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⚜ OCTOBER 2026 NEWSLETTER ⚜ WCH Residency Applications -  Due October 15th!! DEADLINE IS APPROACHING!!! Get your applications in for the 2027 Wedding Cake House residencies Applications are due Thursday October 15th Info and how to Apply Here No one’s coming to save us - Residency season 2027.  Election day 2026 is Nov 3rd and pretty much everything is at stake and also what it will take to change course goes miles beyond the horizon of electoral politics. Yes the arts sector has been decimated, but also everything has been decimated: Happy Birthday USA! For this residency season we are encouraging artists to apply whose starting point is “yes, this is an absolutely a low point in America, particularly in the arts, and everyone is exhausted, but I’m figuring out a way to attempt to create in this time, that is responsive to this moment.” Maybe you are opening new metaphoric portals, or maybe you have an idea to literally run through a house slamming doors. Who knows, but your project is “in it” with all of the chronic chaos that 2026 has to offer. This does not mean that what you’re working on has to be “social practice” or “political art”, but we’re hoping to have a season of working with artists who are managing being in this moment in interesting ways. “Interesting” might often be a polite way of saying fucked up, but a little bit beautiful.  Are you eyeballs deep in a project that strategizes new economic models? Writing poems about the emotional stress of “losing” in any variety of ways? Doing data visualization about profit distributions of data mining? Collaborating with a scientist to humanize our understanding of the effects of global warming? Logging the pitches of various dog-whistles? Viciously satirizing wellness industry profiteering and health care dysfunction? Come hang out and work in a Victorian Mansion run by feminists before feminists are all loaded onto a barge going nowhere. Do we have answers: no. Do we have everything that you’ll need to be fully supported wrestling in the existential chasm: probably also no, but you’ll be housed and depending on what residency model you opt for maybe even fed. There are no fees for the residency or to apply, so all you have to lose is the time that you take to explain yourself, and our hope is that maybe that explaining will be helpful anyway in some way. Non-artists collaborating with artists are welcome to be part of a duo. Full description of what’s involved is on our website.  The Wedding Cake House offers short term, project based residencies with a focus on mid-career artists. This coming season we are taking applications for the full suit of our residency offerings. We are no longer limiting applications geographically to artists who live in New England, however preference will be given to artists from New England and Rhode Island in particular. We are not accepting International applications this year and are generally more interested in working with artists from 2nd cities than Metropolitan art-hubs. Save the date for Jan 8th WINDOW GALLERY Sept/October Installation: Aymar Ccopacatty Interview with Storefront Window Artist Aymar Ccopacatty by Artist/ Cultural worker Shey 'Rí Acu' Rivera Ríos up on our blog!!! CHECK IT HERE Aymar Ccopacatty has been working on uniting his art practice with and lifelong studies of his indigenous Aymara heritage, currently taking shape in important new ways. The project has to do with decolonization of logic, language and the heart. A family curse imposed by a catholic priest and legends combining oral tradition with investigation of Spanish chronicles from the 1500’s. Ccopacatty’s art practice has always involved the textile and building techniques learned from his family in a traditional context, now the body of work becomes a part of telling his family story.   The profound desire and work toward mental and actual liberation of personal family histories as pre-colombian idol worshippers and resulting genetic survivors of holocaust in the Spanish silver mines of Potosi and otherwise. INTERVIEW WITH JULY/AUGUST WINDOW ARTIST KENDEL JOSEPH BY POET/ORGANIZER/CULTURAL PRODUCER CHARLOTTE ABOTSI ON OUR BLOG HERE!!! This project was supported through a project grant through the Department of Art, Culture + Tourism of the city of Providence. WORD SHELTER October/November Word Shelter artist: Laura Marciano Laura Marie Marciano Fonseca is a writer, educator, and media artist whose work explores exit discourse, queer futurity, and the breaking of social binaries. Writers in her courses are encouraged to consider societally imposed binaries and internal editing in their work, and imagine solutions for writing beyond these limitations, and finding their voice. Laura is the author of the poetry collection Mall Brat (Civil Coping Mechanisms, 2016), a confessional and experimental work that addresses class, gender, and contradiction for a speaker who came of age during the economic recession of 2008 and Opening Ceremony (Metatron Press, 2024), a poetic memoir that follows the speaker of her first collection into the landscape of late-millennial identity shifts. Her most recent peer-reviewed publication explores the influence of Internet use on language choice in poetry and, moreover, the evolution of the poetry collection in 21st-century digital writing communities. Laura is the founder of gemstone readings, a media collective that supports the visual media and film projects of poets. Her writing and visual work has been featured with Poetry Foundation, NPR, Tribeca Film Festival, Sundance Film Festival, and MoMA PS1. Laura is a fierce advocate of public art and art access for all, and shares a retrospective of the last decade of her work with Word Shelter this October. AIR UPDATES!!! Sunday Avanti Hey 👋🏾 My name is Sunday Avanti, MLIS (they/them). I am an artist, illustrator, and archivist from the South, creating work and telling stories to help you feel a little more seen and a little less alone. I miss my dog (tax below), my favorite color is yellow, and it’s been a little over a month since I moved over a thousand miles from Atlanta to the Dirt Palace. Moving to a new city has definitely been a transition. I’ve been all over the place, and somehow absolutely nowhere at the same time. Every day I am feeling more and more settled, and I am looking forward to making Providence my home. The first weeks I was here, I tried to make sure I went out every (other) day. It’s important to me to get as much exploring in as possible while the weather is still nice, and being outside is actually enjoyable. I’ve gone to a few galleries and some different events, visited the library, and the park. There seems to always be something happening in this city. I have a long list of places that I want to go and experiences I want to have, and I am always open to suggestions. At the beginning of October, I started a new job, and so far so good. The commute is decent, and I get to work with lots of creatives every day. I’ve met art professors and students, elementary teachers, folks running arts nonprofits, and dozens of working artists. I never thought I'd use my vast knowledge of art supplies, drawing surfaces, and color theory and pigment properties this much in such a short time. I am having a great time. Outside of my new job and working through the move, I am still hosting my cozy queer mail club✨🌈Queerly Beloved🌈✨. Every month I send out a print, a sticker, and a bonus item. Sometimes the bonus item is another sticker or mini print; I’ve also done zines and bookmarks. I’m really hoping to do something on the letterpress soon! Here are the rewards that I sent out for September. October Rewards are still in the works, but members of my mailclub also have the chance to vote on a sticker of the month. This month there were three options, and they chose Drawing 2: the cozy fall sweater. I’m also working on a book cover trilogy, a few private commissions, and working on the daily drawing challenge Peachtober. I am busy, exhausted, grateful, excited… just generally feeling all the feels. You can learn more about me and my work here: www.sundayinbloom.com And sign up for my mailclub here: Sign up to join ✨🌈Queerly Beloved🌈✨ I hope that you are having a great day wherever you are. Take care + talk soon, Sunday <3 Iris Wright Happy Spooky Season 👻 For this digest, I am doing away with transitions. Transitions are inherent to life! I'm always in transition! It need not be stated, so here are some unjoined paragraphs: There is a single digit number of days before the New Bedford Whaling Museum opens their show Boundless: The Book as Art on October 16th. It will feature books from their collection alongside contemporary book artists' works, including several works by yours truly. 😊 If the digest went out on time, I'm in Illinois for Chicago Zine Fest. Find me at table 14 with abcpvd, my mostly functional artist collective. I have many new zines to show you. (I may have folded over 300 zines in the past 3 days.) See me at Boston Art Book Fair on November 14th, too! Do you want to make paper with me? I'm teaching a pulp painting class at the Fuller Craft Museum on November 15th. It's great for people who like color and can tolerate having wet hands. Spaces are limited, so register asap. ☞ I am letterpress printing, book binding, writing, making a slew of new zines, hiking, being misgendered in the same sentence as being complimented, saying yes to every social engagement I am invited to, pretending I have secrets but telling them to my most gossip-prone friend, and thinking about making weird and meaningful wearable sculptures again. Recently I listened to an artist describe suffering to force herself to make art, and it made me feel so lucky to love my job. I can't wait to stop typing so I can write a poem and draw something silly in my notebook. Thanks for reading :) XO Iris xe/xem/xyr iriswrite.com Calyia Varella Spending these last two weeks trying to get myself out of a slump, I fear I’m understanding people that say they did it all by themselves partially lol. Being met with so many opposing opinions regarding my situation makes me see just how much I’ve gotta learn to trust myself and my truth since observations will usually not go beyond that. I’ve gone to Vogue Night again and I did 2 more dips! I’m so proud because it feels like proof of my emotional progress. And Venus retrograde is here until November 13th so visiting creative projects and goals that almost were abandoned are musts. Fellow readers, I shall leave you with this: we are human, it gets messy, our brains hold too much nuance to let love go as cleanly as we’d like, be kind to yourself and situation! Ziggy Smith Xander Marro X is totally obsessed with the RI focused experimental film Monument by Tim Geraghty & Sarah Halpern and is trying to do some writing about it for the next installment of Wild Goose Chase - so keep your eyes popping I mean peeled. This movie has it all: history, philosophy, donuts and parking lots and so many riffs on apples. It is also 6 hours and there is a free screening at the RISD museum on Saturday November 7th from 2-7:30 pm - Trailer here.  X had a blast surface painting on bowls for a fund-raiser that Overlap gallery is doing (that I’m not sure is super public yet). But if you need a bowl with a lady and a seagull on it, check out the auction that I think will be coming up. Pippi Zornoza I look really happy in this pic below, but I certainly didn’t have the stomach for being a referee (I mean, a 11 year old being screamed at by adults because they think 7 year old Johnny should get a penalty kick, was not what I was up for).  Been thinking a lot about the concepts of arbitration and mediation since my father died. As someone who started a second career, devoted to ideas of fairness in sport, and who I think thought about dispute resolution quite a lot, I’ve been somewhat in awe of the decision to dedicated a life to that kind of work. Resting easy this fall. BULETIN BOARD Maintenance Artist Maintenance Artist (2025) is the first feature documentary to chronicle the life and work of groundbreaking public artist Mierle Laderman Ukeles, the New York City Sanitation Department’s original artist-in-residence. Drawing from never-before-seen archival footage, Maintenance Artist offers a deeply moving meditation on care, labor, and visibility during the social and artistic upheavals of the last fifty years. The screening will be followed by a discussion featuring local artists (including Xander & Pippi) discussing the film’s themes of care, maintenance, ecofeminist methodologies, social practice, performance and intervention decades later.     Screening and Discussion  Metcalf Auditorium, RISD Museum Thursday, October 22 / 6:00 pm – 8:30 pm Free. Registration requested for this in-person program. REGISTER MONUMENT SCREENING ALERT!! monument (2026) dirs. Tim Geraghty & Sarah Halpern Screening and Discussion Saturday, November 7, 2:00-7:30 pm Metcalf Auditorium, RISD Museum, 20 North Main Street Grant Opportunity Artist’s Resource Trust (A.R.T.) Grants Deadline Thursday October 15th The Artist’s Resource Trust (A.R.T.) was established in 1996 to provide support to the creative work of mid-career visual artists living in New England and Columbia or Northeast Dutchess Counties, NY, who have demonstrated substantial commitment, development, and quality in their work. A.R.T. grants are available to both individual artists and nonprofits engaging with artists. Link to artist grants Providence Eye Survey The PVD Eye has created a survey about arts reporting in Providence! Please fill this out – and even better – fill it out and then pass it along. Hearing from you will be a crucial piece of ensuring that the PVD Eye will be creating the version of arts coverage that is most meaningful to the wide variety of people seeking it – which begins with artists themselves. FILL OUT THE SURVEY HERE: https://forms.gle/LvDyK4ZmbpojSv5H9 DP Photo Pheed//WCH/// forward to a friend Copyright © 2024 dirtpalace, All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because you signed up at our website, or signed in on a visit to the Dirt Palace long ago. ≪•◦ ❈ ◦•≫