The Artist in Residence (AIR) program offers professional artists in the Austin area an inspiring natural setting in which to explore different mediums and further their artistic development.
The 227 acres of Wild Basin Wilderness Preserve are uniquely situated within Austin and reflect the city’s personality—at once wild and modern, natural and technologically advanced, protected and developing.
Wild Basin hosts two artists per year: in spring and in fall. Artists of all disciplines in the greater Austin area are encouraged to apply. Artists are provided a small budget for materials, supplies, and equipment, a modest stipend, and access to work space within the Wild Basin Creative Research Center and the preserve’s trail system.
The Wild Basin Artist in Residence will:
- Donate a piece created during or inspired by their residency to the Wild Basin permanent collection
- Present two workshops during the residency: one for adults and one for school-age children
- Work on premises at least one day per week
- Exhibit works created during the residency at the Wild Basin Visitor Gallery
- Be willing to be filmed, photographed or interviewed for Wild Basin promotional purposes
- Comply with all policies of Wild Basin while in residence.
Application Information
Spring 2027/Fall 2027 Artist in Residence application deadline is October 31, 2026. The new application will be available July 1st, 2026.
The 2027 Application is available NOW
Application Process
Please submit application materials by email to the Environmental Education Coordinator for consideration by the selection committee. The application must include a brief statement with goals for the residency, the preferred residency period, a resume, digital samples of work, and the signed application form. The award will be made based on merit and on an understanding of the mission of Wild Basin. Selections will be made without regard to race, religion, sex, disability, marital status, age or national origin. The deadline for Spring and Fall 2027 applications is October 31, 2026. Awards will be announced one month before the start of residency.
Fall 2026 Artist in Residence
I dwell in the city, but the wilderness is my altar.
I have spent much of my life moving between the built and natural worlds: living in cities, traveling across landscapes, and continually seeking the places where I feel most connected to something larger than myself. The more I explore, the more difficult it becomes for me to believe in the separation we have created between humans and nature. We are not visitors to the natural world. We are participants within it.
My work begins with a curiosity about the relationships that exist within and between places. I am drawn to the small details that reveal something larger: movement through a landscape, the way a trail follows the contours of the earth, the quiet presence of wildlife within a city, or the ways human structures begin to resemble the natural forms around them. Through photography, long exposures, and experimental processes such as double exposure, I look for opportunities to dissolve the boundaries we have drawn between ourselves and the environments we inhabit.
My travels have continually reshaped the way I understand those relationships. Moving through different landscapes has shown me how deeply place influences the people who live within it—and how deeply human choices influence the places we call home. Every journey has made me more aware that the relationship is reciprocal. We shape our environments, and our environments shape us.
At Wild Basin Wilderness Preserve, I am exploring this relationship through a visual conversation between Austin and the wilderness that exists within it. Through my practice, I am asking: Can wilderness truly be separate from the city when the two exist side by side?
Ultimately, I want my work to feel like a return rather than an escape. I hope these images remind us that nature is not something waiting for us beyond the edge of the city. It is beneath our feet, around our homes, within our communities, and within us. We have simply become accustomed to looking past it.
My work asks us to look again.
Special thanks to Applied Materials Foundation for their generous support of the Artist in Residence program.
Spring 2026
Samantha Melvin is an artist, art educator and advocate. Her research-based, multi- disciplinary artistic practice includes drawing, painting, and printmaking that focuses on the interaction between humans and nature. A nationally-recognized art educator, she is a contributing author to STEAM Education: An Interdisciplinary Look at Art in the Curriculum (2024). She has a M.A. in Art Education from the University of Florida (2015), and a M.F.A. in Painting from the Savannah College of Art and Design (2023).
Samantha teaches printmaking workshops at Flatbed Press, Center for Contemporary Printmaking in Austin, TX and will co-host a workshop/residency on cyanotype and monotype at La Romita, in Umbria, Italy in August. She is a master naturalist and loves
to travel. Samantha lives in the hill country outside of Austin, TX.
Fall 2025
Sarah Cypher is the author of The Skin and Its Girl (Ballantine), a Stonewall Honor Book also shortlisted for the 2024 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction. She holds an MFA from the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College, where she was a Rona Jaffe Graduate Creative Writing Fellow in Fiction. Her writing has appeared in The Rumpus, the Washington Post, Lit Hub, Electric Literature, Mizna, the North American Review, and others. Her writing and wildlife photography have received support from the Headlands Center for the Arts, Vermont Studio Center, and the Bread Loaf Environmental Writers Conference. She currently serves on the board of RAWI, a literary nonprofit that creates a community for writers of Southwest Asian and North African descent. She grew up in a Lebanese family near Pittsburgh and now lives in Austin, Texas, with her wife.
Spring 2025
Linda Wandt is a representational oil painter and instructor who moved from Long Island, New York to Texas in 1999. She obtained a BA in studio art in 2006 from The University of Texas at Austin, and then studied figure painting at Atelier Dojo. She has shown her work in local businesses, markets and art shows, and has participated in the Austin Studio Tours since 2007. Through a growing love of hiking and camping, she now enjoys solo backpacking, which is reflected in her art practice. Wandt won a Juror’s Choice Award at Art City Austin in 2018, and her work is on view in Austin City Hall for another iteration of The People’s Gallery. She teaches painting and drawing at The Dougherty Art Center and at Cordovan Art School.
Fall 2024
Alicia Philley is an Austin-based artist whose work has been exhibited in galleries such as Women and their Work in Austin and the Pleiades Gallery in New York City. She has created work in partnership with the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center and the LBJ Ranch and National Historic Park, and was awarded a 2025 residency with the Pouch Cove Foundation in Newfoundland.
Spring 2024
Sonya Berg is a visual artist based in Austin, TX. Born in Raleigh, NC and raised in suburban Philadelphia, Sonya received her MFA in painting from The University of Texas at Austin in 2010 and her BA in Studio Art from Messiah College, PA in 2005. Her current work explores the relational weight of the portrait through painting and photographic techniques, by transforming the ordinary and casual to vulnerable and elevated.
Fall 2023
Thomas Cook is an oil painter based in Austin TX. Born in Baltimore MD, he studied painting at Savannah College of Art and Design. Working primarily in oil painting, graphite powder and screen printing, his work draws heavily on the landscapes surrounding him and that of his travels.
Spring 2023
Leila Ali is a Colombian-born visual artist based in Austin. Her work moves between modes of production that employ photography, collage, painting, and drawing. Her most recent project uses botanical art and landscape photography as a lens to reflect on common wild plants that are often overlooked and neglected, a phenomenon that has been described as "plant blindness". Leila's practice aims to invite the public to look closely and appreciate the rich botanical environment, which can sometimes be invisible and taken for granted.
Fall 2022
Ania Safko is a Ukrainian-American visual artist working in film, poetry, and photography, and a '21 graduate from the UT Austin MFA Studio Art program. Her artistic practice deals with the human impact on the landscape of the American West and the changing nature of Americans' relationship with wilderness.
Spring 2022
Juliet Whitsett. Juliet is an Art Educator with a Master’s Degree in Community-Based Arts Education from the University of Texas-Austin and Undergraduate in Art Education from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She has designed arts and environmental education programs for public institutions such as the High Line, the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, the Thinkery, Austin Discovery School and private organizations domestically and internationally.
Fall 2021
Danika Ostrowski. Ostrowski is based in Austin and is a dedicated advocate for the preservation of public lands. She paints both en-plein-air and creates in-studio work based on photographs, sketches and memories. Ostrowski began painting on the porch at Wild Basin every Friday morning until Wild Basin closed due to COVID-19 in March 2020. She restarted her residency and served as Wild Basin's Fall 2021 Artist in Residence.
Fall 2019
Precious Parker. As a visual artist, storyteller and photographer, Parker explores "the relational connection between subjects and space with subtle elements of emotion". During her residency at Wild Basin, Parker examined how humans and nature live in tandem and hopes her artwork will encourage people to reflect on their connection to nature and the spaces they occupy. In November 2019, Parker guided 14 children and adults in the technique of cyanotype nature printing.
Spring 2019
Bethany Johnson. Johnson is based in Austin and her art explores the intersection between art and science: between the poetic experience of nature and the more objective study thereof. She works mostly in the medium of drawing, intermingling the aesthetic approaches and media associated with landscape art traditions with data-oriented, informational components, such as seismic imaging, geologic surveys, and others.
Fall 2018
Jaime McCormick. McCormick’s work highlights the connection between people and the environment primarily using acrylic, gouache, and collage techniques. Passionate about conservation and preservation, McCormick hopes to create art that connects visitors to Wild Basin and sparks exploration of our natural spaces.
Fall 2017/Spring 2018
Heidi Miller Lowell. Lowell has over 9 years of experience as an art teacher and a keen appreciation for nature from her childhood in Colorado. Using 3D modeling and watercolors, the artist aims to celebrate the flora and fauna at Wild Basin, bringing attention to the importance of caring for our wild spaces.
Spring 2017
Andrea Wolf. Wolf’s work focuses on contemporary portraits of regional wildlife. The artist painted at the preserve weekly and conducting two events open to the public at the Wild Basin Creative Research Center during her time with us. An event geared to an adult audience explored the influence of local wildlife with a painting demonstration. A second event for children focused on incorporating nature in art.