Amanda Maciuba

Interdisciplinary Residency, Five-Week, Session III

Born and raised in the Buffalo, NY area, Amanda Maciuba graduated from the University at Buffalo with a degree in Visual Studies. She has a MFA in printmaking and a Certificate of Book Arts from the University of Iowa.

Amanda Maciuba’s work is concerned with the landscapes, communities, development practices and environmental practices throughout the United States. The work, which consists of drawing, printmaking, book arts and animation, considers how humans influence and attempt to change, destroy and recreate the natural environments around them.

She shows her work regularly throughout the United States and has participated in artist residencies at the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve, Fire Island National Seashore, the Lawrence Arts Center, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center, the Kathmandu International Artist Residency and the Haystack Open Studio Residency. Currently, she teaches printmaking, drawing and book arts at Mount Holyoke College in Western Massachusetts.

https://www.amandamaciuba.com

Alisa Banks

Interdisciplinary Residency, Five-Week, Session III

Alisa Banks (she/her) is a visual artist living in Dallas, Texas who investigates connections between contemporary culture, her Louisiana Creole heritage, and the African diaspora. Alisa’s interests include exploring the performative potential of the book and investigating links to the material culture of her ancestors.

Her artists’ books, writings, and textile collages, which often reference traditional craft, are housed in several private and public collections, including the Smithsonian Institution, the US Library of Congress, The Schomburg Center, and The British Library.

Alisa holds a B.S. degree in Medical Laboratory Science from Oklahoma State University and a M.F.A. degree in Visual Art from Texas Woman’s University.  

https://www.alisabanks.com

Sharon Cheuk Wun Lee

Interdisciplinary Residency, Five-Week, Session II

Sharon Cheuk Wun LEE ​ (b. 1992, Hong Kong) holds an MFA (2025) from Columbia University, as well as an MFA (2022) and a BFA (2016) from The Chinese University of Hong Kong. She has presented solo exhibitions at Kyoto Art Center as part of KG+ SELECT (Kyoto, 2023) and at Lumenvisum (Hong Kong, 2017). Her work has been shown at institutions and galleries including Galerie du Monde (Hong Kong, 2025); The LeRoy Neiman Gallery and Below Grand (New York, 2025); WMA and HART Haus (Hong Kong, 2024); Tai Kwun Contemporary (Hong Kong, 2022); and The Listening Biennial (Berlin, 2021).

Art commissions include Rice is Greener on the Other Side, presented at WMA Space (2024), If Tomorrow Never Comes & The Remnants of Yesterday, presented in emo gym at Tai Kwun Contemporary museum (2022), Wish You Well, presented in Hi! Flora Fauna at the Hong Kong Zoological and Botanical Gardens by the Art Promotion Office (2021); Same River Twice, presented in Peer to Peer: UK/HK (2020); and multiple projects with the Hong Kong International Photo Festival (2018–2020). She has participated in residencies at Tiger Strikes Asteroid & Transmitter Gallery (New York City, 2025), the Oak Spring Garden Foundation (Virginia, 2025), and Taipei International Artist Village (Taipei, 2018).

Lee won the WMA Masters Award (Hong Kong, 2019) and was a finalist for Kyotographie KG+ SELECT and the Sovereign Asian Art Prize (2023). She has been awarded scholarships for academic exchanges at Yale University and the University of Vienna, as well as research grants from Columbia University (2025) and the Hong Kong Arts Development Council (2023).

Her work has been featured in ArtAsiaPacific, Harvard Advocate, Artomity, and South China Morning Post.

www.sharonleecw.com

Jan Mun

Interdisciplinary Residency, Five-Week, Session II

Jan Mun is a media artist that creates social sculptures working with digital and living media. The landscape has become her framework to unfold stories about others and herself by using a combination of artistic and scientific processes that manifest in the form of interactive installations, photography, performance, and bio-art. Jan creates interfaces to elicit participation as a reflection and critique of our political and social systems. Working with communities such as Newtown Creek Alliance, BeeVillageNYC, NYC Mycological Society, and the Soil & Microbiology labs at Brooklyn College Jan innovates ideas to be realized through research, chance, and collaboration.

Long-term projects include: -ProfileUS: Invasive Species – A series of social sculptures and interactive installations that examine the biopolitics of the East Asian female migration in the United States. This project looks at the interconnections made by humans and other species that have migrated to the US and are adapting to their new or established environments through the lens of art, technology, and biopolitics.

-The Fairy Rings: Mycoremediation and Greenpoint Bioremediation Project (gBP) – As the Artist in Residence of Newtown Creek Alliance, work explores the use of biological agents to remediate toxins in creative cleanup and collaboration with local partners and communities surrounding Newtown Creek.

https://www.janmun.com/index.html

Goldie Poblador

Interdisciplinary Residency, Five-Week, Session II

Goldie Poblador is a Filipina visual artist who creates multi-sensory installations that merge glass scent, sound and performance that address themes of ecology and decolonization as it relates to the emancipation of the female body.

Her work has been exhibited and performed internationally at such institutions as Artpace, The Corning Museum of Glass, Urban Glass, 601Artspace, The Knockdown Center, Saudi National Museum, The Rubin Museum,  Singapore Art Museum, Bangkok Art and Culture Center, Fine Art Museum of Hanoi, Lopez Memorial Museum, Art Fair Philippines, Metropolitan Museum of Manila, The National Museum of the Filipino People and The Cultural Center of the Philippines.

She is the first Filipino artist to be acquired by the Corning Museum of Glass. She has received grants from the Foundation of Contemporary Arts, the University of the Philippines, the Puffin Foundation and a President’s Scholarship from the Rhode Island School of Design. She has completed residencies at Artpace, the Corning Museum of Glass, Oakspring Garden Foundation, MASS MoCa, and the Cité International des Arts. She received her BFA in Studio Arts from the University of the Philippines in 2009. In 2015, she obtained her MFA in Glass at the Rhode Island School of Design.

https://goldiepoblador.com

Sobia Ahmad

Interdisciplinary Residency, Five-Week, Session II

Sobia Ahmad is an interdisciplinary artist with a background in public health. Her practice explores the transcendental power of everyday experiences, objects, and rituals through film, photography, and social practice. She draws from non-western intellectual and spiritual lexicons, specifically traditions of devotional poetry and oral storytelling associated with Sufism. Often made in domestic and social spaces, her process-based work engages in conversations about relationality and reciprocity, embodied knowledge, alternative pedagogies, material experimentation, and DIY ethos. Ahmad employs analog processes that are slow and encourage sustained patience and concentration. These range from weaving and storytelling circles, invitational workshops, and socially engaged projects, to alternative and eco-friendly photochemical processes for developing still and motion picture film. Exercising the meditative potential of these processes, she considers how slowness and tactility might activate our inner lives and help us experience various spiritual and political dimensions of social and ecological engagement. 

Ahmad was born and raised in Pakistan and moved to the United States at the age of fourteen. She holds an MFA from Carnegie Mellon University (2024), a B.S. in Community Health (2015), and a B.A in Studio Art (2016), both from the University of Maryland College Park. Her work has been reviewed in several major publications such as Al Jazeera English, The Washington Post, and The Huffington Post and has been included in multiple collections. She has exhibited internationally—including at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art (Ithaca, New York), Craft Contemporary (Los Angeles), Queen Mary University (London), Museum of Craft and Design (San Francisco), and the Women Filmmakers Festival at the Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington, D.C.). Her work has been supported by Washington Project for the Arts' Wherewithal Research Grant (2025)The Pittsburgh Foundation’s Exposure Artist Grant (2024-2025), and Allegheny County's Art revival Grant (2022). She has attended SOMA Summer Residency in Mexico City (2024), Halcyon Arts Lab's yearlong socially engaged art fellowship (2019-2020) and has exhibited her work in a solo exhibition at the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design in Washington D.C. (2019). Ahmad is a 2024-2026 fellow at Hamiltonian Artists in Washington D.C. 

www.sobiaahmad.com

Michael D'Antonio

Interdisciplinary Residency, Five-Week, Session II

Michael D’Antonio is a postdoctoral fellow at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. His research focuses on the evolution of terrestrial ecosystems over the past 400 million years. He specializes in the evolution of plant structure, development, and physiology; the description of extinct plant taxa using advanced methods; and the co-evolution of terrestrial ecosystems with the carbon cycle.

His work combines field research and museum-based specimen study with advanced imaging and analytical techniques, including X-ray micro-CT scanning, to better understand the history and development of plant life on Earth.

https://sites.google.com/view/michaeldantonio

Lisa Waud

Interdisciplinary Residency, Five-Week, Session II

Lisa Waud creates multi-sensory, site-specific botanical installations that explore the brief space between growth and decay, and the ways nature offers a pause button to both individuals and communities. her work uses plant-based materials to shape built environments where visitors move through shifting states of presence, memory, and sensory experience. she is currently based in the high desert of California after over a decade in Detroit, Michigan.

Grounded in a background in horticulture and professional floral design, and influenced by land art and large-scale environmental works, lisa’s installations intervene within existing architecture, echoing natural structures to create spaces for reflection. 

Collaboration is foundational to her practice. lisa engages the hosting community throughout each project—from planning through exhibition and afterlife—integrating diverse voices, histories, and perspectives into the concepts and materials. . this collaborative approach expands what the installations can hold, transforming them into shared cultural experiences rather than a solitary statement.

Lisa’s process is guided by environmental ethics, prioritizing low-waste production, sourcing from local growers, using found or reusable materials, and composting and recycling at project completion.

Past installations include flower house detroit, petrichor, tread/tender at palais de tokyo in paris, botanical installations at oak spring garden foundation in upperville, virginia, floral set design for danny brown’s “best life” video and jimmy fallon appearance, FLORA festival in cordoba, spain, the fierce urgency of now, hiberna flores, a botanic installation for hudson yards in new york city, a botanic installation for mounts botanic garden in west palm beach, florida, and the tony awards at radio city music hall.

Lisa’s projects have been featured in the new york times, huffington post, martha stewart, hyperallergic, colossal, designboom, the jealous curator, the globe and mail, detroit free press, the detroit news, detroit art review, crain’s detroit, blac magazine, washington post, and travel + leisure.

Lisa has lectured at TEDxDETROIT, oak spring garden foundation, milwaukee art museum, cranbrook art museum, broad museum, henry ford museum, cleveland botanic garden, intermitten tech conference, slow flowers summit, and the evergreen state college.

Lisa has received grants from detroit future city, the carhartt workshop, gretchen + ethan davidson, culture source’s flourish fund, red bull house of art, people first project supported by kresge art foundation), the belle foundation, new economy initiative, the awesome foundation, and the goldman sachs 10,000 small business program.

https://www.lisawaud.com

Katie Simmons

Interdisciplinary Residency, Five-Week, Session II

Katie Simmons is an artist, ornithologist, and educator. She holds B.A. degrees in Visual Art and Art History, a B.S. in Wildlife Biology, and an M.A. in Education. She is currently an MFA candidate in Visual Art at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, where she also teaches.

Alongside her academic and artistic practice, Katie works seasonally as a wildlife biologist, focusing on the study of passerine bird species. Her work bridges art and science, reflecting her interdisciplinary interests in ecology, observation, and visual expression.

https://www.katie-simmons.com

Israel Borokini

Interdisciplinary Residency, Five-Week, Session II

Israel Borokini, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Ecology at Montana State University in Bozeman, Montana. He is also Director at the Public Library of Science (PLOS) and serves as Guest Editor for the Systematic Botany special issue on spatial phylogenetics.

https://tbisrael.wixsite.com/website

Heather McMordie

Interdisciplinary Residency, Five-Week, Session II

Heather McMordie is a Providence-based artist and printmaker whose work integrates science and art to raise awareness about environmental issues. Her practice often invites public participation, encouraging people to engage more deeply with local ecosystems. Her recent project, Stitch & Stay Awhile, brings together participants from across the country to highlight the importance of salt marsh environments. She is also the recipient of Providence’s Interlace Project Grant for The Providence Community Herbarium, a collaborative project that documents local plant life through the perspectives of community members.

www.heathermcmordie.com

Erin Petrella

Interdisciplinary Residency, Five-Week, Session II

Erin Petrella received her PhD in Classics from Columbia University. Her research focuses on the history and development of botanical Latin, the scientific ideal of universal intelligibility, and textual authenticity. She has a prior MLS in Rare Books Librarianship and has worked for several years with Columbia’s Justice-in-Education program.

Colleen M. Stockmann

Interdisciplinary Residency, Five-Week, Session II

Colleen Stockmann is Associate Professor of Art History and steward of the Hillstrom Museum of Art at Gustavus Adolphus College in Minnesota. Stockmann has a B.A. in Studio Art from Macalester College and spent a decade as a curator in San Francisco before earning an M.A. and Ph.D. in Art History from the University of Minnesota. Colleen’s research examines plant politics, drawing instruction, and botanical printmaking.

Their current book project demonstrates how the shared rhetoric of horticulture and scientific racism played out in the politicized lexicon of gardening periodicals and drawing manuals to shape an American view of landscape and the codification of “invasive” species. Dr. Stockmann’s work has been supported by Dumbarton Oaks, The Huntington, Oak Spring Garden Foundation, and Rare Book School. The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation recently awarded Dr. Stockmann three years of support for “Object Lessons: Repatriation, Provenance, and Access in Art History.”

https://colleenstockmann.com

Catherine Epstein

Interdisciplinary Residency, Five-Week, Session II

Catherine Epstein is a playwright and educator whose work has been developed and presented at venues including the Barter Theatre, the Huntington Theatre Company, and the Renaissance Theatre. Her plays include Scouts, Arbor, Oxbow, Orchard, and Allemansrätten, and her work has been recognized by festivals nationwide. She is the recipient of a 2026 Perennial Residency and a 2025 Interdisciplinary Residency from the Oak Spring Garden Foundation, and was a finalist for the 2024 Princess Grace Award in Playwriting.

In addition to her writing, Catherine has an extensive background in education and the arts. She holds a B.A. in English with Honors from Vassar College and has worked as a classroom teacher, theater director, and outdoor educator. She currently leads environmental education programs at Boxerwood Nature Center & Woodland Garden and works as a writing consultant at Washington & Lee University. Across her work, she is committed to fostering collaborative, creative learning environments that center curiosity, storytelling, and engagement with the natural world.

https://www.catherineepstein.com

Amanda Martin

Interdisciplinary Residency, Five-Week, Session I

Amanda Martin is a historian whose research examines how natural resources, social inequities, and environmental politics have intersected across the twentieth-century United States and beyond. She is particularly interested in the ways green spaces—ranging from public parks and urban gardens to remote wilderness areas—have served as important sites of social, political, and environmental history.

She is currently completing her first book project, Greenlining: Civil Rights Struggles Over Access to the Outdoors in the United States, which offers a new interpretation of the American civil rights movement by foregrounding struggles for environmental equity as central to its history.

Amanda received a B.A. in American Studies, with a minor in photojournalism, from the University of Texas at Austin, and an M.A. in History from Montana State University. Before returning to academia for graduate study at Columbia University, she worked for several years as a professional photographer. This background continues to shape her research approach and her commitment to multimedia storytelling.

In addition to her academic work, Amanda has extensive experience in public history and digital humanities. She has collaborated with museums, curated archival exhibitions, created digital maps, produced podcasts, led historical walking tours, and written for popular news outlets. Her research on environmental injustice informs her ongoing efforts to make contemporary green spaces more inclusive and accessible to diverse audiences. She is particularly interested in partnering with public parks, botanical and community gardens, and other outdoor-focused organizations.

Committed to making scholarship widely accessible, Amanda is also the creator of the podcast Everyday Environmentalism, which shares conversations on urban nature, climate change, and environmental issues with a broad public audience.

www.amanda-martin.net

Xiaomin Jin

Interdisciplinary Residency, Five-Week, Session I

Xiaomin Jin is a researcher whose work explores the cross-cultural transmission of garden plants and the diverse symbolic and spiritual meanings they hold across different societies. Their research examines how plants move between cultures, carrying layered histories and interpretations that shape both designed landscapes and cultural narratives.

In addition, Xiaomin is deeply interested in the ways environmental and climate change impact the landscapes surrounding architectural monuments. Their work considers how shifting ecological conditions can transform not only the physical environment but also the spatial and cultural identities of these historic sites, offering new perspectives on the relationship between nature, heritage, and place.

Meredith Leich

Interdisciplinary Residency, Five-Week, Session I

MEREDITH LEICH (pronounced: like) is a painter, animator, and video artist, who explores the hidden forces—human and nonhuman—acting on our environments. The Boston Globe stated that Leich’s work is “uncanny yet earthbound” and “asks to witness what we have wrought” and the Washington Post described her work as “delicately beautiful but [...] warns of [...] perils.”

Leich’s work have been shown in film festivals, galleries, museums, and numerous off-the-grid settings. Her practice draws on scientific research, collaboration with scientists, and time spent as an artist-in-residence at field research stations, including UVA’s Mountain Lake Biological Station and UNH's Shoals Marine Lab. Her collaboration with glaciologist Dr. Andrew Malone was awarded an Arts, Science & Culture Initiative Grant from the University of Chicago, second place in Deutsche Bank’s “Macht Kunst” Contest, and an Individual Artist Grant from Chicago’s DCASE. Her films have screened at the Ann Arbor Film Festival, Athens International Film + Video Festival, and Chicagoland Shorts, among others. She has completed residencies at the Oak Spring Garden Foundation, Tide Institute and Museum of Art, Studios of Key West, Ragdale Foundation, Vermont Studio Center, and Wrangell Mountain Center in McCarthy, Alaska.

Leich received her BA from Swarthmore College and MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She currently serves as the Co-Director of the Cuttyhunk Island Artists’ Residency and lectures at the School of Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University.

meredithleich.com

Sarah Audrey Bürli

Interdisciplinary Residency, Five-Week, Session I

Sarah Audrey Bürli is a plant ecologist and conservationist passionate about species rarity, dioecy, and plant adaptations to environments at high elevation and latitude. Her research is deeply anchored in botanical gardens, where she finds both inspiration and a strong sense of belonging. She is especially interested in the history of these institutions and the critical role they play in global conservation efforts today.

Her work investigates the ecological and evolutionary factors that shape plant rarity and distribution across environmental gradients. She is particularly committed to exploring the impacts of climate change and other global environmental changes on plant species and communities. In addition, her research emphasizes the development of dynamic, holistic, and decolonizing conservation strategies.

To address questions at both micro- and macro-scales, she employs a range of approaches, including field studies, greenhouse and laboratory experiments, and advanced statistical analyses.

Pille-Riin Jak

Interdisciplinary Residency, Five-Week, Session I

Pille­-Riin Jaik (born 1991 in Tallinn, Estonia) is a Vienna and Tallinn based interdisciplinary artist working with camera based mediums, performance and sound as well as with various weavings in textual or spatial form. She has a Bachelor of Photography from the Estonian Academy of Fine Arts (2015) and a Masters from Art and Digital Media at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna (2020). Currently she is studying in a PhD in Practice program in Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and is a member of Golden Pixel Cooperative. Her artistic work is focused on text, plants, textile, storytelling, surplus and waste materials/thoughts in feminist and class aware discourse.

Her videoworks have been screened in several film festivals around Europe (21st Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival, Diagonale 2018, FrauenFilmTage 2018, VI Kinodot Experimental Film Festival in St. Petersburg, Red Love international video competition in Sofia, Terrarista.tv, FIDCampus Marseille 2021, EUROPEAN MEDIA ART FESTIVAL - EMAF etc). Recently she has also been part of group exhibitions at Hobusepea Gallery in Tallinn, Improper Walls, LLLLLL, PFERD, Flucc, xE, Exhibit, AG18, Ausßenstelle Kunst, 21Haus and Kunstraum Niederoesterreich in Vienna.

Currently she is working on her PhD research about political and poetic storytelling in Baltic landscapes. In her artistic research she looks at different leads from post-colonial writers in search for alternative ways of storytelling with particular focus on land- and cityscapes of the region.

https://pilleriinjaik.com

Margot Elizabeth Glass

Interdisciplinary Residency, Five-Week, Session I

Margot Glass grew up in New York City, and studied at The Art Students' League, Brown University, Rhode Island School of Design, and Fashion Institute of Technology. Her educational and professional immersion decorative arts history and applied textile and decorative design techniques inspired her exploration of the dynamic relationship between stylization and imperfection in representations of nature in the subjects she chooses. Her paintings and drawings primarily focused on themes of ecology and fragile plant systems have been widely exhibited in galleries and museums the United States and internationally, and and her work is in private and public collections including such institutions as the Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation at Carnegie Mellon, the Weatherspoon Museum, The Del Coronado Corporate Collection, Midwest Museum of American Art, Oak Spring Garden Foundation, The Mark Parker Collection and Beth Rudin DeWoody Collection. Her work has been featured in publications including Orion Magazine, Watercolor Artist, American Art Collector. She works in a variety of media primarily focusing on traditional metalpoint, homemade organic ink, oil and acrylic paint and watercolor. She was the recipient of a Massachusetts Cultural Council STARS Artist Residency and is currently working on a commission project for Arts in Embassies. She is the recipient of an Oak Spring Garden Foundation Interdisciplinary Fellowship in VA and a Lost & Found Lab Artist Residency, CT. She lives and works in Western Massachusetts and has been a visiting lecturer at university galleries such as Smith College in addition to other colleges and museums.

www.margotglass.com