We are excited to introduce Cycle 18 of TAC Artist in Residence: Lucia Rosenast, Fabiola Carranza, Z. S. Qiu, Natalia Hernandez, Nicole Cheng, Honey Pierre, Camille Lescarbeau, and F. Lo Russo.
The next nine months of the AIR program will be an exciting journey of artistic development for our AIR Cycle 18 cohort. The residents will delve into a comprehensive curriculum of technical classes, textile history and conservation, and professional development, which includes weekly meetings, critiques, workshops, and field trips, and will engage with a wide network of professionals working within the textile arts field.
Learn more about the residents below and join us on October 17-18 during Gowanus Open Studios to meet them in person.
I am a 25-year-old athlete, dyer, weaver, and sculptor. My work maintains a fixation on things which surface. Influenced by my roots in analogue photography printing, I maintain a loyalty creating negatives, exposing them, and watching them bloom. Translating this to weaving, resistance is my primary markmaking tool; exploring the nexus of Cyanotype and Indigo Shibori dying, I’m discovering moments of mimicry and unity between photography and handwork.
I am an interdisciplinary artist and writer. I hold a PhD in Art History, Theory and Criticism with an Art Practice Concentration and a Critical Gender Studies Specialization from the University of California San Diego.
My artwork has been exhibited at Mandeville Gallery (San Diego), Plug In Institute for Contemporary Art (Winnipeg), the National Gallery of Costa Rica (San José), Contemporary Art Gallery (Vancouver), and at artist run centres in Canada, including Artspeak, Access, Blinkers and 221A. My writing has appeared in BOMB, Canadian Art, Public Parking, Charcuterie, C Magazine, PubLab and The Capilano Review.
My play, The Mexican Husband was published by Blank Cheque Press (2019) and by Taller California (2025). It has been staged as a reading-event at the 3rd Kamias Triannial (2020), at Artspeak in Vancouver (2019), at Deslave in Tijuana (2018), at Vinegar Contemporary in Birmingham, Alabama (2022) and at Mandeville Gallery (2025). The Mexican Husband was staged through Project [Blank] at Bread & Salt in San Diego as a full theatrical production (2026).
serena received a ph.d. in art history from the university of pennsylvania (2022), and a b.a. in art history and english from duke university (2011). elsewhere, serena designs patterns for hand knitting, and was formerly a freelance art writer. they teach writing & art history & knitting.
Natalia Hernandez is a socially engaged artist born in Mexicali BC, currently based in New York City. With works that tackle concepts of immigration, race, education, sexuality, food sovereignty, and civil rights, her practice is heavily researched and deeply rooted in personal narrative. By weaving together lived experience and external realities, Hernandez constructs narratives that speak to broader collective stories and realities.
Hernandez holds a BFA in Visual Arts from the University of California San Diego where she expanded her practice to incorporate research of archives/collections, historical and contemporary events, and qualitative structured interviews.
Hernandez carries her practice with her through participation in creative/educational initiatives and collective activism with organizations like, San Diego Pride, San Diego LGBTQIA+ Center, Centro Cultural de la Raza, through her work in residence at TEXERE (2026), and with grassroots projects committed to cultural equity and social change.
Natalia Hernandez continues to build upon her civically engaged art practice telling stories on sapphic intersectionality, cross-border life, and addressing the alarming practices active though the import of textiles and produce from Mexico to the United States
Nicole Cheng (she/they) is an interdisciplinary artist and designer based in Brooklyn, NY. Her family has migrated far distances from their ancestral lands, with five generations dispersed across six continents. With every move, her ancestors had to redefine their connection to Chinese heritage and remake a sense of home. Nicole continued this tradition growing up as an immigrant in Hong Kong and now in Lenapehoking, constantly exploring what it means to make in and of place. Her current focus is on building imagination infrastructure that will help us land in a future where every one of us – from Palestine to Sudan to the Congo and to New York – will be free.
Nicole’s work has been shown at pilot + projects; Philadelphia, Hong Kong Art Book Fair; Hong Kong, Singapore Art Book Fair; Singapore, LIC Arts Open at The Factory; New York, Franconia in the City @ Casket; Minneapolis and others. She was awarded a National Youth Award in Singapore for her work with cultural heritage conservation in 2020 and was a 2025 Forefront Fellow at the Urban Design Forum. She is currently the artist in residence at Velvetpark in Brooklyn, NY.
Cassandra Hickey (b. 1993), known as Honey Pierre, is an Atlanta-based textile artist born in Cleveland,OH, to her mother, Rhonda Harris. After serving three years in the U.S. Army, she cultivated a disciplined and reflective approach that informed her artistic practice.
Honey works primarily in punch needle, an eco-conscious textile technique, creating layered, tactile narratives that explore memory, identity, and the intersections of personal and collective experience. Her work transforms fiber into a medium for storytelling, care, and reflective witnessing.
Through research-driven studio practice and material experimentation, Honey continues to advance contemporary textile art, producing narrative-rich works that connect the personal, historical, and cultural dimensions of lived experience.
Camille Lescarbeau is a Montreal-based ecofeminist artist. She develops sculptural installations rooted in textile and handmade papermaking processes using reclaimed materials. Her research investigates care as both a material and political practice. Drawing on textile traditions, she explores the utilitarian, aesthetic, and poetic potential of discarded matter.
She holds an MFA in Visual Arts from Université du Québec à Montréal and a BFA in Art History and Studio Arts from Concordia University. Her work has been developed through residencies and presented in exhibitions, including NARS Foundation, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, and Musée de Rimouski. Alongside her studio practice, she regularly shares her research on handmade paper, craft, and ecofeminism through artist talks, panel discussions, and workshops. Her practice has been supported by the Canada Council for the Arts and the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec.
F. Lo Russo (born Bari, Italy) is a multidisciplinary artist based in Queens, New York, working across studio and therapeutic contexts.
They studied art history, film studies and psychology at the University of Texas Austin before working as a teaching artist in New Orleans and New York City. While leading drawing classes at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, they developed an interest in archaeology and material culture through close engagement with the collection.
During the early months of the pandemic, they began weaving, drawn to its tactile grounding amid isolation in an increasingly screen-based world. Their practice uses textile processes to explore how embodied forms of making offer a way of thinking through the technological systems that increasingly mediate intimacy, attention, identity, and memory. They are interested in the history of fiber technologies, and global traditions of weaving and dyeing.
F. Lo Russo received an MFA in Painting from Yale University and has attended both the Penland School of Craft and the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture. They have a background in psychoanalytic theory and maintain a private psychotherapy practice in NYC.