Artists Residency

Artist Residency

The Artist Residency Program is designed to offer time and space for craft artists to focus on their creative work and interact with the public. The program supports emerging, mid-career, and established artists working in all craft media, including but not limited to clay, fiber, glass, metal, wood and mixed media. Visitors have the unique opportunity to visit the artists’ studios and watch the artists at work. Interacting with the resident artists is a great way to learn about a range of craft processes and techniques. In turn, the artists receive a unique opportunity to gain exposure, make connections with the Houston community, and help educate the public about craft.

Current Artists

Photo by by Anya GTA.

Gbenga Komolafe

Medium: Fiber
Residency: December 1, 2024–
February 28, 2025

Based in Los Angeles, Gbenga Komolafe is a Nigerian self-taught artist who explores the intersection of sculpture, sound, film, and site-specific installation. They draw inspiration from the traditional ritual practices looted from their Yoruba ancestors and the innovative craftsmanship of mid-20th-century queer and Black American communities. Through their introspective and research-driven practice, they continue the often-unrewarded labor of their queer and diasporic lineage to envision and actualize radical futures through both the embrace of tradition and continual experimentation.

Gbenga was a recipient of the 2021 California Art Council Emerging Artist Grant and the 2018 Fashion Scholarship Fund. Their work has been exhibited at The Broad, Felix Art Fair, Tribeca Film Festival, and most recently, as part of the 2024 Whitney Biennial.

To learn more about Gbenga Komolafe, visit https://gbenga.xyz/ART.

Gbenga’s residency was generously sponsored in part by Edward R. Allen & Chinhui Juhn.

Preetika Rajgariah

Studio: Anne Kinder Studio
Medium: Fiber
Residency: December 1, 2024–
April 30, 2025

Preetika Rajgariah is a queer multidisciplinary artist whose works examine the complicated intersections of cultural + queer identity, nostalgia, and capitalist consumption, while referencing her traditional upbringing as an Indian-born Texas-raised American.

Notable residencies she has attended include the Golden Foundation, the Momentary at Crystal Bridges, Oxbow School of Art, and the Vermont Studio Center. Performances at the Asia Society Texas and Untitled Art Fair Miami, installations at Women & Their Work and Art League Houston, and a large-scale public art commission at Rice University have all shaped her multimedia practice. She received her MFA from the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign and currently lives and works in Houston, TX.

To learn more about Preetika Rajgariah, visit https://prajgariah.com/home.html.

Preetika’s residency was generously sponsored in honor of Sara Morgan.

Photo by Loam, LLC.

Adam Whitney

Studio: Scott & Judy Nyquist Studio
Medium: Metal
Residency: December 1, 2024–
February 28, 2025

Adam Whitney, a Vermont native, began his arts education at Pratt-Munson Williams Proctor in Utica, NY, and earned his BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, VA. He taught jewelry design at Raffles College in Kuala Lumpur for two years, using his time in Southeast Asia to travel widely and immerse himself in regional craft traditions.

Adam specializes in traditional metalsmithing techniques—raising, chasing, and repoussé—through which he transforms metal sheets into intricate sculptural vessels, inspired by historical metalwork. His expertise has led to collaborations and presentations with institutions like the Harvard Art Museums and the Getty Villa Museum. After completing a three-year residency at Penland School of Craft, Adam established his studio in western North Carolina, where he continues to create and teach workshops in metalsmithing.

To learn more about Adam Whitney, visit https://aw-metalsmith.com/.

Adam’s residency was generously sponsored in part by Sue & Bob Schwartz.

Jamie Sterling Pitt

Medium: Wood
Residency: September 1, 2024–
February 28, 2025

Having suffered a traumatic brain injury many years ago, Jamie Sterling Pitt developed an artistic practice that served as an autobiographical image bank, representing memories, places, and sensations and reinterpreting these experiences in the form of two- and three-dimensional reconstructions. This process became a tool to help cope with his short-term memory loss and difficulties with language. Through drawing and sculpture, he is able to give form to the less concrete and harder to articulate aspects of the mind, such as something sensed or a fading memory. Recently he has used a combination of wood, ceramic, acrylic, and glaze in his work. “I am interested in a visual ambiguity to material where it is not abundantly clear what is made of wood and what is made of clay. This allows for contemplation of both material and the interior space of one of the forms in what related to both the body and architecture.”

During his residency at HCCC, he plans to explore functionality and use his studio to create sculptural furniture and play with sight lines and space. He hopes visitors will be encouraged to use and activate his works with their bodies.

Originally from New York, Pitt earned his BFA from the University of New Mexico and his MFA from Mills College. He currently lives and works in Houston, TX, and Santa Fe, NM. His work has been the subject of solo exhibitions in San Francisco, Boston, Los Angeles, New Mexico, and Berlin, and in group exhibitions at the Laumeier Sculpture Park in St. Louis, MI, and the Schneider Museum of Art is Ashland, OR, as well as throughout the Bay Area and New York.  Most recently, his work was shown in dialogue with JB Blunk at Blunk Space and solo exhibitions at Ratio 3, San Francisco, and Seven Sisters, Houston. His work is in the permanent collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Blanton Museum, Austin, TX; and the Berkeley Art Museum.

Jamie’s residency was generously sponsored in part by Laura Babka.

Upcoming

Medium: Fiber
Residency: Spring 2025
Medium: Metal
Residency: Spring 2025
Medium: Fiber
Residency: Spring 2025
Medium: Fiber
Residency: Summer 2025
Medium: Craft + Photography
Residency: Spring 2025

Alumni

THANKS TO OUR FUNDERS

The artist residency program is generously supported by funding from the Windgate Foundation; the John & Robyn Horn Foundation; Crafting the Future; Susan Vaughan Foundation, Inc.; Maxwell/Hanrahan Foundation; and the Gordon A. Cain Foundation. 

The application for the 2025 – 2026 cycle opens December 1, 2025. It’s free to apply!

The Artist Residency Program is designed to offer time and space for craft artists to focus on their creative work and interact with the public. The program supports emerging, mid-career, and established artists working in all craft media, including but not limited to clay, fiber, glass, metal, wood and mixed media.

The application for the 2025 – 2026 cycle opens December 1, 2025. It’s free to apply!

The Artist Residency Program is designed to offer time and space for craft artists to focus on their creative work and interact with the public. The program supports emerging, mid-career, and established artists working in all craft media, including but not limited to clay, fiber, glass, metal, wood and mixed media.

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