Announcing Our 2022 Residencies!

2022 Writer in Residence Faylita Hicks
2022 Writer-in-Residence 

We are excited to announce that our 2022 Writer in Residence is Faylita Hicks! Our writer-in-residence program was created for writers who have chosen to use their lived experiences of state-sanctioned violence in their creative work. With support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, we invite our writers to build alongside our archive of memory, and to cultivate transformative justice. With our residency program, we hope to carve out a space for writers to create dynamic pieces that engage the impacts of the carceral state as well as what narrative power can be. This creative work expands upon the interviews and materials in our archives.

Faylita is a queer Afro-Latinx activist, interdisciplinary artist, and writer of both poetry and prose. Born in South Central California and raised in Central Texas, they use their intersectional experiences to advocate for the rights of BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ people. They are the author of HoodWitch (Acre Books, 2019), a finalist for the 2020 Lambda Literary Award for Bisexual Poetry; the Editor-in-Chief of Black Femme Collective; and a new voting member of the Recording Academy. Their personal account of their time in pretrial incarceration in Hays County is featured in the ITVS Independent Lens 2019 documentary, “45 Days in a Texas Jail,” and the Brave New Films 2021 documentary narrated by Mahershala Ali, “Racially Charged: America’s Misdemeanor Problem.” Faylita received a BA in English from Texas State University-San Marcos and an MFA in Creative Writing from Sierra Nevada University. You can listen to their 2021 spoken word album, A New Name for My Love, here.

2022 Artists in Residence Mark Menjivar and Hollis Hammonds
2022 Artists-in-Residence

We are also pleased to announce that our current Artists in Residence, Hollis Hammonds and Mark Menjivar, will be continuing their time with us. Both Hollis and Mark have produced thoughtful and beautiful work that engages our collaborators and their contributions to our archive. Last year, Hollis worked with our writer-in-residence Jorge Antonio Renaud to create illustrations for his poetry, and Mark showed exhibits of his work investigating the theme of capital punishment inspired by and based on our archive of David Lee Powell’s papers. Powell was convicted of murder and executed by the state of Texas in 2010.

Hollis is an Austin-based artist and Professor of Art at St. Edward’s University, where she is the Chair of the Department of Visual Studies. Her dystopian drawings and found-object installations have been widely exhibited throughout the US. Built on threads of personal memory tied to the public collective consciousness, her work reflects the evidence of war, natural disasters, environmental degradation, and violence in America. Her recent collaboration with poet Sasha West has resulted in a new body of work related to climate change and climate grief. Hollis is the author of Drawing Structure: Conceptual and Observational Techniques, and has had her creative work featured in multiple publications. 

Mark is a San Antonio-based artist and Associate Professor in the School of Art and Design at Texas State University. His work explores diverse subjects through photography, archives, oral history and participatory project structures. He holds a BA in Social Work from Baylor University and an MFA in Social Practice from Portland State University.

Mark has engaged in projects at venues including the Rothko Chapel, the Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, Eastern State Penitentiary, The Houston Center for Photography, The San Antonio Museum of Art, The Puerto Rican Museum of Art and Culture, Blue Star Contemporary Art Museum and the Krannert Art Museum.