Toni Cinderella is a multidisciplinary artist from the east coast of the U.S and has returned for a second time at the Fish Factory! Her work explores the notion of making things with love through connecting with nature and looking at elements of folk art, decorative art, and anything wholesome and cute.
During her residency, she worked on a series of marker illustrations that were inspired by the breathtaking landscapes of Iceland. The flower gardens and fabric collections at Petra’s Stone Museum also heavily influenced her drawings. She spent a lot of time outside taking videos of water, birds, and the iconic sister mountains of Stöðvarfjörður. These were accompanied by recorded bird calls, waves, organ, theremin, and her voice to collage together in her short and sweet video and sound pieces.
Her work looks deep into her own spirituality, femininity, and are love letters that state her gratefulness while admiring the complex yet simplistic beauty of the natural world around us.
Matt Stober is a multi-instrumentalist/composer from the East Coast of the United States. In July 2025 he returned to the Fish Factory for the second time. In addition to his solo work under his own name, he is the creator of the post-rock/math-rock Instrumental band, In-Dreamview.
While there he recorded a 17 track instrumental album, ICELAND II, which is the follow-up sequel to his album from his last trip in 2024. ICELAND II consists of mostly piano and drum-driven tracks that are inspired by the many beautiful geographic and animal features of Austurland. You can find a link to the full album on bandcamp in his instagram bio.
During my residency at The Fish Factory this July, I developed a sound-art project called Teel-Dah, which aims to redefine how sound can be used as a tool for healing. Inspired by ancient sound healing traditions, the project explores the therapeutic effects of natural sounds and frequencies on mental health. I focused on capturing field recordings of natural elements such as wind and water from the surrounding environment. Using the studio’s analog equipment, I combined these recordings with Tibetan singing bowls, emphasizing their healing frequencies and their connection to three of the seven chakras.
Photos by Esra Post
This residency was deeply personal. As a Scandinavian artist living in London, it offered a unique opportunity to reconnect with my roots and incorporate nature’s rhythms—similar to those found in Iceland, a place renowned for its happiness and balance—into my work. The result is a series of sound compositions designed to alleviate stress, depression, and emotional imbalance.
I am a music producer, singer and sonic artist from Sweden and have now been based in vibrant South East London for over a decade. My artistic exploration delves into alternative soundscapes that seamlessly blend melancholic melodies, soul, jazz, and cinematic elements. Drawing inspiration from the raw beauty of Scandinavia and ancient folk traditions like ‘Kulning,’ I aim to evoke deep emotion through my voice.
My work has garnered attention from Discover Mag, POP Matters, Dummy Mag, Worldplay Mag, Spindle Mag, Swedish GAFFA, and BBC Introducing.As an artist I distinguish myself through innovative live production, adept use of field recordings and samples, and a fusion of alternative sounds. Earmilk praised my commitment to pushing artistic boundaries, particularly evident in my release “Theme II,” establishing me as a pioneering artist unafraid to tackle complex themes through music.
My work has left a lasting impression on listeners and tastemakers worldwide. I was honored to be named ‘Artist of the Week’ by BBC Introducing, and my vocals and songwriting have been featured on Channel 4 and Sky TV, solidifying my presence in the global music landscape. Beyond music, I strive to engage audiences with a multifaceted artistic vision that resonates across various media platforms.
My sound is influenced by eclectic acts such as James Blake, Massive Attack, Sunda Arc, Burial, Björk, Laura Misch, and FKA Twigs, creating a unique auditory experience that blends triphop, ambient, and jazz-fused electronica.
I’ve had the privilege of supporting artists and performing at iconic events and venues including Lava La Rue, SK Shlomo, Haiku Hands, Normanton Street, Boomtown Festival 2023, Glastonbury Festival 2023, Lazer Hazer 2023 (Prague), The Revival Festival (Colombia), The Bimble Inn Festival (Dorset), The Alternative Escape Festival (Brighton), Hultsfreds Festivalen (Sweden), The Victorious Festival (Portsmouth), Brighton Pride Festival, The Brit Awards Afterparty (London), Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club (London), Oslo Hackney (London), Troy Bar (London), Colours Hoxton (London), and Hootananny Brixton (London).
Orli Swergold is a Brooklyn–based artist and curator whose hand-wrung paper-pulp paintings—applied to wood and metal substrates—investigate physicality by balancing the rigor of manual labor with delicate, up-close patterning. Treated as organismic entities, their wobbly or outstretched gestures reach beyond the rectangle to elicit empathy on a humanoid level. For Swergold, painting is serious play: a paradoxical collaboration with materials that blends control and unpredictability. Drawing on topography and psycho-mapping, she charts external and internal landscapes with channels, moats, rivers, and wings, while her uncanny color palette bridges the natural and artificial. By transforming pulp into layered networks of religious icons, bodily silhouettes, butterflies, letters, and fungal growth, her metamorphic works oscillate between the abject and the sublime, inviting reflection on alienation, tenderness, modern anxieties, and identity.
Photo by Esra Post
Swergold earned a B.A. in Studio Art and Art History from Brandeis University (2018) and received an M.F.A. in painting from the Rhode Island School of Design (2021), where she exhibited in three juried group shows and won the Graduate Commons Grant. Her work is in the Brandeis University Library Art Collection and she has exhibited at Asya Geisberg Gallery, 81 Leonard Gallery, and Stephen Street Gallery. She has curated exhibitions at Soloway Gallery and the Cigar Factory LIC.
Kiley Brandt (MFA) is a video artist from North Carolina. In her work, Brandt attempts to inspire empathy through sound, poetry and immersive installation to better communicate dissatisfaction with the current political climate and the uncertain displacement many feel within it.
Her research areas include diaspora, adoption, immigration and Mexican/American Border politics. She was a 2019 New Media Caucus: Border Control Presenter in Ann Arbor, Michigan and currently teaches as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Art- Digital Media at Clemson University, SC.
“I spent a lot of time in Iceland just feeling and thinking. At @fishfactory I felt ready to explore without an end goal. I spent my days relearning to use my hands; playing guitar chords and making ceramics even though I have no skill in either. I made linoleum stamps, wrote poetry, made copies and spent many moments by the shore or in the water. In between these moments I felt my larger thoughts about my political pieces shifting and I rediscovered intuitive making in my video practice.
I slowed down and nurtured the need for idle contemplation and experience. What pieces shift back into place when you remember what it is to exist presently in the body? Online slogans, like “cry about it” became premonitions or advice from the landscape. An Icelandic cure for being lost in the woods came to be a call to action in simplicity. One of the most radical things to participate in during times like these is to slow down, feel, and know there are certain truths that cannot be taken from you, like community and freedom…
Ritual, loss, cycles and time became familiar friends in Stödvarfjordur and I was excited to explore texture not just in the physical landscape, but the political one as well.
I left with a few projects started and ongoing with the hopes of returning soon to see them out 💙
Thanks to the amazing creatives I spent my time with @katelittletonrob @arimeyaki @brianconeryart @being_littoral @jessiekilguss
And of course Kris and Vid for always answering my many questions.”
Peter Klett is an artist based in Washington State, USA.
Through video, photography, sound, and woodworking, my work reflects on the layered ambiguities of our relationships—with ourselves, those around us, the things we carry, and the environments we inhabit—and how these entanglements guide and complicate our search for meaning.
During my residency, I began working on a short video titled An Apprenticeship in Unknowing, which unfolded through impressionistic imagery, field recordings, and improvised music—all captured in and around the studio. Shaped by an attentiveness to embodied perception and the shifting nature of memory, the work invites viewers along a series of sensory vignettes where clarity gives way to presence and unknowing becomes its own form of attention.
Running alongside this work were regular spoon-carving sessions with my fellow residents, which became an integral counterpoint. These moments came to ground my days in the studio, acting as a medium for apprehension to be chipped away and for new ideas to quietly accumulate.
Thank you to my hosts Kris and Lukas; to everyone in and around the town of Stöðvarfjörður; and to my fellow residents Adele, Elise, Fien, Lulu, Marina, and Naomi. I am humbled by your kindness and generosity.
Fien Brakkee is a multimedia artist based in the Netherlands. Her work is a poetic and sensitive exploration of the physical and spiritual relations between the landscapes that surround us and the landscapes that live within us. Inspired by the ephemeral evidence of memory, vivid yet untouchable atmosphere of place and the sometimes elusive elements of our existence, Fien hopes for her work to create opportunities to slow down and pay attention to the tender and still things that our harsh, fast paced and chaotic society tend to rush past.
My time at Fish Factory was immensely glorious. It is hard to express the depth of impact it has had on me as an artist and also as a human being. Being here in this grand landscape has felt like meeting the earth in her most pure, wild and free form. Witnessing that and being among it has allowed me to grow, soften, connect, love, explore and experiment in ways I could have never imagined.
During my two month residency I followed the flow of days and the curiosity in my hands. I did many different things such as: continued my growing love for ceramics by handbuilding works and learning how to throw on the wheel, creating many cyanotypes with gatherings from the land, learning how to felt with Icelandic wool, carving my first spoon and writing, drawing and playing around endlessly.
It was freeing to just spend my time making, without purpose or pressure. To follow my intuition and the inspiration this landscape gifted me. It opened up an opportunity to reflect on previous work, recognize the themes and wonderings that tie them all together and deepen those explorations further. The result is a body of work that feels like a beginning of things coming together and that fills me with excitement to continue on this path being here has set me on.
Looking back I will remember the beautiful walks and drives, many deep and sensitive conversations, the warm hugs and the laughs, the snow on the mountains, the singing birds at night, the dancing aurora in the sky, a glimpse of the midnight sun and making friends for life.
Leaving is hard but I go with bags full of inspiration and a heart full of tenderness and warmth. Thank you so much Kris and the whole team at Fish Factory, you created a magical place that I can ’t wait to come back to one day.
Shannon is a US ceramicist based in Cincinnati, Ohio. Her focus during residency consisted of a compilation of lighthearted experiments as she attempted to push the envelope of color, canvas, form and purpose. Shannon’s work often surrounds themes of queerness, femininity, aging and humor. To her, ceramics serves as a vessel for exploration, curiosity and community.
During my March residency at Fish Factory, I spent lots of time getting to know the petri dish of moss that covered the neighboring foothills. The soft, forgiving nature of Icelandic moss creates an environment that inherently encourages play- what a joy!!
I came to the Fish Factory without a specific goal, just the intention to create everyday. I immediately dove into exploring what surface design and small batch production could mean to me. I found myself in the clay studio mimicking landscapes I hadn’t even seen yet! The collective energy of the residency space and the people inspired immediate, almost urgent, acts of lively creativity. The ceramics lab became a haven of playfulness and community as it absorbed other resident artists looking to experiment with a new medium. Some would come for a day, another would stay for the entirety of the month. It was very special to watch others fall in love with clay in real time!
I am extremely grateful for this opportunity to create, experiment, laugh and explore at Fish Factory! Thank you to all who made it possible and to all who made it special!
Joke Noordstrand, a Dutch historian and a visual artist, is redefining the narrative of history through her ceramic art, focusing on the often-overlooked stories of women. Her project, “Female History in Iceland,” undertaken at the AiR Fish Factory in Stöðvarfjörður, draws from her fascination with Iceland’s stark landscapes and the rich histories of Icelandic women across generations.
Through engaging conversations and questionnaires, Noordstrand captures the essence of women’s experiences, translating them into ceramics that highlight themes of connection, protection, and resilience. Her innovative techniques range from using common clay and balloon molds to spraying clay to create unique textures. To work more sustainably, she adds leftovers as coffee grounds to the clay and usually combines the bisque and the glaze in one single firing.
From the rugged beauty of the Icelandic landscape to the intimate stories shared by women, Joke’s work captures the essence of female history with sensitivity and insight. Her art invites viewers to ponder the hidden narratives and untold stories that shape our understanding of the past and present.
Alex M. Stein is an award winning writer and filmmaker living in Los Angeles. Alex stayed at the Fish Factory in November 2024. Alex wrote short stories and shared them at our exhibition at the end of the month in the green room upstairs. During the month, he delighted us with positive energy and good vibes. Pleasure to have you with us in Stöðvarfjörður.
Alex Stein /// November 2023
He has devoted his entire adult life to stories and storytelling and is a mainstay of the Los Angeles storytelling community. He ran a weekly storytelling show for two years. He has won the Moth multiple times and is the author of the personal essay collection No, Mr. Bond, I Expect Your Dreams To Die and the short-story collection Tales From the Trail: Short Fiction About Dogs, Mushing, and Sled-Dog Races. He has worked extensively in film and television development and works as a story consultant for production companies, studios, individual writers, and more.
Alex Stein during Open House Reading /// Fish Factory Creative Centre November 2023
Alex enjoys writing about himself in the third-person and would love it if you connect with him on Twitter (while it still exists) or on Facebook, Post.News, or Mastodon.
Clio Berta is a Maine based performance artist, composer and event producer inspired by snakes, esoteric mysticism, constructed identity, cycles and nothingness. She works with movement, projected video, paint and the natural landscape to explore these ideas in an intimate, multi dimensional way.
Clio spent her time at the Fish Factory researching, writing about and visually investigating the ancient Celtic idea of thin places, simulating rainbows, writing and recording songs, dancing, looking for sparkly rocks and illustrating the elusive spirits that give life to the otherworldly landscape surrounding the Factory.
Hester Aspland is an illustrator and ceramicist based in Scotland. Her work is inspired by nature, folklore and history, which is explored through ink drawings, ceramics and sketchbook work. The landscapes of Scotland are a particularly large source of inspiration, so having the opportunity to come to Iceland was a dream come true. She spent the month of October at the Fish Factory but liked it so much she extended her stay for an extra two weeks.
During the residency she worked on a small book of Icelandic folktales, which she illustrated in ink and paired with film photography. To support the illustrations in the book she kept a drawing journal of landscape drawings and watercolour paintings, experimenting with ways of recording the colours and forms of the landscape.This also lead to some ceramic work; sgraffito pottery depicting landscapes around Stöðvarfjörður, as well as a ceramic troll sculpture which luckily survived two plane rides back to Scotland!
Jane Beguchaya, a Russian/Tatar artist, stayed in Fish Factory in September 2023.
She reflects on her residency experience, saying, “If I’ll say that it was a special experience, it would be not enough. To be honest, it is not easy to find the words. Month already gone since the day I came back home but I still feel I am not here fully. Probably I will never be fully here anymore.”
Jane’s initial goal during her residency was her “alphabet project.” However, her time here led her to explore ceramics, photography, and installations, making it hard to define her work within traditional boundaries. She states, “I want to do everything, and I don’t wanna stop.”
Jane is soon to release a zine featuring her alphabet project, and she has ambitious plans for a large artist’s book on this topic next year.
Jane Beguchaya’s residency experience has left an indelible mark, expanding her creative horizons and solidifying her position as a versatile and boundary-pushing artist.
Nancy is a Professor of Environmental History at Michigan Technological University. She is the author of five books on climate history, Great Lakes history, forest and wetland history, and toxics history.
Nancy spent the month of September with us while she worked on her paintings, watercolours, linocuts, prints and collages. She experimented with these different mediums, inspired by nature and our surroundings. Nancy took many paths up the fjord, looking for different birds and reindeer, and a big herd appeared at the base of the hill in the last week of September.
Lula Asplund is a Chicago based sound artist and musician who combines digital and analog sound synthesis with tape manipulation, field recordings, and vocal manipulation in her practice.
Lula’s time at Fish Factory consisted of going on long walks, taking photographs, field recordings, recording electro-magnetic sounds of the lighthouses, reading Clarice Lispector, and recording with sounds from the Juno synthesizer and piano in Studio Silo. She loved taking long bike rides along the coast and visiting the orange lighthouse and found the ethereal landscape and the fog in Stöðvarfjörður incredibly inspiring for her music.
Madeleine Aleman is a visual artist from Malmö, Sweden. She stayed with us in the month of September 2023. Since 2012, her art practice focuses mainly on drawing, printmaking, and performance. Aleman is strongly influenced by psychology and spirituality. Hypnagogic states and dreams are important sources of inspiration.
“During my residency stay, I was totally overwhelmed by the mountains, the clouds, and the fjord. In the studio, I worked with printmaking and made monotypes.
I used a method in which I painted directly on the printing plate. The result from one print is what brought the process forward, as I kept painting on the same plate without cleaning it in between prints. What’s left of the old print has formed traces of the past in the ones that follow. Like memories. Like dreams. A way to search beyond and dare to get lost.”
Susan Singer is a writer and an artist. The first time she landed in Keflavik was in 2014. That inspired her to sign up for different residencies, where she worked with photography and with pastels. At the Fish Factory, she experimented with watercolour, and she worked plein air as much as possible, taking inspiration from beautiful surroundings.
“I arrived not knowing what I would do during my month at the Fish Factory, but, within hours, I was settling in creating art unlike anything I’d ever done before. I have always worked super-realistically, but at the Fish Factory this month, I moved towards abstraction.
I began to parse the complexities of Icelandic landscapes into lines and angles and compositions. I moved into a very meditative space and worked in the spirit of the stillness and silence of the Icelandic Nature. I’m so grateful for the time I had there to explore this new direction and for the beauty of the setting to give me so much more to paint!”
Kathryn Mohr is an artist and a musician currently based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She spent the month August here at the Fish Factory, working on music. She set up a desk in our green room upstairs, with beautiful view over the opening of the fjord.
Kathryn liked to stroll near the sea, searching and collecting various objects that were washed ashore. She used them to build interesting sculptures and collections.
Eva is a graphic designer and illustrator based in Barcelona, Spain.
Her work during the residency, in August, was inspired by the local fauna and landscape with a layer of fantasy extracted from Icelandic folk tales mixed with witchy popular culture and personal anecdotes of her travels. She also took the opportunity given to focus on improving her watercolour skills, so the majority of her paintings were done using this medium.
“I found it particularly satisfying discovering how much the setting influenced my capacity to focus, be productive and creative, even when I came with no goals in mind”.
You can see more of her work on instagram: kitara22
Julia Hechtman is a visual artist who lives and works in Boston, USA. Julia makes works focusing on the balance of absence and presence, life and death, and real-time and memoried experience in her multi-faceted studio practice. The natural world features prominently in her works, which has allowed her to travel extensively and to contemplate the familiar in new ways. In 2019, she was a Fulbright Scholar in Reykjavik at Lístaháskolí Íslands, where she pursued her research into the roles of landscape and memory in identity production. In 2024, she will be going to Svalbard on a two-week residency on a tall ship.
Julia stayed with us in the month of August 2023, while she continued her project “Not Once,” a series of videos based on stories told by local icelanders regarding specific locations of significance. Julia travelled between fjords and interviewed locals who were willing to share their stories and memories from the past. At midday, she wandered along the beaches and docks, accompanied by Tumi, looking for and filming jellyfish. That’s how the project “Apparitions” came to life.
Julia also worked in our ceramics workshop, sculpting birds out of clay. “Spirit Birds,” they’re called, and they were an inspiration for fellow artist Gabriele Glang’s ceramis birds.
Julia also travelled to Reykjavik, where she had an audio-visual exhibition of her project.
Introducing Gabriele Glang, a German-American artist and bilingual poet from southern Germany, who spent the month of August at the Fish Factory. All her life, she has practiced both painting and writing, her creative work comprising both the visual and the literary. “The artist’s book is the perfect medium for me: a marriage between the written word and the image.”
Her German poetry debut, Goettertage, fictional monologues of the German Expressionist painter Paula Modersohn-Becker, was published in 2017 by Kloepfer & Meyer (Tuebingen). In addition to her work as screenwriter and translator, she taught creative writing in English at the University of Applied Sciences in Esslingen for many years. A painter and maker of artist’s books, her works have been published and exhibited widely in Europe and the US.
Her residency in Stödvarfjödur, part of a six-week journey circumnavigating the Icelandic coast, gave her the opportunity to gather impressions for a new body of work. At the Fish Factory she developed a visual language to express her responses to the sensory input of landscape and atmosphere of Iceland.
Foraging in and around the premises, as well as outdoors during walks on the heath and shoreline, Gabriele collected found objects from which she made mark-making tools, working in various water media, making artist’s books, collaging, and journaling about her impressions back in the studio.
Meet Gabi Maynard, an artist and digital creator. She stayed with us in August.
Gabi Maynard // August 2023
“I recently completed my digital media studies at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, New York, focusing on graphic design. Although I’ve created a lot of digital work, I still have a strong passion for traditional, analog media.
Initially I was planning on just pursuing printmaking at the factory, but reflecting on my time at the residency I’m surprised by how much I ended up experimenting with various mediums. I drew and painted more than I usually do, and discovered a new technique and style to my prints that I want to continue working on. Going to a brand new place by myself right after college was definitely nerve-wracking at first, but I’m very glad I did it. I think the experience has definitely helped me navigate what kind of artist I want to be moving forward and what I want to create.”
Introducing Daisy Allen, an artist born and bred in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Daisy currently works in London, where her creative practice includes photography, illustration, art direction, and painting murals. We got to know Daisy in July, when she was here with only one other artist. She used this time to work on her personal projects, such as creating an art calendar with the help of visual backgrounds (on Zoom! :).
Daisy Allen // 2023
Daisy brought an airbrush, and she experimented with this machine, mimicking and recreating tattoo designs. She’s also a tattoo artist, and if you want to get stick-and-poked, you can catch her in London! Daisy is always on the lookout, searching for walls where she can paint murals, and she found one in Stöðvarfjörður at our Factory. Daisy got inspired while chit-chatting with the locals, relaxing in the local hot tub. That’s how the heitur pottur idea was born.
Daisy also worked with clay, creating different pieces, such as a candle holder and a small coffee cup. We also drove up to Seyðisfjörður for annual LungA festival!
Edie is a multidisciplinary visual artist based in Cornwall, UK. Her work shifts between film and animation to installation and costume for live performance.
‘I was drawn to the extreme, remote landscapes and harsh climates of Iceland, which have shaped the century-old mythology and its need for story. I used my two months in the fish factory to explore Icelandic folklore, making costumes and set to shoot my first reel of super8 film, which I plan to release in the upcoming months along with an analogue soundtrack which I recorded in the surrounding hills.’
