In a previous blog post, I wrote about how to conduct an art residency at home. I shared a basic framework that you can use to conduct your own artist residency.  This year, I am feeling really ambitious! I have planned a year-long residency project for myself with the goal of developing my work and skills further, while also exploring themes that have been percolating inside my brain for a while. Creating things has been an integral part of my personal growth and the maintenance of my mental health. Art helps make my thoughts tangible. Once that occurs, I find that I can help myself move a little further along the path of healing.

If you would like to conduct your own art residency at home but are unsure what to do, you are welcome to follow along with my plan. Take the parts that work for you and adapt or change the parts that don’t. This page may change over the next year as I adapt the project to fit my needs or to encompass the new ideas that form. I will add to the resources as I go. I plan to adapt my schedule to my personal needs. Maybe I will want more time to explore a particular concept, or perhaps it will take a longer stretch of time than originally thought to complete an art piece. I am treating each part of the residency plan as a phase or unit study. While they are organized into a neat outline, I plan to shuffle the phases around. I may also work in multiple phases simultaneously, if it suits the work I am doing. This will help me follow the constantly shifting thoughts in a focused manner. It will also allow me to adapt to upcoming art calls as they come up. I know I do well with a framework. I also know I fail if I make the framework too rigid. I need room to grow, explore, and adapt the project as each phase challenges me to analyze my inner self.

I do know that the project has already grown larger than I anticipated. I have enough ideas for years of work. I will need to rein that in a bit or create a plan to make that work come to life later. I am excited to see how this plan develops and changes over the coming year. I am excited to see the work I produce. I do hope you will join me!

Residency Overview

This self-directed residency explores the deconstruction and reconstruction of self through textile-based sculpture, spun cotton, painting, embroidery, and mixed-media work. The project investigates identity through three intersecting lenses:

1. Mental Health / Emotional Self: How emotional growth, coping, and neurodivergence fragment and reshape identity. 
2. Relocation / Place: How moving and putting down roots in a new cultural environment influences belonging and self-perception.
3. Aging / Life Stage: How midlife transitions, cultural perceptions of women, and evolving family roles reshape the sense of self.

Workflow Philosophy:
Sculptural works require several days to dry between stages. During these intervals, I will work on painting, embroidery, or paper-based studies, maintaining creative flow while alternating between media.

All reflections and process documentation will be shared publicly via Substack posts and YouTube videos. Written journaling will be minimal; insights will emerge through making, filming, and conversation.

Residency Goals and Timeline

My goal is to work through each phase of the residency. I want to have at least 1-3 pieces of work completed for each phase. I will work on this residency throughout 2026 with the end goal of having an online exhibition.

Residency Phases

Phase: Ingredients of Identity

This phase focuses on examining identity as something assembled over time rather than inherent or singular. Instead of treating identity as a stable core, I approach it as a collection of “ingredients”  which consist of experiences, roles, diagnoses, environments, cultural expectations, and personal histories that accumulate, shift, and sometimes contradict one another.

During this phase, I will explore how identity is shaped by multiple, overlapping forces, including:

• Place and Home — how repeated relocations, migration, and the act of putting down roots influence belonging and self-perception
• Mental Health — how diagnosis and healing can dismantle prior narratives of self while introducing new frameworks for understanding one’s body and mind
• Aging and Time — the evolving perception of self as a middle-aged woman, artist, and mother, particularly as cultural narratives around usefulness, visibility, and productivity change
• Family Roles and Transitions — shifting identity as a parent to an adult child and as a partner navigating retirement and life reorganization
• Cultural Context — adapting to new social norms, languages, and values, and how these contexts reshape internal identity maps

Rather than isolating these elements, this phase emphasizes how they coexist and interact. Materials such as spun cotton, paper, thread, paint, and fabric function as metaphors for these ingredients : layered, bound together, unraveled, repaired, or left partially unresolved.

This phase establishes the conceptual foundation for later stages of deconstruction and reconstruction, grounding the residency in lived experience while allowing space for uncertainty, contradiction, and growth.

Phase: Dreams, Intuition, and the Subconscious

In this phase, the inquiry turns deeply inward to explore the unmapped landscape of the subconscious and the fluid boundaries of identity. The pieces created in this phase tune into the quiet, internal frequencies of the mind. They look at the strange logic of the inner mind. Identity is approached here as a psychological collage that is eccentric, layered, and deeply intuitive.

Studio practice serves as a mental health exercise, centering on the emergence of characters and internal narratives to process real-time thoughts and emotions. Through the tactile application of paint and paper, these works become an emotional barometer, capturing everything from flashes of joy to the heavy anxiety of the daily news. They are also an interpretive tool, allowing heavy thoughts or feelings to be objectively observed and analyzed. The process relies heavily on an intuitive, outsider approach to painting, letting peculiar figures and distorted features reveal themselves naturally on the surface.

This phase is a meditation on the dialogue between the conscious self and the shadow self. By welcoming the bizarre, the quiet, and the unfamiliar onto the canvas, the works embrace the fragmented way we experience memory and self-awareness. The process highlights the vulnerability and curiosity required to listen to our own internal eccentricity, translating the wordless language of the subconscious into a tangible representation of the inner self.

IABET – Jungian Art https://www.youtube.com/@iabet_jungian_art

• This is an art channel with therapy excercises. many of the art therapy excercises are similar to the way in which I paint the Weird Voices Series. Using these may help the series find a little more direction.

Phase: Containers and Thresholds

In this phase, the work turns inward to explore how we hold, protect, and negotiate the self. Moving beyond the physical structures of home and domestic space, the focus is on emotional containment, boundaries, and sheltering—the ways we protect ourselves, regulate vulnerability, and adapt to internal and external pressures. These ideas are deeply tied to mental health, resilience, and the ongoing process of identity reconstruction.

In the studio, small forms take shape: spun cotton vessels, soft textile nests, and abstract shelters. These objects serve as metaphors for the emotional body (spaces where feelings, memories, and experiences can be held, paused, or released). Painting and embroidery add layers of texture and narrative, allowing visual and tactile reflection on containment, fragility, and the work required to maintain personal boundaries.

This phase situates vulnerability as a creative tool. Through making, arranging, and reflecting on these containers and thresholds, the work investigates how the emotional self is held, shaped, and sometimes transformed by the structures we create around it.

Phase: Root Systems – Growth, Connection, and Aging

In this phase, the work expands outward to explore the interconnectedness of identity over time. Just as roots extend below the surface to anchor and nourish, the pieces created in this phase examine how personal history, family ties, cultural experience, and the passage of time shape the self. Identity is approached as a network (dynamic, layered, and constantly evolving).

Studio practice focuses on layered textile and paper-based works that weave together threads of memory, connection, and growth. Spun cotton and embroidery become metaphors for both physical and emotional ties, binding together experiences of aging, womanhood, and the shifting roles within family and community.

This phase is also a meditation on continuity and transformation. As relationships, responsibilities, and bodies change, the works reflect the ways identity stretches, adapts, and roots itself across time and space. The process highlights the resilience, vulnerability, and adaptability embedded in the human experience, and how our connections(both visible and unseen) support the ongoing reconstruction of self.

Exploring My Role as  Parent:

(Un)Seen Labor: Motherhood and Care https://youtu.be/ESg_e2WHRMQ?si=ZmGKQM7UXIf9jAkg

Exploring Connection with the World Around Me

Ilana Halperin, What Is Us and What Is Earth at Fruitmarket 27.02.26–17.05.26 https://youtu.be/E5D3zUDf-kk?si=k8wPcGD1cB8k63nb

• this exhibition focuses on moments, how we move throught those moments, and our relationship to the world in relation to geological time frames. Geological time is made human.

Josh Kline in “Human Nature” – Season 12 | Art21  https://youtu.be/8JY7-bSXnOo?si=ffP89byn9LWAWo_6

• Part of his work explores how culturally, we identify with a career and what happens when you lose that career. I think this is also applicable in the context of aging or in the context of motherhood. When a person retires from their job or becomes a mother, the way they are defined in the context of having a career changes.  For example, as an expat wife, I was always asked what my husband’s job was. It was like we were categorized by it.
• His work also explores boundaries between work and the individual. How an employer can access you at any time of the day. How a person may alter themselves to produce.

Exploring Aging

Pathways- This exhibition explores conversations about aging, paths taken or not taken, and the journey to “now” in our lives https://youtu.be/jbvyoLdNx0Q?si=tvgyz86qkNpB7RAt

Phase: Material Materialism & The Witness of Objects

In this phase, the lens shifts from internal root systems to the physical and emotional history embedded in the things that surround us. Moving beyond the immediate narrative of the self, the focus is on material memory, provenance, and the concept of the object as a silent observer, exploring how ordinary items hold, record, and witness our uncurated lives, everyday routines, and personal transformations. These ideas are deeply tied to the intersection of personal geography, historical timelines, and the ongoing process of identity reconstruction through material culture.

In the studio, ordinary and found forms take shape: intuitive representations of mundane tools, altered everyday artifacts, and mixed-media assemblages. These objects serve as metaphors for the material body and its timeline (spaces where history, cultural adaptation, and environmental memories are held, paused, or released).

This phase situates the everyday object as a creative collaborator and witness. Through making, altering, and reflecting on these material forms and thresholds, the work investigates how the emotional self is held, shaped, and sometimes transformed by the histories and structures of the physical objects we create and collect around it.

Artist Study: Zhang Enli

Creates portraits of everyday objects; examines close-ups of everyday objects in some of his paintings

Zhang Enli • Hauser & Wirth https://youtu.be/btFCqmJGfkk?si=iLTNv1657aBnqikD

Phase: Deconstruction – Shedding and Renewal

This phase turns toward transformation, examining how fragmentation and release can open space for renewal. Inspired by processes of mental health recovery and the transitions inherent in life, the work investigates how letting go (whether through physical alteration of materials or conceptual rethinking of ideas) can be a generative act.

Studio practice focuses on deconstructing, altering, and recontextualizing earlier pieces. Materials are torn, unraveled, and reassembled, creating new forms from what once seemed fixed or complete. Sculptural and paper-based works alternate during drying periods, allowing for both reflection and continued experimentation.

Through these processes, fragility becomes a tool rather than a limitation. The work explores how vulnerability, impermanence, and material wear mirror the emotional labor of healing, adaptation, and growth. Reflections are documented publicly through Substack and YouTube, connecting creative practice with lived experience and highlighting how the act of making itself can be a form of regeneration.

Phase: Body as Container – Vessel of Experience

This phase examines the body as both a site of experience and a repository of memory. The self is explored through layers (physical, emotional, and cultural), highlighting how identity is inscribed on and carried within the body.

Studio practice focuses on developing layered sculptures that integrate spun cotton, textiles, and paper. These materials act as metaphors for the body’s capacity to hold and transmit lived experience. Each form embodies memory, emotion, and the traces of life’s transitions, reflecting how the internal and external self coexist and interact.

A critical part of this phase is exploring cultural perceptions of aging and femininity, particularly in midlife. The work interrogates societal expectations and the shifting perception of self as time progresses, transforming the body into both archive and vessel (a space where past, present, and imagined selves converge).

Through this phase, the act of making becomes a form of reflection and reclamation, revealing how physical form can narrate emotional and cultural history.

Phase: Cultivating New Belonging and Coherence

In this final phase, the focus shifts to synthesis and reflection. After months of exploration, the body of work is brought together to examine how themes of identity, mental health, relocation, and aging interconnect. This is a moment of pause and integration, where individual pieces become part of a coherent narrative of self and place.

Studio practice emphasizes curating and documenting the work for digital exhibition or portfolio presentation. Photography captures not only the visual forms but also the textures and relationships between pieces, preserving their material and conceptual layers. Writing an artist statement consolidates the threads of the residency, articulating the ideas of containment, deconstruction, growth, and rootedness.

Reflections continue to be shared publicly through Substack and YouTube, extending the dialogue with viewers and situating the residency within a broader community. This phase highlights how creative practice can cultivate a sense of new belonging (both within oneself and in relation to the environments, experiences, and audiences) that shape our ongoing narratives.

Budget

I am approaching this with a zero-to-low budget approach. I will use supplies on hand along with found materials. I may purchase books or courses. Supplies will only be purchased if I run out of something. All of my resources will be found online.

Community

My residency community will be my peer groups in the Surface Design Association. I have several groups that help provide feedback and accountability. I will also share my work with with the art curious community through Youtube, Substack or my blog.

Art Talks I am facilitating through SDA:

Deconstruction: A Home Artist Residency with Ana Tieche and Christy Strickler

Description: In this home artists’ residency, we will investigate the act of breaking apart form and symbolism to create new perspectives in our work – rearranging, combining, reordering elements, and working with them in various media. We’ll also discuss how you can create a personal framework for your artist residency at home while exploring the concept of deconstruction in art.

Discussion prompt examples: How might you break down an image(its shapes, lines, or meaning) and reconstruct it into a new work? What do you choose to keep, transform, or let go of?

Dates: Mondays, September 22, October 20, and November 17, 2025, at 2 pm Eastern time 

Resources

Artists to Study

These artists align conceptually and materially with themes of home, belonging, mental health, aging, memory, and reconstruction through fiber and mixed media.

These Artists focus on themes and techniques of deconstruction

Exhibitions

• Unravel: The Power and Politics of Textiles in Art. focus on the pieces for Fabric of Everyday life and Wound and Repair

https://medium.com/@StephanieSteele.Studio/unravel-the-power-and-politics-of-textiles-in-art-f85966a31888

Readings and Writings

• The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard – Philosophical text on the home as emotional and psychological space. (Free public domain PDF available online.)

   

• Women Who Run with the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés -Archetypal exploration of feminine identity and transformation (chapters available free online).
• “The Woven Body: Textile and Trauma” -Scholarly article, Textile: The Journal of Cloth and Culture (available via ResearchGate).
• “Annette Messager: Word for Word” – Selected essays on identity and material language.
• Exhibition catalogs and online essays from MaterialDriven.com on innovative textile practice.

Book I have on my Wishlist to use for Art Studies

*Disclosure: The following are affiliate links for books on my wishlist at Bookshop.org and Amazon. As an affiliate, CES Art Evolution Lab earns through qualifying purchases. Please check your local library first, but consider using the link below if you would like to add a book to your collection. If you choose to purchase a book through one of these links, it doesn’t cost you anything extra, but each purchase helps support CES Art Evolution.

A collection of Books related to exploring Identity and culture.

Spiritual Moderns: Twentieth-Century American Artists and Religion by Erika Doss – Looks at how spiritual and personal belief systems shape creative identity, adding another lens on self and meaning.

Art’s Properties by David Joselit – Examine how art and identity intersect with systems of value, ownership, and representation.

SDA Meetups Integrated into the Residency

• Curating Connections with Shannon Lee Molter and Helen Adams
  October 4, November 1, December 6

   

  • Focus: Curation, artist statements, exhibition relationships, exhibition dynamics
• Louise Bourgeois: Fiber and Materiality with Bethany Cordero & Suzanne Morlock
  November 6 and 13

   

  • Focus: Domestic materials, memory, and the body in sculptural fiber work.

Note: Check SDA spring meetups and integrate those as applicable

• Fiber & Form: Tactile Acts of Threading Space- SDA’S 2026 Online Symposium
  February 7 – 12