ranch studios artist Residency, the Eames Institute, 2025

In 2025, the Eames Institute piloted a new invitational residency program at the family’s historic ranch in Petaluma, located an hour north of San Francisco. Founded to steward and maintain the legacy of Ray and Charles Eames, the Ranch Studios Artist Residency was created to make space for inquiry, problem solving and open-ended experimentation in line with the couples lifelong collaborative work. The first year cohort included chefs, woodworkers, weavers, ceramicists, musicians and interdisciplinary artists working in a wide range of material explorations.

In January 2026, the exhibition Crafting Curiosity opened at the Petaluma Art Center, bringing together the culminating projects of all twelve of the inaugural residents: Windy Chien, Rie Dion, Jay Dion, Chris Kallmyer, Travis Meinolf, Masako Miki, Yvonne Mouser, Amy Rathbone, Kristen Stain, Nobuto Suga, Pierre Gorgui Thiam and myself.

While in residence, I focused on the theme of repair to guide my experiments. With support of the agricultural program at the ranch I learned how to make botanical inks from the abundance of natural materials in the rural landscape. As a long-time teacher of color theory, this pursuit led me into an entirely new realm of color, opening a door into a way of working that is less harmful to the planet and that dovetails into a deeper understanding of the natural world. I spent days and weeks foraging oak galls and redwood cones, harvesting numerous dye flowers from the garden and hunting for specific fungi. The collection of over a dozen inks and watercolors tell a story of land and place through color. Alongside this, I spent time mending a skirt made of a fragile navy blue linen that looks and feels like silk, a fabric so thin a hole appeared after wearing it only once. The act of patching it was almost a fool’s errand, because each time I patched a hole, a new one appeared the next day. As a democracy activist and artist in equal parts, the exercise became a metaphor for tenacity and persistence even in the face of unravelling in the current political and environmental era in which we live.

The culminating projects formed a new series, REPAIR WORK, which includes a selection of bottled inks with notes on their sources, collages made with colors from the land and visible mending projects that serve as a call to action to care for the planet and society at large.