VSW Salon Spring 2026 Calendar 🗓️📌
The VSW Salon features film screenings, artist talks, Community Curator™️ events, performances, photo presentations and conversations, showcasing the approaches to film, photography, performance, installation and archival research. Tickets are available online, or at the door for all in person events.
Image: The Project Space Studio with 2026 Artist-In-Residence, Wayne Liu
📣 Last call for applications for the 2027 Project Space Residency program! This is the final weekend before submissions are due on Monday, May 18 (11:59pm ET). Apply online at vsw.org or use the link in our bio.
The Project Space Residency is rooted in VSW’s mission to provide support to experimental photo, film and media art artists, to provide time, space, and resources to artists so they can create.
The 4 week residencies are open to artists at any stage of their career and take place at VSW in Rochester, NY. Project Space Residents receive 24/7 access to a private studio, along with access to digital printing equipment and an analog darkroom. They also receive a stipend of $1000, plus $250 for supplies, and a $500 travel budget for those traveling from outside the Rochester region.
We provide housing for national/international artists within walking distance to VSW.
Each year, a jury panel consisting of VSW staff, artists and guest curators review applications to select up to 12 residents for 4-week terms. We are honored to have a panel of guest jurors who are artists, curators, educators and are all former Project Space Residents: Aspen Mays (’22), Le’Andra LeSeur (’23) and Nando Alvarez - Perez (’17).
Swipe through for more info about the residency.
Click on the vsw.org link in our bio to apply.
Applications are open to U.S. based and international artists working in photography, film or media art.
#ArtistResidency #Photography #MediaArts #Film
We are excited to announce the two emerging photographers from the greater Rochester region who have been selected for the 2026 Regional Workspace Residency program! ✨Congratulations to Maryel Pryce (Henrietta) and Louis Ressel! (Rochester)✨
The Regional Workspace Residency supports emerging photographers based in the Rochester, NY region with 3-month residencies over the period of two cycles to help them expand their photographic practice and to provide professional development opportunities. Maryel Pryce ( @photobymaryel ), a recent Rochester Institute of Technology graduate, will be in residence at VSW beginning in June 2026. Maryel will be developing an ongoing project that explores the intersection of familial and environmental relationships in shaping one’s identity.
Louis Ressel ( @upstatelouyork ), an emerging artist and commercial photographer, will be in residence beginning September 2026. Louis will create a body of work that focuses on a personal process of reconciliation with their birthplace of Guatemala.
📸 Maryel Pryce and Louis Ressel will each hold public presentations of their works following the end of their residencies. Stay tuned for future date announcements
Thank you to the Leonian Foundation ( @leonianfoundation ) for their support of the VSW Regional Workspace Residency program.
Left Photo: Maryel Pryce, from the series “At Least I Am Living Now”
Right Photo: Louis Ressel, Untitled
There is still time left to apply for the VSW Project Space Residency!
Each year applications are reviewed by VSW Staff and a panel of guest jurists. We are excited to announce this year's amazing guest jury panelists:
Aspen Mays, Le’Andra LeSeur and Nando Alvarez-Perez.
✨Aspen Mays is a 2026 Guggenheim Fellow whose work investigates photography’s relationship to science, chance, and material transformation. May’s work was presented at Paris Photo in 2025 and was also featured on the cover of the Winter 2025 issue of Aperture Magazine. Aspen Mays is a Project Space Resident alum (’22).
✨Le’Andra LeSeur is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice spans video, installation, photography, and performance. Her work is rooted in examining conditions shaped by racial violence and systemic inequities. LeSeur is the recipient of notable honors, including the Tulsa Artist Fellowship (2024), the NJ Council of the Arts Fellowship (2022) and the Leslie-Lohman Museum Artist Fellowship (2019). Le’Andra LeSeur is a Project Space Resident alum (’23).
✨Nando Alvarez-Perez investigates the individual's relationship to the vast territory of history. His practice extends to his work as a founding director of The Buffalo Institute for Contemporary Art, a non-profit that models how culture can sustain communities through focused, practical engagements with contemporary art, and as editor-in-chief of Cornelia, a visual art review published for the Western New York and Southern Ontario (Canadian) region. Nando Alvarez-Perez is also a Project Space Resident alum (’17).
Swipe through for more info about the residency.
Click on the vsw.org link in our bio to apply.
Applications are open to U.S. based and international artists working in photography, film or media art.
The Project Space Residency is supported in part by The Joy of Giving Something Foundation, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and The Leonian Foundation. @warholfoundation@leonianfoundation
#ArtistResidency #Photography #MediaArts #Film
Please join us in welcoming Wayne Liu ( @toscanaghost ) , our newest Artist In Residence in The Project Space!
In residency, Wayne will be working on a series entitled “In Time Past & Time Present”, using photography, sound, film and installation to approach the self as an archaeological site. He is particularly interested in the fluidity of identity and how movements between dissonant homes (Taiwan and the United States) complicate how he defines himself.
Wayne has a prolific darkroom practice, producing images on expired paper that are integrated into installations. According to Wayne, these installations, “vary in form, with prints layered, pinned, or scattered to reflect memory’s fragile architecture and the haunting presence of the past—never dead, never past.”
🗓️ Mark your calendars for Open Studios with Wayne. Join us Friday, May 8th from 6-8pm. Stop by to meet Wayne Liu, learn more about his work and engage with what he has been creating throughout his time in residency at VSW.
This Project Space Residency is supported by the @leonianfoundation and @warholfoundation
Stop by VSW on First Friday (6-9pm) for the Spring Workshop Showcase! Throughout the spring, VSW hosted a month-long Handmade Film workshop and three in-person Game Jams. The game jams introduced various free and accessible game-making tools and encouraged attendees to finish and share a game in a few hours; film workshop students explored a variety of materials and techniques to make 16mm motion loops and films and 35mm slides.
At 7pm, there will be a screening in the theater, featuring more handmade film works. You are invited to drop in and experience this exuberant spring showcase!
Image: Participants of the Handmade Film Workshop work in the VSW classroom
A huge thank you to Joel Dow of Lingua Lucem for their performance last night in the VSW Salon. A mesmerizing, meditative experience of light, sound, and video feedback.
On Film Presents:
Join our event at VSW to watch short nonfiction films.
April 24th @ 6:00
Our Uniform by Yegane Moghadam
Exile Echoes by @maz.mahan
Of The Trace and The Land by @nasbagherii
||: The Planet Egg by Simone Barros
The film series is curated by Yasaman Baghban
@yas_baghban
Applications are open for the VSW Project Space Residency 2027 📣!
Rooted in VSW’s mission to provide support to experimental photo, film and media art artists, the goal of the Project Space Residency is to provide time, space, and resources to artists so they can create.
The 4 week residencies are open to artists at any stage of their career and take place at VSW in Rochester, NY. Project Space Residents receive 24/7 access to a private studio, along with access to digital printing equipment and an analog darkroom. They also receive a stipend of $1000, plus $250 for supplies, and a $500 travel budget for those traveling from outside the Rochester region.
All of our Residents receive consultations with curators on staff, research support in VSW’s archive collections and opportunities to engage with the public through Open Studios and Artist Talks.
We also provide housing for national/international artists within walking distance to VSW.
Each year, a jury panel consisting of VSW staff, artists and guest curators review applications to select up to 12 residents for 4-week terms.
Apply online at vsw.org or use the link in our bio.
The deadline is May 18, 2026
The Project Space Residency is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, the Joy of Giving Something, Monroe County, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts (@warholfoundation ) and the Phillip and Edith Leonian Foundation (@leonianfoundation ) provides support for photography artists participating in the program ✨
Image: Allie Tsubota, Project Space Resident, Summer 2025. Photo by Hernease Davis.
📸Calling on emerging photographic artists in the Greater Rochester Area! These are the final few days to apply for our next Regional Workspace Residency cycles.
The VSW Regional Workspace Residency is a 3-month program that supports emerging photographers based in the Rochester, NY region with tailored residencies to help them expand their photographic practice and to provide professional development opportunities.
This regional program is rooted in VSW’s mission to support experimental photography, film and media art. Selected photographic artists will develop detailed project and budget plans, professional development goals (i.e. crafting an artist statement/CV, website or portfolio development, portfolio review preparation). Selected artists will be provided with $1000 stipend for supplies and $1000 for travel. Residents will be given access to the VSW workroom and darkroom and time with VSW staff dedicated to helping complete professional development goals and feedback on their photographic project.
✨The deadline to apply is April 9.
The Regional Workspace Residency is supported by The Phillip and Edith Leonian Foundation. @leonianfoundation
Stop by tomorrow, April 3rd for First Friday Open Studios with Project Space resident, Preston Gannaway.
Preston (@ pgannawayphoto) will open her studio from 6-8pm. Preston is a documentary photographer and queer artist whose work centers around intimate narratives of American communities and landscapes. Her project, Remember Me, was awarded the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for feature photography. During her residency, Preston has been working with materials she's collected from home over the course of ten years to explore her queer identity and her experience growing up gay in North Carolina.
Stop by to see more of Preston's work, learn about her time in residency and engage with what she has been working on throughout her time at VSW.
This Project Space Residency is supported by the @leonianfoundation . #firstfridayroc
Don’t miss IMAGE PROCESSING: Video Work by Matthew Schlanger next Thursday, 7pm (April 9) in the VSW Salon. This screening will feature several of Schlanger’s videos, unique serial constructions created with custom-built analog and digital processors. Each video is a real-time synthesized recording in which sound and image are parallel structures, often using periodic waveforms as image and sound source material. Schlanger is both an artist and a tool maker. He has been working with analog synthesizers since the 1980s, and continues to create video in his home studio in Nyack, NY. Following the screening, Schlanger will discuss his practice and how tool making has fed his image making process.
Image: still from Lumpy Banger, Matthew Schlanger
