Wherever we go, we go by the sea.
residensea started as a simple idea: that a residency should give as much to a place as it takes. Every year we choose one coastal community, stay for a week to ten days, and build the whole trip around it: its history, its people, its food, its shoreline.
We don't ship in materials. What we make comes from what we gather while we're there, and what we make stays with the community that hosted us.
The sea acts as our mentor and collaborator, not a backdrop, one we learn from and admire. Working within an ecosystem carries a responsibility to approach it with care, so each cycle closes with an open studio exhibition, the residency giving back what it takes.
residensea is multidisciplinary by design. Visual, written, performance, and archival work all come together into individual and joint pieces. Collaboration runs in two directions, with the place as much as with the people in it, and we move through both with compassion, curiosity, and care.
01
Learn the history
Before we make anything, we listen: to the people, stories, and histories of the coastal community that hosts us.
02
Support local business
Our food, tours, and housing route through local, independent businesses. The residency's spend stays in the community.
03
Create from what we find
Every piece we make starts with material gathered during our time there: driftwood, clay, shell, fiber, dye, using what is lost, found, and untold in the tides, algae, and sediment around us.
04
Give it back
We close each residency with a public exhibition of the work, open to the community that hosted us. Not a finished body of work, but a reflection of the shared landscape.
