CURRENT RESIDENTS
The Beard and Weil Galleries are thrilled to welcome Maia Hay and Magda Leon as our 2026 Artists in Residence. Using the galleries as a studio, Hay and Leon will engage the campus through their work in printmaking, performance, painting, and mural creation from January 15-February 14, 2026.
Magda Leon, a Guatemalan-born multidisciplinary artist currently residing in Providence, RI, specializes in printmaking, installation art, and social practice art. She discovered her love for creativity while drawing on her grandmother’s kitchen floor as a child. Her work stems from a personal experience of living with a bicultural identity, which she cariñosamente refers to as ‘De aquí y de allá’ (From here and from there). Leon graduated from the Community College of Rhode Island, with an Associate’s degree in Social Work in 2002 and earned her BA in Printmaking from Rhode Island College in 2021 and she received an MFA from MassArt in 2024.
Leon will be working on Storytime: Removable Lives, a performance and installation that brings visibility to testimonies shared by family, friends, and community members who have experienced border crossings, displacement, separation, and migration. Originally staged as a question-and-answer exchange between a passport agent and an unaccompanied child, the performance echoes the first of forty questions asked of minors in asylum processing. The work exposes how power evaluates and measures a life in moments of vulnerability. She will hold two workshops titled “Printing What We Carry.” Participants will create relief prints inspired by memories, objects, or phrases that have traveled with them or their families. The workshop will focus on storytelling, personal boundaries, and allowing the printmaking process to speak where words may be difficult. These prints will be displayed collectively as a temporary wall of shared stories, expanding the project and allowing the community to contribute their voices.
Maia Shelby Hay is a visual and emerging public artist based in Massachusetts, whose work emphasizes the significance of natural pigments and the stories they tell, creating a dialogue between the viewer and the environment. Her research examines the restrictions and accessibility concerns of socially engaged practices aiming to develop new approaches that harness recycled materials and innovative methods to promote alternative forms of creation. Hay graduated from Wheaton College with a BA in Visual Art and Political Science in 2020. She received a Watson Fellowship and traveled across Canada, Portugal, South Africa, Serbia, and France in 2023 studying the vital role of post-pandemic public art. Hay completed an MA in Art and Ecology at the Burren College of Art Ballyvaughan, Ireland in 2025.
Hay will create a community-designed mural in the stairwell of the Diana Davis Spencer Discovery Center. Basing her design on community input, Hay will use recycled paint from Wheaton’s paintshop to transform this busy space with color and light. All members of the Wheaton community are invited to participate through the design process and community painting sessions. Additionally in the galleries Hay will be developing new large scale paintings using recycled materials and natural pigments and dyes often made from plant material Hay has grown herself.
About the residency and how to apply
Applications for the residency are now closed.
The Beard and Weil Galleries residency plays an important role in bringing contemporary art to the Wheaton community while supporting the development of new work by contemporary artists.
Housed within the Beard and Weil Galleries in the Watson Arts Building on Wheaton College’s campus in Norton, MA, the residency supports the artistic development of professional artists while advancing creative and artistic excellence within the Wheaton community. The Galleries provide access to Wheaton’s unique artistic, intellectual, and institutional resources to support the artist in the conception and development of a body of work while in residence.
For many artists, dedicated time and space to create work is difficult to come by. Whether it is finding an affordable studio or having the financial means to dedicate time to researching, creating, iterating and experimenting outside of the pressure to produce a finished product. This program will offer exactly that to artists who are at a point where they need this type of support. The residents bring new voices to Wheaton outside of a student teacher relationship. These artists will be on campus working and sharing their process in an open, generous, transparent way. We hope for spontaneous conversations, thoughtful collaboration and fruitful discovery in whatever form it takes.
PAST RESIDENTS
ADJUA GARGI NZINGA GREAVES & BLÁITHÍN HADDAD
August 30–October 14, 2023
The Beard and Weil Galleries welcomed Bláithín Haddad and Adjua Gargi Nzinga Greaves as our inaugural artists in residence in 2023. As part of their simultaneous six-week long residencies at the Beard and Weil Galleries, Haddad and Greaves will developed new work, visited with classes, held open studio hours, collaborated with each other and across academic fields, and held a Lego printmaking workshop.