Sam Fox School Announces 2026-27 Paris Residencies

The Sam Fox School has selected the next group of artists and designers for residencies at the College & Graduate School of Art’s Paris studio at the Cité internationale des arts. Opened in 1956, the Cité is a complex of live-work spaces that hosts approximately 1,200 artists in all disciplines each year. The studio residencies provide WashU alumni, faculty, and students a place to focus on the development of their work, broaden their international network, and immerse themselves in French culture. 

The Sam Fox School recently invested in renovations for its studio space at the Cité, which the university has held since 1985. 

In addition to the residencies awarded below, two additional slots per year are held for new graduates awarded the John T. Milliken Foreign Travel Award.

John Early, MFA ’10, senior lecturer and undergraduate academic advising coordinator, will continue his research into basketball by focusing on the rich history and culture of the sport in Paris — including the world’s oldest surviving basketball court, a short walk from the studio. Early intends to create a small body of two-dimensional work while in Paris, followed by a larger project that highlights the importance of “playable, vibrant, and well-maintained,” basketball courts in the St. Louis community.

Lola Ayisha Ogbara, MFA ’20, intends to write a series of “speculative elegies about the lives of Black American writers and artists, like Augusta Savage, who spent time in Paris; using Paris’ historical connection to the Harlem Renaissance…as a spatial ground for research.” Ogbara’s practice utilizes visual and sonic mediums to explore collective memory and more.

Emmy Thelander, BFA ’10, plans to deeply study the city’s architecture by foot, collecting photographs of balconies as research for a large installation of miniature balcony sculptures. Thelander has already gathered research in New York, Des Moines, Rome, Istanbul, Mexico City, and Berlin, exploring the connections between balconies, leisure, and capitalism.

Arno Goetz, BFA ’20, creates work that explores the relationship between urbanism and nature, examining how different land usage reveals a society’s value systems. During the residency, he intends to create public-facing performances, posters, and prints, along with site-specific rogue gardens. Noting the public’s apprehension about the Seine’s safety following the 2024 Olympic Games, one of Goetz’s ideas includes activating the river by encouraging a hazmat suit leisure experience, an interaction he calls “research-based, political, and silly.”

Carla Fisher Schwartz, MFA ’13, plans to study a World War I-era decoy Paris deployed to confuse German bombers by its carefully designed lighting, mimicking the real city. Based on her research into the decoy’s history and construction, along with the city’s current light quality, Schwartz will create paper sculptures. Schwartz’s practice looks at the relationship between “the mapped image and emerging notions of exploration, virtuality, and the simulated environment.”

Martin Smick, BFA ’00, will visit archives in Paris and research French pochoir — a stenciling technique — aiming to recreate historical methods while also expanding the “creative potential of pochoir within contemporary printmaking, painting, and mixed-media practices.” Smick noted that documenting the slow, handmade processes and their relevancy to sustainable practices will provide further resources for artists interested in traditional printmaking.

For more information about the Paris studio residency, visit samfoxschool.washu.edu/collaborations.