Past Residents | Lamplight Avl

Keagan Wheat Residency | June 11 -June 30, 2026

Welcome Kaegan Wheat to Lamplight’s Residency at 812 Haywood! Keagan will work on a full-length poetry collection and engage the community in writing poetry and crafting chaplets. Aliah Lavonne Jahan-Tigh and he will host a creative writing workshop and bookmaking workshop for the Asheville community. Attendees will write their own piece, then illustrate and bind a piece at the second workshop. Learn more about their workshop here!

Artist Statement:

Keagan Wheat is a trans, Latinx, disabled poet and educator from Houston. His work appears in The Acentos Review, Variant Literature, ANMLY and more. His reviews of poetry and podcasts have been published in Shards, Cutthroat, and Spectrum South. They’re a Pushcart Prize nominee and the winner of the 2024 Unity Committee Arts and Media Award. He’s read at Brooklyn Poets Staff Picks, Houston Public Poetry, Poison Pen Reading Series, and the Houston Contemporary Arts Museum. His work has been supported by New Orleans Poetry Festival, Lamplight AVL, and others. Check out his interviews with Brooklyn Poets and Latinx Lit.

June 9, 2026

Dawn Roe Residency | May 19-June 8, 2026

Past Residents

Welcome Dawn Roe to Lamplight’s Residency at 821!

Extending from the collective reading performed as a closing event for Dawn Roe’s exhibition, Super | Natural, at Tracey Morgan Gallery earlier this year, the artist’s residency at Lamplight will serve as an incubator for the newly forming body, Hydrofeminist Action Generator (H.A.G.). Deeply informed by the sharing communities generated through the ongoing work of environmental humanities researcher, Dr. Astrida Neimanis, projects and events will engage with Astrida’s description of hydrofeminism as “an action concept” that begins with “[u]nderstanding our own human bodies as bodies of water, [inviting] us into a different kind of relation to other bodies of water, and a feminism of relation. Hydrofeminism asks: if we are all bodies of water, what does this connect us to? What can we give, and what do we owe?”

The public programs associated with the artist’s residency will engage these questions through a site-responsive community workshop held along the waters flowing through Rhododendron Creek in West Asheville Park scheduled for May 29th. Part of an ongoing series of Marking Time With(in) the Water workshops, this action will offer space for neighbors to come into relation with their freshwater spaces, combining careful observation with a collective artmaking process recording imprints of land, water, and human interactions over prolonged moments in time. Copies of each print will become part of a collective archive of our “hydrocommons” – a term used by Astrida Neimanis to describe the space where embodied human-water relations occur. A closing event on June 6th will bring together families, friends, and neighbors to celebrate, think, and share together while viewing, reading, and listening to our watery selves and fellow more-than-human beings. A library, screening environment, print sharing corner, and conversation hub will be available to gather within throughout the day.

Hydrofeminist Action Generator (H.A.G.) reclaims the hag as her revered self, honored as a conduit between the powers held within the murky darkness of turbulent forms, and the regenerative powers of gathering, rest, and resistance.

Save the Date for Dawn’s community events:

Friday, May 29th | 1-4PM
Marking Time With(in) the Water workshop
Rhododendron Creek in West Asheville Park

Saturday, June 6th | 1-7PM
Closing Event
at Lamplight’s Residency at 821

Artist Statement:

Using reproductive methods as observational tools, I respond to sites and situations where human and more-than-human lives entangle, often drawing on grief and despair as generative modes of being. Energized by continuous, impossible attempts to form a collective archive of earth, plant, and animal forms living and dying together across both great and small distances, I visualize the cohabitation of species as a collective endeavor through re-presentation(s) of both routine and remarkable encounters. With attention focused toward magical transformations occurring along and within the liminal space(s) of water-based worlds permanently re-shaped by extractive actions and colonial forms of “species management,” I push against hierarchical perspectives of the human body as dominant by seeking ways to serve as a conduit for the many Beings gestating within and along these waters as they endure ongoing disruptions, forever altering how these spaces have and continue to function as home, and community. My process incorporates analog and digital imaging, film, and video alongside camera-less photographic methods relying on direct contact with physical materials, allowing for prolonged engagement. These observations become re-presentations, transformed and replicated as sequential and composite screen and print-based forms, stressing the fragmentary nature of perceptual response. As we struggle to orient ourselves within a shared global space that is rapidly transforming, I find uneasy comfort in visualizing our lived and perceived world as one of repeated disappearance and return.

May 13, 2026

Zaquia Luisa Salinas | April 29-May 13, 2026

News, Past Residents, The Residency at 821

We are excited to welcome Zaquia Luisa Salinas to Lamplight’s Residency at 821 this spring! Throughout her time at the residency she will be working on A Call to Prayer: an immersive, participatory performance project that blends embodied ritual with collaborative installation.

Zaquia will develop installation elements – integrating objects, projections, and spatial design – while inviting community members to participate directly. Visitors are encouraged to contribute offerings to the space and engage in intimate, one-to-one (or small group) performance appointments with the artist.

Artist Statement:

Zaquia Salinas is a dance artist invested in movement-art as an act of reclamation and world-building. She is committed to creating work that forges meaningful connection through personal and collective storytelling. Conceptually rooted in biomythography, her work (re)builds narratives that braid the personal with the communal, expanding how story can be held, alchemized, and shared. Her interdisciplinary constellations operate as portals for communion with body, earth, ancestor, and spirit. At the heart of her work is the desire to create rituals and spaces that help us understand ourselves and each other more deeply.

April 28, 2026

Nate Northrup | April 5 – April 26, 2026

Past Residents, The Residency at 821

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.

Nate will host Open Studio hours
Friday, April 24th from 5-9PM
Saturday, April 25th from 5-9PM

April 9, 2026

BOUND By ALLYSON SEIFERT | Saturday, Mar 28, 7-11:30, 2026

Events, Past Events, Past Residents, The Residency at 821

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

March 24, 2026

Emma Ensley | March 9th-March 23rd, 2026

Past Residents, The Residency at 821

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.

March 10, 2026

Phantom Lamp Theatre Company | Feb 5- March 5, 2026

Past Residents, The Residency at 821

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.

January 27, 2026

Swannatopia | December 18, 2025 – January 15, 2026

Past Residents, The Residency at 821

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.

December 17, 2025

Julianna Chioma | Nov 18- Dec 16, 2025

Past Residents, The Residency at 821

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.

November 18, 2025

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

Past Residents

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.

September 10, 2025