Trillium Arts Announces An Exciting Lineup of Spring 2024 Resident Artists
Trillium Arts is delighted to welcome a roster of four individual artists from across North Carolina and around the U.S. this May and June. The awarded artists are working in a variety of disciplines and will each have a solo week at Trillium's Artist Suite to rejuvenate and further their creative endeavors. They were selected from an application pool based on their artistic merit and the quality of the exciting projects they will advance while here at Trillium. We can’t wait to see what grows out of these residencies this spring!
MEET THE SPRING 2024 ARTISTS
JOHN ALLEN
Knoxville, TN
https://www.johnallenart.com/
John Allen is an artist working in drawing and photography residing in Knoxville, Tennessee. John is active in community art organizations and teaches locally at Pellissippi State Community College as an adjunct instructor. John's artwork explores the complexity of our relationship to ecology through exploring the idea of interdependence and mutuality with our relationship to animals.
Residency Plans: "At the Trillium Arts residency, I am interested in making work exploring invasive species within the Blue Ridge and Smoky Mountains. This work will expand upon recent artwork addressing the environmental impacts of the Anthropocene within Southern Appalachia. Inspired by research which has included volunteerism and discussions with park rangers, the work will depict ecological and cultural changes to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and region, both past and present. Examples include the recent expansion of the Armadillo into a region which would have previously been considered too warm for them, the impacts that reintroduced elk have had on exacerbating traffic problems, and the presence of coyotes in occupying an ecological niche formerly held by wolves."
ALLY HETZER
Detroit, MI
https://allyhetzer.com/
Ally Hetzer is a painter and sculptor working in Detroit, MI who has earned her BFA in Studio Art at the College for Creative Studies. Her paintings and sculptures arise from the surrealist known process of automatism, or the expression of the unconscious mind. With the role of intuition and themes of mortality, religion, and identity, her work creates a space of unadulterated introspection.
Residency Plans: "During my residency at Trillium Arts, I will focus on the two-dimensional transformation of three-dimensional objects. I will be studying four of my original bronze sculptures, Cerberus, Mom’s Embrace, Mary, and Running Man, and use them as a reference for a series of paintings. The goal of the studies is to translate these anthropomorphic sculptures onto canvas, so I can explore each figure’s idiosyncrasy between mediums. I look to achieve this through the pensive act of spontaneous mark making. I conversate with the surface by being responsive to the impact each mark makes, this can range from delicate applications to frantic finger painting, smashing charcoal, the carving of the surface, and the scraping away of paint."
HELEN SAVITA SHARMA
Carrboro, NC
https://helsavwords.com/
Helen Savita Sharma is a librarian and writer working on her first novel from her home in Carrboro, NC. Helen's work has appeared in Okay Donkey, Progenitor Literary Magazine, Bizarrchitecture, and erato. You can find Helen on X (fka Twitter) @helsavwords, at www.helsavwords.com, or by staking out any Dunkin' Donuts franchise location south of the Mason-Dixon line.
Residency Plans: "Using revision processes laid out by Matt Bell, Jessica Brody, and Peter Ho Davies (among others), I hope to use precious time at Trillium Arts this spring to complete significant scene work and evaluate the structure of my novel's second draft. The book, currently titled It Was So Relaxing, is a queer vampire novel that explores how the genre of horror amplifies human experiences of desire, belonging, and self-protection. I will depart the residency with a plan for the third draft and a clear-eyed sense of the structural and thematic underpinnings of the final product."
ALEXANDRA JOYE WARREN
Greensboro, NC
https://www.alexandrajoye.com/
Alexandra Joye Warren is the Founding Artistic Director of JOYEMOVEMENT in Greensboro, NC. Alexandra is an Assistant Professor and a Director/Choreographer for the Music Theatre program at Elon University. She was recently selected as an Artist-In-Residence for Creative Greensboro and the North Carolina Dance Festival. Alexandra has completed post-graduate studies at the Yale Summer Directing Intensive, Leadership Initiative Project for Emerging Directors, and at Germaine Acogny’s L’Ecole De Sables in Senegal. Alexandra has presented her scholarship most recently at the International Federation for Theatre Research Conference in Accra Ghana, 2023. She is a contributing author in the newly released book DANCE IN MUSICAL THEATRE: A HISTORY OF THE BODY IN MOVEMENT, Bloomsbury Press. Her most recent projects include Love Notes (Artistic Director and Choreographer) Head Over Heels (Associate Director/Choreographer), 42nd Street (Director), A Wicked Silence: A Choreoplay (Playwright, Director, Choreographer).
Residency Plans: "During this residency, I plan to continue development of the libretto text and music for Rewind:1968, a requiem for the possible. Rewind:1968 is the second iteration of a series of creative works exploring the history and consequences of the North Carolina Eugenics program. When I first learned about the NC Eugenics program, I felt compelled to bring these stories to light through my artistic practice bringing dignity and respect to the 7,000+ survivors of this program from the 1920s through the late 1970s. During my career to this point, I have mostly focused on cultivating my choreographic and theatrical works as performer, choreographer and director. This residency will allow me to focus on the libretto text, story and dramaturgy for a dance-centered opera."
Follow Trillium Arts on Instagram to witness how these residencies progress!
