Meg Hunt Artist Residency Program

2025 Program Dates: June 12-26

2014 Meg Hunt Resident, Joe Barrington's, raven sculpture in front of the Wrangell Mountains Center

2014 Meg Hunt Resident, Joe Barrington's, raven sculpture in front of the Wrangell Mountains Center

Overview

The Wrangell Mountains Center (WMC) is a nonprofit organization whose mission is connecting people with wildlands through art, science, and education in Alaska. The Wrangell Mountains Residency Program aims to support artists of all genres, writers, and inquiring minds. Our organization and community will provide a unique and rustic workspace located in the heart of the nation’s largest national park.

We invite applicants with creative and inquisitive minds who will both add to and benefit from the interdisciplinary efforts at our community hub in McCarthy, Alaska and the surrounding Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve. Artists and writers of all genres and stages in their career are encouraged to apply for our two-week residency. Alaska Native artists, artists from the global majority, artists who are underrepresented and/or marginalized are especially encouraged to apply. The WMC will make selections through a competitive admissions process. We hope to encourage emerging and mid-level career voices as well as mature professionals.

During the residency, the artist will be asked to share their experience with the public by demonstration, talk, or other means. The presentation will depend on the artist’s medium, interests, and experience.

The Setting

Writing in a field of Dryas plantsPhoto: Nathaniel Wilder

Writing in a field of Dryas plants

Photo: Nathaniel Wilder

The Old Hardware Store (OHS), located next to McCarthy Creek at the end of main street McCarthy, is the heart of the WMC where meals are prepared and shared among staff, volunteers, and program participants. The OHS was built in 1911 as a town general mercantile and was converted into a community hub for arts and sciences in the 1980s. This 100 year old building is currently on the National Register of Historic Places. Across the street from the OHS is Porphyry Place, a former homestead cabin, where artists, scientists, and locals give public lectures and weekly youth programs take place. Located behind Porphyry Place is one of three gardens at the WMC, including a small greenhouse, which supply the WMC kitchen with fresh greens throughout the summer months. Residency participants will have the opportunity to experience and contribute to the sustainable living system at the WMC.

Each resident will be provided with a private and furnished live/work space. The smaller of the two is a cozy 12’ x 12’ standalone cabin with a small wood burning stove, desk, and twin size bed. The slightly larger cabin includes a small propane heater, work table, and full size bed. There is an outhouse located just a few paces from both spaces. The studios are not equipped with electricity, but the long Alaskan summer days provide ample natural light for many hours and small electronics can be charged on our solar power system at the OHS. Residents will have access to common areas on campus and simple, healthy meals (mostly vegetarian) will be provided and shared communally with WMC staff, students, and visitors.

Our live/work resident studios are located in the back yard of Porphyry PlacePhoto: Anders Link

Our live/work resident studios are located in the back yard of Porphyry Place

Photo: Anders Link

Our campus, located in the center of McCarthy, a small mountain community, and within the boundaries of the nation’s largest unit of the national park system (over 13 million acres), provides a unique natural and cultural environment for the WMC. Positioned near ice-capped mountains, the roaring Kennicott River and McCarthy Creek, and the raw terminus of the Kennicott Glacier, the local landscape is a dynamic laboratory for ecology, glaciology, and geology. The town of McCarthy was established during the copper mining period in the early 20th century. After the local copper mines were abandoned in the 1930s, the once booming community virtually became a ghost town, but as the national park was established in the 1980s and with the growth of local tourism, McCarthy has been rediscovered by everyone from Alaskans to international travelers. Many historic sites and buildings in McCarthy and Kennecott combine to make the area a rich cultural environment, hosting vibrant communities full of character and dynamic narratives. It is an ideal place for contemplation and creative endeavor.


In 2025 we are hosting a single residency cohort from June 12 - 26.

Applications are now closed.

Stay tuned for summer 2026 program details.

To apply please submit the following by April 11, 2025 through the Call For Entry application portal linked below (application portal closes at 11:59 Mountain Time). There is a $25 application fee. Artists from the global majority, who are underrepresented, marginalized, Alaska Natives, etc. are especially encouraged to apply. Please direct any questions or concerns to sabrina@wrangells.org:

  • Artist statement (1000 characters)

  • Please upload your resume or CV (limit your resume to 1-2 pages).

  • Why is this residency important to you? What do you hope to accomplish during your two weeks at the Wrangell Mountains Center? (2000 character limit)

  • One goal of our residency program is for artists and writers to share their work with our community. Examples of such outreach include giving a slide lecture, teaching a short workshop, and/or having a public performance or exhibit. Are you comfortable sharing your work in a public setting? Explain what you propose to do to give back to the Wrangell Mountains Center and our community during or after your residency. We recognize that these plans may change and develop leading up to and during the course of a residency. (2000 character limit)

  • Tell us about your workspace needs. (1000 character limit)

  • Our setting is very primitive with limited water and electricity. We operate off the grid with a communal approach to sharing resources. Tell us about your experience living and working in remote locations and your comfort level with this challenge. (1000 character limit)

  • Optional response: Artists from the global majority, who are underrepresented, marginalized, Alaska Natives, etc. are especially encouraged to apply. Do you identify with any of these groups of people? 

  • Optional response: Is there anything else about your background or practice that you feel is important for us to know?

  • Work samples: Please submit the following based on your area of focus. Visual Artists: 6-10 images of your work. Performance, video, dance, and music artists: please submit links to samples of your work online (for example on Vimeo, YouTube, or a personal webpage or blog). Please keep the time to about 15 minutes. Writers: upload up to 10 pages.

Selection Process:

Artists will be selected by the following components:

  • Artistic merit

  • Importance of the Wrangell-St. Elias/McCarthy experience to the artist’s work

  • Need or benefit to artist

  • The artist's proposed plan to engage with the community, e.g., workshop or performance

  • Feasibility of plan and ideas

  • Diversity of backgrounds and disciplines represented in the program overall

We plan to announce our selections by early May, 2025.


Other Info

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Artist in Residence Greta Van Campen working in the Meg Hunt Studio

Artist in Residence Greta Van Campen working in the Meg Hunt Studio

Our remote location limits the ability of visitors to obtain many goods and services in the area. Participants should come prepared with all the necessary research materials and art supplies since they are not available for purchase locally. Please communicate specific needs for the residency period to ensure enjoyment and productivity. Internet access can be purchased on a personal computer, but the ability to charge electronic devices is dictated by solar power availability, which can be limited in inclement weather. Laundry opportunities are available.

We plan to host four residents during two two-week periods in the summer (June 5-19 and July 30-August 13). Teams of two artists are welcome to apply and will be awarded two of the four residency slots.

Program Goals:

  • Provide work time and space for artists inspired by the wildlands of Wrangell-St. Elias National Park & Preserve

  • Facilitate a personal experience with the dramatic landscape and sense of place

  • Foster meaningful connections between artists/writers and the McCarthy community

  • Provide educational opportunities for locals and visitors at the WMC

  • Create lasting collaboration and development between artists in residence and the public space and local community

  • Promote professional and personal relationships between artists in residence

 

2025 Artists in Residence


Allen Braden, Artist Resident 2025

Perri Howard, Artist in Residence 2025




Allen Braden is an Associate Professor at Tacoma Community College, he currently resides in Lakewood, Washington. He is the author of A Wreath of Down and Drops of Blood (University of Georgia) and Elegy in the Passive Voice (University of Alaska/Fairbanks). His poems have been anthologized in The Bedford Introduction to Literature, Poetry: An Introduction, Best New Poets, and Spreading the Word: Editors on Poetry. Assistant poetry editor of Terrain.org: A Journal of the Built + Natural Environments, he has received fellowships from the NEA and Artist Trust.



Perri Lynch Howard is a multi-disciplinary artist working in painting, drawing, installation, and sound. Her work investigates the passage of light, sound, and signal through the world’s most vulnerable ecosystems - a phenomenology of place.

Howard’s art has a global reach through exhibitions and sound installations completed in the United States, Italy, Portugal, Brazil, Canada, the Arctic Circle, and in South India as a Fulbright Senior Research Scholar. She is a volunteer field recording ambassador with Quiet Parks International, and an avid adventurer.

Howard received her BA from The Evergreen State College, BFA from the University of Washington, and MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art. Honors include a Puffin Foundation Grant, Artist Trust Fellowship, McMillen Fellowship, Seattle City Artist Grant, a Foundation for Contemporary Art grant, and multiple 4Culture Special Project Grants. She has received support from numerous residencies including the Montello Foundation, Atlantic Center for the Arts, Centrum Foundation, PLAYA, Willapa Bay AIR, the Santa Fe Art Institute, and the Arctic Circle Residency Program. Her paintings and drawings are represented by Smith & Vallee Gallery in Edison, WA and the Seattle Art Museum Gallery.



Read about our past residents from 2014-2023


The Meg Hunt Residency Program is sponsored in part by the Alaska State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts