Community Engagement awards grant funding for artist residencies at Casa Regis - Center for Culture and Contemporary Art, located in a 17th century structure in the Piedmont region of Northern Italy. Visual artists, video-makers, sound artists, and writers can apply for a residency during the summer months. The location has the dual purpose of being in a quiet surrounding designed to promote an undisturbed creative process while the characteristic building can simultaneously be an aesthetic backdrop to showcase projects or host exhibitions.

Mikelle Standbridge, a fine art photographer who moved from the U.S. to Italy over 20 years ago, is the founder and director of Casa Regis. She is working to restore the historic structure and connect the international community through the presence and exchange of artists working in contemporary art.

Victoria Chapman is a Curatorial Advisor and Liaison to Casa Regis and founder of VC Projects. She has spent over 25 years working with art directors, curators, art consultants, artists, galleries, museums, and art institutions, assisting with administrative, curatorial, and exhibition planning.


COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT MOSSO, italy EXCHANGE ARTISTS

LEISA LOAN

2024

Leisa Loan is a poet, editor, translator, and educator from Boston, MA. She is pursuing a PhD in Critical Poetics at the University of Houston where she is a C. Glenn Cambor Fellow. She currently serves as the Digital Editor for Gulf Coast. While in Italy, Leisa plans to gather creative and critical materials essential to the completion of an interdisciplinary project that engages with translation, poetry, and sculpture. This will culminate in her first full-length collection of poetry.

"I was so proud and fortunate to continue this relationship between Community Engagement and Casa Regis this summer; a relationship I hope will continue in the future to enable other artists to have as transformative and powerful an experience as I did."
- Leisa Loan

Kaitlin Rizzo

2023

Kaitlin Rizzo is a writer, researcher, and translator working on a series of projects related to the life of Baroque painter, Artemisia Gentileschi. Her most recent writing can be found or is forthcoming in POETRY Magazine, Plume, and the anthology Shreela Ray: On the Life and Work of an American Master. She has received support from Harvard's Institute of World Literature Conference for her translations, and in 2022, she was a Finalist for the Wisconsin Institute of Creative Writing Fellowship in Poetry. Kaitlin lives and teaches in Houston, Texas where she is a Co-President and Founder of the Adjunct English Society, which advocates for sustainable wages for contingent faculty at the University of Houston. 

“I am forever grateful for your support of my work during such a critical time in my trajectory as an artist. I hope Community Engagement is able to continue this support for those hoping to attend Casa Regis in the future, as it is truly transformative experience, one I know I will carry with me for the rest of my life.”
- Kaitlin Rizzo