Museum & Box Office Hours
Tuesday-Sunday, 10am-4pm (Dec-May)
Tuesday-Saturday, 10am-4pm (Jun-Nov)
Visitors can find us, tour our galleries and studios, and visit the rooftop at 533 Eaton Street.
Tuesday-Sunday, 10am-4pm (Dec-May)
Tuesday-Saturday, 10am-4pm (Jun-Nov)
Visitors can find us, tour our galleries and studios, and visit the rooftop at 533 Eaton Street.
Admission to our galleries and campus is always free of charge. As a non-profit, community organization, we offer discounted fees for classes, performances and events to members of The Studios. If you are interested in the benefits of membership learn more here!
From rooftop parties to business gatherings, The Studios offers a host of unique spaces to make your event one for the ages! Learn more here.
Troubadour, vaudevillian, storyteller, adventurer, singer-songwriter, Lewis was winner of the Colorado Rocky Mountain Folks Festival Troubadour Award in 2003, New Folk Winner 2002 at the Kerrville Folk Festival in Texas and 2001 Falcon Ridge Folk Festival Audience Favorite. Lewis has performed all over the world with an array of incredible musicians, including tours with Judy Collins, Nanci Griffith, Pat Benetar and The Indigo Girls.
She’s traveled around the globe to more than 70 countries, picking up world-beat music and stories on the way; jumping box cars, riding on freight boats and has even played music with an elephant orchestra in Thailand.
Fay Ku is a Taiwan-born, New York City-based artist whose work is figurative, narrative and connects with past and present cultural histories. Most of her paintings are mixed media tableaus on translucent sheets of Mylar. She is the recipient of a 2007 Louis Comfort Tiffany Grant and 2009 New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship grant. She has exhibited both nationally and internationally and participated in several artist residencies. She attended Bennington College, Bennington, Vermont for her B.A. and holds both a M.F.A. Studio Art and M.S. Art History from Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY.
Jean Fineberg is a Jazz & R&B composer, performer on saxophone, flute and drums, a faculty member of the California Jazz Conservatory, and a recipient of grants and awards from ASCAP, the NEA, and the San Francisco Friends of Chamber Music. Performances of her work include the Kennedy Center, the Monterey Jazz Festival and the Grammys. Jean currently composes for 18-piece Jazz Orchestra as well as smaller ensembles, and has recorded on more than 40 albums. Profiles of Jean appear in numerous books, including Feminists Who Changed America and American Women in Jazz.
photo: Jane Higgins
Shea Hembrey‘s work questions reality. He seriously explores our best current understanding of the structure of reality while also often playing trickster. Currently, that exploration questions our contemporary view of the universe as revealed through physics.
He approaches art by concentrating on a singular, defined conceptual project where the ideas direct what methods and media he uses. Research is key to all of his creative endeavors while he remains a prolific maker of things.
Though always focused on developing new technical skills on his own, he has a varied formal art education.
His nine years of studying art at university include a year spent studying Maori art in New Zealand and an M.F.A. from Cornell University.
Further explore his work online through coverage on NPR, PBS, in a New York Times Magazine profile, and a popular TED talk.
Greg Hrbek is the author of three books of fiction, most recently Not on Fire, but Burning, which was an NPR Best Book of 2015. His short stories have appeared in numerous periodicals and anthologies, including Harper’s Magazine, Conjunctions, Tin House, and The Best American Short Stories 2009.
Nature has long been the subject of Christine Neill’s large mixed-media paintings. She grew up in New England and after initially studied biology at Skidmore College, graduated with a BS in Art. It was a natural transition for her from the examination of biological process in a lab to metaphorically visualizing those processes as imagery in paintings and prints. She dates her interest in the effects of climate change to early studies of the environment. In 1971 she earned a MFA at MICA’s Hoffberger School of Painting where she studied with Grace Hartigan. She is a Professor of Painting at Baltimore.
Allison Svoboda is an internationally recognized artist working in painting, installation and sculpture. Finding the edge between intuitive and deliberate mark making, Allison’s work is both ethereal and ominous. Her sumi-e collage works are intricate paintings layered to create sculptural works. These paintings, are translated into large-scale works on metal, glass and cut paper. She recently received the Hemera fellowship to study Zen and calligraphy in Japan. Her artwork can be seen in places such as the Ritz Carlton in Abu Dhabi, Hilton of Barbados, Intercontinental in Guatemala City, and the Nashville International Airport.
In 2009, as part of her Master’s study Colette Keen embarked on researching and writing A Beautiful Day aka Windows on the World, a verbatim play that focuses on the perspectives of individuals who were in New York on 9/11. The cast included Noah Wyle, Virginia Masden, and Mike Farrell, among others.
Colette recently completed her PhD (Drama) Flinders University. Her thesis Behind the Words: The ‘Art” of Documentary and Verbatim Theatre examines what puts the ‘art’ into Documentary and Verbatim Theatre.
Born in 1943 and raised in London, Bill Jacklin attended the Royal College of Art. In 1989 he was inducted into the prestigious Royal Academy of Art, and in 1991 was elected Royal Academician. Jacklin at first worked with abstraction, and as his interest changed toward studies of light and movement, he began to work with figuration. The abstract tendencies of Jacklin are present in his figurative works, as his crowded city landscapes often appear as patterns of light and dark, making them simultaneously remote and familiar.
Jacklin’s work is in collections worldwide, including the British Museum, Brooklyn Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Museum of New Tate Gallery, and the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Richard Cleaver has been working in sculpture for 45 years. He received his BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art and an MA from the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. Cleaver has exhibited nationally, including solo exhibitions at the Baltimore Museum of Art, American University Museum, Kohler Arts Center, and many others. His work is in the collections of the Crocker Art Museum, George and Dorothy Saxe Collection at the DeYoung Museum, the Baltimore Museum of Art Diane and Sandy Besser Collection at Arizona State Museum, Fuller Craft Museum and the Delaware Art Museum. Awards include the National Endowment for the Arts, Evergreen Foundation, Maryland State Arts Council and The Trawick Prize, the Franz and Virginia Bader Fund, and the Baker Artist Award.
Jean Pederson is the author of North Light books Expressive Portraits: Creative Methods for Painting People and Mixed Media Painting Workshop. She is a contributing editor for The Artist’s Magazine appeared in several of the Splash best-of-watercolor series, Watercolor Artist, Magazin’Art and has four instructional dvd’s.
Included in Canada’s Who’s Who Jean is a signature member of the American Watercolor Society (AWS), California Watercolor Association (MCWA), The Federation of Canadian Artists (SFCA), the Canadian Society of Painters in Watercolor (CSPWC) and the Alberta Society of Artists (ASA).
Jean has been honored with numerous national and international awards over the years, and has work placed in the Royal Collection in Windsor, England. Most recently, Jean was awarded the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal for contribution to the arts.
George Ciscle has mounted groundbreaking exhibitions, created community arts programs, and taught fine arts and humanities courses for close to 50 years. He trained as a sculptor, studying with Isamu Noguchi. For 15 years he developed high school interdisciplinary curriculum and work-study programs for the emotionally disadvantaged. In 1985, he opened the George Ciscle Gallery where he promoted the careers of young and emerging artists. From 1989-1996 Ciscle was the founder and director of The Contemporary, an “un-museum,” which challenges existing conventions for exhibiting art in non-traditional sites focusing its exhibitions and outreach on connecting artists’ works with people’s everyday lives. From 1997-2017 , as Curator-in-Residence at Maryland Institute College of Art, he continued to develop new models for connecting art, artists, and audiences by creating the Exhibition Development Seminar, Curatorial Studies Concentration and the MFA in Curatorial Practice.
Leigh Gallagher is a fiction writer and teacher from California. She received her MFA from the University of Michigan in 2011, where she was a Helen Zell Postgraduate Fellow and won a Hopwood Award. She’s taught at InsideOut Detroit, the Front Street Writers in Traverse City Michigan, and the Pratt Institute, and has been awarded residencies by the Lighthouse Works, the Wassaic Project, OxBow School of the Arts, and the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation.
Her short stories have appeared in literary journals such as Salt Hill and American Short Fiction, though she’s also interested in collaboration across art practices and alternative venues for her texts. Recent projects include a Risograph print set with the painter Paul Wackers, a short-story-as-album insert with musicians Alexis Georgopoulos and Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, and a lyric essay contribution to a forthcoming publication by Dispersed Holdings, New York. She currently lives in Detroit, Michigan, where she’s at work on her first full-length book, a collection of long stories.
Parini Shroff wrote her first short story at the age of 7. It is likely her best work to date. She graduated from the University of Southern California in 2006 with a BA in Literature and Creative Writing. She obtained her Juris Doctorate in 2009 from Loyola Law School; and her MFA from the University of Texas in Austin in May 2015. She been an artist in residence at The MacDowell Colony Residency, Jentel, and Kimmel Nelson Center for Arts. Her work has appeared in Salamander, Redivider, The MacGuffin, Southern Humanities Review and others. She’s currently working on her first novel.
Justin Lubke is a director and cinematographer with a passion for telling stories that can make a difference. He grew up in a tiny Montana town. After leaving home, he did social work in the slums of Rio de Janeiro and made his first film with an indigenous tribe in south India. Eventually, Justin returned to the US and earned an honors degree in filmmaking. From wounded warriors to grizzly bears, his work has earned numerous awards including an Emmy for his feature length documentary Class C: The Only Game in Town. Currently Justin is working on an elephant love story.
Dimitra Skandali grew up on Paros, a Greek island in the Aegean Sea. “I carry my island with me everywhere”, she states. She was educated in Greece and the Netherlands before moving to California, and earning her MFA in New Genres from San Francisco Art Institute in 2013.
Some of her distinctions include the 2016 2×2 Solos at ProArts in Oakland, CA, the 2014 First Place best of show from Marin MOCA, Novato, CA, the 2013 First Place-Anne Bremer Memorial Prize, the 2013 Outstanding Graduate Student Award in New Genres from San Francisco Art Institute, and the 2012 Murphy & Cadogan Contemporary Art Award and Fellowship from the San Francisco Foundation. She has also been awarded artist-in-residencies throughout California in Chandra Cerrito Contemporary, Oakland, Root Division, Jail/Cell AiR of Alter Space in San Francisco, Lucid Art Foundation in Inverness, Studio 110, Sausalito, The Bridge AiR in Los Angeles, as well as at The Studios of Key West in Florida and St.Mary’s College of Maryland. She has shown her work nationally and internationally. She lives and works in San Francisco, CA, and Paros Island, Greece.
Xuan Juliana Wang is a fiction writer. A Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, Juliana has received grants and awards from The Corporation of Yaddo, Cite des Arts International, Breadloaf Writer’s Conference, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, NYFA, and the Elizabeth George Foundation. Her short stories been published by The Altantic Monthly, Ploughshares, Narrative, Gigantic, The Brooklyn Rail, the Pushcart Prize Anthology and Best American Nonrequired Reading 2016.
Juliana was born in Heilongjiang, China but after age seven, did most of her growing up in Los Angeles. She currently lives in New York City but has also lived, studied, and eaten many things in Paris and Beijing as well.
Jessalyn Haggenjos was born in Portland, OR. She lives and works in both Portland and Mexico. She received her BFA from Pacific Northwest College of Art and holds an MFA from California College of the Arts in San Francisco, CA.
Jessalyn has been awarded artist residencies at the Golden Foundation, the BAU Institute in Otranto Italy, and Ox-Bow Artist Residency, MI. She worked as an artist in resident at the San Francisco Arts Education Project.
She has exhibited work in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Portland, Boston, Seattle, Las Vegas, and New York. She has shown internationally in Copenhagen and has been featured in art fairs in London, LA and Miami. Her work has been featured in numerous publications including New American Paintings, Verb Magazine, Cheap and Plastique Magazine and Whitefish Review. Jessalyn’s work will be featured at Russo Lee Gallery in Portland OR in January 2018.
Cincinnati native Pam Folsom is nationally known for her vibrant, energetic oil paintings of familiar scenes, depicting everything from the rolling farmland of the Midwest to the beaches of Florida’s coast. Her award-winning works have appeared in numerous juried group, two-person, and solo exhibitions. Pam’s paintings appear in private collections internationally, as well as corporate collections. Pam is currently represented by Gingerbread Square Gallery in Key West, Florida; The Miller Gallery in Cincinnati, Ohio; and B. Deemer in Louisville, Kentucky; and had gallery representation in Chicago, IL and Williamsburg, VA. A painting was currently awarded best in show at Fusion Gallery’s “Color” exhibit and two pieces were juried into the exhibit “Of Women” at Studio 7 in Queens, NY.
Image: Porch Swing Nap, oil on canvas
Produced widely in both the United States and Australia, Drew Larimore made his Off-Broadway premiere of his new play OUT OF ICELAND in the spring of 2012 starring Lea Delaria, produced by the Culture Project. He has twice been a semi-finalist at the O’Neill Theatre Conference, The Lark Playwrights’ Week, the Heidman Award, P73 Playwriting Fellowship and most recently, a writing fellow at the Hawthornden Writing Residency in Scotland. His short play, THE ANNIVERSARY, after receiving a world premiere in Australia and a U.S. premiere in New York, is published in Vintage Anthology’s recent SHORTER, FASTER, FUNNIER. His musical THE NEW PEGGY, for which he wrote the book and lyrics, was presented in concert starring Ann Harada at the Green Room.
Drew has developed plays with Asolo Repertory, Ensemble Studio Theatre New York and LA, Circle East, The Bridge Theatre Company, Artistic New Directions and the Telluride Playwrights Festival.
His film for which he wrote the screenplay, C U @ ED’s, was featured in over 15 film festivals around the country, winning the “Audience Award” at the 2013 DC Film Fest. He has several series in post-production through One Glass Video and a handful of others in development.
Deanna Krueger has exhibited in Museum of Santa Severa – Italy, Fort Wayne Museum of Art, The Illinois Institute of Art – Chicago, Berliner Liste, Aqua Art Miami, Rockford Art Museum, Lighthouse Center for the Arts in Tequesta FL, Gallery UNO Projektraum in Neukölln – Berlin, and numerous other venues. Her work resides in corporate, private, university, and museum collections in several states and in Europe, Austalia, and the Cayman Islands. She received her BFA Summa Cum Laude from the University of Michigan in 2002, MFA from Eastern Michigan University in 2004, and studied abroad in Italy in spring 2003. She has received several awards, professional development grants, and has completed residencies at Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts in Saratoga, WY, Ragdale in Lake Forest, IL, and Contemporary Artists Center in North Adams, MA. Krueger lives in Chicago where she also teaches art and design courses at Northeastern Illinois University.
Jodie Hollander, originally from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, was raised in a family of classical musicians. She studied poetry in England, and her poems have appeared in journals such as The Poetry Review, PN Review, The Dark Horse, The New Criterion, The Rialto, Verse Daily, The Best Australian Poems of 2011, and The Best Australian Poems of 2015.
She is the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship in South Africa, a National Endowment for the Humanities Grant in Italy, a Hawthornden Fellowship in Scotland, and attended the MacDowell Colony in February of 2015. Her debut publication, The Humane Society, was released with Tall-Lighthouse (London) in 2012, and her full-length collection, My Dark Horses, is published with Liverpool University Press (Pavilion Poetry). She currently lives in Avon, Colorado.
Stephanie Carpenter’s first book, Missing Persons, won the Press 53 Award for Short Fiction and was released in Fall 2017. Her prose has appeared in The Missouri Review, Witness, Nimrod, Big Fiction, The Crab Orchard Review and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from Syracuse University and a PhD in Creative Writing and American Literature from the University of Missouri. She teaches creative writing and literature at Michigan Tech University, in the northernmost reaches of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
Lucy McKeon is a writer based in New York City and assistant editor at NYRDaily. Her work has been published in The Paris Review, Buzzfeed, Newest York and more.
Sabrina Marques is an Assistant Professor of Studio Art and MFA Critic at Western Connecticut State University. She received her BA in Visual Arts from Columbia University. During college, she studied painting and drawing at the International School of Art in Umbria, Italy. After graduating from Columbia, Sabrina worked in New York with theater and movie director Julie Taymor. She attended the Yale School of Art where she received a MFA in Painting and Printmaking. Her solo exhibition titled “ Mi Patria Querida (My Beloved Homeland)” at Real Art Ways in Hartford, CT, explored her heritage as the daughter of a Cuban exile through paintings filled with stories of her family’s experience during the Cuban Revolution. She has exhibited at Wallspace and Morgan Lehman Gallery in New York, the Geoffrey Young Gallery in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, and Artspace in New Haven, Connecticut. Sabrina has been an artist in residence at The Vermont Studio Center, The Scuola Internazionale di Grafica in Venice, Italy, and The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation. Sabrina was selected for the Radius Program at the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, and received a Golden educator award from the National Art Education Association (NAEA) for her professional artwork and teachings. She has previously taught art at UCONN, Whittier College, and Connecticut College.
Jaynie Gillman Crimmins, a Brooklyn based artist, has been creating art from her shredded financial statements and mail since 2009. She currently works with her junk mail which is difficult to recycle because the inks have high concentrations of heavy metals.
Elevating the ordinary and overlooked aspects of our daily existence, her intimate pieces use an economy of means and restraint of process, inspired and influenced by Ruth Asawa’s practice and work.
Frank Wilczek’s book “A Beautiful Question” reveals that symmetry and economy are the distinctive features of beauty in nature. Her shredded junk mail is sewn and rolled meditatively to create textural surfaces reflecting these notions.
Crimmins’ work was exhibited at 2016’s SPRING/BREAK Art Show, the 8th Annual Governor’s Island Art Fair and her new project in process, Building a Blue Wall, was recently installed at the John Doe Gallery in Brooklyn. Her work is exhibited in numerous galleries throughout Brooklyn, the Hudson Valley, New England and the Southeast.
She is represented by Kibbee Gallery in Atlanta, GA.
Caylin Capra-Thomas’s second chapbook, Inside My Electric City, is available through YesYes Books. The recipient of The Louisville Literary Arts Association’s 2016 Writer’s Block Prize in Poetry and first place in The Baltimore Review‘s 2017 Summer Contest, her poems have appeared in journals including New England Review, Crazyhorse, Ninth Letter, Salt Hill, The Journal, and elsewhere. Her nonfiction has appeared in Yemassee, where it was awarded the 2016 Nonfiction Prize. In addition to the Studios of Key West, in 2018 she will also be a writer-in-residence at the Vermont Studio Center, where she was awarded a fellowship.
Annie Howe is the artist behind Annie Howe Papercuts located in Baltimore, Maryland. After graduating from the Maryland Institute College of Art with a BFA in Fiber, she worked in community arts for many years, creating and contributing to the Baltimore art community with large-scale puppetry and shadow puppets. As her love for storytelling grew through this large medium, she found her focus as an artist shifting from large 3D objects to that of the smaller more intimate medium of paper. She founded Annie Howe Papercuts in 2010, creating handmade papercuts for businesses, publications and private collections. Her illustrations are easily recognized in many branding and publishing initiatives.
With over ten years of workshop teaching experience, Annie has led workshops for small groups, large groups, young and old, artists and non- artists. Annie has taught at museums, summer camps, universities and private homes.
Erin Rehberg, M.F.A., is Co-Founder/Director, with her husband Tanner Melvin, of Side Street Studio Arts in her hometown of Elgin, IL; an interdisciplinary artist and choreographer; and devoted curator. She was the Founder and Artistic Director of Core Project Chicago, a dance-based, interdisciplinary performing arts collective, 2006-2016, which pushed the boundaries of storytelling through artistic collaboration with dramatic, sound, media and text artists and founded the Going Dutch Festival, a celebration of the female voice in dance, music, theater, and the visual arts. Erin earned a B.A. in Journalism from Western Illinois University, studied dance technique and choreography at the American Dance Festival in Durham, NC, where she was later hired the Director of Press and Marketing, and was a founding member of Kim Nofsinger’s Shelter Repertory Dance Theatre. She teaches and fuses multiple dance styles and has set work on student dancers around the midwest. Her work has been produced around the United States and in China, and she has curated site-specific performances throughout Illinois. She has curated a variety of inter-arts happenings, working closely with artists across the country regarding common themes. Erin earned her M.F.A. in Interdisciplinary Arts and Media at Columbia College Chicago in 2009 where she expanded her creative horizons by pursuing dance for the camera surrounding creative process and in live performance. She has been on faculty at Interlochen Center for the Arts and Tennessee Governor’s School for the Arts and is currently on faculty at Middle Tennessee State University and DancEd Dance Center in Northbrook, IL. Erin was a 2010 recipient of a Chicago Cultural Center DanceBridge Residency a 2011 recipient of The Studios of Key West artist residency, and the recipient of the 2016 YWCA Elgin Margaret Hillis Award for the Arts. Since moving back to Elgin in 2012, she co-founded the Elgin Ties Dance Festival (2012-2014), has been appointed to the Elgin Cultural Arts Commission, was a member of the Hemmens Cultural Center Task Force (2014-2015), and is Artistic Director of the Elgin Fringe Festival. Through its EXCHANGE program, Side Street Studio Arts aims to bring artists together in physical and creative space for the benefit of the surrounding communities.
Robin Antalek is the author of the USA TODAY bestselling The Summer We Fell Apart (HarperCollins 2010) chosen as a Target Breakout Book and The Grown-Ups (William Morrow 2015), a Sutter Home Book of the Month Club selection. Her non-fiction work has been published at The Weeklings, The Nervous Breakdown, Beyond the Margins, Writer Unboxed, and collected in the following anthologies, The Beautiful Anthology, Writing off Script: Writers on the Influence of Cinema, The Weeklings: Revolution #1 Selected Essays 2012-2013. Her short fiction has appeared in Salon, 52 Stories, Five Chapters, Sun Dog, The Southeast Review and Literary Mama among others. She was twice a Glimmertrain Magazine Award finalist, as well as a finalist for The Tobias Wolff Award for Fiction. She lives in Saratoga Springs, New York.
Born in Albany, NY Hannah Antalek graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2013 and now lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. She is a recipient of the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant and completed a residency at the Vermont Studio Center in October 2016.
Through generous sponsors we are able to provide the following extras to use during your residency:
BEST OF KEY WEST RENTALS. Generously provided your linens, bedding and towels.
FORT ZACHARY TAYLOR STATE PARK. We want you to visit the state park and beach as much as you’d like! Our pass unfortunately needs to be tied to a staff member, so you can coordinate a day to go together, or we’ve got a gift card you can use to visit on your own time. The card is in the PEAR House, be sure to bring it so you don’t have to pay the entry fee.
KEY WEST YOGA SANCTUARY. Free yoga classes all month! Register for your first class online with code ‘PEAR’ then connect with staff to get set up with a full month at your first visit.
YOGA ON THE BEACH. Meet at Ft. Zach Beach by 8:15am to flow with Nancy and Don. PEARs get your first class free!
KEY WEST PUBLIC LIBRARY. We’ve partnered with the library to offer you a library card to use during your stay. Key West Library has an extensive catalog of books and other media, plus e-books and audiobooks available for download and even some special events! Their calendar has more about what’s going on.
LAZY DOG ADVENTURES. Lazy Dog does it all – kayak and paddle board tours, rentals, lessons and classes, paddle yoga and fun boat adventures! They’ve offered a paddle pass for PEARs – simply inquire with staff about an available day and they’ll hook you up with a free rental.
WE*CYCLE. The fun way to get around town! Public transportation with 2 wheels. They provided your conch cruiser or tricycle.
The Studios accepts applications on a rolling basis from January-May of each year for the following residency season. The season runs from October-August. There is a $45 application fee to apply which supports the program.
Applications are evaluated by selection committees comprised of working artists and professionals in the applicants’ respective fields of discipline under the five categories: Visual Arts, Literary Arts, Media Arts, and Musical Arts and Performing Arts.
Acceptance to The Studios’ PEAR Program is based on the merit of past work and the potential for creative, intellectual and personal growth through the time and space to imagine new artistic work, engage in valuable dialogue and explore island connections.
Key West’s official motto, “One Human Family” reflects our commitment to living together as caring, sharing neighbors dedicated to making our home as close to paradise as we can. To that end, we encourage artists of all races, nationalities, gender identities, sexual orientations, and abilities to apply.
The Studios of Key West’s mission is to support artists, inspire creativity and build community.
The Studios was founded with the vision of bringing world class artists to the island, connecting them with local audiences and artists, and offering space for both to explore their creativity. We’ve hosted Pulitzer prize winners, world renowned artists and musicians, and introduced thousands of students to different ways of seeing and working. Our Helmerich Theater stage bristles with talent, music from our rooftop concerts flood into the neighborhood, and every month hundreds of people visit The Studios to take in new experiences and catch up with old friends.
You’ll find that the Key West community is very welcoming to new people (especially creative ones!) – and there is never a shortage of things to do. Your time is yours to do with as you choose, of course, and we respect that you’ll need plenty of time to dream, reflect and create. We do ask that you join us at two events during your residency:
Depending on the time of year, a group of about 20-40 friends and community members gather together for an informal potluck and a chance to meet our residency artists. Guests bring a dish to share (bring whatever you’d like – from chips and salsa to your favorite recipe). About halfway through the night, each of the residency artists takes few minutes to introduce themselves and talk about their work or what they’re working on in Key West (remember, it’s very casual, so no PowerPoint presentations necessary!). Writers often like to read a very short bit of their work and artists often like to open their studios to show what they are working on – but neither is necessary, whatever you feel comfortable with.
Friends new and old are invited to join us for each month’s First Thursday Open House event, when we keep our lights on late and throw our doors open to celebrate the newest work in our galleries. Stop in to say hello, relax with a glass of wine on the rooftop terrace, tour the third floor artist studios and see the just-installed exhibitions in the Sanger, XOJ, Zabar Project and Zabar Lobby Galleries.
Key West is an island community, two miles by four miles wide, at the very end of the road. Most people get around on bicycle or foot, and the neighborhoods are compact and filled with lush gardens and tropical plant life. There are Cuban groceries and café con leche on every other corner, and a mix of Latin and Caribbean influences everywhere. Known for blue skies, open water and mangrove islands, and 80 degree days in winter, Key West is removed from the American mainland by 120 miles of bridges and small islands.
Long a home to artists and creative people, the ghosts of Hemingway, Robert Frost, Elizabeth Bishop, Mario Sanchez, and Shel Silverstein still haunt our Old Town neighborhood. Flowers bloom year-round, and fruit trees proliferate. And on any given day, it’s not unusual to run into modern-day creative people, such as Judy Blume, Billy Collins, Jimmy Buffett, Meg Cabot, Terrence McNally, John Martini, Seward Johnson, or Annie Dillard.
For a small community, Key West is rich in cultural events, creative projects, and celebrations of every kind. The population is diverse and compassionate, and takes to heart the island’s famous motto: One Human Family, which reflects The Studios’ commitment to living together as caring, sharing neighbors dedicated to making our home as close to paradise as we can. Our creative community is proud of this special sense of place. We embrace an independence from the mainland, celebrate our tropical and Caribbean influences, and seek out artists and cultural leaders wanting to do the same—and gain the benefit of exile in the Conch Republic.
A limited selection of short length (4′ or less) specialty hardwoods (mostly Cuban Mahogany) can be purchased from the Woodshop. Email woodshop@tskw.org for inquiries.
For a wider variety in wood types and length, we recommend our friend on Big Coppitt, Mike. He has a great selection and is nearby. His phone number is (305) 797-5747.
Address: 6810 Front Street, Key West, FL 33040
We’re located in Safe Harbor Marina on Stock Island, just down the docks from Hogfish Bar & Grill.
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With one of the tallest buildings – and most spectacular views – in town, the Hugh’s View rooftop terrace serves as The Studios’ creative space in the sky. The terrace sits four stories above street level and offers panoramic views of the island. The Kitwald Stage glows in the golden twilight of our sunset performances.
Hugh’s View offers:
—Smaller audience sizes
—Outdoor environment
—Intimate experiences
—A rooftop bar that opens one hour prior to show time
With original seating from its days as a Masonic temple, the Helmerich Theater has been updated to also include floor seating. As a black box theater, the set up is intimate but professional, and sets the stage for concerts and performances that leave guests feeling like they really got to know the performer.
Helmerich Theater offers:
—More space and comfortable chairs
—Indoor comforts
—Intimate experiences
—A walk-up counter bar that opens one hour prior to show time
The period for applying to 2021/22 residencies is now closed. We will begin accepting residencies for the 2022/23 season, which runs from September 2022-August 2023, in January 2022. If you would like to be notified by email when the application period opens again, please fill out this form.
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