SPAR(K) is a Social Practice Artist Residency—an approach to art that centers on human connection and shared experience. Instead of creating work in isolation, artists collaborate directly with communities. The result might be a performance, a gathering, a conversation, or something entirely unexpected. The focus is not just the outcome, but the process of making meaning together.

In a time when so many experiences are based in consumption, SPAR(K) invites people to step in, participate, and help shape what happens.

Craig Pleasants will be in residence in the fall of 2026, in collaboration with NOVA Arts and Brewbakers Cafe. We will also be in collaboration with the Gordon-Matta Clark Estate which is based in Chesterfield, NH and is Directed by Jessamyn Fiore.

With the Gordon Matta-Clark Estate, the residency connects to a lineage of work that reimagines buildings and public space as sites of transformation—inviting people to see, and move through, the world differently.

As always, the project will evolve through dialogue, experimentation, and participation.

Craig Pleasants is a multi-disciplinary artist and activist born in North Carolina and based in Virginia. He has exhibited widely in venues across the U.S. and Europe: the Alternative Museum, White Columns and Artists’ Space in New York City, the Musee d’Art Contemporain in Marseilles, the Kunst und Gewerbeverein in Regensberg, Washington Project for the Arts, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, the North Carolina Museum of Art, and the Jersey City Museum. He is the creator or collaborator in the creation of social art projects in the US and Europe: an alternative space gallery in Tryon, NC, an artists’ live-work building and gallery in Lynchburg, VA, an artists’ residency program in SW France, and a community cultural center in a rescued nineteenth century church building in Amherst, VA. He is the recipient of Fellowships and Grants from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, the MacDowell Colony, the Virginia Commission for the Arts, The Hambidge Center, and Art Matters. His artist’s book, The Three Little Pigs: as it was originally passed into English folklore in 1620, is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art and is one of the longest continuously running artworks on the internet. He is the founder and Creative Director of Sculptorhouse, www.sculptorhouse.com, a company created to address two existential crises: affordable housing and climate change. He is the author of Opening the Artist’s Eye: recipes for a creative life and The Conceptual Artist’s Cookbook which can be found on Substack.

This event is free and will take place between 5 and 7pm!