Jentel Artist Residency

08/06/2026

for applications is September 15th at Noon MDT.
Applications are available for writers, visual artists, and composers. Please visit our website at https://www.jentelarts.org/apply

08/03/2026

Victoria Ravelo is a first-generation Cuban-American artist based in Miami. She is particularly interested in how children of the diaspora experience cultural transmission differently from those who have experienced displacement firsthand, how this generational distance creates hybrid forms of knowledge where certain elements are simultaneously remembered and lost.

Victoria works across installation, photography, sculpture, and drawing. She's drawn to materials with complex colonial histories, like indigo and sugar, along with reclaimed objects transformed through spiritual use. The results carry a déjà vu quality, the sense of recognizing something not quite remembered, of inheriting knowledge without its full meaning, existing as feelings before they become understood.

During her three weeks at Jentel, Victoria has been developing Siempre vuelvo, a series of encaustic drawings on paper with images suspended within layers of wax, combined with found ephemera drawn from her own travels. The wax works like memory itself, holding images, translucent yet opaque, preserving and distorting at the same time.

1: Studio portrait by Nicole Combeau ()
2: Installation view, "Poceta de memoria" (well of memory) and "Untitled (Viñales)" in 'poemas de sal y tierra' (poems of salt and soil), .gallery x .art
3: "Poceta de memoria" (well of memory), 2019. Photocopy, wheatpaste, reclaimed wood, drywall screws.
4: "Infinite Horizons" and "Cargo de Conciencia (or The Weight of Consciousness)," 2021. Wall: reclaimed wood, acrylic, drywall screws. Floor: ocean rocks and seashells sourced from the Miami shoreline, glass plate and palm oil on straw mat. Photo by Neighboring States.
5: "Yordanca," 2026. Wax, graphite, and plaster debris on watercolor paper.
6: Victoria working in the Autumn studio at Jentel.

07/31/2026

Charlie King creates work around q***r identity and psychiatric disability. They primarily work with textiles and printmaking, but are open to any medium that suits their ideas. Charlie is a recent graduate from the University of Houston where he received their MFA in Photography.
Follow them at .b.king or browse their work at www.charliebking.art.

07/29/2026

1) Monet’s Window, 2026, oil on linen, 30 × 24 inches
2) Studio Portrait, 2026
3) Giverny, 2025, oil on linen, 18 × 14 inches
4) Installation view from Drayzen's solo exhibition Towards the Sun at My Pet Ram Gallery (), NYC, 2025.

Heather Drayzen (b. 1985, San Antonio, TX) is a painter whose intimate, small-scale works mine the complexities of her interior and exterior life, capturing the people and places closest to her across the passage of time. She lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. After health scares and the pandemic, Drayzen felt a renewed urgency to mine her own life for subject matter. Her portraits and still lifes render moments of quiet domesticity and the seasonal textures of her daily life — among visiting family, those she cherishes, and her travels. In layered, atmospheric paintings with rich color and flickering light, she chronicles the everyday and commonplace with an emotional intensity drawn from art historical references including Bonnard and Vuillard to Munch and O'Keeffe. Each painting is a vignette within the larger narrative of her life. In a moment of relentless speed and noise, her deeply personal work finds the spiritual in the ordinary, insisting on the devotional call to create, to love, to pay attention, and to look toward the light.

Drayzen received her BFA from the School of Visual Arts, New York, and her MAT from the Rhode Island School of Design. Her second solo exhibition, Towards the Sun, opened at My Pet Ram, New York, in October 2025. She has a forthcoming solo exhibition at Auxier Kline Gallery, New York, in 2027. Her work has been shown in two-person and group exhibitions at Massey Klein Gallery (New York), EDJI Gallery (Brussels), The Middle Room Gallery (Los Angeles), Myriam Chair Galerie (Paris), and Pentimenti Gallery (Philadelphia), among others. She is a July 2026 artist in residence at Jentel. She was awarded First Prize in the Prisma Art Prize, Rome, and has completed residencies at Hafnarborg, Iceland and the Vermont Studio Center. Her work is held in the Beth Rudin DeWoody Public Collection.

| www.heatherdrayzen.com

07/27/2026

Miah Jeffra's latest book, American Gospel, was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award.

07/23/2026

Our July residents enjoyed a wonderful tour of Neltje's home, hosted by Kathryn Stevens, the assistant director of the Neltje Center.

07/22/2026

Apply! The deadline is September 15th, 12 PM MST.

A Mountain West residency for artists, writers, and composers.

07/21/2026

JD Raenbeau (b. 1985, Stony Brook, NY) lives and works in Rocky Point, New York. He earned an MFA from the School of Visual Arts and a BFA from Alfred University. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, featured in numerous publications, and supported through residencies at the Vermont Studio Center, the Golden Foundation for the Arts, and the Hafnarborg Museum in Iceland. Represented by CLAMP Gallery in New York City, Raenbeau presented a solo exhibition there in May 2025 and is scheduled to present another solo exhibition in May 2027.
Raenbeau’s work draws from the intimate relationship he shares with his husband and the living earth. Just as the earth nurtures and sustains them, they reciprocate that care. This symbiotic bond reflects the love they give and receive in their relationships. His paintings explore this dynamic of mutual tending.

Image 1: “Shadow”, 30”x24”, Oil on panel, 2025
Image 2: JD Raenbeau is his studio in Rocky Point, NY
Image 3: “With You”, 16”x12”, Oil on panel, 2025
Image 4: Installation of view of Raenbeau’s solo exhibition, “At Home With You” at CLAMP gallery, NY, NY 2025
Image 5: “Lover”, 12”x9”, Oil on panel, 2025
Image 6: Installation of view of Raenbeau’s solo exhibition, “At Home With You” at CLAMP gallery, NY, NY 2025

07/20/2026

At the UW Neltje Center’s Jentel Studio Tour, the Jentel Artist Residency artists share their artworks and writing with the community in their studios. Jentel Studio Tour will take place on Tuesday, July 28th 11:30 am – 1:00 pm at the Jentel Artist Residency, 132 Lower Piney Road in Banner, WY. A light lunch will be provided. RSVP by July 23rd to [email protected].

This month’s presenters include:

Victoria Ravelo, Miami Beach, FL; Multidisciplinary Artist; Victoria is a first-generation Cuban-American who grew up in Miami in a family of exiles. She is an avid swimmer who finds solace in open water and nature.

M.L. Martin, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada; Writer; M.L. has lived and worked in Arizona, Arkansas, New York, Oklahoma, and Texas. They love animals, weird books, trees, and being immersed in nature.

JD Raenbeau, Rocky Point, NY; Painter; In addition to painting and teaching, JD enjoys gardening, traveling, running, beach outings, cooking with his husband, texting his best friend, twirling, and family time.

Heather Drayzen, Brooklyn, NY; Painter; Heather lives and works in Brooklyn with her husband and two pups. Her paintings are about her life and those she cherishes.

Charlie King, Houston, TX; Interdisciplinary Artist; Charlie recently graduated from the University of Houston with his MFA in photography. He loves to craft with his friends in his free time.

Miah Jeffra, San Francisco, CA; Writer; Miah is Southern by birth and Californian by choice. They dance, walk, hike, climb—anything with legs—when not writing and reading. They probably like you.

Join us as Jentel hosts its Studio Tour on Tuesday, July 28th, 2026

The Jentel Artist Residency accepts applications twice a year from visual artists in all mediums, writers in fiction, creative non-fiction, and poetry, and composers in all genres for a three-week residency. A residency includes comfortable accommodations; common living, dining, and kitchen areas; a private workspace; and a stipend to help defray expenses during the program. For more information, please visit www.jentelarts.org or call Jentel at (307) 737-2311.

Resident contacts:
IG: .sent.past
IG: m_litgeek_martin
IG:
IG:
IG: .b.king
IG:

06/27/2026

Olivia Berkey is an artist working in ceramics and time-based performance based in Taos, New Mexico. She creates pieces—functional, sculptural, digital, and durational—that excavate site-specific relationships between body and earth, human and geologic time.

Her work has previously been supported by residencies with Open AIR (MT), Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts (ME), and Arquetopia Foundation (Mexico), and she was named a 2025 SURFACE: Emerging Artist of New Mexico with Harwood Art Center (NM).

Pictured:
Angled Pitcher, 2; stoneware, wild clay slip, wood/soda fired; 15” x 7” x 3”; 2025
Cavity (Spoon Rest); wild clay, woodfired; 8” x 3” x 1.5”; 2025
Extraction Series, 5; wild black clay, woodfired; 18” x 9” x 3”; 2025