Vance Waddell Feminist Residency

Since 2021, Wave Pool has been offering a different kind of artist residency program that builds upon a private, local collection of world class work by female-identifying artists: the Sara M. and Michelle Vance Waddell Collection. This residency, like our others, will be socially-engaged, working collaboratively with our neighborhood and specific community groups within it. The Artist in Residence will have intimate access to the Vance Waddell collection, which features the work of artists who have and are working to resist oppression, subvert public scrutiny, and suggest alternative visual paradigms within the personal and political spheres. The successful candidate will respond to and build their project around the concepts and ideas offered in artworks held in the collection, as they create something new, needed, and proactive for our community.

The Resident-selected inspirational work(s) from the Vance Waddell collection will then be on public view, throughout the course of their exhibition. More importantly however, we hope that the work(s) will be activated through the socially engaged artist driven project and will extend the messages of these historically significant works out into our community with programs and partnerships.

Selected project grant awardees will receive:

• A $2,000 stipend to create a socially-engaged exhibition in our main gallery space (which includes living/travel expenses)

• A flexible live/work space on site during the course of their Residency

• Access to a private collection of radical feminist-leaning artwork

• Programming and installation support from Wave Pool

• Staffing support to help execute the experience for the public during open hours

Successful proposals are projects that collaborate with the community, utilizing a social practice methodology that makes the place and the people who are here integral to the project. Projects are to be artist developed and in line with their work to date. The program emphasizes two-way engagement, offering exceptional arts experiences to Wave Pool’s local community as well as unique benefits and exhibition opportunities to the artists in residence.

The Vance Waddell Residency is sponsored by Sara and Michelle Vance Waddell

Applications for 2025 are CLOSED.

Announcing our 2025 Resident: Marcy Petit, Under the Owl’s Eye

During her 5-week residency at Wave Pool Gallery, Marcy will create a series of installations and a performance that explore the loss — and the reclaiming — of women’s ancestral ties to nature. Drawing from eco-feminist perspectives, folklore, and personal rituals rooted in French-Celtic heritage, this project reimagines forgotten spaces of feminine power, resistance, and healing.

Each piece embodies a symbolic gesture of reclamation: We will keep Watching You presents wood logs marked with feminine eyes — a silent, collective gaze from trees and forest. Passage is a textile piece where prints of flowers and leaves are sewn together with veins of red thread. The Heart of a Witch stages a human ceramic heart pierced with nails — like an old ritual of violence and resilience invoking the power of love and nature. In Dry Flowers are to Remember the Dead, hanging flowers dipped in limestone hover above mirrors resting on beds of dead leaves, creating an altar of memory and mourning. She comes back to me after Dark invites visitors to a shadow projected owl watching us.

The residency will culminate with a performance, reimagined here as a nocturnal ritual of remembrance. Wearing the head of an owl — the symbol of her grand-mother but also a creature of wisdom, mystery, and silent observation — the artist will continuously sweep the floor while a personal text dedicated to her grandmother is being read aloud. Through her story, she will evoke a generation of women who once held ancestral knowledge — connected to plants, rituals, the land — and who gradually lost this wisdom through time, societal shifts, and capitalist transformations.

Together, these works create a fragile yet defiant landscape — a space haunted by what has been lost, but fiercely alive with what can still be reclaimed.

About the artist:
Marcy Petit is a French interdisciplinary artist whose work spans photography, installation, performance, video, sound, textile, and beyond. She studied Fine Art at the University of Rennes and earned a Master's degree in Contemporary Art Management from the University of Leeds and Paris 8. After living in the U.K. for many years, she now lives and works in San Francisco, California.

Marcy’s diverse body of work critically engages with social, political, and cultural issues, with a particular focus on gender, feminism, social identity, and environmental concerns. Her creations are often rooted in personal memories and familial trauma, exploring the intersections of popular culture, the female condition, and lived experiences. Guided by her belief in the educational power of art, she aims to craft accessible and thought-provoking pieces that combine elements of narration, truth, violence, and beauty.

Her practice is influenced by a wide range of artistic disciplines, including poetry, writing, and theatre, which she often integrates into her installations. She approaches these works as fragments or mementos, constructing and deconstructing narratives that weave together the real and the fictional.

Driven by a deep ecofeminist perspective, Marcy’s recent work reflects an urgent interest in the natural world and landscapes, often invoking the myth of the witch as a feminist and political figure. Her exploration of these themes allows her to merge art, magic, and activism, creating a unique dialogue that challenges conventional narratives and invites viewers to consider their place within these complex stories.

Having exhibited internationally, Marcy Petit continues to develop new projects that invite audiences into a dynamic conversation about the ever-evolving relationships between art, society, and nature.

Past Vance Waddell Residents: