Greenhouse Artists In Residence
Our Artist in Residency (AIR) program are four 1-month residency sessions for artists who want to dive deeper into their artistic practice while in community with others.
2025/26 Residents - December
Car Nazzal
Car Nazzal (they/them) is a contemporary ceramic sculptor based in California, whose work explores Palestinian identity, queer expansiveness, and the layered complexities of being. With a background in psychology, Nazzal channels those mischievous, rebellious aspects of the psyche—to create works that challenge assumption and embrace contradiction. During the GreenHouse Residency at Mendocino Art Center, Nazzal will be exploring the decolonization of time and our relationship to time.
Nazzal's work has been exhibited at esteemed institutions such as the American Museum of Ceramic Art and the New Museum Los Gatos, with additional solo and group exhibitions across the SF Bay Area, Los Angeles, and New York. Nazzal’s sculptures are in private collections, and can be seen publicly at Queer Arts Featured in San Francisco, California.
Stephanie Dowda DeMer (she/her)
Stephanie Dowda DeMer (she/her) is an American photographer and experimental media artist. Her work excavates invisibility and creates space for reflection through phenomena, communion, and kinship. Dowda DeMer uses the materiality of photography to address grief, climate catastrophe, and power. In 2019, Dowda DeMer was named the inaugural Iowa Idea Fellow in Photography at The University of Iowa. She has taught photography at ASU and VCU. DeMer holds an MFA in Photo + Film from Virginia Commonwealth University. She is a Hambidge Fellow, Idea Capital grantee, and her work has been published in Dialogue, Bad at Sports, MuseA, ArtsATL, BurnAway, among others. She has shown at White Space Gallery-Atlanta, SITE Goat Farm, curator of Open Air Media Festival, Grizzly Grizzly-Philadelphia, MART-Dublin, and others. Formerly, she was an Assistant Professor of Photo + Video at Wesleyan College. Her work is part of the Bunnen Collection, Microsoft Collection, and the Center of Books, among others. Currently, Dowda DeMer is the Emory Visual Arts Fellow in Lens-based Media. Her forthcoming exhibition will be across two galleries in Atlanta in March 2026. She is based in Atlanta, GA.
Jo Ko
Jo Ko is a first-generation Chinese American, self-taught ceramic artist based in her hometown of Oakland, California. She earned her BFA in Design from San Jose State University in 2013 and spent ten years working across the design industry—from nonprofit documentary storytelling to art direction in the photo world.
After years of creative work in digital spaces, Jo was drawn to ceramics as a more tactile, expressive medium. A single workshop revealed her ability to translate her design knowledge into sculptural form, allowing her concepts to evolve more freely through hands-on, intuitive making.
Jo’s sculptural work is rooted in the surreal and organic, often drawing inspiration from imagined organisms and ambiguous forms. Her process embraces unpredictability and transformation.
She has exhibited at CCACA, SOMArts, Julie Steingart Gallery, and Cult Aimee Friberg.
jokojoko.com
Yve Guzman
Yve Guzman is from the DC metro area and currently lives in Los Angeles, CA. She received her BFA in Painting and Printmaking from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2013. Her process involves layering found fabric, printmaking techniques, and airbrush; by which the narrative and dimensional logic of her magical abstract landscapes are created. Within them, she explores inherited trauma from exile, grief and existentialism through the aesthetics of girlish tropical kitsch.
Yve’s work has been in group exhibitions nationally and internationally, published in New American Paintings and included in both private and corporate collections. She has participated in residencies here in the states and in Mexico.
Irma Yuliana Barbosa
Irma Yuliana Barbosa (Yuli) they/them is an interdisciplinary artist based in the Bay area and LA—working across mixed media installation, painting, drawing, sculpture, film, and photography. Their practice centers in the entanglements between ecology, ancient preservation technologies, spirituality, and erotics of grief. Barbosa holds an MFA from UC Berkeley (2023) and a BA from UC Santa Cruz (2019).
They were awarded the Eisner Prize for their film Eclipse, created in collaboration with their sister Celeste Barbosa, and received the Cadogan Award in 2022. Their work has been exhibited at Personal Space Gallery, SOMArts, BAMPFA, and Felix Kulpa Gallery in Santa Cruz.
Website: irmayulianabarbosa.com
Adriana Velez Villaseñor
Adriana Velez Villaseñor is a mixed media artist and self-taught metalsmith rooted in traditional and sculpted jewelry, freestyle metal forms, and visual narratives. Melting, shaping, and forming metals become acts of transformation—each piece reflecting her work toward returning home, whether that is in Michoacán, Mexico, her mom’s house in Sacramento, or the feeling you get when you know you belong.
Adriana works with recycled materials and everyday metals that gain richness through touch and devotion to explore the relationship between tradition, resistance, and adornment. She designs wearable art that frames and celebrates the body as a moving canvas, inspired by the parts of ourselves often hushed or shamed.
The fractals of nature guide her process, symbolizing movement, growth, and constant change. This guidance allows her to dream of a world where making becomes an act of resistance and homecoming.
She has exhibited jewelry in Chico, Sacramento, and San Francisco, taught jewelry workshops, collaborated on zines and catalogs, and held her first metalwork and photography solo exhibition, Alhajas Mexicanas, in Sacramento, California.
Kate Rusek
Kate Rusek is a multi-disciplinary artist assembling highly tactile sculptures, textile, garment and installation with an emphasis on Craft and materiality. Her work transmutes wasting and waste matter into abundant, maximalist forms with dynamic biophilic textures that interrogate perceived value and a rigid binary of ‘natural’ and ‘unnatural’. Her research and writing examines the connective edges and dissonant intersections between systems thinking and the natural world. Rusek received an M.A in Design for Sustainability from Savannah College of Art and Design and dual B.F.As in Sculpture and Costume Design from The University of Miami. Rusek has been awarded residencies at Millay Arts, The Archie Bray Foundation, Socrates Sculpture Park, Chulitna Lodge, The Hambidge Center, Red Lodge Ceramics Center, and Vermont Studio Center among others. She is the Devra Freelander Fellow at Socrates Sculpture Park for 2023 and the recipient of a Windgate Distinguished Fellowship for Innovation in Craft. She currently has public sculptures installed in Atlanta, GA, Canton, NY and Tucumcari, NM.
Select exhibition venues include Trotter and Scholer (NYC), Culture Object (NYC), Shelter Gallery (NYC), diRosa Center for Contemporary Art (Napa, CA) Ki Smith Gallery (NYC), Socrates Sculpture Park (NYC), Mizuma, Kips, and Wada (NYC), Material for the Arts (NYC), Geheim Gallery (Bellingham, WA), The Vestibule (Seattle), di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art (Napa, CA), The Archie Bray Foundation (Helena, MT) and the Gallery of Visual Arts at The University of Montana among others. Additionally, she is a Daytime Emmy winner for puppet costume design on Sesame Street. This work informs a portion of the artist's approach to tactile research, devotional craftsmanship, and sculptural materiality in her practice. She has built a career as a bespoke Tailor, builder of specialty costumes, and design/builder of puppets and puppet garments as a member of IASTE Local 764. Among other highlights, she has been on staff at Saturday Night Live since 2016 and contributed her expertise to the broader film, television, and theater industry in New York City for over 15 years. Rusek splits her time between New York City and the Washington Coast.