Nate Northrup | April 5 – April 26, 2026

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We are excited to welcome Nate Northrup back into the residency this spring! During his time here this April, Nate will be creating a site specific body of work that includes interactive sculptural installations, a projection loop, sound, and temporary renderings.

Artist Statement:
“We Are Were” is a glitch where the present fails to overwrite the past and instead runs alongside it. Objects appear not as stable forms but as residues, as if they’ve already happened and are still happening, evidence of events that won’t resolve, identity loops back on itself instead of progressing forward becoming a kind of temporal artifact, still forming, but only out of what it has already been.

BOUND By ALLYSON SEIFERT | Saturday, Mar 28, 7-11:30

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BOUND: AN IMMERSIVE FLORAL ART INSTALLATION & AN EVENING EXPERIENCE OF THE SENSES
from Current Resident Allyson Seifert

BOUND IS A POP UP ART EXHIBITION, OPEN TO THE PUBLIC, SATURDAY MARCH 28 FROM 7PM UNTIL LATE. BOUND WILL IMMERSE YOU INTO NEW SENSES. TASTE, TOUCH, SMELL, LISTEN. FEATURED ARTIST AND OWNER OF LOCAL CAFE AND FLORAL DESIGN STUDIO, ALLYSON SEIFERT, TAKES YOU INTO A NEW PLACE EXPLORING THE DICHOTOMY OF INDUSTRIAL METALS AND FABRICS BOUND TO FLORALS AND FOLIAGE.

BITES BY CHARIS GODDARD

WINE BY ETHAN RISINGER

MUSIC SET BY DJ BLOOD CHAMBER

PAY WHAT YOU WISH $15 – $30 SUGGESTED DONATION

PLEASE RSVP AHEAD OF TIME

Emma Ensley | March 9th-March 23rd

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We are happy to welcome Emma Ensley to the residency this March! Emma published her debut short story collection in 2025, and during her time at the residency she will be working on a surreal dark comedy novel that follows a student named Fern through her first year of college.

Fern does two things her first week of college: accidentally enrolls in a seminar on Dante’s Inferno and starts taking birth control pills. As campus life grows increasingly disorienting, she clings to her one source of stability–her former therapist, a woman in her early twenties who lacks boundaries and answers Fern’s texts at all hours. The novel is structured around Dante’s nine circles of hell, with the therapist serving as a Virgil figure, guiding (and misguiding) Fern deeper into each circle—lust, gluttony, wrath, and beyond.

 

Save the Date for Emma’s community event
Held on the evening of Thursday, March 19th
Join Emma for a reading centered around the nine circles of hell. Nine readers will each be assigned one of Dante’s circles as a theme and share a piece that responds to it. Emma will read from her novel in progress, and other readers will  pull from a variety of sources and genres.

 

Artist Statement:
My work is rooted in the two places I grew up: North Georgia and on the internet. Both taught me about performance, about the gap between who we are and who we pretend to be, and about the ways we seek connection and find community. I’m drawn to the weirdness of coming-of-age. Not the grand moments, but the small, humiliating, hypnotic ones. My debut short story collection, The Computer Room, explored this through message boards, dive bars, roadside attractions, and fan fiction forums. I’m excited to carry these same obsessions into a novel, where the performance can unravel more slowly.

Phantom Lamp Theatre Company | Feb 5- March 5

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We are excited to welcome Phantom Lamp Theatre Company to the Residency.

Phantom Lamp Theatre Company is a bare bones theatre company committed to developing original work, creative collaboration, and taking risks. They strive to bring unique, new shows to their audiences, and love to push boundaries and try new things with each show. They focus heavily on development and on collaboration throughout their process.

They will be putting on a play in the space:
Close Quarters
Get your tickets here!

Feb 20 @ 7:30
Feb 21 @ 2PM, 7:30 PM
Feb 22 @ 2PM

Feb 26 @ 7:30 PM
Feb 27 @ 7:30 PM
Feb 28 @ 2PM, 7:30 PM
March 1 @ 2PM

 

Close Quarters, is being developed with this residency space in mind. Picture, if you will, a perfectly normal apartment: warm lighting, a loving couple, and a ghost who insists this was their home first and is absolutely fine about it. Truly. Fine! Except not really…Our ghost is aggrieved, indignant, and like all ghosts, has some unfinished business. According to them, the couple is invasive, disrespectful, and possibly evil. According to everyone else, the ghost may be experiencing some misdirected anger.

You, the audience, are the other spirits haunting the space, watching events unfold from within the cozy apartment. You’ll observe the couple as they attempt to navigate their relationship during an escalating supernatural turf war. You’ll also witness the ghost’s version of events, as their assigned psychopomp gently (and repeatedly) suggests that murder-by-haunting is not a healthy coping mechanism.
Will you support the ghost’s campaign to reclaim the apartment from the living menace? Will you side with the psychopomp and help guide this stubborn spirit toward the light? Or will you simply enjoy the chaos as exorcisms loom and everyone involved questions their life choices, living or otherwise?
This production includes moments of audience interaction, though ample space will be provided for those who prefer to haunt quietly and judge from afar.

Swannatopia | December 18, 2025 – January 15, 2026

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We are excited to welcome back our friends at Swannatopia to the residency. They have spent several December’s with us, and this year they return with: “Ribbon Time”!

 

Save the Date for:
Swannatopia Presents: Ribbon Time
Saturday, January 3rd | noon-Sunset Surprise (5:30)
with dance party + djs to follow

 

“Swannatopia Presents: Ribbon Time” will bring the people together again, to shimmer and shimmy among sights and sounds from their many large scale installations staged over the past year:

 

Puppet Fashion Pie (3/14 @ BMCM+AC), Ant Float Dream Boat (5/3 on Lake Eden @ RE{Happening}), Seed Circus (Summer Tour stops included Asheville Museum of Science summer camp, NC Mountain State Fair, and Utopian Seed Project’s Trial to Table at Hickory Nut Gap), JellGlo (10/11 @ Center For Craft), and Blue Goose Caboose (10/25 sunset parade through Swannanoa’s historic Beacon Village).

 

Featuring fresh ribbon choreography by A Clutch, Puppet Portals by Madeleine Sis, live A/V splendor by XOR+friends, neon wiggles by Vyvyan, and many more surprises, the day will culminate in a Sunset Surprise procession at 5:30 to/from Garden Party as we behold the gently rippling reflection of the terrestrial wonders all around us, and bask in the warm glow of friendship.

 

“Because sometimes you don’t win a blue ribbon at the fair, but what about all the other colors?”

Artist Statement:
We, of Swannatopia, are a group of experimental artists headquartered in Swannanoa, North Carolina. Over the past decade, we have set out to blur the lines between “artist” and “participant”, to defamiliarize the familiar, to nurture an immersive, whimsical, thoughtful, experience of empowerment and offer a glimpse of what is possible. To this end, our “Experimental Art Club” launched in 2021. An experiment in and of itself, Experimental Art Club aims to facilitate the free exchange of knowledge, experience, tools and materials, while bringing the people together to “make stuff for fun!”. To date, our multigenerational list of collaborators numbers in the hundreds.

Julianna Chioma | Nov 18 – Dec 16

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We are excited to welcome Julianna Chioma to the residency! Throughout the course of her residency Julianna will be working on a series of work entitled Rage Bait, including both abstract and figurative paintings, and if time permits an installation as well as a movement based performance.

 

Rage Bait is a multidisciplinary project exploring the psychological and emotional landscapes of Black womanhood as both symbol and icon. Drawing inspiration from body horror, Nigerian folklore, and the aesthetics of online outrage culture, the work examines how the Black female body is consumed, distorted, and mythologized across media and imagination. Through mixed media paintings, installation, and performance, Rage Bait, aspires to reclaim the spectacle of rage, reframing it as a site of agency, multiplicity, and pleasure.

 

Save the Date for: 

Rage Bait
December 14th, 6-9 PM
a presentation showcasing latest works by Julianna Chioma
with live performances from:
Designer
Nina Gi
+ DJ set by Boys Camp

 

 

Artist Statement:
My work explores the psychological and emotional terrain of Black womanhood—an experience that is often mythologized, feared, and misunderstood. Through painting, textiles, ceramics, and performance, I construct hybrid mythologies where innocence and unease coexist. Drawing from Nigerian folklore, body horror, and the language of cartoons, I create figures that feel both playful and unsettling. Their stitched and layered surfaces become metaphors for visibility, vulnerability, and reclamation. I am interested in how joy and pain can inhabit the same image, how tenderness can emerge from dissonance. At its core, my practice is about autonomy and multiplicity. I seek to create spaces where the Black female body exists beyond the spectacle—where it can rest, transform, and simply exist.

 

Open House: Ephemera House | November 15th 7-10 PM

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Artists Meg Mulhearn and David Lynch have envisioned a project where they bring the coast to the mountains. Many things today are experienced through a screen or grid, whether by social media or video, and they will use the idea of a grid or frame as a component in their work at Lamplight.

 

“Our recent experiments with printing, painting, projection, and sound have inspired an imagined realm with both terrestrial and oceanic elements. As the mountains speak of materialism, solidity, and proximity to the heavens themselves, the ocean and wetlands evoke a different type of depth and the power of oceanic circulation which regulates life on earth. Our hope is that the experience will facilitate deep reflection.”

 

Join us this Weekend:
Open House: Ephemera House
with Meg Mulhearn & David Lynch
Saturday, Nov 15th
7-10 PM

 

artist statement:
All creations are ephemeral and reflect the natural life cycle of bloom, decay, transformation, and absorption into new works of art. We are interdisciplinary artists and musicians, and our collection across forms, called Ephemera House, is a very human and joyously un-optimized attempt to acknowledge the past, present, and future of our creative lives in a series of moments.

Jade Aster / The Moon Talkers | August 27 – September 24 2025

Experimental instant film photographer, Jade Aster, blends art and astronomy under the moniker, The Moon Talkers. Jade will be using instant film cameras (Polaroid and Instax) and a telescope to capture lunar and solar details on small pieces of instant film. As the moon cycles through its lunar month, they will photograph each phase to show the changes in crater visibility and dark plains of the surface. By the end of the residency, they will piece together the individual photographs side by side to create a larger mosaic of the lunar month.

Throughout their residency, The Moon Talkers will host impromptu telescope pop-ups outside of Lamplight and local spaces around Asheville, sharing views of our sky with curious folks passing by. Come take a look through their telescope and see how the instant film photos are taken!

Due to a dependence on weather, time and locations will be posted on Instagram (@themoontalkers and @Lamplightavl). Potential pop-up locations include Lamplight AVL, Cellarest Beer Project, Garden Party, Grassland Mountain Observatory, Bebop Bottle Shop and more!

Save the date:
Saturday, September 20th, 1-4pm
for an afternoon viewing of the photographs taken throughout the residency.

 

artist statement:
Curiosity, exploration, and connection are at the center of my work as an instant film photographer whose primary focus is lunar and solar photography. Each time I set my telescope up, I am prompted to think about where I am in relation to the rest of the universe, both literally and existentially. The act of aligning the instant camera to the eyepiece of the telescope is experimental by nature and allows for a cycle of trial, error, and constant discovery. With my work being created outdoors – usually in my front yard, occasionally in public spaces – it is an invitation for curious folks passing by to engage in some way. It is an opportunity to share the views through the telescope and a chance to join in conversation about things like perspective, time, and the cosmos.

Martha Skinner | July 2025

Martha Skinner creates drawings that are spaces and performances –playfully subverting and transforming issues through works emerging as celebrations of life. At Lamplight she’ll be weaving herself into a drawing within a drawing of drawings – a durational performance in collaboration with light, space and the visitors to the sliver of space as a series of participatory performances.

Learn more about her Community Making Sessions here! 

 

Artist Statement:

I create drawings that are performances, installations, products. Playfully subverting and transforming issues that need addressing through works emerging as celebrations of life.

From inhabitable to wearable, drawings as vehicles for connection. Transforming the world one drawing at a time. Playful, inspiring, transformative.

I wait and work with the light and some days I make the light.

Drawings you hang in your home.

Drawings I inhabit and you experience.

Drawings we inhabit and create together. 

Drawings you take wherever you go.

From immersive and participatory to tiny and personal. Connection.

My life is a drawing. I am the drawing. The drawing is my process.

 

Biography:

Martha Skinner, born in Colombia, is an international multi-media artist. With a Masters in Architecture & Urban Culture, her career as an artist, researcher, professor and public speaker spans 25 years.

Martha converses with our built environment through visualizations of the cycles of life to address temporal, social and environmental issues of our delicate ecology. She utilizes this methodology in her work to filter, transmit, capture, and commemorate the intangible qualities of the passing of time with playful representations of the relationships between humans and the environment in which they are situated.

Martha’s work has been recognized by various awards and internationally-recognized publications and exhibitions.


Highlights of Martha’s career include:

  • 1999 Walter B. Sanders Fellow at the University of Michigan
  • Creator of Notation A/V, a seminar about the merging of drawing and moving image and creator CiTy- 
SCAN, The City as Bodies in Movement (body of research), and 10^10, The Exponential Power of Design
  • TEDx speaker (2015): The Exponential Power of Design
  • Creator of several Living Maps of cities which include NY A/V, a moving document and installation on 
Broadway Street (acquired by the NY Historical Society, and featured in the book “Installations by Architects” and as part of an international travel exhibition. Also received Best of Category Award from Concept Category of ID Magazine.
  • Professor at Clemson University (2001-2014) & founding partner at field office (1997-2010)
  • Exhibitor at 10th Venice Biennale, 4th International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam & Black Mountain 
College Museum, {Re}Happening and NFT Liverpool
  • Five awards from I.D. Magazine, & a Next Generation Award from Metropolis Magazine
  • Receipt of a People, Prosperity and the Planet Award from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
  • 2nd prize – Sun Shelter Competition.

Martha lives in Marshall, NC.

Julianna Chioma | November 18 – December 16 2025

Julianna Chioma is a Nigerian-American emerging artist working out of Asheville, NC. Through the interdisciplinary gestures of painting,ceramics, textiles, and installation her work explores myth and narrative surrounding themes of sex, power, identity, cultural and social perceptions, trauma, suffering, and modes of healing. By casting mythological characters adapted from their favorite cartoons in the role of avatars of the psyche and forebearers of truth, the work unfolds to reveal an epic journey of loss, discovery, and growth. Inspired by the trick mirror play of psychological horror, surrealism, and Nigerian folklore she builds up stratified renderings encased in stitches, paint, and mud in an effort to communicate the complex tapestry of black womanhood.