Lunder Institute Resident Fellows
First Cohort
Established in 2021, the Lunder Institute residential fellowships provide artists with spacious studios as well as opportunities for collaboration with Colby College faculty, students, staff, and the Waterville community. This new studio program, which is based at the Greene Block + Studios at 18 Main Street in downtown Waterville, encompasses artists at all stages of their careers and working in a range of artistic disciplines and mediums. Resident fellows are provided with housing and a stipend; have access to Colby College campus facilities; and are in dialogue with local organizations and community members.
Inefficiency expert, Adriane Herman orchestrates witnessed releases–like her non-monetized “Emotional Value Auction”–to harness the power of witnessing to facilitate letting go; highlight the generosity inherent in receiving; and occasion meaningful connections between strangers through publicly shared vulnerability. She received ecomaine’s 2018 eco-Excellence award for a series of installations entitled “Out of Sorts,” pressing pause on the recycling process and inviting contemplation of the impact of consumption and our cultural commitment to convenience and disposability. Thirteen consecutive Sunday mornings spent attending Evangelical services in suburban Kansas evolved into a collaboration called “The Freeing Throwers,” yielding print and GPS-triggered audio works on Kansas City municipal buses.
Herman has had solo exhibitions at Adam Baumgold Gallery (NY); Western Exhibitions (Chicago); Kansas City Jewish Museum of Contemporary Art; Center for Maine Contemporary Art; Kiosk Gallery (Kansas City); and Rose Contemporary and SPEEDWELL Projects in Portland. Group exhibition sites include The Dalarnas Museum (Sweden); Portland Museum of Art; The Brooklyn Museum; Chapel Street Gallery at Yale University; Chosen Barren Land, Taiwan; and International Print Center New York. Herman’s work is held by collections including The Whitney Museum of American Art; The Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art; The Progressive Corporation; The Walker Art Center; The Ulrich Museum; and the Bates College Museum of Art.
She has lectured at over 50 institutions and explores content in context with students as Professor and Chair of Printmaking at Maine College of Art. Her work is included in: Printmaking at the Edge; A Survey of Contemporary Printmaking; and Thomas Kinkade: The Artist in the Mall. Herman holds a B.A. from Smith College, an M.F.A. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a Level III certificate in the Wilton Method of Cake Decorating.
Jose Barrionuevo ‘16 (Killer Bee) is a Mexican American instrumental electronic artist from the New York City metro area. Upon graduating from Colby College, he quickly rose in the Brooklyn beat scene, playing live all over New York City at mainstay DIY venues and platforms like Trans Pecos and the Beat Haus Show. He has been featured in various prominent publications such as the Bandcamp Daily section and has released several albums in a short period of time, amassing a cultlike following by topping the Hype Machine charts and garnering millions of streams across platforms. He has participated in residencies from Italy to Japan, and his music has been played on international stations such as BBC Radio 1 and NTS.
Barrionuevo’s work consists of manipulating and synthesizing sound using a mix of analog hardware and software, all while interpreting nostalgia and memory through the use of samples and everyday Foley. He frequently blurs the line between genres, and his music investigates everything from the impermanence of being to Zen Buddhist and Christian themes and symbology within the context of his own Mexican identity. At the Lunder Institute, he is working on his next major effort, Sagrada, an album centered around spirituality and familial relationships in Mexican culture, specifically looking at how Christian iconography played a vital role in the dynamics and power structure of his upbringing.
Riley Watts is a Bangor-born dance artist now based in South Portland, Maine. With twenty-six years of ballet and contemporary dance experience in his body, Watts’s work is deeply rooted in the experience of observing states of consciousness through physicality and motion. Beginning with dance as a base of knowledge, he creates artwork using choreographic improvisation, video and digital media, sculpture, music, and live installations. In Maine, Watts has been in residence and shown work at SPACE Gallery, Bates Dance Festival, Hewnoaks Artist Colony, Sistered, and the Ellis Beauregard Foundation, and is the founder of Portland Dance Month (2018–19). He is currently being commissioned by Portland Ovations’ New Year, New Work initiative to premiere a new performance in collaboration with choreographer Heather Stewart in 2022.
Watts studied dance at the Thomas School of Dance, Walnut Hill School, and Juilliard School before moving abroad to dance with the Bern Ballet (Switzerland), Netherlands Dance Theater 2 (The Hague), and Forsythe Company (Frankfurt/Dresden). Since 2010 Watts has danced with internationally acclaimed choreographer William Forsythe, and continues to tour the world extensively to perform at such venues as the Sydney Opera House, Brooklyn Academy of Music, ICA Boston, Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, and Philadelphia Museum of Art, among many others. In 2015 Watts was invited to tour with iconic dancer Sylvie Guillem on her Life in Progress farewell tour before moving home to Maine in 2016. Watts is the recipient of a Princess Grace Award and the Leonide Massine/Positano Prize, and has received grants from the Maine Arts Commission and New England Foundation for the Arts.
In addition to performing and creating, Watts is frequently invited to teach improvisation and embodied dance thinking around the world in a variety of professional and educational settings. He has collaborated in interdisciplinary dance/neuroscience research and public speaking events, including coauthoring a case study for Frontiers in Human Neuroscience on entertainment in William Forsythe’s Duo. Watts coauthored a children’s book for Tate Publishing entitled Where’s Your Creativity? with his cousin Dr. Aaron Rosen; has music featured on Blutte, the latest album of composer/cellist Patrick Belaga for PAN Records in Berlin; and worked as a landscape gardener in Kennebunk with Snug Harbor Farm during the pandemic of 2020. As an artist living with bipolar disorder, Watts is particularly interested in the relationship between art making and mental health.
Veronica Perez is a multidisciplinary artist living in Maine. Utilizing hair as well as kitschy and other unconventional materials in her sculptural works, she creates intense personal moments by means of material hybridization and ideals of beauty. Material fragility echoes sentiments of a lost self and at the same time comments on contemporary Latinx and feminist issues. Recently, she has been working at the intersection of identity, vulnerability, protection, and power through the facade of dark absurdity using materials such as sugar, fake hair, chain-link fences, and fake sunflowers. In 2020 she was awarded the Ellis-Beauregard Fellowship in the Visual Arts, and in 2021 she was a resident at the Black Seed Studio in Portland, Maine, as a part of the Indigo Arts Alliance David C. Driskell Fellowship.