This summer, seven artists from Texas are participating in the prestigious Skowhegan residency program.
Established in 1946, the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture offers a nine-week intensive program at its Maine site. Participants live in cottages on the school’s 350-acre rural campus and have access to studios 24/7. Despite its name, the program invites artists of all disciplines to apply. There are no educational criteria for applicants, but participants must be 21 years of age at the start of the program.
Each year the program accepts approximately 65 artists. Past Texas participants in the Skowhegan program include Aryel René Jackson, Buster Graybill, Jules Buck Jones, and Troy Montes Michie. Trenton Doyle Hancock, who is also an alumni of Skowhegan is serving as a Visiting Faculty Artist this summer.
Maru Aponte, Alexis Pye, Ruhee Maknojia, Hannah Spector, Hiromi Stringer, Maximiliano Cervantes, and Gabrielle Constantine. Photo courtesy of Ruhee Maknojia.
This year’s participants include Maru Aponte, Alexis Pye, Ruhee Maknojia, Hannah Spector, Hiromi Stringer, Maximiliano Cervantes, and Gabrielle Constantine. Learn more about each artist below.
Artists are approximately halfway through their summer program and Ms. Maknojia told Glasstire, “This year at Skowhegan, there were so many artists from Texas, it was quite a surprise! Skowhegan just has this way of bringing people together and fostering unexpected connections. It’s more than just a place to create art; it’s where ideas can pivot, new friendships form, and collaborations blossom.”
Read more about Skowhegan via the organization’s website.
Maru Aponte is a Puerto Rican artist working between Puerto Rico, Houston, and Vancouver, Canada, where she bridges diverse landscapes to evoke a profound sense of place. Recently Ms. Aponte relocated her studio to Houston. Intense color emerges as a pivotal element in her work. This saturation reflects the intrinsic qualities of the medium and the vibrant palette of Puerto Rico. Ms. Aponte recently graduated with an MFA from Emily Carr University of Art + Design in Vancouver.
Alexis Pye is a Houston-based artist whose practice explores the tradition of portraiture to express the Black body outside of its social constructs. Placing her subjects in leisurely, luscious, nature-rich, and even fantastical settings, her works evoke playfulness, wonder, and Blackness, as well as the joys amidst adversity. Her formal strategies include an integration of mixed media within painting, including embroidery and punch-stitch needlework. Ms. Pye received her BFA in Painting from the University of Houston in 2018.
Ruhee Maknojia is a painter, installation, and animation artist based in Houston, Texas. Her artistic practice uses patterns inspired by historical textile traditions as a tool for myth-making. Her work explores the collapse of time, where mundane moments of contemporary life unfold alongside centuries of thought drawn from philosophy, history, and literature. Ms. Maknojia received her MFA in Visual Arts from Columbia University and a BA in Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Texas at Austin.
Hannah Spector Hannah Spector is an interdisciplinary visual artist and poet working out of Austin, TX. Spector thinks of language as a solid object—a concrete and spatial expression that can overturn limiting perceptions of the everyday. They are an Assistant Professor of Practice at UT Austin and serve as the Secretary of the artist collective, MASS Gallery.
Hiromi Stringer is a U.S.-based Japanese artist. Currently, she is a Senior Lecturer of interdisciplinary, drawing and painting at the University of Texas at San Antonio. Ms. Stringer received multiple awards including the 2019-2020 Dedalus Foundation Master of Fine Arts Fellowship, the 2022 Dedalus Foundation Funds for Past fellows and Awardees, a grand prize for Eyes Got It!2014, the 2019-2020 Blue Star Contemporary Berlin Residency Program/ Künstlerhaus Bethanien International Studio Program, Berlin, Germany, the 2021 Summer Arts Faculty Residency program at Ox-Bow School of Art & Artists’ Residency, Saugatuck, MI and the 2024 Vermont Studio Center residency, Johnson, VT. A resident of the San Antonio area, her works are in public, corporate and private collections in Japan and the U.S.
Maximiliano Cervantes creates images that evoke the border wall as a kaleidoscope from the wastelands of the borderlands to Chicago. Born in Harlingen, Texas, Mr. Cervantes currently lives and works in Chicago.
Gabrielle Constantine was born and raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where she received her double BFA in Sculpture and Fibers and Material studies at the Tyler School of Art. She currently lives and works in Austin, TX and holds an MFA from The University of Texas of Austin. Growing up in an Armenian community and the restaurant industry has inexplicably informed her material, linguistic, and performative decisions surrounding her sculptures, installations, and gatherings. Alongside her more sculptural practice, Ms. Constantine has shared in cooking dinners and hosting gatherings with communities in Philadelphia, Mexico City, Austin, and is consistently and continually innovating ways of gathering community through art and food.
