Guild Hall Residency Program Takes Residence as Focus

Guild Hall’s spring 2018 artists-in-residence moved into Guild House on Monday for a month-long stay during which their creative energies will be focused on using that building as a site for collaborative and impermanent interventions, including installations and performances, which will culminate in an evening presentation at the house at the end of April.

Corey Jane Cardoso, the administrator of the artists-in-residence program, called this year’s blueprint a “creative reboot.”

“It was working before, but I think this is a more unique residency. It’s not so much to work on projects you’re already doing but more to connect with other artists and see what you can come up with when you collaborate. Most of the artists we’ve chosen are multi-disciplinary, and I’m just facilitating whatever ideas they want to produce.”

The five artists were chosen by Andrea Grover, Guild Hall’s executive director; Josh Gladstone, the artistic director of the John Drew Theater; Christina Strassfield, the museum’s director and chief curator; Philip Schultz, a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, and the artist Eric Fischl, who was instrumental in developing the program

The spring residents are Simone Bailey, Aviva Jaye, Siobhan O’Loughlin, Eva Schmidt, and Katherine Taylor. Ms. Bailey, who lives in San Francisco, works with video, performance, sculpture, and photography to explore themes related to perception, process, ephemerality, desire, violence, and the impossible.

Ms. Jaye and Ms. O’Loughlin, both from Brooklyn, have worked together and applied to the program as a pair. Ms. Jaye’s experience as a performer has included theater and dance productions, studio albums, and live concerts. Ms. O’Loughlin, a writer, performance artist, Moth Story Slam champion, and activist, has taught workshops throughout the United States, Southeast Asia, and in Syrian refugee camps in Greece.

Ms. Schmidt’s work in the culinary, visual, and performing arts fields investigates themes of lifespan, vision, and alchemy. A former chef at the Watermill Center, she will cook breakfast for the residents and cater the salon dinners in addition to collaborating on the art side. She is also based in Brooklyn.

Ms. Taylor, who lives in Los Angeles, is the author of the novels “Valley Fever” and “Rules for Saying Goodbye,” both published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and has won a Pushcart Prize and the McGinnis Ritchie Award for Fiction.

The National Endowment for the Arts has just recognized Guild Hall’s artists-in-residence program with a $15,000 grant from its Art Works category, which supports projects that focus on the creation of art that meets the highest standards of excellence, public engagement, and the strengthening of communities through the arts.