Upcoming Artists and Educators
The people recently selected for residency at A Blue Farm:
Invited for their commitment to craft, ingenuity of practice, and their alignment with A Blue Farm’s mission and culture.
Your support makes this possible: Donate now.
While some artists have an established practice and a portfolio/website to share, part of our intervention is seeking and recognizing artists that do not hail from formalized, institutional training and/or have often been overlooked and excluded from time and space for consistent practice and engagement—which, we argue, when offered unconditional support (from us, from you), cultivates unique and daring approaches to art-making and community service. Within their residency, artists will be matched with an apprentice, which you will receive joyful updates about.
If you would like to become the sole patron or part of a partnership in supporting a specific artist on this roster, please reach out directly by email, itsabluefarm@gmail.com, or calling A Blue Farm directly at 724-254-7831
Alumni
Romana Henson Antiem Tran Maya Tran Jenny Jiang M Jiang Azzah Sultan Abril Barajas Clea Gunn Inessa Illes Hannah Sy
Romana Henson
January-February ‘25
Romana assisted in the official opening and overall function of the studio spaces, the first wood-fire kiln, gallery spaces and main house. She established compost pits and consulted on long-term cultivation for the land. As an apprentice in glass and ceramics, she began work for an upcoming solo show featuring a dreamscape device.
Romana now remains a consultant on residency formation, apprenticeship and development.
Antiem Tran
February ‘25
Antiem was the first artist to install a show in A Blue Farm’s gallery space: Frostline: in the pine beds at winter. His interaction and mindfulness of the land was at the center of his practice while here, and his pieces exist as a relic of surrender and confrontation, discovery and inquiry, turbulence and stillness—an eternal moment to witness an artist seeking communal archive.
Maya Tran
March-April ‘25
Maya led the way for clay foraging on the property and processing for a more refined A Blue Farm clay (it’s a deep red). She participated in the first farm clay builds (‘garden guardians’), apprenticed in ceramic, glass and woodworking, began renovations for milk and grain house residences and continues to consult on future builds for the grounds.
Jenny Jiang
April ‘25
A prodigious artist and thinker, Jenny experimented in glass fusion, apprenticed in stained glass and opened the sewing/textile room in the main house, adorning the walls as they went. They also built a brick wall.
M Jiang
April ‘25
M arrived ready to experiment with lead cast figures and glass frames as insets for sculptural mortar blocks. Their experimentation with form in the stained glass medium has been a formative part of the farm’s teaching and glass identity. While here, they also illustrated the cover of the first edition of A Blue Farm zine. M remains a consultant on residency formation and development. M Artifacts here.
Azzah Sultan
June-July ‘25
Azzah is a multimedia artist that studies the spirit, gestures and objects that are suffused with the themes of memory, grief, love and the divine. Recently, she finds inspiration in the batik fabric design of Malaysia/home, and is currently a teaching artist at the Lower East Side Girls Club. Follow her work and exhibitions here.
Azzah apprenticed in stained glass and ceramics while pursuing experimentation with her painting, video and textile work. She exhibited a solo show—”things we’ve kept, treasured and forgotten: a spectre of objects”—in the gallery space and established permanent installations for future artists to engage and add to.
Abril Barajas
July-August ‘25
Abril Barajas is a mexican-american multidisciplinary artist living and working on the east coast of the United states. Her work is earth bound, rooted in the mystical and alchemical properties of clay and ritual. She creates and recreates a practice developed on the heels of mystic and traditional folk healing practices. The work is a residue of spells cast, wishes made; what is left after the translation of ancient practices through a modern shaped brain. She creates work in ceramics, paper, food, and most recently was the resident cook and a touring member of the Bread and Puppet theater company working in political puppet theater.
Abril arrived in between residencies with Bread and Puppet. Working with slabs made from A Blue Farm clay, and incorporating solder and glass, she established new resident techniques for fabrication, soldering and glazing, with plans to return to consult on the outdoor oven/kitchen builds.
Clea Gunn
August ‘25
Clea Gunn is a mixed media artist with a recent fixation on glass. Their work is informed and inspired by the natural world and all of its wonders: the water, the light, the way the grass moves, the soft smiles of others. A collector and writer, found objects and text often make their way into sculptures, paintings, and functional objects.
While here, Clea was trained in pedagogy for these clay and glass, and explored themes of sanctity, spirituality, stillness, and silence through her body of work titled Sacraments of Stone, which visualized rituals of copying movement: the silence and stillness of stone, the slowness of a shell, letting material fall through your hands. How do we define holiness?
Inessa Illes
February ‘24; August-September ‘25
Inessa, Nick’s partner in Los Angeles at _____babystudio, has been an integral part of this residency’s formation and imagination. While here, she made the farm’s first glass pieces, and continues to push experimentation in solder work, framing, and teaching/accessibility within glass art. Her fiber arts work and clothing can be found here.
Hannah Sy
September ‘25
Hannah is a Los Angeles native with a Chicagoan heart. She is a practicing clinician and creative—seeing both her worlds as sustenance for one another. While on the farm, Hannah apprenticed in glass, and penned a case report for her board-certified clinical specialty in oncology physical therapy.
Through clay, fiber and now glass, Hannah’s creative practice is aimed at the experience of shared delight when a piece is gifted to the person she has in mind while creating.
