Kimberly Callas, MFA, associate professor of Art and Design, has been selected as an artist-in-residence (AiR) at the Arts Quarter Budapest (AQB), an independent art center in Budapest, Hungary. This AiR is housed in a renovated factory building, the former Haggenmacher brewery, and has exhibition galleries for contemporary art, studios for local artists, and provides space for an experimental sound studio and performance. The AQB residency offers opportunities for the residents to integrate into the Budapest art scene and assists in establishing professional connections that support work and career development.
Jurors chose five international artists, including Callas, to participate in the AQB March residency. Jurors included: Katalin Timár, art historian, curator at Ludwig Museum – Museum of Contemporary Art Budapest; Zsolt Petrányi, art historian, head of the Contemporary Collection at the Hungarian National Gallery; and János Sugár, artist, professor at the Intermedia Department of the Hungarian Academy of fine Arts, Budapest.
Artists-in-Residence live in an apartment in the arts center and have separate studios to complete their projects. Callas will be working on drawings and digitally sculpting a series of life-size figurative polychromed sculptures and reliefs for a project called Ocean Bodies. Callas began this project while an AiR with the Urban Coast Institute. This socially engaged art project and exhibit is designed to raise awareness of the importance of the ocean in climate regulation and stability, and its vital role as habitat while exploring ways in which the ocean shapes our symbolic consciousness as a symbol of the cosmos and the deep unconscious. An exhibit of the completed work will be shown at the Ice House Gallery at Monmouth University in January 2025.