Artist in Residence
Lyndon House Arts Center's AIR program provides working artists the opportunity and studio space to dive in and develop a largescale project, full body of work, or time for research. The AIR's one responsibility is a public and open studio visit program during the residency. As a community arts center, artists can walk through the studios to catch a glimpse or a conversation with the AIR as they work. A small stipend comes with the residency.
For further information, please email amanda.burk@accgov.com
Artist in Residence Application
OPEN CALL: APPLY FOR A RESIDENCY
The Lyndon House Arts Center is seeking gifted studio-based artists to take part in the Artist in Residence program, which provides participants with a unique opportunity to concentrate on their work in a supportive and collaborative environment. Professional visual artists 18 years of age or older from or living in Athens-Clarke County and the bordering counties are invited to apply. The Lyndon House AIR Program is intended to strengthen the vitality of the arts in the Athens area by providing artists with valuable resources and to broaden the community’s engagement with contemporary art.
During 6 month terms, the Lyndon House AIR program will offer artists a semi-private work space (approximately 10 x 10 feet each) and access to our 7 open studios (Photography, Printmaking, Wood Shop, Ceramics, Fiber Arts, Painting, and Fine Metals). Artists’ work may involve any or all of these media that they have previous experience working in.
Applications are accepted on a rolling basis and are reviewed on September 20 for residencies beginning January 1, or April 20 for residencies beginning July 1. Notification date is within several months of submission deadline.
The participants in the AIR program will receive a $250.00 stipend. The participants in the AIR program will provide an educational program, either through a class or a workshop at the Arts Center.
SUPPORT AND ACCOMMODATION
Resident artists will be provided with a semi-private work space (approximately 10 x 10 feet), complete with studio furnishings. Residents will also have full use of the following specialty studios and are expected to help maintain them.
Ceramics: throwing wheels (sitting and standing), 2 electric kilns, slab roller, extruder, assorted hand tools
Wood Shop: table saw, band saw, miter saw, planer, joiner, drill press, router table, assorted clamps and hand tools
Fine Metals: acetylene torches, electric kiln, roller, drill press, polishing wheel, rotary tools, assorted hand tools
Painting & Drawing: easels, drawing benches, drawing boards, palettes
Printmaking: 2 etching presses (30 x 60 inch & 18 x 36 inch beds), large and small rollers, exposure unit, assorted screens, squeegees, washout booth, light tables, letterpress equipment (sign press and assorted type), book press
Fiber Arts: sewing machines, floor looms, inkle looms, tapestry looms
Photography: developing canisters, temperature regulating sinks, enlargers, photo wash tanks, photo chemicals, heat press, dust-free cabinet, art documentation equipment and studio
APPLICATION MATERIALS
To apply please have ready:
- CV/resume
- 10 images labeled Last Name_First Name_ 01, Last Name_First Name_02 etc.
- Questions you will be asked to answer on your applications:
- Provide a brief overview of your artistic practice and the themes or concepts you typically explore in your work?
- Describe a specific project or body of work you would like to focus on during the residency period. What are your objectives and goals for this project?
- How do you anticipate engaging with the local community or environment during your residency? Are there specific collaborations or interactions you hope to pursue?
- What materials or techniques do you primarily work with, and what facilities or resources would you require during your residency?
Current Artists in Residence
Jonae Anderson
Bio:
Jonae Anderson is an artist from Fayetteville, GA. She currently lives and works in Athens, GA, and received her BFA in Printmaking + Book Arts from the University of Georgia in 2025. Her art is largely inspired by the natural world and focuses on the relationships that exist between living things. She enjoys creating stories through her art, focusing on the exploration of narratives and how they can be created and manipulated through color, form, and shape. Her work follows the story of a fox and their friends and consists of a variety of printmaking and book arts methods, with a focus on CMYK screenprints, pochoir, collage elements, and pop-up book structures.
Artist Statement:
My work focuses on the idea of home, how the intricacies and tiny details of our lives connect like a puzzle, bringing us to where we’re meant to be. What makes a space feel like home, what makes a person feel like home, and how do our personal experiences influence our perception of home. I am focused on creating a space that feels like home, so I focus on all the tiny details of my work. Creating is an act of love, you are putting time and energy into everything you create, and in doing so you are imbuing that piece with a bit of yourself. I utilize color and interactive story elements to immerse the viewer into the world I am creating. My work consists of a series of CMYK color separation screen prints and digital reproductions of handmade pieces. I use these pieces to create books whose structures elevate the content of the book. Through accordion, drum leaf, carousel, tunnel books, and pop up books I tell a story through highly saturated and colorful elements, allowing the structure of the book to further inform and involve the reader.
Jordan Blackwell
Bio:
JORDAN BLACKWELL (b. 2000) is a jeweler, market organizer, and multi-media artist from Athens, GA. She received her degree from the University of Georgia in Jewelry and Metalworking in 2025. Jordan’s "Clownfish 2.0” was accepted into the show “Snakes, scales, & things that slither," at the South River Art Complex in April of 2025. Jordan has been organizing community artist markets and selling her work since 2021.
Artist Statement:
I am an enamelist focusing on cloisonné. The process is to form thin wires into cells for powdered glass to fill and be fired to a shiny finish. I enjoy experimenting with colors and am drawn to deep blues and golden yellows. Fish were the theme for my senior body of work at the University of Georgia. I explored the relationships of man and fish. Focusing on how we’ve treated them as separate from us, despite our common ancestors. I’m excited to play in the studio and make work that feels reflective of myself and the folks around me. I’m inspired by magick, ancient religions, community, and my fears of technology.
Artist Contact:
Instagram @impoliite
Email iimpoliite@gmail.com
Anne McInnis
Bio:
Anne McInnis is a visual artist, designer, and social scientist. Trained as a painter, she attended art school at the University of Georgia (UGA), Athens, GA, from 1978–1981. From 1981–2017 she worked in the NYC fashion and soft furnishings industry as design director for domestic and international textile mills as well as global brands. She taught woven design courses at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) from 2007–2012. Time, age, and (mis)perceived (ir)relevance eventually drove her to re-enter academia. She completed her BA in fine and studio arts from Empire State University, NYC in 2017. In 2023 McInnis received her Ph.D. in textile sciences at UGA. From 2021–2023 she was a Dodd Interdisciplinary Graduate Fellow at the Lamar Dodd School of Art, UGA. The fellowship culminated in a solo exhibition and served as a visual complement to her dissertation. McInnis has exhibited in group shows in NYC, Washington D.C, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and multiple Georgia venues. She lives and works in Georgia.
Artist Statement:
My artistic practice explores perception, alterity, and impermanence, using materials as metaphors to examine social myths and identities. Decades of living in Manhattan and working in fashion and textiles have shaped my approach to color, texture, and composition; ageing in its youth-obsessed culture has given me a unique visual perspective of societal assumptions about appearance and abilities. Printmaking, my primary medium, offers a repetitive, meditative process in line with my interest in impermanence; I combine it with painting, drawing, and hand- dyeing/felting/stitching on silk organza, wool felt, various textiles, and washi/fine art papers, as well as found/personal objects and photos.
Artist Contact:
Instagram: @annemcinnisart
Previous Artists in Residence:
Elizabeth Given
Winter & Spring 2025
Bio
Elizabeth Given is a ceramic artist from Warren, Ohio currently residing in Carlton, Georgia. She received her BFA in Ceramics from Kent State University in 2013 and MFA in Ceramics from University of Dallas in 2019. Elizabeth has exhibited her ceramic wares in many shows across the United States and was an artist in residence at Core Clay in Cincinnati, Ohio where she worked managing the kiln room from 2020 to 2023. Elizabeth spent 2024 making work for craft fairs and shows at her home studio in Carlton, Georgia.
Artist Statement
I am a ceramic artist working primarily with hand building techniques who makes functional wares using porcelain of various colors as well as different kinds of stoneware. I will often combine different kinds of clays and paint imagery on my work with underglaze, or press tiny coils together, which make their own pattern. I embrace humor and light heartedness in my work, using lots of bright colors and tend to think of my work as “girlie.” My imagery is influenced by 1990s pop culture, psychedelic art, and other strange counter cultural imagery.
Artist Contact:
Website: elizabethgiven.com
Instagram: eliz.abethgiven
Victoria Dugger
Victoria received her BFA from Columbus State University, Columbus, Ga for Drawing and Painting and her MFA in Studio Art and Design from the University of Georgia, Athens, Ga. Her work has been featured in Vogue, Hyperallergic, ArtNews, New American Paintings MFA Edition as well as various other publications. In June 2021, she had her New York debut solo show "Out of Body,” at Sargent’s Daughters gallery in the Lower East Side. Other recent exhibitions include David Zwirner’s Platform and The Museum of Sex. She is represented by Sargent’s Daughters gallery in New York. The artist lives and works in Athens, Ga.
Artist Contact:
Website: victoriadugger.studio
Gallery Representation: sargentsdaughters.com
Instagram: @victoria.dugger.studio
Andrea Murillo
Fall & Winter 2020-2021
“As a Honduran-American artist and trained textile designer, I construct vulnerable, whimsical, and sometimes crude worlds through digital and physical illustration, textiles, and sculpture. Through both a melancholic and playful lens, I create art to give expression to the small things in life, like the young man on the cusp of adulthood building sandcastles in pure ecstasy or the group of friends having a picnic which reminds me so much of The Bathers by Paul Cézanne. It's an impulsive reaction to my personal experiences and surroundings. It's a glimpse into a random page of my journal. These worlds are eclectic, fanciful, and full of curiosity. Digesting society's fixed nature to then spit back out as cutesy and eccentric artwork. They contemplate death, heartbreak, sex, fluffy clouds, kittens, spirituality, and more. Giving a name to what it's like to be alive while making space to not be taken too seriously. In short, it's a balanced duality with the bittersweet awareness of existence.” - Andrea Marillo
Andrea Marillo graduated from the Lamar Dodd School of Art last year. Marillo has exhibited at ACC Library, ATHICA and in the 44th Juried Exhibit at the Arts Center. Creating both humorously playful and yet at the same time melancholy ceramic sculptures and woven blankets depicting drooling cats, deflating beach balls and sexy birthday cakes, during this residency Marillo will be busy making in both the Clay and Fiber Studios.
Artist Contact:
Website: whackfactory.com
Megan Sparks
Spring & Summer 2020
"I create characters to symbolize my thoughts and emotions. These loosely-rendered characters, genderless placeholders,embody expressive forms that communicate a dynamic narrative. The queer body is one that I am particularly interested in. Using my own life as a framework for the paintings, I also draw from historical paintings and constantly pull imagery from the cascade of things I see on the ever present Internet.
The repetition of symbols is important in my work. Repetition allows me to imagine events existing concurrently giving me the freedom to mix personal experience with art historical references. Through the act of painting and the symbols, I’m able to examine these experiences under the same lens categorizing and better understanding the emotions and bigger picture concepts such as temptation, spiritually and sexuality. For example, I use a halo as a marker for goodness and power and you will see it repeated throughout my work, circling the heads of many of my characters. The halo communicates that even though these characters are rough around the edges, shadily dancing through back allies or cramming their face at the dinner table, they come from a place if dignity, kindness and playfulness.
I constantly balance the line between tragedy and humor, the beautiful and the ugly. I can paint personal hardship and then find the punch line within that same story. Humor helps to conceptualize a (sometimes) sad thing. Even though they can reference tragedy and heartache, my paintings are forced to not take themselves too seriously. I am telling stories through paint, using my own unspoken language (made up of color, forms, and lines), leaving room for images to hold a multitude of complexities." - Megan Sparks
Paula Runyon
Spring & Summer 2019
"Living somewhere between the spheres of sculpture, play, craft and design, my work creates a welcoming space for people to notice and appreciate things from nature they normally would not consider. Most recently - I have begun to think about the importance of childhood, magical thinking and what it means to imbue something inanimate with life. I have also begun to think about what this connection to nature and materiality in early life can teach us about empathy. I situate these ideas within the framework of domestic space through the use of objects commonly found in the home. This space is where I see the most meaningful overlap of people, craft and materiality, coming together through objects contextualized by their use.
The warp and weft of the textile pieces, tightly spun fibers, clean lines and structure of furniture, and the neatly aligned clay particles of a thrown/altered vessel all denote the regulatory mood of the human hand on natural material. My work also explores the viewers relationship to these objects through a sort of fantastical, visceral, awareness. What does it feel like to look at a rug mimicking a caterpillar, or a bowl filled with milkweed seeds about to burst open, objects whose functions are obscured by their materiality? This amalgamation of nature anatomy and bio-mimicry in the form of a domestic objects calls into question the hierarchies of dominance, value and even sentience that we impose on elements from nature within our homes."
Paula Ruth Runyon is a print-maker and textile artist from Jacksonville Fl. She received her BFA in Printmaking from the University of North Florida and MFA from the Lamar Dodd School of Art. She has exhibited throughout the southeastern United States and frequently teaches craft-based workshops as part of her practice.Her work explores using play and experimentation as tools for learning about the natural environment and attempts to enhance the essential connection between people and nature.
Artist Contact:
Instagram: @paula.runyun
Mo Costello
Fall & Winter 2018-2019
Mo Costello (Seattle, 1989) is an artist and educator based in Athens, Georgia. A graduate of Rhode Island School of Design (MFA, 2014), she is the recipient of recent fellowships from the University of Georgia's Lamar Dodd School of Art (2015 - 2017) and Emory University (2017). Former projects include, 'Reading Station (HH)', a site specific installation and term-long curatorial project conceived and organized while in residency at the University of Georgia as well as 'NEWSPAPER (1969 - 2017)', an exhibition cocurated with publisher Marcelo Gabriel Yañez. 'NEWSPAPER (1969 - 2017) considered the history of a queer publication originally conceived in New York in 1969 under the direction of Steve Lawrence. The exhibition coincided with the curation of a regional edition of the publication, initially released at Murmur Media. Currently, Mo is an instructor at The Zero School of Art + Time in Atlanta's South Downtown, established alongside Blair LeBlanc in Spring 2018.
Artist Contact:
Website: mocostello.com
Instagram: @momotello
Brian Hitselberger
Spring & Summer 2018
Brian Hitselberger is an artist living and working in Athens and is an Associate Professor of Arts at Piedmont College in Demorest. His work has been exhibited at ATHICA in Athens, at {Poem88} in Atlanta, Dalton Gallery of Agnes Scott College in Decatur, Barbara Archer Gallery in Atlanta, The Contemporary in Atlanta, and Cabinet in Brooklyn, New York. He has held residencies at the Elsewhere Artists Collaborative, the HUB-BUB Arts Initiative, and the Hambidge Center for the Arts.
He has received funding for his work from the Georgia Council for the Arts, the Willson Center for the Humanities, and the Andy Warhol Foundation. He received a BFA in Printmaking from Tulane University in 2005, and an MFA in Painting from the University of Georgia in 2010.
“During my time in the Print Studio of the Lyndon House this summer I have ambitious plans to develop several bodies of work concurrently, all of which relate directly to my interest in print as a means of creating a unique image. In a suite of cut-paper monotypes, I intend to explore shape and color relationships as they relate directly to several of my recent works on canvas. Additionally, I will be utilizing monotype and relief processes to add layers and depth to some larger-format works on paper in that are in progress” - Brian Hitselberger
Brian’s residency is supported by a faculty grant from Piedmont College.
Artist Contact:
Website: brianhitselberger.com
Instagram: @brianhitsstudio