
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, the preservation of traditional and/or indigenous craft, and artistic practices that foster human connection.
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, musicians, 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.
UNFOLD Encinitas’ first cycle just hosted Jessy Slim and the application for the Winter 2027 Residency is now open until November 1, 2026. Follow our Instagram for more updates as we unfold and launch our second Edition in Idyllwild, CA in the next year.
APPLY HEREFAQsThe 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.
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LEARN MORE ABOUT OUR SUMMER 2026 Artist-in-Residence
slim-studio.com | @_slimfactory
We were honored to host Unfold Encinitas’ first artist-in-residence, Jessy Slim, an architect and artist based in Fairfax, California in September 2026.
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 co-hosted with Mel Meagher of Unfold Projects to present the next iteration in the chickpeas for thought series during her time in residency.
Portrait Credit: Naomi Mcleod

JESSY’S RESIDENCY
Community connection // Meet+Greet : bica San Diego
Unfold Guild Exchange: Nicholas Pourfard
Dinner co-hosted with Mel Meagher and chef Maz Naba: Chickpeas for Thought, with the Unfold artist guild and regional curators and writers
Photography by Stacy Keck