Program:
ARTIST IN RESIDENCE
The Artist in Residence Program provides 6 months’ of free, professional studio space at the Golden Belt Campus in Durham for one or more local artist(s) each year. Resident Artists also receive a $1,500 stipend, regular support from local professional artists, access to DAG’s professional resources and networks, and an exhibition in the DAG Gallery at Golden Belt at the end of the residency.
In 2024 the Artist in Residence program has grown to three artists’ studio spaces, with a new studio added in the Durham Bottling Co.
Applications for the next cycle will open Spring 2025.
2024 Artists in Residence
Antonia Brown
Antonia Brown is a visual artist who found her voice in painting when she found her love of nature, specifically farming. Her work as a farmer and her life as an artist blend together to create pieces that are steeped in joy, community and connection. The natural world and the ecosystem of farming are her strong inspirations. Through her art, she is able to take a breath and make new connections to agriculture that outshine the heaviness, the fear, dread and trauma. She creates new pathways that allow herself, and hopefully others, the chance to explore the natural world with new lightness.
During my residency, I hope to explore the simple joys, textures and feelings we can experience when we move through farming with ease and comfort. These pieces will utilize new painting techniques for me, such as natural dyes and pigments. I also hope to spend my time building art community and making space for all of us to create and experience art as well as farming.
Jake Heffington
Jake is an Architect and Artist that works across a range of nontraditional mediums in addition to his architecture practice (and other works…), teaching at North Carolina State University, and running a nonprofit ([Diversify Architecture]). He is drawn to things as they are, and things as they almost are, his work often stemming from a nagging curiosity about the latent potential of forgotten things. He is a process-driven artist, not setting out to create compositions or products but rather designing processes and letting the work unfold through his active or passive participation.
During his residency, Jake intends to expand on his investigation of the troublingly common material of Expanded PolyStyrene (EPS - Styrofoam). He is looking forward to creating individual pieces that challenge our perception (or lack of perception) of the material, as well as a larger scale installation using processes he uncovers during the residency.
huiyin zhou 徽音 (phonetic pronunciation: hway-yin joe)
Born and raised in the industrial hub of Dongguan, China, huiyin zhou 徽音 (they/she) is a transnational queer feminist organizer and community-based photographer, writer, translator and multimedia artist. They work with digital and analog photography, text, installation, and performance. Photographing with intimate and tender sensibilities, huiyin explores themes related to queer feminism, intimacy, memory, diaspora, and community and approaches photography with a relational, reciprocal praxis. Other than photography and writing, huiyin co-founded and co-directs a queer feminist art and organizing collective, Chinese Artists and Organizers (CAO) Collective @caocollective.
“During my residency at The Durham Art Guild, I hope to create a photo-based installation project focusing on Asian/AAPI queer feminist friendships and community spaces. While I also document protests and vigils that are explicitly political, I am more drawn to the intimate lives of social movements – the grassroots networks of community care; the revolutionary potential of living and surviving together; and the poetics and politics of everyday life. Through memory objects, movement ephemeral, writing, and photography, I hope to transform the exhibition into an intentiona space that enables the audience to reflect on their relationship to community archiving and care.”
Headshot photo credit: Toby Tenebaum
2025 Artist in (Micro) Residence
A special three month residency from January - March 2025
Ro Miller
Ro Miller makes objectified performances that mine the history of metaphysics, identity formation, and religion, beginning with their retreat in 2021. Their artwork primarily takes the form of scents intertwined with performance and sculpture. Ro holds a Master of Performance Studies from NYU and is the assistant director of Olfactory Art Keller, a small commercial art gallery in Downtown Manhattan focusing on multi-sensory art and performances incorporating fragrances. Their writing has been published in Aromatica Poetica and Viscose Journal.
“My time at DAG will focus on providing community engagement opportunities for those interested in learning about scent as a medium and creating work that draws from Durham’s history of activism. Using scent and tactile sculpture, I hope to create a space for viewers to consider embodied identity's enduring importance and power.”
Past Artist in Residence Recipients
2024 DAG (Micro) Artist in Residence Ina Liu
2023 DAG Artist in Residence: Michelle Wilkie
2023 DAG/Black on Black Project Artist in Residence: Sanjé James
2023 DAG Artist in Residence: Delayna Robbins
2022 DAG Artist in Residence: Isabel Lu
2022 DAG/Black on Black Project Artist in Residence: Assata Goff
2021 DAG Artist in Residence: Derrick Beasley
2021-2022 DAG/Black on Black Project Artist in Residence: Haillee Mason
2021 DAG Mini Artist Residency: Antonio Alanís
2020 DAG Artist in Residence: Claire Alexandre
2020-2021 DAG/Black on Black Project Artist in Residence: Shay Hendricks
2019 DAG Artist in Residence: Jade Wilson
2019-2020 DAG/Black on Black Project Artist in Residence: Anthony Patterson
2018: Gemynii
2017: Stephen Hayes
2016: William Paul Thomas
2015: Maready Evergreen
2014: Brianna Gribben and Lile Stephens