The Center for Craft’s New Residency Program Spotlights the Artists of Western North Carolina

When Linda Lopez began her artist residency at the Center for Craft in 2023, she was alone in the basement of the nonprofit’s renovated building in downtown Asheville, NC. “Our space is really big,” says Executive Director Stephanie Moore, describing the Center’s 3,500-square-foot open-floor Ideation Lab, where artists can collaborate on shared or individual projects. There, Linda, a visiting artist and sole recipient of the first Virginia A. Groot Material Exploration Residency, spent six weeks developing her work and exploring the craft community in Asheville.

The Center for Craft has been vital to that community since its founding in 1996. The nationally recognized nonprofit pumps resources into the craft community through grants, fellowships, residencies, and other programs that empower national and regional artists and organizations. The Center’s recently launched residency programs develop reciprocal relationships between craft communities by connecting national artists with resources specific to Western North Carolina and vice versa. During their eight-week stay in Asheville, each resident partners with a local organization to learn about a new medium or material.

“We were hoping to bring these nationally acclaimed sculptors to Asheville because of the strength of our particular craft community,” says Stephanie of the Material Exploration Residency, which provides visiting sculptors with a $10,000 honorarium, a $2,000 professional development stipend, and studio space in the Center’s Ideation Lab. “We're connecting them with the rich history of craft here, so when they go back to where they're from, they understand what this region has to offer.”

The WNC Artist Residency

The Center for Craft expanded the program’s scope for its next residency cycle after gathering feedback from Linda Lopez, its sole participant. Linda’s vision, a “cohort of artists working together” during the residency’s eight-week period, became a reality when the Center agreed to host two groups of two artists in 2024. “We thought it would be great to offer equivalent [funding] to two local artists and pair them with the two national artists [from the Materials Exploration Residency],” says Stephanie. “We asked ourselves, ‘How can we cultivate our own community of artists and get them greater exposure, connections, and support?’”

With that, the WNC Artist Residency was born. The new program, launched in 2024 and underwritten by the Maxwell Hanrahan Foundation, supports regional craft artists with a $10,000 honorarium, a $2,000 professional development stipend, and studio space in the Center for Craft’s Ideation Lab. The two residencies ran concurrently in 2024, encouraging a symbiotic relationship between local and national craft communities. “The group of people we brought together juried and selected all of [the artists] at the same time,” says Stephanie Moore on the selection process. “The reason is that we wanted to make sure they could work together as a cohort. [The artists] had different experiences, media, techniques, ambitions, and what they wanted to learn.”

The Center’s panel selected local artists Nava Lubelski and Luis A. Sahagun for the first year of the WNC Residency program. “We define ‘craft’ very broadly,” says Stephanie, “so there are always surprises.” Over the residency’s eight weeks, Nava Lubelski, a paper and fiber artist, pushed her large-scale work into the third dimension by combining collage, embroidery, and painting with elements of sculpture and installation. Luis A. Sahagun, a painter and sculptor born in Guadalajara, Mexico, worked alongside Nava as the second WNC resident during the summer of 2024. He uses traditional Mexican artifacts in his mixed-media work and performances to explore “craft as a way to heal.”

The Virginia A. Groot Material Exploration Residency

Along with regional artists Nava Lubelski and Luis A. Sahagun, the panel chose visiting artists Justin Archer, a sculptor based in Atlanta, and c marquez, a sculptor based in New Mexico, for the expanded 2024 Virginia A. Groot Material Exploration Residency. Combining digital fabrication with traditional carving techniques, Justin Archer creates figurative sculptures embodying the fragile beauty of the human experience. During the residency, he carved a series of small maquettes to test glass casting on his figurative sculptures.

Printmaker c marquez makes paper, sculptures, and installations from the tumbleweeds, also known as tumble mustard plants, that roll past their home in New Mexico. “Construction materials are derived from one plant specific to the land on which I live: tall tumble mustard,” they say. “Material tones are made by charring and burnishing the tall tumble mustard plant parts. Pigments used in my sketchbook are plant material, coffee remnants, and wood-stove charcoal.” In Asheville, separated from the tumbleweeds’ natural environment, marquez supplemented their practice with metalsmithing.

The 2024 Virginia A. Groot Material Exploration Residency opened on June 3 and wrapped last weekend on July 27 alongside the WNC Artist Residency. On July 11, Nava Lubelski and Luis A. Sahagun joined Virginia A. Groot Material Exploration residents Justin Archer and c marquez for a public panel discussion and open studio event.

Envisioning the Future of Craft

Over the past two decades, the Center for Craft has awarded $4 million in grants to over 500 emerging artists, crafters, curators, and scholars—many longtime residents of Western North Carolina, where the organization is based. “[In] Asheville, there is a very strong arts and culture sector, but it is in spite of philanthropic or resources locally,” says Stephanie Moore, adding, “most of the funding that the Center for Craft receives is from outside of the area.” Programs like the Material Exploration and WNC Artist residencies, both underwritten by national foundations, underscore the benefits of investing in local and regional arts.

Some of the discrepancies between regional and national funding come down to location: “We're so far away from Raleigh,” says Stephanie, “which is where the legislature is, and the funding is—there's a lot of disparity in what's distributed there versus what's distributed here.” Despite the lack of regional funding, the Center for Craft counts both residencies—particularly the WNC Artist Residency—as landslide victories for the craft community in and around Asheville. While the Center has not announced its 2025 residency cycle as of publishing, Stephanie Moore hopes their example will “encourage other [grant-makers] to do the same for this critical segment of our community that has been underresourced for too long.”

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This interview has been edited for length and clarity. All photos published with permission of the Center for Craft.