Current Annual Artist Residents
April Sopkin
April Sopkin is a writer working on a novel and a short story collection. She believes deeply in the fundamental utility of community for artists and art-making, and is particularly interested in experimenting with methods of support outside of the traditional workshop model. April’s prose has been published in Joyland, MIT Technology Review, Carve, and elsewhere. She was a 2019 Tin House Scholar and has won the Raymond Carver Short Story Contest, the Patricia Aakhus Award, and the Frank McCourt Memoir Prize. April’s work has been supported by grants, fellowships, and artist residencies, including from the Elizabeth George Foundation, the Tin House Summer Workshop, TENT: Creative Writing at the Yiddish Book Center, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She lives outside of Richmond, Virginia with her family, and works as a writing instructor at VCU, Randolph-Macon College, and here at VisArts.
Explore more: Website / Substack
Doah Lee
Doah is an interdisciplinary visual artist born and raised in Seoul, South Korea. She earned her BFA with a concentration in Painting and Printmaking from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and her MFA from the University of Pennsylvania. In her artwork, she utilizes symbolic imagery to explore conflicted cultural translation, immigration, otherness, and femininity, while simultaneously investigating issues of self-identification, including race, culture, and gender. She is also interested in how children develop their identities, specifically the competition between self-understanding and cultural, social, and political pressures. Her artwork has been featured in exhibitions in Baltimore, Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Seoul. She has been a resident artist at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the Vermont Studio Center, and has served as a curator and co-director of the nonprofit artist-run exhibition space, FJORD gallery. She is currently an Assistant Professor at Penn State University.
Explore more: Website / Instagram: @doahstudio
Evie Metz
The artistic practice of Evie Metz explores cycles of life and the values of human beings. Her world-building process is intimately hands-on, combining craft, performance, and technology. Through magical realism her work often teeters a line between the maternal and the monstrous. On one hand, her works are humorous and playful while on the other they address aspects of the human experience that are existential, primal, and mythical.
Explore more: Website
Luis Vasquez La Roche
Luis Vasquez La Roche is an artist and educator at George Mason University. Their practice is interested in aspects of the transatlantic slave trade that repeat themselves in varying ways in
the present. An essential part of their research is an inquiry regarding material, space, smell, and sounds and how these sensory experiences become challenging to grasp in historical documents. The work also functions as a way to explore the gaps in historical archives and to fill the intentional void by summoning and collapsing past, present, and future.
Their works have been exhibited, screened, and performed in institutions such as LACE (CA), AIR Gallery (NY), The Carr Center (MI), Cornell University (NY), Institute of Contemporary Art (VA), Bronx Museum (NY), Deakin University (Australia), La Vulcanizadora (Colombia), Alice Yard (Trinidad and Tobago), Hervey Bay Gallery (Australia), Fresh Milk (Barbados), Grimmwelt Museum (Germany) and Documenta 15 (Germany).
Explore more: Website / Instagram: @vasquezlaroche