Joy Ray

 “There is something very magical about Hambidge: the simplicity of the built environment, the beauty of the natural world, the nightly communal dining ritual, the exquisite privacy, the thoughtfulness of the staff and, perhaps most of all, the lack of pressure to perform and produce. Time moves in strange and novel ways; the days feel limitless but also fleeting and precious. Ideas and insights surface unexpectedly, bloom into experiments, action, new methods and practices, new work. 

During my stay, I became obsessed with the deep red mud created by occasional rainstorms, and ended up using this beautiful earth (along with the glittering mica that makes Hambidge dirt sparkle) to stain thread, fabric, and objects. On my second day at  Hambidge, I wrote, "I’m feeling such buoyancy and joy. I’m thinking about this residency less as a temporal container for production and more as a luminous container for FEELING." As it turns out, Hambidge is both—and so much more.”

—Joy Ray, Hawaii, Fiber Arts