Patricia Valian Reser Artist-in-Residence
Location: The Patricia Valian Reser Center for the Creative Arts (PRAx)
Annually appointed, the Patricia Valian Reser Artist-in-Residence creates work at PRAx in collaboration with a cohort of 10-14 Oregon State University arts students, who also apply to the program on an annual basis. Artists working in any performance-based medium are invited, from theatre or music or to digital, conceptual, or experimental mediums. A partnership of PRAx and the School of Visual, Performing, and Design Arts, the program especially welcomes artists focused on contemporary impact and those working in areas outside of traditional canons or beyond disciplinary boundaries. The program flexibly accommodates artists at various career stages: emerging artists may benefit from holding a parallel teaching position as visiting professors in the arts at Oregon State University, while established artists unable to relocate to Corvallis for the full year may interact with the student cohort at times and moments suited to the work under development. The only creative expectation is that the residency result in a collaborative work presented at PRAx in which the student cohort plays a significant role.
For 2024-25, PRAx and the OSU School of Visual, Performing, and Design Arts are delighted to announce the inaugural Patricia Valian Reser Artist-in-Residence: five-time Grammy-winner and arts-residency advocate esperanza spalding.
Artist Bio
Born in 1984 in Portland, Oregon, esperanza spalding is an eaabibacliitoti* artist, trained and initiated in the North American (masculine) jazz lineage and tradition. Her work interweaves through various combinations of instrumental music, bass playing, improvisation, singing, composition, poetry, dance, therapeutic research, storytelling, teaching, regenerative agriculture, urban land and artist-sanctuary custodianship, and growing in love as a daughter, sister, cousin, niece, auntie, great-auntie, and friend, while collaboratively decolonizing within and through her hometown community. She founded and Co-Directs Prismid Sanctuary, a nonprofit that creates and stewards free artist residency, performance, and workshop space in Portland, Oregon.
Milton + esperanza is spalding’s first new album release since 2021's songwrights apothecary lab, which, along with 2019’s 12 Little Spells, both won Grammy Awards (Best Jazz Vocal Album). Last year spalding released a protest song entitled “Não Ao Marco Temporal” that was recorded in Rio and addresses the Temporal Framework, an initiative in Brazil that threatens Indigenous Brazilians’ land rights and poses a major risk to the Amazon rainforest.
A 5-time Grammy winner and 11-time nominee, spalding has previously released 8 full length albums and, in addition to working with her heroes including Nascimento and Shorter, has collaborated with Q-Tip, Janelle Monae, Robert Glasper, Terri Lyne Carrington and many others.
With her dance project “Off Brand gOdds” and her therapeutic music incubator “Songwrights Apothecary Lab,” she co-leads performance, teaching, workshop, and therapeutic-arts research residencies in collaboration with colleges and arts venues across the Americas and throughout the world. She is a 2024 recipient of the Doris Duke Foundation Artist Award and a 2016 Ford Foundation “Art of Change” Fellow.
*European-African ancestored being influenced by American cultures living in Indigenous Territories of Turtle Island
Workshops
During April 2025, esperanza will offer a series of intimate workshops at PRAx exploring the thought-provoking depths of collaborative artmaking. Based on participant engagement, esperanza and dance collaborators in Off Brand gOdds will lead masterclasses and workshops for shared vocabulary development and improvised co-creating between music and dance. These guided exploratory workshops will be followed by group discussion. Learn more and sign up.
Residency Details
One artist annually in any performance-based medium.
Artists are appointed as year-long residents, with the specific terms customized on a case-by-case basis. Paid teaching opportunities as visiting professors held in parallel to the residency are generally available for interested artists. The major expectations include (1) year-long engagement with a cohort of 10-14 OSU arts students, who are themselves selected by application; (2) the presentation of a collaborative work at PRAx in which the student cohort plays a significant role.
TBA in Winter 2025
Application information will be posted as part of the call in Winter 2025.
Awardees are selected by a committee that includes appointees from PRAx and from the School of Visual, Performing, and Design Arts.
The residency is made possible by a generous endowment from Patricia Valian Reser ’60, ’19 (Hon. Ph.D), and is supported by PRAx, the OSU Foundation, and the School of Visual, Performing, and Design Arts.