Julia Weber
Staff Writer
As the 2025 summer season winds down, so does Chautauqua Visual Art’s short-term residency program which brings practicing artists — both emerging and established — to the Institution for a two-week period to focus on their practice.
To conclude its two-week residency program, CVA hosts a culminating exhibition of residents’ works opening from 3 to 5 p.m today in the School of Art Gallery. Before the opening reception, CVA will host open studios from 2 to 3 p.m. today at the School of Art, in which Chautauquans will have an opportunity to engage with artists enrolled in the program and see their studios in person.
For resident artists Sarah Royer and Tina Williams Brewer, the short-term residency program is an asset for artists like themselves who have an established practice and might not be able to take as much time away from it as other residency programs require.
“The two-week residency, I was drawn to, personally, because it was a time that I could take away from my own studio where it’s just constantly working on these commission pieces, which is great, but it was a great time to just step away from that,” said Royer.
Like Royer, Williams Brewer said she had been committed to her artistic practice for a long time and saw the CVA two-week residency program as a way to step back and refocus.
“I was thinking that it was time for me to take a breath and step away from all the things that have accumulated over the last 20 years and to reevaluate where I was going, what I was doing,” said Williams Brewer.
Williams Brewer said the program has been a “respite” for her as a working artist. Both of the artists in the residency program said their work on view in the exhibition explores a moment in time, albeit in different ways.
For Royer, the piece on view in the exhibition is a community-based collaborative screenprinting project. Williams Brewer’s project is a reworking of a quilt she made in the 1990s with new imagery layered onto it with transparent textiles.
Both artists are looking forward to sharing the work they have made during the program with Chautauquans during the exhibition, and to meeting community members during the open studio portion of the day.
“It’s one thing to look at art, and it’s another thing to actually meet artists, see works in progress,” she said. “It’s such a unique experience for people to actually see a studio space.”
One of the most exciting parts of the residency, according to Williams Brewer, was the space for collaboration and community the program offered to artists. Often, art is a rather solitary practice in which artists work in their studios and don’t always have easy access to collaboration or the camaraderie of their peers.
Williams Brewer said the residency reminded her of her time in art school when she worked with other students to exchange ideas and information through collaboration and critiques.
“I think we’re all here lifting one another,” she said, “so it is the human experience that is so valuable here.”
