Past Gibbs Street Residents

Kat Thompson

Kat Thompson's six-month Gibbs Street Residency is from February 5-August 5, 2025; it provides a unique opportunity to create a new body of work, evolve an existing body of work, or develop a project in a stimulating, supportive environment.

The residency includes a $3,000 stipend, free studio space, and a solo exhibition, which will be in the Gibbs Street Gallery from July 25-September 21, 2025. An opening celebration will be held August 29 from 7-9 p.m.

Artist's Statement

As a first-generation Afro-Jamaican American, Kat Thompson’s work explores
the complexities of self-discovery and identity preservation while grappling with
the sense of dislocation that comes from existing between two distinct worlds. Through photography, textiles, and installation, she examines these themes
with a focus on the African American experience within the context of AfroCaribbean culture.
How does one maintain an identity passed down through generations, shaped
by both nearby and distant influences? When woven into a complex web of
experiences, does this identity become part of a broader, shared narrative of
the Black immigrant experience?

Thompson uses materials from her personal archives, along with found objects
and photographs, to uncover recurring themes and shared experiences that
shape an interconnected Black transnational identity. At the same time, she
redefines her relationship with her Jamaican heritage. Through techniques
such as re-photography, collage, and the recontextualization of images and
objects, she critically examines American and Afro-Caribbean family dynamics,
addressing themes of alienation, assimilation, and authenticity across
generations.

This process extends into her textile work, where she draws inspiration from
the traditions of Southern African American quilting to fill historical gaps in a
personal, imaginative, and speculative way. She departs from traditional
quilting techniques, allowing the work to evolve through deconstruction and
reconstruction. In doing so, she transports it into a symbolic realm, solidifying
connections to the diasporic family.

About the Artist

Kat Thompson is an interdisciplinary Afro-Jamaican American artist and
educator based in Virginia. She works with photography, textiles, sculptural
collages, and installations, combining these mediums to explore notions of
Black selfhood within the African diaspora.

Being of Jamaican heritage, Thompson examines her dual identity through
recent projects that trace her family’s journey using personal and found
materials. Her work seeks to uncover stories that reflect our histories, current
realities, and future possibilities.

Her work has been exhibited at Page Bond Gallery in Richmond, Virginia;
Visible Records in Charlottesville, Virginia; Fenwick Gallery and Gillespie
Gallery at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia; and Tephra Institute of
Contemporary Art in Reston, Virginia. She was the 2021-22 recipient of the
Young Alumni Commissioning Award from George Mason University's College
of Visual and Performing Arts.

Thompson is currently a 2023-25 Hamiltonian Artists Fellow in Washington,
D.C. She holds a BFA in photography from George Mason University and an
MFA in photography and film from Virginia Commonwealth University

Learn more at www.katherinesimonethompson.com

Hedieh Javanshir Ilchi

Hedieh Javanshir Ilchi is an Iranian-American artist whose creative practice is a navigation of her multifaceted experiences as an immigrant. Her paintings provide a space where her two disparate histories come together to reflect on cultural traditions and notions of belonging. By combining conventions of Western abstraction with conventions of Persian art, Ilchi explores contradictory painting processes and the ways in which they can be melded into a hybrid visual language. These pictorial clashes echo the erasure and distortion of cultural identities, evoking allegories of intrusion and invasion and moving beyond the personal to reference contemporary and historical interference. Ilchi was born in Tehran, Iran and currently lives and works in the Washington, D.C. area. She received an M.F.A. in studio art from American University and a B.F.A. from the Corcoran College of Art + Design and is the recipient of the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation Creative Fellowship, Charm City Fellowship, Zeta Orionis Painting Fellowship, Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award in Painting, and Bethesda Painting Award. Ilchi has participated in numerous national solo and group exhibitions. Her work has been featured in publications that include “The Washington Post,” “Hyperallergic,” “Art Papers,” “Washington City Paper,” and “New American Paintings.” She has attended residencies at the Ucross Foundation, Millay Arts, Vermont Studio Center, Jentel Foundation, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, Playa Summer Lake, Monson Arts, and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Ilchi’s work is in private and public collections, including The Phillips Collection, The Federal Reserve Board, The Microsoft Art Collection, and the Carl M. Freeman Foundation. She is represented by Hemphill ARTWORKS Gallery in Washington, D.C. and is currently serving as one of the 2023-2024 McMillan Stewart Endowed Chairs in Painting at Maryland Institute College of Art. Learn more at hediehilchi.com/

Isabella Whitfield

Situated between paper, metal, and site-responsive installation, my fabrication process adopts repetitive motions, testing physical endurance through mundane performative actions. By abstracting object materiality, I examine the internal disassociation that arises when intended purpose contradicts actual functionality. Inspired by contemporary artifacts, religious architecture, and commonplace tools, my work values quiet precision, inviting viewers to confront the familiar with a sense of alienation.     Bio:  Isabella Whitfield (b. 1998; Centreville, VA) is a multidisciplinary artist based in Virginia, working primarily in sculpture and site-responsive installation. After receiving a Bachelor of Arts in Sculpture and Politics from the University of Virginia, she completed a postgraduate year as an Aunspaugh Art Fellow. Whitfield has exhibited with Hamiltonian Artists, the Kluge Ruhe, 1708 Gallery, and the Morgan Conservatory.  She has been a resident artist with Penland, Anderson Ranch, Ox-Bow, Pyramid Atlantic, and VisArts Richmond. She is currently a 2022-2024 Hamiltonian Fellow and Papermaking Associate at Pyramid Atlantic.  Learn more at www.isabellawhitfield.com

Jamille Wallick

I visualize a time-lapse of tree rings forming, mountains rising and falling, then the brevity of holding my tiny newborn baby. Moving in and out of macro and micro perspectives of time and change, my work uses printmaking, photography, sculpture, and painting as tools for curiosity and attention. The blurring of discipline boundaries is a physical expression of boundaryless places that I often explore. There are no tidy lines between forest and marsh, myself and my environment. Paying attention moment-by-moment is how I make sense of change and how I come to remember my sense of the sacredness of life. Born in North Carolina and currently living in Maryland, Jamille Wallick is a mixed media artist influenced by the ecosystems of Atlantic coast states. She holds a BA of Dance Studies/General Anthropology, an M.ED in New Media and Global Education (Appalachian State University), and an MFA in Studio Arts (The George Washington University). Before moving to the DMV, Jamille worked as media instructor, freelance media artist, and dancer with SG Ballet in Boone, NC. She was also a Founding Member and President of community arts group, Verge Dance Collective. In 2022, Jamille was the recipient of a Keyholder Fellowship at Pyramid Atlantic Art, Hyattsville, MD, where she studied paper-making and printmaking. In October 2022, she installed a large-scale work: three 12′ sculptures, Pleiades Sisters, at Brunswick Beer and Cider in Brunswick, NC. In October-December of 2022 she also worked as an Associate Producer and Media Specialist on LEGACY: 50 Years of Dance on the Edge, an exhibition/immersive installation at the Corcoran FLAGG Building, Washington DC, with artists Maida Withers and Robin Bell. She currently works as a freelance multimedia artist and as an adjunct professor of Art and Media. Image Credit: Jeff Goodman

Liz Lessner

My objects and installations use sensory perception to reframe interpersonal interactions. They combine traditional sculpture materials with embedded electronics to create multi-sensory experiences that are sometimes interactive. These works stems from a framing of resonant gestures that ritualize and familiarize psychological narratives and personal memories. These objects consider social feedback loops, popular narratives of desire, as well as mythology and nostalgia and the fetishism that both imply. They explore negotiations of power and status, authenticity and performance, and preconscious affinities and desires through forms that unsettle and attract. By repeating and reframing iconic gestures these works find new ways of representing and experiencing the ephemeral psychological and spatial dynamics of interacting with others. They seduce through materials and form, prompt consideration through user experience and sensorial awareness, and create, as Nigel Thrift says, ‘new and more productive entanglements’ by activating sticky and paradoxical spaces of negotiation and intimacy. [caption id="attachment_2417" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] A Block and Tackle of Lures, Reels, and Rods, 2013, wood, sound-biters, micro-controllers, ICs, leather, buckles, and for-ton, 12′ x 5′ x 2.5′[/caption] Artist Bio: Liz Lessner is a sculptor and installation artist whose work combines traditional fabrication techniques and emerging technologies to create sensory experiences that reframe common occurrences and routine encounters. Lessner has had solo shows at Honfleur Gallery in Washington, D.C.; Big Orbit, a Center for Exploratory and Perceptual Arts Project Space in Buffalo, NY; and The University at Buffalo Visual Studies Gallery in Buffalo, NY. She has exhibited her sculptures and installations nationally and internationally including the Guapamacátaro Center for Art and Ecology in Michoacán, Mexico, A.I.R. gallery in Brooklyn, NY, and Everard Read’s Circa Gallery in Cape Town, South Africa. She has an MFA in Media Study from the University at Buffalo. Her research into embedded electronics ability to create novel sensory experiences has been supported by grants like the Mark Diamond Research Fund, fellowships like the Eyeo Artists Fellowship, and awards like a 2019 Fulbright Research Award to Brazil.

Estefaní Mercedes

During the Argentinian Dictatorship (1976-83) grandmothers and mothers would protest the forced disappearance of their children and loved by ones by wearing lockets of their faces in the streets. This simply gestures reflects the often female, delicate and intimate methods of protest during this dark period of Argentinian history. This installation, re-images the original acts of protests in lockets that are suspended from the ceiling each acting as small light boxes. This installation is part of a larger project by the artist, Stephanie Mercedes, entitled “Luz del Día: Copyrighting the Light of Day” in which the artist is combating pending copyright legislation that would make the photographic archives of the Argentinian Dictatorship inaccessible to the public. [caption id="attachment_2501632" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] Stephanie Mercedes, Los Relicarios, installation view[/caption] About the Artist: Through radical justice, investigating copyright law, and film photography, Stephanie Mercedes hopes to restore missing violent histories, turning the archive into legend. Mercedes has a research-based practice that intersects law and social justice. Her recent work is in connection to the history of the Argentine dictatorship (1976 – 1983). By building publicly accessible photographic archives, Mercedes hopes to restore silenced voices. Mercedes’ work questions the purity of the documentary image, the singularity of memory, and the purpose of the archive. Mercedes is an Argentinian/American Artist whose practice moves between Performance, Social Practice and Social Sculpture. In 2017 Mercedes won the Light Work Grant and the Open Society Grant for documentary images. She has exhibited at the Bronx Museum of Art, Flux Factory, Paco das Artes and many institutions across the Americas. She was the VisArts Studio Fellow from January – June 2018 where she used her studio as a platform for investigations into the ethics of violent images, art and law, and Latina performance, Mercedes is always looking for individiuals who want to share their connections to the histories she excavates. ornamental.activism.contact@gmail.com