Recology San Francisco — Artist in Residence Program (applications Jun–Sep 2026)

Recology's residency gives a Bay Area artist four months of studio space at San Francisco's recycling and transfer centre, a stipend, and access to materials pulled from the public reuse area and paint from the household hazardous waste facility. It's a materials-and-place residency: you scavenge from the waste stream, talk to school groups and adult visitors touring the recycling operations, and finish with a public exhibition and artist talk, leaving one to three works from the residency in Recology's permanent collection. Past residents have worked in new media, video, painting, photography, performance, sculpture and installation. The guidelines don't name music or sound as a discipline, so anyone working in sound should expect to argue that their practice fits a scavenging, object-making studio.

You must currently live in the Bay Area — no housing is provided, and applications aren't accepted from artists living more than an hour's drive from the transfer station on Tunnel Avenue. Emerging, mid-career and established artists are all welcome; students enrolled at a local college or university apply to a separate student strand instead. Everyone has to attend an on-site tour before applying, then submit through the SlideRoom portal.

Professional applications run from 1 June to 1 September 2026, for residencies beginning February 2027. An advisory board of former residents, arts professionals, environmentalists and educators reviews in October and interviews eight to ten candidates in November; six artists are chosen each year. The board weighs your work samples and proposal, whether you can handle the challenge of scavenging your own materials, what the residency would do for your professional growth, and how your materials and methods suit the tools in the studio.