Frank Juárez
In 2021, the Peninsula School of Art hosted its artist-in-residence program with 6 artists from across the country. I learned about this program via social media. Since then, visiting this program has become an annual Winter tradition. Lucky for me, each time we visited we ended up knowing one of the two artists.
According to the Peninsula School of Art website, PenArt has long placed a value on taking risks and pursuing new directions throughout our 57-year history — and it’s with that spirit that we’re thrilled to support today’s artists through our Artists-in-Residence program.
Designed for artists of all career stages, the Artists-in-Residence program is an immersive studio experience awarded to six individuals per year. The program prioritizes time and space for its residents to engage fully in their creative practice—creating uninterrupted opportunities to experiment and pursue new projects and ideas.
In an environment that encourages contemplation, experimentation, and exchange of ideas, this program is invested in new modes of thinking and working in visual art.
This Winter we visited Saukville-based artist Nicole Shaver and Philadephia-based artist, Morgan Thomas Shankweiler.
Nicole Shaver (she/her) grew up along Lake Michigan, where she skipped rocks and watched fishermen gut salmon as a child. Largely inspired by ideas of place and belonging, she researches geographical sites and employs them as metaphorical compasses to navigate the space between reality and fantasy, the banal and the sublime.
She received her BFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and her MFA from the University of Iowa. She has attended artist residencies in Colorado, Iceland, North Carolina, Ohio, Portugal, Vancouver, and Wisconsin, while exhibiting widely throughout the United States and Scandinavia. Her work has been featured on NPR’s All Things Considered and published in New American Paintings and Studio Visit Magazine.
Shaver is committed to growth of the artistic community in Wisconsin, working as Director at the MARN ART + CULTURE HUB. She maintains a painting studio in Saukville, Wisconsin, shoots 35mm film, runs, swims and throws rocks when permitted.
Connect with Nicole on Instagram at @nicolejshaver or visit nicolejshaver.com
Morgan Thomas Shankweiler splits her studio time between the Philadelphia suburbs and the coast of Maine. She graduated with sociology and studio art majors from Williams College (Massachusetts) and studied Mughal miniature painting with Ajay Sharma in Jaipur, India. Her background in sociology informs her work, which is a study in time, memory, community, chance and the commonalities of human experience. Shankweiler’s award-winning work has been featured in the 2020 online archive of AI39, online through MuralArts Philadelphia and ArtsBenicia, has been shown in galleries in Boston, New York, New Jersey, Indianapolis, and Philadelphia and she has been honored with residencies at SVA and Penland School of Craft. Her current practice focuses on the meditative and aleatoric creation of intricate rope and knot paintings and drawings. These works examine relationships, social systems and community networks through metaphorical still-life and mathematical abstraction.
Connect with Morgan on Instagram at @morganthomasshankweiler or visit morganthomasshankweiler.com
For detailed information on this artist-in-residence program, click here.