The 2026 WARP Residency is underway! We arrived in Philadelphia on June 7th, and moved into our studio space at Nextfab on the North side of town. Meet the crew:
- Adam Atkinson – Austin, TX
- Joyce Lin – Houston, TX
- Anders Nienstaedt – Minneapolis, MN
- Mark Tan – Tempe, AZ
- Niv Tishbi – Tel Aviv, Israel
- Liza Stout – Phoenix, AZ
The residency scholar, Daniel Fountain, of Exeter, United Kingdom, will be joining us later this summer. We’ll do some more in-depth introductions in next week’s blog post, once the residents settle into work on their projects.
After a couple days to acclimate to Philly (including a water ice tasting and an investigation into the mysterious yellow cutouts on the power poles) we residents found ourselves whisked away to Bucks County Community College to participate in the long-running Echo Lake Collaborative Conference. With an inception in 1999, it’s been running almost as long as the WARP program, and the two have been closely tied for years (we met at least one former WARP resident at this year’s event).
It’s a hands-on woodworking and craft bonanza, with artists working nonstop for 3 days to make collaborative art pieces to sell at an auction to benefit Bucks County Community College. This year, the WARP group collaborated on a table made from a reclaimed piece of 600-year-old oak rumored to have been “admired by Washington.” This slab comes from just a branch, not the trunk!
Clockwise from left: Niv, Joyce, Adam, Liza, and Mark. Anders, who is the WARP documentarian (and your humble blogger) is not pictured because he running around with a video camera. His Echo Lake mini-documentary gives a good sense of the event’s range of creative practices, the wonderful shop facilities, and the collaborative spirit that runs throughout.
That’s it for now! Look for more news next week, including our forays into our projects and a recap of our upcoming group trip to Washington DC.