EMERGE
The EMERGE AIR program aims to elevate and support artists in the emerging phase of their creative careers by providing 24/7 access to studio space, creative community, and related department tools and equipment, thereby broadening and strengthening the greater creative community in Maine.
Application decisions will be made by a small panel of local professional artists with extensive knowledge in print or clay. The 2025 - 26 EMERGE Artist in Residence panelists include Elizabeth Jabar (print), Ian Colewell (printmaking & EMERGE AIR Alumni), and Aidan Fraser (ceramics).
Important 2025 dates:
Application opens: March 1st
Application Deadline: April 30th
Notification: late May
Announcements: early June
Info Session #1: February 25
Info Session #2: March 18th
There are two EMERGE sessions per year hosting a print and clay artist during each one.
Session 1: September 1, 2025 - January 31, 2026
Session 2: March 1, 2026 - July 31, 2026
EMERGE AIRs have access to:
24/7 private studio space for five months
Department tools & equipment
Creative community
Members-only events
$250 stipend for materials
Professional photoshoot
Spotlight in the RWS newsletter
Opportunity to access additional departments
10% membership discount upon completion of the program
Pictured: 2024-25 Session 1 Print AIR Bea Willemsen.
Photo credit: Bret Woodard
Pictured: 2024-25 Session I Print AIR Julia Arredondo.
Photo credit: Bret Woodard
2025 - 26 Session 1 EMERGE Artists in Residence
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Olivia Propeck
2025-26 EMERGE AIR: Clay
Olivia Propeck (she/ they) is the 2024-25 RWS Session II EMERGE Artist in Residence in Clay. Olivia makes illustrated vessels that depict quiet domestic moments of queer relationships. They also practice photography as a form of documentation. Olivia holds a BFA in Ceramics from MECA&D.
There is a good amount of improvisation in Olivia's process. Their aim is to make forms that are full or soft with a lived-in feel. They're open to opportunity and allow things to change along the way. "I think you can discover new solutions that way and it prevents me from getting bored." Even though having a plan is comforting, Olivia enjoys little imperfections and changing the plan because they don't like to make the same thing twice. There's a lot of trial and error that goes into making new things all the time. Things can go wrong in the kiln and letting go is something they are learning to do. It's necessary to have a certain level of detachment to the work because a lot is out of your control and things don't come out how you anticipate. When a work is too controlled it can look stiff. Olivia is excited by the challenges of working in ceramics because it keeps them from getting bored.
Olivia’s practice is organized usually with a timeline and a sketch as well as a research component. When Olivia thinks about ceramics they think a lot about lineage. Ceramics is a material and medium that is one of the most archival. We learn about ancient cultures through their ceramics. When Olivia thinks about representing queer culture they think it’s important to portray it in a very honest way. “Ceramics last way longer than you ever will, so thinking about what you want to leave behind and how you want your community to be remembered is overwhelming.” They put out a call to interview and document the spaces of local queer couples and were overwhelmed with the amount of responses. They interviewed about ten couples and they’re trying to include everyone because one couple's home can’t be representative of the entire community. Olivia is cognizant of making each vessel and their illustrations feel unique and loosely representative of the couples they interviewed without turning them into caricatures. Working in a medium that lasts forever and abstracting the space a little bit allows for more fun and play and freedom.
The illustrations depict colorful furniture or objects or clothing, personal items that hold meaning for the people Olivia interviewed that tell the story of who these spaces were made by. The illustrations do not usually include figures because Olivia wants the spaces to be the point. This is important to Olivia because, “Queer people, especially, like to nest and collect objects and things they feel represent a part of them so that their spaces become a visual representation of who they are and what they like or the people they love. You don’t often feel accepted in the world, so your personal space is the one thing you can control and insert yourself into and express yourself there.” It’s about claiming space without feeling judged. Olivia grew up in the midwest and didn’t have any exposure to queerness. The interviews have created a stronger sense of community for Olivia, which can be comforting in a world that often feels chaotic and out of control.
The symbols they use in their illustrations are symbolic of queer culture, such as a UHaul moving truck. A ‘UHaul lesbian’ is a stereotype wherein queer women fall in love faster and more intensely and move in together quickly. “I think Sapphic people often make emotional connections a little bit quicker and more intensely, I’ve noticed.” Olivia believes this is because you can exist freely with someone who understands the basis of your lived experience. One of the couples Olivia interviewed rented a UHaul on their second date to move one of them to Maine from Virginia. The couple wrote each other love letters before moving in together. “The great thing about it is when you’re queer you’re inherently existing outside of heteronormative life, so you can make up your own rules. You don’t have to follow the status quo and that’s really freeing sometimes.”
Contact them via their website Oliviapropeckceramics.shop and follow them on Instagram @livpropecceramics.
*This interview has been lightly edited for brevity.
Images provided by Bret Woodard and the artist.
Delaney Burns
2025-26 EMERGE AIR: Print
Delaney Burns (she/ her) is the 2024-25 Session II RWS EMERGE Artist in Residence in Print. Her printmaking includes mostly woodcut and lithography, and she recently got back into etching. She does some photography as well.
Delaney currently teaches printmaking at UMaine where she received a BFA in Studio Art and Marketing. As soon as she stepped into the print studio for her first college class she knew it was where she was meant to be, “I’ve been printmaking ever since and I can’t imagine doing anything else.” She took all of the printmaking classes she could and went straight to graduate school where she earned a degree in Print Media and Photography from Boston University. Delaney graduated a year ago and has been trying to figure out what career will best balance with her artistic practice. She’s happy to explore multiple routes and has been carving out time to come to the studios, “I think that’s what we have to do as artists, we have to make it work and do what’s necessary.”
In graduate school Delaney constantly analyzed her artwork and realized everything connects back to her family. She likes seeing those connections and how it informs her work. She recently took film images of her mother gardening. Gardening is a lot of work that takes a great deal of tenderness and care. Delaney took the pictures, developed the film, exposed the film, scanned it to her computer, and printed out to use for acetone transfers. Delaney is a process person and what she loves about printmaking is that each stage of the process is different, "You're prepping your block, carving, and printing your block." She likes the physical intensity of printmaking as well, like graining on the stone, and has been equating artistic labor to the domestic labor she explores thematically. The series she has been continuing while in residence is inspired by the plants found in her mother's garden; plants traditionally used to reproductive health.
The project examines her family history on Chebeague Island and how the women of her family have handed down generational knowledge. She’s exploring how these themes tie into gender roles and celebrating the physical and mental labor the women of her family put into maintaining a household and family. She’s interested in the unintentional ways these roles are inherited by example and direct communication, and how it becomes implicit, internalized knowledge we aren’t always aware of. She’s also looking into the ways information about relationships and ways of handling things was intended to protect women. “I’m looking at reproductive health and how my mom taught me about periods and sex, and how that information was handed down to her.” She’s comparing experiences and how these gender roles and societal expectations inform us.
She does this by beginning with a flower that was traditionally used for reproductive health and transforming it symbolically. Delaney will take a flower and translate it into something else that carries the message she wants to express. She started with poppies, which are a symbol of grief. She has recreated them in a way that looks like they are expressing emotion, either by dropping seeds or bleeding.
Delaney is using her grandmother’s diary as a source of inspiration, which documents her daily life. “They’re really interesting because they are very impersonal; she doesn’t express emotion through them. That’s very different from how we view diaries as keeping deepest secrets and emotions.” Delaney has been tracing her grandmother’s script on drypoint and layering these diary pages with her own texts. Delaney tries to keep her own original texts more illegible by writing in cursive. It’s a stream of consciousness, which has been an exercise that allows her to not hold back. She’s thinking about words and letters as forms, and, for Delaney, it’s about the feeling that is evoked by seeing these texts rather than the meaning of the words. She's exploring what they can say on their own.
Her familial research feels just as important in the process of this transitional phase of self-discovery. Delaney is excited to be a part of the EMERGE program. It's the first time she's been in a creative space since graduate school. She's working more freely and is allowing herself to make whatever comes to mind, allowing the work to lead her to new discoveries. "The residency has really given me the space to just be an artist again."
Contact Delaney Burns through her website, delaneyburns.com, or through email, delaney.c.burns@gmail.com. Follow her on Instagram, @d_burns_art.
Images provided by Bret Woodard and the artist.
EMERGE AIR ALUMNI
Read past interviews with & see work from EMERGE Alumni