Back to Basics Program Kristen Zory King Washington, DC, USA Writing, Movement, Teaching www Kristen Zory King is a writer, teaching artist, and yoga instructor based in Washington, DC. Recent work can be found in Electric Lit, Ghost Parachute, and HAD among other publications. In 2025 her chapbook of flash fiction stories, “Ladies, Ladies, Ladies,” was published by Stanchion. As a writer, Kris is interested in creating work that explores the tension between the internal self and the outside world, examining conflicts and communion between nature, ideology, and social identity. As a teaching artist and community facilitator, Kris believes that art enriches our lives and opens doors to knowledge and understanding on both a personal and collective level. She seeks to use her work both on and off the page to explore these larger themes and serve as a "finger pointing toward the moon." Kris is currently an MFA candidate at George Mason University where she is at work on a project exploring spiritual ecology. Learn more, join a workshop, or be in touch at www.kristenzoryking.com. Heidi Newbauer Mankato, MN, USA Writing, Voice www I grew up in northern Minnesota and currently write and teach in southern Minnesota. My research looks at creative consciousness, healing, and the role of the narrator in survivor stories as well as in fiction, as part of my PhD program. I have an M.F.A. in Creative Writing, an M.A. in Literature, and a graduate certificate in Holocaust and Genocide Studies. I find voice to be a place where relationships convalesce into a greater understanding of ourselves and the world. I am working on rewriting the old tropes of the heroine’s journey in a historical fiction romance taking place during the Thirty Years War. I also write poetry, essays, short stories, and take classical and Broadway voice lessons. Singing gives me a lens of lightness in what may seem heavy in my other work. I also find the movement in gestural storytelling a lot of fun and a way to further move my energy in positive ways. During my residency, I plan to spend time in nature, reconnect to my true love of reading, develop further drafts in my creative work, and nourish community. Kayla Eicholtz Kentucky, USA Sculpture, Performance, Writing www "Art is a force for revealing oppressive systems and imagining new realities." Kayla Eicholtz is a sculptor from a working-class background in rural Kentucky whose practice focuses on class, gender, and labor justice. With an emphasis on exposing the unspoken and unacknowledged truths of repressive and destructive forces, they are concerned with systems that exploit the working class and the environment. Responding to a culture defined by production and extraction, they imagine alternatives defined by understanding, connection, and interdependence. Eicholtz uses industrial and reclaimed materials to create immersive installations and environments, particularly appreciating qualities of materials that are often overlooked. The flexible and submissive nature of metal, the acoustic qualities of a bridge, and the delicate process of moving and positioning bricks are recurring themes in their work. As their practice continues to evolve, they are exploring more ecologically conscious work that reflects the relationship between the self and the environment.

July Blue Delliquanti Minneapolis, USA Comic Art www "Queer comics change the world!" I am a comic artist, writer, and teacher based in Minneapolis. I first worked in comics by serializing a longform narrative, O Human Star, online for 8 years, and I contributed short stories to several anthologies. I have also written and drawn award-nominated graphic novels and novellas. I teach comics classes and serve in a mentorship capacity at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. My primary interest with my work is to explore subjects common to the genre of science/speculative fiction through a queer lens. The most interesting sci-fi narratives are those that examine the personal elements of a substantial technological or cultural change. The possibilities raised by the presence of queer lives (social, political, medical, etc) and the way in which societies respond to, adapt to, or lash out against that presence, reflects and overlaps with hopes and anxieties stoked by other kinds of change. I have developed queer narratives through the lens of robots/digital identity, culture clash on an interstellar scale, and perpetual digital surveillance. Wendy Cowan Alice Springs, Northern Territory, Australia Drawing, Installation, Street Theatre, Writing, Curatorial www "Walking, listening, and paying attention are the foundations of my practice." Born in Enniscorthy, County Wexford, Ireland, during the height of the Troubles to an Irish mother and English father, Wendy Cowan grew up with a lived awareness of the boundaries that shape belonging, identity, and community. Experiences of being neither sufficiently Irish nor English continue to inform her work. Based in Mparntwe (Alice Springs), Central Australia, Wendy is a writer, mentor, and artist whose practice spans more than four decades. Working alongside communities, cultural knowledge holders, young people, and organisations, she develops projects grounded in storytelling, learning, and social change. Her work explores how more just futures emerge through relationship. Collaborative projects have been exhibited at IMMA (Dublin), the V&A (London), Chester Beatty Library (Dublin), UNSW Galleries (Sydney), Araluen Arts Centre, Parliament House (Canberra), and Watch This Space (Mparntwe), as well as festivals in Ireland, England, and Australia. Her work has received awards from ATOM, First Nations Media Australia, and NARIS. Janine van Veen Utrecht, Netherlands Performance art, Video, Installation www "How can the body remain present when the mind wants to escape?" My name is Janine van Veen, I am a Dutch artist and professional worrier. Through video and performance, I create moving paintings and living sculptures that make invisible mental states physically visible. My body is my primary material, often placed in minimal natural environments where the landscape becomes an active partner in a visual dialogue. My artistic practice responds to a society driven by speed, productivity and constant self-optimisation by creating space for pause, stillness and embodied experience. Through physical endurance, meditative repetition, pointless rituals and often tragicomic gestures, I explore what happens when discomfort is given time and attention.

Holly Peters Plymouth, UK Writing, Research www "Everything becomes a poem eventually." I am a Plymouth-based writer and researcher. Although I work across many forms, my main discipline is poetry. As part of my PhD research project, I am writing a poetic exhibition that intends to re-memorialise the lives of four women and girls whose dead bodies were spectacularised in the nineteenth century. I am concerned with how mediations of the dead female body have transformed women into objects through which power is exercised. Through poetry, I am testing how innovative forms and the application of archives can shape new contemporary memories. I am always working on more projects than I have time for and so during the Arteles residency, while I will be working on my PhD research, I will also work on a personal collection of poems and my novel. I am looking forward to letting my writing practice surprise me and learning what kind of writer I can be. I want to be curious, to reacquaint myself with why I love writing and to become a student of my own practice during the Back-to-Basics residency. I am excited to read, explore the natural world and simply be for a little while. Douglas Flowe USA History www I am an Associate Professor of History at Washington University in St. Louis, where I study the intersections of race, crime, and urban life in the United States. My work focuses especially on the experiences of Black men in the early twentieth century, examining how they navigated the criminal legal system and how their lives were represented in courts and public discourse. I am the author of Uncontrollable Blackness: African American Men and Criminality in Jim Crow New York (2020), and my current book project, American Darkness, explores Black men’s experiences in New York’s Jim Crow prisons. Jaz Armour Aberdeen, UK Painting, Writing, Drawing www I’m Jaz Armour and I’m a mixed media artist, writer and illustrator for comics. I'm interested in bodily transformations and nature, pulling from outdoor sketches to incorporate landscape and natural forms with human and animal bodies. I want to fall into the painting and for the space to feel hazy and suggestive. Sketches completed outside inform the next stage of my paintings, allowing me to play with colour and composition without relying on strict representations of objects or places. I enjoy the way layers of transparent watercolour can create space within layers of colour and suggestions of forms. The stories for my comics explore themes of displacement in landscape and transformation. My current comic Wayward Wanderers is about the transformation of the character in an idealised but ultimately inhospitable (for humans) landscape. I find the idea of the usefulness of humans interesting and how we would need to adapt to better suit environments without burdening them.

Enny Wokna Berlin, Germany Mixed Media, Object, Installation www "I ask questions through materials." My curiosity about the world finds a place in art, where I can ask questions without having to resolve them. It is where I indulge my sense of play and follow my fascination with simple materials. My practice often starts from something that already exists, exploring the relationships between people, objects, and their surroundings. Instead of treating uncertainty as something to overcome, I adopt it as a conscious artistic position – sometimes with irony, sometimes with sincerity. This attitude informs both my artistic practice and my teaching as an art educator in schools. Heather Moore Cape Town, South Africa Patterns, Cut Paper, Textiles www For the last 18 years, I've been running my screenprinted textiles & homewares business, Skinny laMinx. At the end of 2025, the high tariffs on South African exports to the USA had made the business no longer viable, so I'm taking a sabbatical year in my studio, exploring a new creative direction. My love of print, pattern and process is a through-line in all my work. Bridget A. Lyons Santa Cruz, CA, USA Writing, Printmakingn www "To reawaken wonder, all we need to do is step outside." Bridget A. Lyons is a writer, editor, artist, and explorer whose work focuses on appreciating the creativity and diversity of the natural world and increasing our species' awareness of the creatures and landscapes with whom we share our planet. Her written work expresses the interconnectedness of the Earth and all of its residents by weaving together strands of observation, science, personal narrative, and adventure storytelling. Bridget is also an avid printmaker who illustrated her recent book, Entwined: Dispatches from the Intersection of Species. As a professional editor, she assists other authors in shaping their manuscripts and preparing them for publication. Tom Gurn Yartapuulti/Port Adelaide, Australia Writing, Poorly-drawn Comics www "Where does play end and art begin? - Agnes Varda" I tend to write about people I meet, things I see, or general happenings both in my life and at large. I love theatre and film and have delved into those mediums from time-to-time, but that's mostly borne in my belief that stories are stories are stories. I know that we are all born storytellers to some degree. Personally, I can't remember to put the bins out or to reply to emails in a timely manner, but if something strange or funny happens I've somehow got every detail down pat for decades. I just try to cultivate that in my work, and have a bit of fun with it. See the list of all the Arteles residents here