Mutual Artist in Residence

Mutual Stores was a collective studio comprised of six individual studios, a brick library and studio archive, a garden, a shared experimental gallery, and the Mutual Artist in Residence Program. The Mutual Artist in Residence Program began in 2018 as a subsidized studio residency program hosted by Mutual Stores. Participants in the first year's cycle of the program were given one material resource: waste produced by the studio’s clay and water recycling sink. This closed system piece of plumbing produces an accumulation of ceramic waste material that is ever fluctuating and dependent on the work produced and materials used by Mutual Stores studio members. Participants were asked to research and find an experimental use for the studio’s collective waste while in residence. The first cycle of artists in residence included, chronologically, Ken Becker and Torreya Cummings, Tracy Ren, Maya Gulassa, Kari Marboe, and Brooke Singer.

Participants in the second and final cycle of the program included Juan Huerta Coello, Michael Berens, Alyssa Block, Penelope Anstruther, Kristiana Chan, Caroline Meyers, and Almaz Wilson. Following the completion of Coello's term in residence at the start of 2020, the program shifted to a new format, as the hands-on use of collective waste was no longer feasible, nor was the exhibition of artists' projects in person at Mutual Stores. The program now centered on sharing participating artists' work through small editions of risograph publications, printed by Mutual Stores members Brendan Page and Rosa Novak, which would be distributed by mail to allow for a physical (yet remote) interaction with resident artists' work.

The residency studio included a table, a chair by Shushan Tesfuzigta and modular shelving by Vivian Harp. Work made by past artists in residence can be seen to the right. The program was made possible by generous support from the Windgate Fellowship of the Center for Craft, Creativity and Design and the Alternative Exposure grant program of Southern Exposure in partnership with the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, in addition to crowdfunding support from our family, friends, and arts community.