Recent Weekend Residency
- thebriarcombeinsti
- Oct 27, 2025
- 2 min read
It is beginning to get chilly in Bolinas, but we recently got to spend a sunny weekend with some brilliant arts at the institute. As our community continues to grow, we are grateful to be able to provide our little home away from home as a space to learn, experiment, discuss, and create.
Eric Rodenbeck is a designer, ink maker and fermentor. He is the founder of Stamen, a data visualization and cartography design studio in San Francisco, and has worked with The Getty Museum, MoMA, The Dalai Lama, The Smithsonian, and many other arts organizations and thinkers. We got to spend the weekend watching Eric explore his interdisciplinary art practice.
Award winning filmmaker Kelly Duane de la Vega also joined us for the weekend. Kelly has a unique and detailed eye for story telling, creating work about institutional power, race and class, that aims to change the world through social justice. She has received awards and nominations from the NAACP, The Tribeca Film Festival, The Emmys, The Peabody Awards, and many more. But, part of an artist retreat is finding time away from the world to rest and think. At Briarcombe, when not working on upcoming projects, Kelly got to relax with some delicious food, and our founder’s dog.
Food is itself an art, and a core part of creating community. We are lucky to have incredible local produce. We picked up these veggies from the Gospel Flats Farm Stand. Our lovely artists come together every day to take a break, cook, and share about their projects.
Johanna St. Clair joined us this weekend, painting her colorful take on the natural world around the institute. Johanna always carried around her “pocket studio” to capture her observations in small ink drawings. Her larger paintings, shown all over the world, expand these impressions of foliage, using vibrant oil paints on large canvases.
After a weekend with such wonderful creators, we reenter the world ready to experiment and create, finding new ways to make art and build community.