Trillium Arts is delighted to announce Lora Akati, Catherine Baumhauer and Eleana Daniel as awardees of Trillium's Fall 2025 Individual Artists in Residence Program. These exciting artists, who hail from locations both near and far, will be in residence at Trillium during the months of September and October. Each artist will be on a solo creative adventure to work on projects they proposed as part of a competitive application process. Residencies are seven days in length, providing space and time to deepen creative endeavors and rejuvenate in the beautiful Blue Ridge mountains.
MEET THE Artists:
LORA AKATI
Accra, Ghana
Website: https://lorawords.wordpress.com/
Instagram: @mahraba.move
Lora Akati is a photographer and writer whose work explores memory, belonging, and the quiet spaces we carry within and around us. Moving fluidly between text and image, her practice focuses on overlooked gestures, intimate landscapes, and the layered relationship between personal history and cultural identity. She often works with light, shadow, and stillness as metaphors for emotional states, creating space for slow seeing and reflection. Her ongoing project, The Spaces We Occupy, examines the intersections of memory, material, and the body as both archive and vessel. She is currently based in Accra, Ghana.
RESIDENCY PLANS:
During my residency at Trillium, I intend to focus on developing and refining The Spaces We Occupy - my ongoing project that weaves together photography, writing, and layered imagery to explore memory, belonging, and the body as a vessel of history. My goal is to use this concentrated time to edit and sequence photographs, expand the written text that accompanies them, and experiment with formats that bring the two mediums into deeper dialogue.
By the end of the residency, I aim to leave with a strong working draft of a photo-text manuscript, as well as a set of polished images that reflect the themes of constraint and freedom, memory as space, and the overlooked gestures that shape our emotional landscapes. I also hope to begin sketching ideas for how this work might exist as both a book project and an exhibition.
CATHERINE BAUMHAUER
Asheville, NC
Website: catherinebaumhauer.com
Catherine Baumhauer was born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and is a graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (BFA) and CalArts (MFA). Her background in painting, sculpture, animation, film and her life as a mother influences her current work. She’s shown at Under the Bridge at Bridge Red Studio and Girls Club, Miami, Florida, CICA Museum, Seoul, South Korea, Shockboxx Gallery, Resin Gallery, Dorado Projects, Los Angeles, Upstairs Art Space, Tryon NC.
Baumhauer recently moved back to Asheville, NC from Los Angeles, CA.
RESIDENCY PLANS:
I'd like to explore themes of transformation and decay using natural and everyday materials, connecting what’s happening in my own life with the changes I see in the environment. As I prepare to move from Los Angeles back to Asheville—just after Hurricane Helene and the wildfires in California—I keep coming back to ideas of home, resilience, and how we rebuild in uncertain times.
I’d like to work on repurposed surfaces like thrifted canvases, old book pages, and even sandpaper, layering natural pigments and experimenting with cyanotypes to reflect cycles of growth, loss, and renewal. Alongside this, I want to make playful drawings using everyday things—coffee, tea, wine, soda, makeup, crayons, and markers. These materials bring a sense of humor and heart, while also touching on big life changes like moving, divorce, single motherhood, and the many roles women balance.
I’d also like to explore the quilt barns of Madison County. My mother is a quilter, and I grew up watching her piece together intricate, beautiful work. Even though I chose painting instead of quilting, I’ve always felt connected to those traditions. I’d love to reimagine quilt patterns and symbols through painting and mixed media, as a way of honoring both memory and place. This residency would give me the grounding I need in Appalachia—the space to reconnect, take risks, and begin a new body of work about rebuilding, transformation, and hope.
ELEANA DANIEL
Chicago, IL
Website: eleanadaniel.com
Instagram: @eleanadaniel
Eleana Daniel was born in Raleigh, NC and now lives and works in Chicago. She holds a BFA with honors from Columbia College Chicago. After an almost decade-long career in advertising as an art director she returned to painting in 2019. Eleana received her MFA in Painting and Drawing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2024. After graduating, she was awarded a teaching fellowship as part of the Painting department. Eleana’s work has been featured at Co-Prosperity Sphere, Oliva Gallery, The Plan, Woman Made Gallery, Color Club, and most recently at the inaugural Door County Contemporary art fair where she was chosen as Critic’s Pick by Michelle Grabner. Eleana has also been the curator of mozart house, a series of DIY group art shows, and a volunteer graphic designer for Comfort Station Logan Square.
n the devil-may-care short rows, 48 x 55 in., Oil paint on canvas, 2023.
RESIDENCY PLANS:
During my residency with Trillium Arts, I am eager to spend most of my time making oil paintings outside surrounded by the Blue Ridge Mountains. I look forward to working in an iterative and intuitive way, guided by my body's response to the landscape.
Congratulations to this fall's Artists in Residence!