my month long residency at fish factory was an entirely unexpected journey.

before getting here, i was at a residency in rural finland, wondering where i would go next. in the quiet winter and a deep conversation with my grandpa rock friend, i asked myself:

“if i don’t have to worry about money or anything, where would i want to be in this world?”

the answer emerged almost immediately:
i want to go play with clay in iceland.

so by the time i arrived at fish factory, i had about $100 in my pocket.
this was the wildest way, even for a traveling artist, to follow nothing but my intuition to this magical, eerie place.

i spent the entire month basking in iceland’s strangeness, held in complete acceptance by my residency mates, diving deep into play with my inner child and other spirit beings.

my art is all about healing with my inner child and making art together with her.
this month, we sat together and decided to unpack a layer of memories and quiet grief surrounding my queerness.

we joined songwriting circles, shared stories of spirit encounters, spent long hours in the ceramics studios, and basked in the warmest, most vulnerable kind of conversations.

this place didn’t just accept my weirdness ———
it reminded me how sacred it is to be bathed in it.

fish factory embraced me unconditionally and gave me space to tell the stories that had been waiting to surface.

thank you, fish factory & my march residency mates!

Website: https://seiustudio.art/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seiumakes/

Martina Solárová Pauleová is a visual artist from Slovakia. She graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Bratislava in 1998. In her life, she has welcomed her sunny sons: Tadeáš, Martin, and Kristian.

In my recent work, the passage of time and shifts in scale play a central role. The piece is composed of layered paintings, photographs, and drawings.

Here at the Fish Factory residency, I’ve been working on a project called Invisible Tattoo. It’s about the stories we all carry inside — the ones no one else can see. Black and white photos of my dad on a ski trip as a student are hidden in the cat’s whiskers. This is a tattoo of happiness.

Thank you to all the friends I met here and to the Fish Factory! 🦭💘

Scott, Charlotte, Risa, Seiu, Shann, Alex, and Kris :)

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/keramikamisipi/

Marina Guiu Almenara is a multidisciplinary artist working in visuals and theatre, based in Barcelona. Using arts as political activism for children’s rights and against sexual violence to women. Through illustration, painting, printmaking, writing, and performing theatre, she seeks to generate a tension between the poetic and the political creating a bridge between the social and the artistic.

The main objective during my residency at Fish Factory was to explore the visual side of my project “La Muda. Un agujero entre el esternón y el ombligo”(*), a documentary art project about sexual assault of children and sexual violence narrated in first person; structured in three parts: a theatre play, a compilation of testimonies and an illustrated book.

I’ve been focused on exploring the similarities between the Icelandic landscapes, volcanoes, lava and the cracks opened on the earth, to the feelings that remain in your body once you have been sexually assaulted: fear, rage, shame, nausea. The result is a collection of dry-points and different monotypes with the same sinuous and mysterious shapes of the landscapes surrounding Stöðvarfjörður. All this using the small and powerful etching press in the factory.

I’m feeling immensely grateful to been able to share all this process and daily life with my loved fellows, creating real support and safe spaces for listening, taking care of each other, crying, laughing, carving spoons, doing ceramics, printing cyanotypes and sharing everything. A lovely April.

(*) “The Mute. A hole between the sternum and the navel”

Linktree: https://linktr.ee

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marinaguiu/

Alexandre Lapointe Thibault (LeRøux) is a multidisciplinary artist from Quebec, Canada, working at the intersection of music and video. During his Residency at the Fish Factory, he worked on instrumental piano compositions deeply influenced by nature, drawing inspiration from the vast and rugged landscapes of Iceland. Routine and repetition emerge as key themes, evoking the passage of time, the essence of travel, and the meditative nature of movement.

Blending impressionistic visual aesthetics with contemporary production techniques, Alexandre approaches his work like a filmmaker—layering images, cutting string samples, and rearranging them over intricate drum loops. His creative process mirrors the rhythms of the environment, capturing the interplay between organic textures and structured soundscapes.

Through an intuitive exploration of sound and moving images, Alexandre built an immersive experience that transports the listener and viewer into a contemplative state. His experimental approach blurs the boundaries between music and film, creating works that feel like an entry into a world—where time stretches, contracts, and loops. By layering shifting images of natural landscapes—roads, water reflections, wind-blown grass—he constructs a sense of fluidity and transformation.

Linktree: https://linktr.ee/rouxlerouxleroux

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rouxlerouxleroux/

The Fish Factory is a badass, fabulously outfitted DIY oasis of a space for art and culture. I loved working within a multinational group of artists practicing in a range of media—from ceramics and drawing to electronic synth and neo-classical music composition and video. I loved being a part of this amazing community built by staff and organizers committed to living and supporting creative lives. Here, within the quiet peace of the village and the beauty of the harbour and the surrounding hills, I accomplished everything I’d planned.

At the Fish Factory I worked on a project involving documented performance art leveraging rhetorical absurdity, reflecting on the dissonances and complexities of arctic touring during a time of ecological and other crises.

The project began when I hand wrote over one-hundred letters asking people in my art world to gift me with instructions for performance to enact and document while on an artist residency in Svalbard in August 2024. I invited entrusted colleagues to share in tender and critical dialogue about art, memorial, witness, mortality and so on, and fulfilled close to forty instructions, wrapping up the final actions in March in Stodvarfjordur. Instructions included collecting my tears to exchange with glacier water, singing a Russian song about polar bears making the Earth go ‘round, performing certain gestures of apology, and leaving no trace.

I wanted to make serious and imaginative attempts to make sense of the sublime within a landscape so emblematic of the zeitgeist of these times. To self-justify my return to Svalbard I needed to continue my explorations of constructed and mythologized landscape, grounded in human relations and interventions with the environment.

The Fish Factory was the perfect place for me to process images, videos, and sounds I made for these documented performances, while writing creative nonfiction about the project.

Risa Horowitz is a visual and media artist based in Saskatchewan where she is a Professor of Visual Arts at the University of Regina.

www.risahorowitz.com

@risahorowitz

Visual and recording artist Scott Murphy stayed at Fish Factory in February and March, continuing recording and mixing his debut collection of four EPs with his homemade 70’s-style modular synthesizer.

Moody winter weather and long hours of darkness were the perfect companion with which to lose myself in sound and are reflected in its content. My time in Iceland provided both the solitude needed to flesh out completed works and advance my process as well as a peer group of talented artists to challenge and inspire me and make the experience truly memorable.

Website: mockhurdlesoup.com
Bandcamp: nnamusic1.bandcamp.com

Iceland’s strangely familiar yet entirely new landscape has provided the space to play, contemplate, and freely explore my process without distraction or dictation. Its ever-changing landscape has seeped into my practice in ways I hadn’t expected, shaping my approach to material, repetition, and the unknown.

Having access to a ceramics lab has revealed a curiosity for clay! Previously, my practice focused on removing conscious thought—through repetition, erasure, and collage—to unearth something unknown. Ceramics, however, holds its own mysteries. The meticulous process—hours of coiling, sculpting, and refining—followed by the unpredictability of the kiln, where a piece might crack, collapse, or transform entirely, has captivated me. There is a surrender in this process that feels integral to my work going forward.

What was supposed to be a one-month residency became three months in Iceland, drawn in by the people, the place, and the creative freedom I’ve found here. I leave with a practice tangled and reshaped by the space. Thank you, Kris, Lukas, Vinnie, and all the residents who have made this time so gorgeous.

Charlotte Searle is an artist from the UK who explores fictional multiplicities and knotty, entangled themes that resist definitive answers. She plays with concepts of place and non-place, home, mysticism, memory, and desire. By exploiting iteration and automatism, she harnesses the subconscious while inviting an unsettling awkwardness. Charlotte’s practice employs messy, irreverent methods of play, embracing mistakes and humour. Her works aim to consume and regurgitate, revealing imagined spaces in constant flux, where chaos, absurdity, and clarity intertwine—inviting a space for the mind to wander.

Website: www.charlottesearle.com

Instagram: www.instagram.com/char_searle

Chris Vola is a writer and bartender based in New York. A graduate of the Columbia University MFA program, he is the author of two novels, a collection of short stories, three books of poems, a coffee-table conspiracy theory book, and three books of cocktail recipes. His most recent work is The Cocktail Atlas: Around the World in 200+ Drinks, a collection of beverages from 195 countries and an exploration of global spirits culture.

I came to the Fish Factory because I wanted to flee the noise of the city to work on my next book, Drink One for the Team, which celebrates global sporting events by pairing them with appropriately themed cocktails. What I found in Stöðvarfjörður was less of an escape than a revelation, from the jagged exquisiteness of the mountains and fjords and drastically shifting weather to the hushed village streets and the inimitable energy of the studio.

I finished as much of the book as I needed to – East Iceland in January isn’t exactly heavy on distractions – but the best moments had little to do with rigid productivity. Hiking to nearby beaches, geological formations, and the harbor (when there weren’t power-outage-inducing blizzards), chatting with other artists, vibing to live Icelandic punk rock, and taking in the aurora, polar stratospheric clouds, reindeer, etc., tapped into a creative flow state that had been absent for a couple years. I wrote some poems and restarted work on a collection of haiga – a Japanese artform featuring a short poem (haiku, senryu) combined with a visual element (photography in this case) – based on my travels in the Nordic countries. Stöðvarfjörður will undoubtedly feature heavily in the final version of the project. Something, along with my time at the Fish Factory, for which I will always be grateful.

Website: https://www.chrisvola.net/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chrisv85

Kate Wurtzel (Ph.D) is a visual artist, art educator, and professor at Appalachian State University in North Carolina, United States.

Her previous work focused on emergence, body movement while painting, and the importance of ritualization in the creative process for someone who is neurodivergent and has a physical disability. She initially went to the Fish Factory to investigate how her own non-abled body responded to the landscape, and to write and paint through the lens of embodied phenomenology, however when she arrived the work and some life elements took an unexpected turn.

In Kate’s own words, she explains: During my short stay at the residency we encountered severe weather fluctuations and at the same time I was going through some life changes as well. My body responded to the weather with tenacity, persistence, some anxiety and pain, as well as significant periods of joy and physical-emotional peace. As a response to the environmental situation and the points of reflection in life, the work became less about physical-bodily responses and more about accessing internal strength and a need for more relational intimacy overall. Inspired by the quiet majestic strength of the mountains in the Eastfjords, and the deep and nearly primal connection to the land when in Iceland, the work shifted to reveal a desire for connectivity to spirituality, bodies, stories, ancestors, magic, and more.

Consequently, my time at the Fish Factory opened an unexpected portal of desire; it revealed a need to understand my felt-embodied-connection to Iceland and investigate ancestral histories that touch-in to the supernatural and move beyond linear ways of knowing. The short, yet incredible, residency set me on a quest to know more about these deeply sensed experiences, including the complexity of relational intimacy, and the well of intra-connected ancestral strength we carry on an affectual level that often can only be accessed through creative gestures and sensed-ties to land/place. While the end result may not have been about the non-abled body in Iceland as planned, ultimately what emerged highlighted a need to move beyond the binary of abled/dis-abled, and instead reach for an expression of strength and connectivity in several ways.

Website:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dr.k8creates/

I’m an American multimedia artist with a background in theatre, photography, cinema, stone carving and, most recently, clay. After graduating from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts with a BFA in Drama, I left the acting world to study performance and media at the University of Texas at Austin and, later, filmmaking at EICAR, the International Film & Television School in Paris, France.

While I have moved between different industries and art forms over the years, all of my aesthetic work is connected by a love of light, color and rhythm as well as a tactile investigation of the invisible energetic threads tying elements together in both the natural environment and the social, human world.

During my time at the Fish Factory, I fell in love with the Icelandic landscape and its constantly changing patterns of weather, light and color — an awe-inspiring spectrum I have never seen before. I was also inspired by the generous interdisciplinary exchange of cultural and artistic ideas among our dynamic, talented group, which I believe advanced my own practice by leaps and bounds. Every day in Stödvarfjördur brought the gift of something new, and I will always be grateful for this unique experience on a personal as well as a professional level.

Tereza Kociánová, born in the Czech Republic and now residing in Akureyri, Iceland, is a visual and mixed textile artist.

She holds a BA in Textile Design from the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava, Slovakia, and studied a MA in Print Textile from the Academy of Fine Arts in Lodz, Poland. Additionally, she completed her studies in Graphic Design at Myndlistaskóli Akureyri.
Her work is characterized by a bold use of vivid, contrasting colors and a distinctive approach to form and texture. Tereza’s artistic practice involves translating elements of the natural landscape into abstract forms that merge the external environment with interior spaces. This is evident in her paintings, where fluid lines
and vibrant color palettes create dynamic interpretations of landscapes, as seen in her work that evokes both familiarity and dreamlike states.

The Fish Factory residency felt like a chain reaction in every sense. Even though I live in Iceland, I had never spent much time in the Eastfjords before, and the experience gave me a fresh perspective on the country I call home. The chains on the stones at the harbor immediately captured my imagination, sparking a new direction in my work.
I began by painting a canvas with the theme of chains, which I later transformed into a chainshaped soft sculpture.

This process of shifting between 2D and 3D became central to my explorations. I also experimented with clay, creating countless versions of chains—from sturdy, solid loops to fluid, melting shapes. Each piece felt like it connected to the next, forming a larger narrative of material, form, and transformation. The Eastfjords, the harbor, and the creative space at the Fish Factory all came together to inspire a
body of work that feels deeply tied to this place. It wasn’t just about creating—it was about connecting: with the landscape, the people, and the ideas that came to life here.

Website: https://apolloart.is/collections/tereza-kocianova

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/terezianakocian/

Website: https://www.lilypetch.com/

Instagram: www.instagram.com/lilyrpetch

A huge thank you to everyone who joined us in 2024—it was such a bright and eventful year! Nearly 90 artists brought their creativity to Fish Factory, filling the year with inspiring art, music projects, and exhibitions. Without you, this place simply wouldn’t exist!

As we head into 2025, we’re excited to continue working on our space in the beautiful village of Stöðvarfjörður. We still have a few spots open for residencies from January to May 2025!

Residency spaces include access to ceramics facilities, a concert hall, a green room, and, hopefully soon, a new print workshop. Musicians—did you know releasing your work can qualify you for an Icelandic state refund?

Discover the quiet charm and natural beauty of East Iceland! :)

The residency fee is 150,000 ISK per month, including facilities, accommodation, and transport to and from Egilsstaðir.

Email us at contact@inhere.is or check the link in our bio for more details. And please share with anyone who might be interested!

Bear with us during our winter break—we’ll be back in January to answer emails. :)

Fish Factory Team – Una, Vinny, Kris, Lucas, Tummi and Miso.

Camilla (she/they) is a Naarm-based multidisciplinary artist, sustainability advocate and learning designer.

She has exhibited in multiple spaces including NOIR Darkroom, Counihan Gallery, Schoolhouse Studios, Platform Arts Geelong and Honey Bones Gallery. She is halfway through a Master of Fine Art at RMIT University. Camilla also has experience teaching art and painting murals. In 2024, Camilla completed two artist residencies, one in Estonia and one in Iceland. Thematically, their work sits in the nexus of climate change, mental health, and corporate culture. Formally, Camilla is interested in different ways of framing experience through illustration, collage and digital aesthetics.

THIS RESIDENCY

I have explored compositional space. I have explored absence and presence on the page and at large. I have gone through the motions of a process. I have engaged with flow and with experimentation and with not caring what comes out. I have played with intense technical rendering and then free, sloppy, mark-making – and have experimented with putting them both together. Constraint and catharsis. Through this, I’ve inadvertently explored emotional processing and what it looks like through art. I have made according to my value of using whatever you have and whatever is around you, and by doing so, have embraced chance and spontaneity.

I have drawn from life, both macro and micro. I have drawn from books, magazines and photos. I have inadvertently explored repetition. I have yet again been drawn to collage. I have frozen, been frozen, and defrosted. I have embraced free association and absurdism through words and tacit means. I have reflected my surroundings and my inner landscape too. I have admitted that illustration is important to me. and that it is a style that I can’t help but carry with me. I have been angry and I have been thoughtful I have critiqued certain people and parts of society at large. The phrase ‘at large’ has been echoing around my head. I have been accepting my head. I have expressed deep cynicism, frustration and perhaps a kind of unravelling. I have worn the same ski boots every day. I mean snowshoes. I am new to such a chilly lexicon. I have drunk a lot of coffee made by different people and different methods. I have thought about outsiders, about oppression, about the representation of the world. I have been amazed by how much effort it takes to draw a single stone. I have concentrated, and thus, been free.

Website: https://camillaeustance.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/camillaeustance__/

Nancy Pilkington is an artist from Stanstead Abbotts, UK.

During my stay at the fish factory I had a unique opportunity to gather myself creatively. I enjoyed testing the limits of my practice, learning a new skill and taking up an old one. I began working with clay which helped build my intuition. As I got comfortable, the pieces got smaller, finishing with a castle the size of my thumb.

Gradually I moved towards drawing and paint. The restriction of scale allowed more freedom to build layers. I collated my favourite painters, names of stones and ideas, fossilising.

I am very grateful for the time I spent in Stöðvarfjörður. The camaraderie of the group and the epic beauty of the Fjord provided me with a rich resource I will carry on my journey forward.

Website: https://nancypilkington.uk/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nancypilk/

Caroline Galderisi is a multimedia artist and photographer from Brooklyn, NY.

Through layering and collage Caroline will continue this project back in NYC’s coastal areas to print cyanotypes on different objects such as driftwood and shipping containers.

Website: https://galderisi.space/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/carolinegalderisi

Cula Bula –  Mixed Media Artist from Ireland

I made my second visit to the Fish Factory this year, to honour some time out for my self. I had been working on getting my health on track and hoped to ease myself back into creativity after such a long break.

I wondered around the landscape just to observe and breathe it in.  Autumn being my favourite season I found myself collecting the decaying leaves and flowers as they fell to earth through their process of seasonal change.

After such a long time I felt like I’d literally forgotten how to paint. When I felt ready I would sit in the studio and just look at all the things I had collected. I did this for long enough to want to pick up a pen. Then a paintbrush. In the end I loved playing with a geli plate as it was a new experience for me, it felt free and non-restrictive.

Retreating back into stillness and clarity and witnessing the rapid shifting landscape was just the most perfect reflection of my physical and mental state and one of the best things I ever did. I miss all of the people I shared this experience with.  I can never imagine feeling finished with this place.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cula.bula.art/