So-LAR Residency Program

Carrizozo, NM

The So-LAR Residency came out of an extended stay with Carrizozo AIR, where I transformed my individual residency period into preparation for a larger gathering. Drawing on insights gained from my experience in the high desert, I designed a month-long intensive that brought five artists together in August 2023. The program balanced structured creative time with communal living experiments to support both individual practice and collective exchange. What began as a personal contemplation on place and practice evolved into a structured program supporting five artists in their interdisciplinary writing & research practices.

Year: 2023

Location: Home + studio spaces of artists Paula Wilson & Mike Lagg

Cohort:

  • India Sky Davis

  • Summer Eldemire

  • Olivia Roper-Caldbeck

  • Yohana Zecarias

Host Partner: MoMAZoZo

In the heat of New Mexico's summer, when Carrizozo typically falls quiet, a new possibility took root. The extended solitude of an off-season residency revealed an opening, and desert solitude evolved into a collaboratively orchestrated gathering. The intention was to cooperatively create a space for artists to develop written work while participating in an intentional creative community.

This program followed a 6-month development arc that culminated in August 2023. The first phase of development was dedicated to planning — coordinating with the program’s host partner MoMAZoZo, sending invitations to each artist, and designing an onboarding survey that allowed the artists to articulate their needs and intentions before arriving in the desert landscape. The second phase was the residency container itself, which held four weeks of work-sharing sessions, shared meals, excursions and studio visits visits all over the state of New Mexico. The third phase wrapped up with a period for reflection and documentation, where other artists were also invited to visit and have short-term stays in the residency space that the cohort had forged together. The program's documentation phase preserved the learnings gained to create foundations for future iterations. Through this reflection, I saw So-LAR as a vessel not just for hosting residencies, but also practical investigations into how artists might work and live together, particularly in landscapes that seem to suggest solitude.