Our 2024 cohort of Post Graduate artists will wrap up their residency experience via a moderated discussion on their work and residency. All are welcome – join us in the Overlook Room at 1 pm on Sunday, February 16th to learn more about their studio practices and what’s next in their artistic journey.
About the Artists
In 2024, the program proudly hosted Samantha Van Heest, Kat Thompson, and Charlotte Richardson-Deppe whose dynamic work brought fresh perspectives to the Art Center. Through this program, they not only honed their craft but also contributed to the vibrant artistic community that defines the Torpedo Factory Art Center.
Samantha Van Heest is an artist and art educator currently residing in the greater Washington DC area. Primarily working in paintings, her work explores our relationships and rituals with the seemingly mundane, navigating patterns of collecting and preserving through unconventional ways of presenting still life and found objects.
Kat Thompson is a multidisciplinary Afro-Jamaican American artist based in Virginia, who works with photography, textiles, sculptural collages, and installations. Her work combines these mediums to explore notions of Black selfhood within the African Diaspora.
Charlotte Richardson-Deppe is a queer feminist artist working between performance and soft sculpture. Her work posits soft sculpture as social practice through wearables that exaggerate bodies and replicate limbs, making visible the invisible ways in which humans relate to one another.
About the Moderator
Blair Murphy is a curator based in the D.C. area and the Curator of Exhibitions at Museum of Contemporary Art Arlington in Arlington, VA.
At MoCA Arlington, she shapes the vision for the exhibitions program and has curated numerous exhibitions, including An Adventure of Being, Take a Number: Artists and Bureaucracy, Stretched, Applied Forces, Transitional Objects, Over, Under, Forward, Back, and By Proxy, the museum’s first virtual exhibition.
Her previous curatorial projects include exhibitions at The Kitchen (New York, NY), Washington Project for the Arts (Washington, DC), Trestle Gallery (Brooklyn, NY), Field Projects (New York, NY), VisArts Rockville (Rockville, MD), and with the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities.
She was a Helena Rubinstein Curatorial Fellow of the Whitney Independent Study Program and holds a BFA from Maryland Institute College of Art and an MA from Georgetown University.
About the Post-Graduate Residency Program
The Torpedo Factory Art Center’s Post-Graduate Artist program offers emerging artists a unique opportunity to navigate the critical transition from academic training to professional practice. This competitive juried residency provides recent graduates with three months of exclusive access to a studio space within the Art Center, where they can create and sell their work, engage with the public, and build connections with arts professionals.
Designed to foster professional growth and networking, the program helps residents refine their practice outside an academic setting. Open to recent graduates holding bachelor’s or master’s degrees in visual arts from accredited institutions, applicants from across the U.S. are welcome, provided they demonstrate a commitment to the region’s arts scene.