In honor of patrons Fleur and Charles Bresler, VisArts invites applications and proposals from artists for a four-month residency.
The Bresler Residency provides dynamic individual artists or collaborative artist teams the gift of time, space, and financial support, along with a unique opportunity to experiment, create a new body of work, evolve an existing body of work, or develop a project in a stimulating, supportive environment.
We offer three four-month Bresler Residencies each year, which include a free studio, $2,000 stipend, and a culminating solo exhibition by each Bresler Resident.
We encourage Bresler Residents to initiate in person and/or online outreach with the VisArts and greater Rockville communities. Rockville is a progressive, diverse city in the DC metropolitan area.
It ranks nationally and statewide as a leader in environmental sustainability and use of green power. Rockville is recognized for its high quality of life, excellent schools, numerous public parks, and well-educated population.
We also encourage Bresler Residents to engage a variety of audiences, ages, and cultural orientations within the Rockville community, in person and/or online, by accessing and interacting with local resources, including the City of Rockville; the Beall-Dawson House and Museum; Montgomery College Visual and Performing Arts Departments; Montgomery College and other local schools; the Montgomery County Public Library; the Potomac River/Rock Creek watershed; Rock Creek National Park; historic sites, organizations, and groups in the DC metropolitan area.
September 2024–January 2025 Bresler Residency + Montgomery College Collaborative Artist-in-Residence (AiR) Partnership
VisArts is proud to continue our partnership with Montgomery College’s Collaborative AiR for our September 2024 – January 2025 Bresler Residency.
During the September 2024 – January 2025 Bresler Residency, the selected artist or artist team will, in addition to fulfilling the terms of the Bresler Residency:
- Be embedded in the Rockville and Germantown Montgomery College Art Departments
- Receive an additional $3,000 stipend
Applicant Qualifications
- Qualified applicants are professional individual artists or collaborative artist teams over the age of 18; the program is not designed for undergraduate students or commercial artists.
- Artists working in all media are welcome to apply, but VisArts can’t support the use of hazardous materials that require specific ventilation requirements.
- Montgomery College is an academic institution committed to promoting equal opportunity and fostering diversity among its students, faculty, and staff.
Current Bresler Resident
Jill Stauffer
Bresler Resident
ARTIST STATEMENT
On my screen I see a forest. If the forest is felled, the image will remain. The digital image of these trees becomes an afterlife – the landscape embalmed, documented, preserved. Through my studio practice I seek to answer the question of what gets lost when we memorialize the natural world through digital media and artificial replication. What happens when digital representation becomes the primary reference? My new media installations are acts of speculative design for how future generations may attempt to reconstruct past versions of the environment with preserved digital media as primary reference points. I begin each new project with research into a specific ecosystem
through field work. I spend time slowly exploring on foot, observing the site, and recording what I see through digital media (audio recordings, photography, video, and photogrammetry), and supplement my explorations with research into that specific environment. I later use these digital assets and my memories to physically reconstruct the environment. The resulting installations combine organic and artificial materials to create immersive installations with kinetic components, time-based lighting, and sound. My practice negotiates the increasingly interconnected relationship between technology, memory, and nature — the quality of the representation of natural landscapes in digital interfaces, built with materials mined from the earth, increases as the natural environment is further degraded. I hope to generate dialogues about how our ability to immortalize fleeting moments in the natural environment through technology affects how we perceive, remember, and experience a rapidly changing natural world.
ARTIST BIO
Jill Stauffer is a Virginia based multimedia installation artist, originally from Pembroke Pines, FL. They hold an MFA in Studio Art from the University of Maryland, College Park (UMD), and a BA in Studio Art from Middlebury College. Jill has participated in artist residencies with NE Sculpture, Josephine Sculpture Park and the Torpedo Factory Art Center. Notable exhibitions include Next Gen 11.0 at VisArts, LevelUp at Brentwood Arts Exchange, where they received the Juror’s Award, and their solo show If Saltwater Heals Wounds at Glen Echo Park. Jill’s research has been recognized by their reception of the ArtsAmp Interdisciplinary Grant and the Clarvit Research Fellowship from UMD. Jill is also an arts educator, currently working as an Adjunct Lecturer with the UMD Department of Art, and as Fabrication Lab Specialist with Northern Virginia Community College. Jill creates multimedia installations that explore the transmutationof the natural environment through digital documentation, artificial replication, and memory.
- 2026
