Incubator Studio Program

Grow your studio practice in a vibrant, affordable residency space.

About the McGuffey Art Center Incubator Program

The Incubator Studio program began over 10 years ago as a way to give emerging artists a place to grow in their studio practice. The members of the studio are chosen through an application process and have use of the space for one year. The Incubator artists gain experience during that year by being in McGuffey Art Center and meeting other artists, sharing their own skills, working on projects in the building and creating within quality studio time. There are opportunities to go on field trips, attend art openings, meet visiting artists, follow studio tours and engage in critiques during the year. Other opportunities include grant applications, art show open calls, collaboration work, etc. that may further their artistic endeavors.

The goal of the Incubator Studio Program is to promote the progress of up to 6 emerging artists, by offering them an inexpensive studio space for 1 year (July 1 - Jun 30), during which they will receive support, encouragement, advice, and inspiration from the membership at McGuffey Art Center. As an incubator member, artists will be an integral part of the McGuffey Art Center community and will work on a committee doing tasks such as hanging artwork, hosting openings or creating marketing materials.

Renting an incubator studio requires less of a time and financial commitment than a full McGuffey membership (10 hours a week of studio time is required instead of 16 for full membership) and can be worked around a full-time job. During their time in the program, incubator artists will be encouraged to develop a body of work and move on to the next step in their journey as an artist. These artists will have an opportunity at the end of their residency year to showcase their works in a group show on the first floor of McGuffey Art Center.

Questions? Email us!

Meet the 2026 -2027 Incubators

Devin Edwards

Devin Edwards (They/Them) is a Charlottesville-based artist originally from northern New Jersey, right on the border of NY farmland. They hold their BFA from Mason Gross School of the Arts. Working between printmaking, woodworking, ceramics, painting, and drawing methods. They make sculptural collages referencing ephemeral memories and craft traditions, creating a space where domestic spaces and the natural world come crashing in on each other.

TO VIEW MORE: INSTAGRAM

Bryan Sorto-Guzman

Bryan Sorto-Guzman is a self-taught Salvadoran American artist from Charlottesville, Virginia. He has never passed a painting or drawing class and was kicked out of Bennington College, but continues to draw and paint on his own terms.

Bryan’s work is influenced by his Salvadoran heritage and the American struggle. He longs to be in El Salvador and feels conflicted about his life in the United States. He works primarily in acrylic, watercolor and colored pencil, creating landscapes and figurative scenes that depict life in El Salvador. Painting and drawing serve as a way to navigate feelings of being lost. He explores romantic and juvenile themes in his work.

He is currently exploring embroidery, working with his grandmother to create Salvadoran folk art.

TO VIEW MORE: INSTAGRAM

Marissa Hammond

Marissa Hammond is an acrylic painter from Charlottesville, Virginia. She grew up in a homeschooled environment where her love for art was a primary focus, but did not take a formal art class until community college; she then participated in several art classes through community college to further her skills. She creates acrylic paintings that often mirror themes of life to explore the complicated feelings we encounter navigating it, often depicting the modern landscape in multiple forms. Through urban snapshots, like that of a grocery store, making use of composition and vibrant color, her work highlights the emotional weight of ordinary moments and the quiet comfort they provide. She explores how routine spaces can hold memory, loneliness, and connection, and she aims to create paintings that feel both personal and build connection between people.

TO VIEW MORE: INSTAGRAM

Hannah Kade

Hannah Kade (she/her) is an interdisciplinary artist and designer from Detroit, MI. Kade’s work focuses on mundane narratives yet yearns to encapsulate a specific moment-in-time feeling. With writing that sits within the illustration itself, she hopes to peel back daily motions that exist as much more than they let on. With a BFA from College for Creative Studies, she is expanding her research to include the historical printmaking processes of etching, engraving, and book/stationery design. She currently resides in Charlottesville, VA, where her first solo show will be exhibited in August 2027 at New City Arts Welcome Gallery.

TO VIEW MORE: INSTAGRAM

Audrey Knabe

Audrey Knabe is a mixed-media and installation artist based in Charlottesville, VA, working primarily in watercolor, acrylic, and paper sculpture. Her process is a dance between the medium and herself, a push and pull, often with three stages: creation, extraction, and reconstruction. At the heart of her process is transformation; here is where she finds joy. Her background as a dancer and her current role as a company dancer with the local modern company, ORH Dance, deeply informs her studio practice. Her most recent body of work conveys a ‘visual dance’, where she creates gestural paintings to music. She then extracts and transforms these paintings into dynamic 3D paper sculptures that respond to movement and cast shadows, composing a choreographed visual experience for the viewer.

TO VIEW MORE: INSTAGRAM

Alexandra Taranto

Alexandra Taranto is a painter and printmaker capturing body dys-awareness. Raised in Richmond, VA, she graduated from Yale University in 2023 with her BFA in Painting & Printmaking. Her gestural figurative paintings layer charcoal and acrylic paint in an act of objectifying bodily sensation. A meditative autodrawing practice allows her to spontaneously capture abstract internal phenomena—inescapable stomach aches, kicks from an unborn child, a lump in her throat—and translate it visually onto paper, and later, canvas, cardboard, and printing screen. Alex is intently developing her visual language to best communicate these universal yet subjective sensations with viewers.

TO VIEW MORE: PORTFOLIO