CREATORS ON CAMPUS
Creative
Careers
Residency
The Creative Careers Residency is a transitional program providing support for full-time, self-directed creative practice in architecture, art and design, performing arts, intermedia arts, or creative writing.
While pursuit of an advanced degree in a creative practice provides support, structure, and most importantly, the time necessary to develop and execute creative work, after graduation many practitioners lose these networks of support necessary to develop significant work, posing a significant barrier to the transition from degree to sustained work. The Creative Careers Residency seeks to reduce these barriers to creative practice post-graduation, by providing the time, structure, and funding support to transition from academia to post graduate endeavors.
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To provide transitional support for creative artists, parallel to the scaffolding typical of academic disciplines, to assist graduates in their transition from “graduate student” to “creative professional.”
To foster the continued artistic growth of recent graduates by allowing them to practice their artistic discipline full-time.
To set up U-M graduates of creative disciplines for success in a deep creative practice by providing the infrastructure of support necessary to do so.
Reduce barriers to artists without generational wealth to develop sustainable careers as artists.
To increase the presence of and interactions with artists-in-residence across campus.
To support early career creative practitioners as a bridge to the next tier of artist residencies
Abigail Lowe
Abigail Lowe is a visual artist whose practice integrates drawing, sculptural installation, and theatrical design. She earned her BA from Grinnell College in 2015 and her MFA from the Stamps School of Art & Design in 2024. Lowe has held residencies at the Penland School of Craft ('22), Vermont Studio Center ('25), and the Arts Initiative at the University of Michigan ('25–'26). Her work has been recognized by the Jean Paul Slusser MFA Thesis Award ('24) and the Smucker Wagstaff Graduate Award ('22, '23). She currently serves as Senior Designer for the Creative Campus Voting Project.
Five Soliloquies for Ophelia is a folkloric retelling of Hamlet from Ophelia’s perspective — a journey into a world where the veil between the living and the dead has torn. Ophelia’s story unfolds in five vignettes; each soliloquy is embodied by a life-size puppet that opens to reveal an interior populated by miniature landscapes, sculptural tableaux, and flickering animations. Small audiences are invited to experience this phantasmagoria through headphone-audio synced to a live performance and brought to life by pre-cinema magic.
Willie Cornish, JR
South Carolina native Willie Cornish, Jr. (b. 2000) is an avid interdisciplinary collaborator and composer who creates music for film, video games, concerts, electronics, and education. His works have been performed nationwide by ensembles such as the U.S. Air Force Band and, more recently, a Lincoln Center premiere by the What is Noise Chamber Ensemble. Outside of composition, Willie enjoys journaling, teaching, and caring for his family of plants.
cyclecyclecycle is a 30-minute production that combines dance, live music, and fashion design to showcase transformation and the cyclical evolution of the soul, being a lifelong process, not a single event.
Sahara SidI
Sahara Sidi is a 2024 Master of Fine Arts in Poetry graduate from the Helen Zell Writers Program.
Sidi will develop a chapbook that calls upon the long tradition of musical forms in elegiac poetry. In collaboration with local poets and musicians, Sidi will feature excerpts of their chapbook during a transdisciplinary performance that conveys the all-too-human experience of love and loss.