Watershed Residency - ReMixed
June 2-13th 2025
Our residency at Watershed felt like a blink in time and yet everyday was like three. Summarizing such a profound experience is like trying to paint the feeling of a memory. A landscape punctuated by laughter and images blurred with a collage of conversations. The theme of our two week residency was ReMixed, a collection of people of mixed identities coming together all working in clay. What felt the most jarring and unfamiliar was the comfort and ease of our casual existence with each other. Never in my life have I been surrounded by such a large group of people who have a deep understanding and shared experience of what it is to be mixed. For many of us came from fractured families fraught with tension and navigating diasporic and immigrant cultures. Being third-culture kids and coming together we no longer needed lengthy explanations of trauma or pain to validate our experiences. We each knew the complexities of love and familial duties we hold.
The grief that followed the residency wasn’t just the separation anxiety from these fast friendships but the re-entering into a society that values rugged individualism and imperialist monoculture. We created a small pocket of belonging for ourselves that may have been just a moment at Watershed but knotted us together with lasting ties. Watershed created a space for us that felt like anything was possible, creatively as artists but also as a community. The freedom and ability to take up space, to explore and create was a gift. Having summer staff to cook and feed us with the ethos of fuelling you and your creativity felt deeply nurturing and supportive. 
For how truly moving this experience was, it was mirrored equally by the trivial and mundane. Like a summer camp for adults, you were navigating new social situations, smaller cliques forming and the slow burn of being with people almost constantly. The cabins were hot, the studio cold, the weather sunny and humid or a torrential downpour. We worked independently and collaboratively. Culminating in a simultaneous salt and soda firing. We had organized group activities, a beach day, going out for ice cream, dinner at a lobster shack, cyanotype t-shirt printing, and a last day sip n’ shop with a White Elephant gift exchange. How we had the energy to do it all still baffles me, but I think in ways the collective manic energy pushed us through. Not letting you waste a moment. Some of my favorite moments were not the creation of art but passing the time. Sitting outside on the Commons patio watching the Moon make its journey across the sky, eating ice cream from the tub while watching the WNBA games on the projector, and a few stolen moments alone to sit in the forest.
Being in a community is not without its discomfort. But a worthwhile trade of small annoyances to share a greater sense of care. We were graced with sights of the aurora borealis, the strawberry moon, and an abundance of fireflies. Birdsong called you to rise in the morning along with the early sun. The bleating sheep and chickens feeding was the soundtrack to your walk down to the studio. The resident marmot and her baby scurrying along the edge of the forest. A few snakes and frog sightings and many, many ticks. Watershed is filled with memories I yearn for but know will not repeat. I am so grateful to Bianca MacPherson, Ashley Campbell, the Watershed Staff and the Maxwell Hanrahan Award that made this opportunity possible for me.
