This week GoggleWorks Center for the Arts, located in downtown Reading, PA, will begin accepting submissions from artists to participate in its Summer Residency program. The program, now in its second year, will select three outstanding visual artists who will spend 10-weeks on the campus developing a project or body of work. The Summer Residency Program was created to infuse new, creative energy to the GoggleWorks community with an emphasis on facilitating cross-disciplinary experimentation. The residency provides personal studio space, access to GoggleWorks’ communal studios, and a culminating exhibition showcasing the residents’ work. Additionally, the program provides shared, fully-furnished housing conveniently located across the street and within walking distance of the campus, a generous living stipend, travel stipend, materials stipend, opportunities to teach, and documentation.
“In many ways GoggleWorks is the ideal environment for artists looking to expand their artistic boundaries, collaborate, or work across multiple mediums,” said Levi Landis, the organization’s Executive Director. The campus operates in a former goggle factory and is composed of 145,000 square feet of creative space, making it the largest interactive art center in the country. GoggleWorks offers year round arts education; including workshops, classes, visiting artists, residencies, summer camps, a film theatre and restaurant, studio access, and exhibitions. “We have eight communal studios—hot glass, wood, 2D print, warm glass, metals, ceramics, photography and virtual reality,” Landis said. “In many ways these are at the heart of our education model because each studio has its own rhythm, audience, nuances, and culture.”
Last year, the inaugural Summer Residency, brought three exceptional artists to Reading, PA. Bartosz Beda, a Polish-born painter, Joseph Cavalieri, a glass artist from New York City, and Karina Mago, a Venezuelan artists who works primarily in ceramics, paint, and print. While each artist built their craft and expanded their individual body of work, each tied into the GoggleWorks community in unique ways.
Bartosz Beda decided to allot one hour per day during each day outside of the residency to paint a small painting. At the end of the day each painting was exhibited for sale at $7.25, Pennsylvania’s minimum wage. After researching about Reading, PA he decided to focus on the struggles of immigrants from Mexico and Puerto Rico, a large and fast-growing community in the city, many of whom work on a very constrictive minimum wage.
Karina Mago explored the city to find inspiration from her surroundings. She created 2D ceramic art that reflected shapes, shadows, profiles, or other aspects of these city surroundings.
Joseph Cavalieri created, “Disenchanted Alice,” a collection of six stained-glass panels with a new twist on the illustrations of Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland.” One of the panels was installed in the southwest stairwell of GoggleWorks’ campus.
The residency culminated in an exhibition titled, “Tilting Realities,” named because each artist’s work engaged with vastly different materials, but they have an overarching theme of distorting the space they were in and the audience experience.
GoggleWorks welcomes interested artists to apply or learn more at its website, www.GoggleWorks.org. Applicants can choose to submit a project-based application or portfolio-based application. Selection of residents is highly competitive and based on the strength of the applicant’s project proposal and/or quality of work and experience.
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