various elements results in a cohesive, cross-cultural, and historical gender-nonconformist narrative.
I channel the experiences and identities shared by me and my queer friends into the figures depicted in the paintings. In doing so, my subjects simultaneously represent groups of people, personifications of emotions, and individuals with unique experiences. They transcend the need for labels and ultimately become something that defies categorization. I use my art to bring to life the humanity of the queer experience throughout history, giving queer experiences form and face, and enabling my subjects to tell their own stories.”
— Avery Schoenberger