Frank Lloyd Wright’s Martin House is excited to announce that two individuals have been selected as residents for the inaugural year of the Creative Residency Program. The Martin House established the project-based program to provide a designated time and space for creative makers to develop new works of the imagination inspired by Wright’s masterpiece.
“The goal was to host one resident during the first year of the program, but the response to the call for applications was remarkable,” said Martin House Executive Director Jessie Fisher. “We received more than 350 applications from around the world from talented individuals eager to draw inspiration from the site to elevate existing projects or to create new bodies of work.”
Applicants presented ideas from a wide variety of disciplines. While it was difficult to narrow down the field, the eventual finalists had identified projects that more closely aligned to themes central to the Martin House, all created through diverse perspectives. The end product of each residency will be the delivery of a free public program in order to share the Martin House-inspired work with the larger community.
Alexandra Light
The Martin House is pleased to welcome the first creative resident, Alexandra Light, in late June. Currently based in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, Light is an emerging choreographer with a passion for abstract and narrative work highlighting important topics. Her Martin House project will give voice to six influential women in the history of Frank Lloyd Wright through dance.
Alexandra Light; Image by Joe Johnson
The site-specific project will be titled ‘Floricycle,’ and the outcome will be a 17-minute contemporary-ballet dance work presented both live and for digital viewing. Light has spent the last several years researching the lives of these select women, so the opportunity to participate in the residency program was quite serendipitous.
“By using dance to get a deeper look at the floricycle and other elements of the Martin House, the residency will nurture my creativity through the unique discipline of dance in the thought-provoking environment of the site, which I will return to the community through a performance,” said Light.
Jessica Mehta,PhD
In September, the Martin House will welcome its second creative resident, Jessica Mehta, PhD. A native of the occupied land of what is often referred to today as Oregon and a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, Mehta will take inspiration from Wright’s architecture and revert it back to an Indigenous creation.
Jessica Mehta
An accomplished artist and poet, her project is titled ‘The Indigenous Influence on Wright’s Prairie School Through Poetics.’ The work done during the residency will culminate in a chapbook that focuses on what “home” means and how our ideas of shelter/housing have progressed throughout the years – often with an Indigenous perspective.
“I believe my proposed project is significant to the community because it takes a different approach to exploring the Martin House, Wright’s designs, and the history of architecture and housing as a whole,” said Mehta. “It is not necessarily a visual response to Wright’s architecture, but a form of preserved storytelling.”
More information to follow in the coming weeks and months about the creative residents, the progress of the individual projects, and the public programs as plans are formalized.
Click here for more general information about the Creative Residency Program.
