Artist Residencies Return To The Watermill Center

Following the temporary closure this past April, The Watermill Center is slowly reopening and is now welcoming new artists-in-residence, taking precautions to ensure safety of all.

The Watermill center’s next artists-in-residence program runs October 21 to November 23. The process-based residency provides artists with time and space to focus on developing their practice in a communal environment that encourages experimentation.

Taking part in the next residency will be:

Tahir Carl Karmali, a Brooklyn-based visual artist who began his practice as a painter and sculptor. His attention to material and process is integral to how he communicates narratives centered around global environmental, political, and socioeconomic factors. Karmali has exhibited in Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao; Kunsthal, Rotterdam; High Museum of Art, Atlanta; Rachel Uffner Gallery, New York; Pioneer Works, Brooklyn; Brooklyn College Library, Brooklyn; United Photo Industries, Brooklyn; and Circle Art, Nairobi.

Regina Parra has an MFA in Art History from Faculdade Santa Marcelina and a BFA in Fine Arts from FAAP. She also studied Theater and worked in the field with Antunes Filho (1929-2019) for many years. Painting, video and performance are the main poetic instruments Parra uses to address issues like resistance and subversion.

Claire Watson lives and works in Water Mill. She received a BFA in Painting from the University of Texas at Austin in 1980, and an MFA in Sculpture at Tyler School of Art in Rome and Philadelphia in 1984. Her awards and honors include a Residency Fellowship at the Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts in 2019, a Studio Residency at MASS MoCA in 2018; and a Fellowship in Sculpture from New York Foundation for the Arts in 2007.

Also coming up from October 21 to November 23 is the Watermill Center’s Young Arts and The Watermill Center Mentorship Residency. Inaugurated in 2020, each year a Young Arts alum is awarded a residency at The Watermill Center, where they are given the chance to develop their practice and receive guidance from one of Watermill’s esteemed alumni.

The residents are:

Paige Mazurek, a Young Arts alum, is studying audio storytelling at the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies, part of the Maine College of Art. Her exploration takes place across multiple mediums including lens based media, sound, collage, drawing and sculpture. She is drawn to ideas of the everyday, family, and the broad interconnectedness of all things.

Zeinab Shahidi Marnani lives and works in Tehran and New York. She holds an MFA in sculpture from Yale School of Art. Her work has been shown at the Thomas Erben Gallery in New York; ALLGOLD at the MoMA PS1 Print Shop in New York; design transfer gallery (UDK) in Berlin; the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Arts in Iran; and Devi Art. Zeinab Shahidi Marnani was an Inga Maren Otto Fellow at The Watermill Center in 2016.

The Watermill Center is at 39 Water Mill Towd Road, Water Mill. Visit watermillcenter.org.