The Ramona Residency, described as “the first and only artist residency in Texas dedicated to amplifying the voices and creative practices of artist mothers,” has announced its 2025-2026 residents.
Madison Hendry, “Front Yard,” green yarn, 60 x 60 feet
Eight artists will visit Houston for two-week residency periods beginning Thursday, May 1 and running through mid-January 2026. The artists — Monika Meler, Sepideh Dashti, Tamar Ettun, Molly Burke, Adrian Rhodes, Madison Hendry, Cristina Velásquez, and Raisa Nosova — hail from diverse locations including Georgia, Tennessee, Ohio, Texas, South Carolina, and New York.
Monika Meler, “Piecing Together,” relief print, ink, hand-cut paper, 35 x 34 inches
According to Ramona Residency founder and artist mother Sarah Sudhoff, the residency program’s mission is to “provide support, develop community, and create professional opportunities for the artist mother while simultaneously enriching the Houston arts community through free public programming.”
The residency, launched in 2024, is named in honor of Ms. Sudhoff’s mother, whom Ms. Sudhoff has described as instrumental in providing support as she pursues her artistic career.
Tamar Ettun, “Purple Placenta,” site-specific installation, 11 x 10 x 19 feet
Each resident artist will engage in curator visits, open studios, and a public artist talk during their two-week stay.
Ms. Meler, Interim Associate Dean at Valdosta State University, engages a printmaking-forward practice. She has exhibited at Wabash College in Indiana, the Western Colorado Center for the Arts, Frontier Space in Montana, and Limerick Printmakers Gallery in Ireland.
Ms. Dashti is a PhD student and art educator in Memphis. According to the artist statement by Ramona Residency, Ms. Dashti’s work focuses on her experiences as an Iranian immigrant woman, navigating “interlocking systems of oppression and their impact on female bodies denied agency.”
Ms. Ettun’s immersive textile installations center somatic empathy, trauma healing, and ritual. Her exhibitions and performance sites include the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis; the Chinati Foundation in Marfa; and the Ford Foundation Center for Social Justice, Socrates Sculpture Park, Jewish Museum, and Sculpture Center in New York.
Ms. Burke works collaboratively with her partner Nathan Gorgen as Byproduct Studios, making use of materials generated from their artistic and domestic lives. Together and separately they have exhibited at Toledo Museum of Art, Columbus Museum of Art, Delaware Center for Contemporary Art, and the Centre Pompidou in Paris, France.
Ms. Rhodes earned a BFA and MFA from Winthrop University in Rock Hill, South Carolina, and most recently received a South Carolina Arts Commission 2020 Individual Artist’s Fellowship. Her ornate, multimedia work focuses on relationships and the complexity of closeness, employing motifs that reflect recurring, intrusive thought patterns.
Ms. Hendry earned an MFA in Sculpture from Brooklyn College, and cites teaching artists Vito Acconci, Blane de St. Croix, and Tom Scicluna as influences. Her motherhood-focused work has been exhibited at ProCreate Project and Whitechapel Gallery in London.
Ms. Velásquez is an artist and publisher in Austin and Bogotá, Colombia, who works in photography and weaving. Her work explores the global circulation of popular culture, and how “a dominant culture sanitizes and reduces the other in a subtle, and not-so-subtle, continuity of colonialism.”
Ms. Nosova holds a BFA from the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York and an MFA from New York University Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. Her current work is a documentary self-portrait through pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding, and postpartum, in painting, works on paper, video, glass and breastmilk sculpture, as “a direct cry of motherhood pride and fragility.”
Ms. Meler will open her studio to the public on Mother’s Day, Sunday, May 11, from 2:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. The Ramona Residency is located at 2213 Decatur Street in Houston’s 6th Ward art district. Follow the residency Instagram page for updates on further public programming.
