A Plank in a Shipwreck: The Windgate Arts Residency Program in Wood 2025

August 1 – October 26, 2025

A Plank in a Shipwreck

Tabula in naufragio—a Latin phrase meaning “a plank in a shipwreck”—has been used in legal contexts to describe a final hope, a last lifeline. Here, the phrase offers an apt visceral metaphor for the bold leap each 2025 WARP Wood Fellow has made: crossing oceans and borders, letting go of safety, and trusting in a collaborative, uncertain process.

This year’s residency brought together six artists and a scholar whose practices span installation, sculpture, marquetry, animation, performance, social engagement, and research. For two months, they have immersed themselves in an environment that encourages experimentation, exploration, and exchange. The renowned Windgate Wood Arts Residency Program (WARP Wood), now in its twenty-eighth year, demands not perfection, but presence—testing each artist’s capacity to float, flail, and ultimately surface with something new.

2025 Windgate Resident Fellows

Follow along on the WARP Wood Blog.

Meet the 2025 WARP Wood Fellows! Join us for the WARP Wood Open Studio Day, in memory of Lee Bender, on July 12, 2024, at NextFab.

Opening reception with the Windgate Resident Fellows | Aug 1, 5:30-8 PM | Gallery talk, 6-7 PM

Shop the exhibition by clicking HERE. 

This year’s Windgate Arts Residency Program in Wood and Exhibition is generously supported by the Cambium Circle Members of the Museum for Art in Wood, donors to the Windgate Arts Residency Program in Wood appeal, the Phil F. Brown Fund, Bresler Foundation, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, Philadelphia Cultural Fund, the Klorfine Foundation, and Windgate Foundation. Special thanks goes to the WARP Wood committee, the organizing committee of the Echo Lake Collaborative Conference, the Organic Recycling Center in the Philadelphia Parks & Recreation, and Debbra Soffer in memory of Michael Soffer.