Rediscovery of practice and self

2026 Artist Residencies

Providing creatives with the conditions to step outside of the pressures of production and performance.

The UNFOLD RESIDENCY offers participants across disciplines space, time, and resources for creative regeneration. An extension of UNFOLD PROJECTS, the residency supports artists dedicated to natural, bio-based or repurposed materials, or the preservation of traditional and indigenous craft.

Our residency program intentionally prioritizes applications from women, transgender, nonbinary, and gender-marginalized artists, Black, Indigenous, artists of color, and low-income artists.

Hosting two residents per year—painters, poets, sculptors, chefs, environmentalists, and others—on a seasonal basis at UNFOLD Editions, the program provides a stipend and facilitates opportunities for connections within the local community to further each artist's individual practice.

A living model of UNFOLD PROJECTS’ philosophy of environmental and community stewardship, and a platform for radical generosity and expression, the UNFOLD RESIDENCY provides creatives with the conditions to step outside of the frantic daily cycle of production and performance and into a sphere of self-expansion, working toward a mutual goal of planetary and interpersonal care. Above all, it is a channel for rediscovery.

The first cycle of the residency launches late Summer, September 2026 at UNFOLD’s Edition in Encinitas, California. A second will follow in Idyllwild, California, in late 2027. Each residency cycle is planned in collaboration with a local community partner.

Our application cycle for the UNFOLD Encinitas Winter 2027 Residency is now open until November 1, 2026.

APPLY HERE FAQs

The UNFOLD Residency: Encinitas

The Artist Residency at UNFOLD Encinitas residents are hosted to a two-week to one-month stay in the transformed Artist Flat on the property, which once served as the original woodshop. The space is made home and a source of inspiration for its inhabitants with furniture pieces and artwork created by the artists and designers of the UNFOLD Guild. Situated in coastal Encinitas just steps from the beach and a short drive to San Diego, The Encinitas Residency is a setting rooted in rest, dedicated pause for introspection, and creative rediscovery.

Explore Encinitas

September 2026 Artist-in-Residence

Jessy Slim

slim-studio.com | @_slimfactory

We are excited to welcome Unfold Encinitas’ first artist-in-residence, Jessy Slim, an architect and artist based in Fairfax, California.

Utilizing architecture, installation, sculpture, and photography, intuition and memory drive Slim’s research-making based practice. Through her own grappling with displacement, memory, and the notion of home, her work encompasses and embraces her personal history through the lens of a Lebanese immigrant.

Slim explores chickpeas as her medium — an ingredient emblematic of the Middle East and Lebanon — to create large-scale, site-specific installations to highlight and amplify chickpeas’ value and represent an expression of the fragmentation of cultural and political identities.

Her series chickpeas for thought was born out of her reflections about her work in relation to what is happening on the ground back home in Beirut in the ongoing war in the Middle East. The series has become an evolving collaborative practice that centers chickpeas literally and figuratively at the table to confront difficult conversations and create dialogue to further understanding, alliances, and human connection.

Slim will be collaborating with Unfold Projects to present the next iteration in the chickpeas for thought series, bringing a site-specific installation to the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) San Diego / North in September 2026. Meet the artist as she finishes installing her work during San Diego Design Week on September 20th 11AM-3PM. The exhibition of her work will run September 24- November 21. Open Tuesday - Sunday 11AM-5PM at ICA San Diego / North. Free and open to the public.

Meet the artist

Portrait Credit: Naomi Mcleod