RESIDENCY UPDATE
Poetry & Collage Residency-New Orleans 2025
at Kolaj Institute Gallery in New Orleans
8-12 April 2025, with two preliminary virtual sessions on 2 and 6 April 2025
A five-day, in-person collage artist residency in New Orleans
Since 2022, Kolaj Institute has explored the intersection of poetry and collage throughout its history. In Kolaj 32, Rod T. Boyer’s article “Mind the Gap: Collision and Context in Haiku and Collage“ compares the disjunction that occurs in haiku with a similar phenomenon in collage. Since then, Kolaj Institute organized a series of residencies to explore the intersection of poetry and collage. The artists heard from guest speakers Kevin Sampsell, Renée Reizman, Rod T. Boyer, and the Poetry Foundation’s Fred Sasaki and were challenged to create page spreads to be included in PoetryXCollage, a printed journal of artwork and writing at the intersection of poetry and collage. We are interested in found poetry, blackout poetry, collage poems, haikus, centos, response collages, response poems, word scrambles, concrete poetry, scatter collage poems, and other poems and artwork that inhabit this world. To date, seven volumes of PoetryXCollage have been published.
To support artists working at the intersection of poetry and collage, Kolaj Institute organized an in-person artist residency at Kolaj Institute Gallery that coincided with the New Orleans Poetry Festival. In daily meetings, artists shared work and received feedback from one another. Prior to the residency, artists met virtually where Kolaj Institute Director Ric Kasini Kadour made presentations on the history of the project, artist practice, and the ecosystem of Poetry & Collage. Through in person discussions, artists explored how the art they make at the intersection of poetry and collage exists on the printed page and on the wall of a gallery. By participating in the New Orleans Poetry Festival, we hoped artists would connect with poets, editors, and publishers.
After the Residency, artists were invited to submit work for the PoetryXCollage journal and for an exhibition on Poetry & Collage at Kolaj Fest New Orleans 2025.
PARTICIPATING ARTISTS
11.69″x8.27″; collage. Courtesy of the artist.
Adriana Gordillo is a Colombian poet, mixed media artist, and Spanish teacher based in Saint Paul, Minnesota, USA. She has published two poetry books, Hereticum (2024) and El tiempo al revés (2025). Her creative work has also been published in Latin American and U.S. magazines. She was awarded the Victoria Urbano Poetry Prize (USA) in 2011 and Voces nuevas (Spain) in 2014. Her visual and installation work has been exhibited in “Latinx MN: Re/claiming Space in Time of Change” at the Catherine G. Murphy Gallery at St. Catherine Gallery (2024), “Art & Memory Conference” at South Texas College (2024), the “Art Show Competition” (Finalist) at the Wyoming Area Creative Arts Community in Wyoming, Minnesota (2018), and the Paradise Center for the Arts Healing Arts Gallery at District One Hospital, Faribault, Minnesota. Learn more HERE.
Julia Johnson holds a BFA from Hollins College and an MFA in Creative Writing from The University of Virginia, where she was a Henry Hoyns Fellow. Prior to joining the faculty at the University of Kentucky, she taught at Hollins University, The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and in the Center for Writers at the University of Southern Mississippi. Johnson is the author of three books of poetry, Naming the Afternoon, published by Louisiana State University Press, which won the George Garrett Fellowship of Southern Writers New Writing Award; The Falling Horse, published by Factory Hollow Press; and most recently Subsidence. She served as editor of Mississippi Review, including a special issue on The Prose Poem, as well as an anthology, 30 Years of Mississippi Review. She edited The Collected Poems of Jane Gentry. Her poems have appeared in The Cincinnati Review, Poetry International, Sentence: A Journal of Prose Poetics, Smartish Pace, Conduit, Tin House, and numerous other journals and anthologies. Johnson is currently Professor of English and was the Founding Director of the new Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program at the University of Kentucky. Learn more HERE.
6″x18″; India ink on various papers; 2023. Courtesy of the artist.
Mariam Aziza Stephan holds a BFA from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and an MFA from the University of Washington. Her work has been exhibited in the US and overseas including the Weatherspoon Art Museum, Mobile Museum of Art, Henry Art Gallery, and the Gezira Art Center in Cairo, Egypt, and is included in the permanent collections of the Raleigh Municipal Art Collection, Raleigh, North Carolina; the Mobile Museum of Art, Mobile Alabama; and the Egyptian Ministry of Culture, Cairo, Egypt. Stephan has received awards including the 2018 North Carolina Arts Council Fellowship Award, served as a 2010-11 Fulbright Scholar to Egypt, and currently serves as Professor of Painting at UNC Greensboro. Learn more HERE.
11.25″x4.5″; sculpted mixed media collage on paper; 2025. Courtesy of the artist.
Mori Anderson Hitchcock is a Black, Queer, and Nonbinary, Collage Artist from Chester, Pennsylvania with familial roots in Ohio, Georgia, and Jamaica. At Juniata College, they became a student of Art History and Criticism. After college, the artist lived in both Upstate New York along the Hudson River and also in Brooklyn, working as an archivist for both the Fellowship of Reconciliation and the War Resistor’s League, two Historic Peace and Justice nonprofit organizations. At Case Western Reserve University, they taught workshops offering comparative analyses of Black/Black Queer popular media from 2016-2020. The artist also took part in the Irene Publishing Writing Residency in Sweden. Since starting their artistic journey, the artist participated in Kolaj Institute’s Politics in Collage Artist Residency in 2021 and the Joy & Grief Artist Residency in 2025, and had their artwork published in Black Collagists: The Book (2021) and Politics in Collage (2022). Their artwork was included in group exhibitions at The Domino in New Orleans (2022), and an exhibition at Understory in Cleveland (2024-2025). Learn more on Instagram @themayorofnegropolis.
22.5″x22.5″; handmade paper, thread, fabric, pins, found objects; 2023. Courtesy of the artist.
Rose Menyon Heflin studied plant sciences for an agroecology graduate program and is an award-winning poet, writer, and visual artist working primarily in collage, papermaking, and printmaking. Her visual art has appeared in numerous state, regional, national, and international group shows, including the North American Hand Papermakers’ 2023 Juried Exhibition, “Triennial Sustainability in Chaos”, and in publications ranging from ‘zines to international journals to the Artists Beyond Boundaries calendar. She primarily creates at Artworking, a Madison, Wisconsin studio for disabled artists, where she enjoys helping autistic artists explore writing, in addition to making her visual art. Her poetry, which has been published over 250 times around the world, includes free verse, formal, performance, and prose. The artist lives and works in Madison, Wisconsin, USA. Learn more HERE.
14″x11″; digital illustration; 2022. Courtesy of the artist.
Zahirah Nur Truth holds an AS in Early Childhood Education, with an Arts Program focus from Bunker Hill Community College, and a BFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts/Tufts University, Boston. She has collaborated with the community to develop engaging learning opportunities with arts organizations and others to focus on workshops and art curation that are inclusive to all, and so much more. She has developed community partnerships with The Eliot School of Fine and Applied Arts, Boston Public Library, Institute for Contemporary Art, Boston Food Forest Coalition, The Urban Farming Institute, The Food Project, A FAR CRY, Fenway Health Center, Wheelock Family Theater at Boston University and Little Uprising. She is also the co-creator of Un-ADULT-erated Black Joy, an all-Black mother arts collective dedicated to uplifting joy in motherhood and finding liberation in parenting. However her art manifests, it is always her voice—her way of processing, healing, and calling others to embrace love, growth, and transformation. The artist lives and works in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. Learn more HERE.
About the New Orleans Poetry Festival
From the organization’s website: “The mission of the New Orleans Poetry Festival and Small Press Fair is to create a space for an inclusive and diverse group of writers to collaborate, share and influence each other while also being immersed in the distinctive literary culture of New Orleans. Our goal every year is to bring in poets and performers from across the globe to share their work and research in topics not only specific to writing but to all aspects of the Humanities, including cultural, political, ecological and historical disciplines relevant to contemporary New Orleans, Louisiana, and the world. We showcase the best writers New Orleans has to offer to our visitors, and to the local community we try to offer the most compelling authors from across the nation and the globe. The Festival is highly participatory with events ranging from workshops where you will be generating writing to open mics where you can share your work, from formal readings and panels to the most informal and collegial interactions and collaborations. For both locals and visitors we invite the active inspiration of four days of poetry immersion and collaboration, hopefully fostering further explorations and creations that continue beyond the time spent here in New Orleans.” The festival runs 10-13 April 2025. www.nolapoetry.com
FACULTY
15″x11″; book illustrations and collage on watercolor paper; 2024. Courtesy of the artist.
Ric Kasini Kadour
Ric Kasini Kadour, a 2020-2021 Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts Curatorial Fellow, is a writer, artist, publisher, and cultural worker. Working with the Vermont Arts Council, Kadour curated four exhibits: “Connection: The Art of Coming Together” (2017) and Vermont Artists to Watch 2018, 2019 and 2020. In 2017, he curated “The Art of Winter” at S.P.A.C.E. Gallery in Burlington, Vermont. In 2018, Kadour curated “Revolutionary Paths: Critical Issues in Collage” at Antenna Gallery in New Orleans, which bought together collage artists whose work represents the potential for deeper inquiry and further curatorial exploration of the medium; followed in 2019 by “Cultural Deconstructions: Critical Issues in Collage” at LeMieux Galleries in New Orleans, which furthered the conversation; and “Amuse Bouche”, also at LeMieux Galleries in 2023 and 2024. Since 2018, he has produced Kolaj Fest New Orleans, a multi-day festival & symposium about contemporary collage and its role in art, culture, and society. As Curator of Contemporary Art at Rokeby Museum in Ferrisburgh, Vermont in 2019 and 2020, he curated three exhibitions, “Rokeby Through the Lens” (May 19-June 16, 2019), “Structures” (August 24-October 27, 2019), and “Mending Fences: New Works by Carol MacDonald” (July 12-October 25, 2020). He also curated “Contemporary American Regionalism: Vermont Perspectives” (August 17-October 20, 2019); “Where the Sun Casts No Shadow: Postcards from the Creative Crossroads of Quito, Ecuador” (November 1-30, 2019); and “Many Americas” (August 20-November 27, 2022) in the Wilson Museum & Galleries at the Southern Vermont Arts Center. “The Money $how”, co-curated with Frank Juarez, was presented at the AIR Space Gallery at Saint Kate-The Arts Hotel in Milwaukee, Wisconsin (April 10-September 12, 2021). For Birr Vintage Week & Arts Festival in Birr, County Offaly, Ireland (August 13-20, 2021), he curated “Empty Columns Are a Place to Dream”, which traveled to the Knoxville Museum of Art in January-February 2022. At 516 ARTS in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Kadour co-curated with Alicia Inez Guzmàn two exhibitions: “Many Worlds Are Born” (February 19-May 14, 2022) and “Technologies of the Spirit” (June 11-September 3, 2022). In 2023 at the Knoxville Museum of Art, Kadour curated “Where the Sun Casts No Shadow: Postcards from the Creative Crossroads of Quito, Ecuador” (January 9-February 16, 2023) and “Mythical Landscape: Secrets of the Vale” (March 17-May 28, 2023). In September 2023, he curated “Word of Mouth: Folklore, Community and Collage” at A’ the Airts in Sanquhar, Scotland. His first short film, The Covenant of Schwitters’ Army, debuted at Collage on Screen during Kolaj Fest New Orleans 2023. His second, Joy Is Paper, debuted at Collage on Screen during Kolaj Fest New Orleans 2024.
At the Kolaj Institute Gallery, Kadour curated “Kolaj Institute Grand Opening Exhibition” (March 9-April 14, 2024); “Collage the Planet: Environmentalism in Art” (April 19-May 26, 2024); “Magic in the Modern World” (June 1-August 11, 2024); “Advanced Wound Healing Techniques: Collage by Robbie Morgan” (August 16-October 6, 2024); “Temporal Geolocation: How Place & History Inform Identity in Collage” (October 11-November 24, 2024; and “Camera & Collage” (November 29, 2024-January 25, 2025).
Kadour is the editor and publisher of Kolaj Magazine. He has written for a number of galleries and his writing has appeared in Hyperallergic, OEI, Vermont Magazine, Seven Days, Seattle Weekly, Art New England (where he was the former Vermont editor) and many others. Kadour maintains an active art practice and his photography, collage, and sculpture have been exhibited in and are part of private collections in Australia, Europe and North America. In January-February 2020, he was artist-in-residence at MERZ Gallery in Sanquhar, Scotland. He holds a BA in Comparative Religion from the University of Vermont. Kadour splits his time between Montreal and New Orleans. www.rickasinikadour.com