From weeklong retreats at a sun-soaked forest cabin to two-month expeditions in Antarctica, the residencies offered through OSU’s Patricia Valian Reser Center for the Creative Arts provide unique opportunities for artists to dive deep into creative projects.
PRAx manages dozens of residencies each year for visual artists, musicians, writers, humanities scholars and others whose work emerges from the intersection of the arts, humanities, science and technology.
“The big benefit of these residencies for OSU is that they give us the chance to connect artists with the research enterprise of the university,” said Peter Betjemann, executive director of PRAx and associate vice provost of arts and humanities. “We know that the very questions we are prompted to ask on the research side are culturally conditioned in some way, so for an artist to reframe how we think about questions can have powerful impacts on the science. They are used to seeing things that are outside of the mainstream.”
PRAx residencies are available for university students and faculty, as well as artists from outside the OSU community. Many programs are built around environmental themes, such as the Fireline Fellowship at the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest, where artists, writers and musicians will spend time in the forest over the next two years to develop projects exploring the subject of wildfire.
During the 2024-25 season, Betjemann said PRAx received more than 750 applications and awarded 65 residencies.
Jazz musician esperanza spalding was the inaugural Patricia Valian Reser Artist-in-Residence last year. For the 2025-26 season, steel drum percussionist Andy Akiho is filling that role, with three scheduled performances (one per term) as well as three weeks of dedicated classroom time to work with student musicians, who will join him onstage at PRAx for his winter concert.
“What we love about him is the wide variety of collaborations and work he has created for all different kinds of musical configurations,” Betjemann said. “What people can expect with Andy is just inventiveness that pushes all the boundaries you thought you knew, along with incredible musicianship.”
Several PRAx residencies are managed through the Spring Creek Project and the Center for the Humanities, both of which have moved under the PRAx umbrella.
For example, the Spring Creek Project Faculty Residency lets faculty members spend a week at the Cabin at Shotpouch Creek to work on writing or research that aligns with the program’s environmentally focused mission. The Center for the Humanities Teaching Innovation Fellowship provides a supportive community and stipend for faculty to develop or redesign OSU humanities courses.
There are also a series of interdisciplinary student fellowships, an expansion of the Art+Sci Initiative that began in 2022 as a way for students to engage both their artistic and scientific pursuits.
Students can choose from Art+Science, Art+Engineering, Film+Science and Humanities+Science. Fellows work with a mentor from each of the two disciplines; mentors are often OSU faculty but may also come from the community or relevant research agencies. The students spend an academic year developing a project that considers a research question in a creative way.
PRAx has a unique responsibility as an arts venue based at a research university, Betjemann said.
“We cannot only show work, as a civic venue,” he said. “We must also foster and support new work, advancing research and creativity across the university as a whole. Residencies and fellowships are one of the most important ways we do that.”
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