Artist Johanna Hedva and opera director George R. Miller were awarded the Andrew Mangold music residency at Casa Mahler. Hedva is a Korean-American writer, artist and musician whose influential work questions how we encounter illness, disability, doom, and death. In Spoleto, Hedva and Miller have been collaborating on a new performance, to be premiered in fall 2026 and toured in 2027. Hag blues, cave music, mystical doom, intimate metal, and succubus folk are some of the genres that articulate Hedva’s music. They are informed by the Korean tradition of Pansori singing, which demands rehearsal next to waterfalls in order to ravage the vocal cords. In Spoleto, they produced recordings of recent work in Teatro Caio Melisso: setting Hedva’s ‘broken’ Pansori inspired voice against the backdrop of an historic opera house.

Anna Curzon Price is a London-based artist working across painting, printmaking, performance, and architectural intervention to explore the body as a site of vulnerability. She was awarded the 2025 Ivan Juritz Prize in Visual Art. Recently, her focus has shifted toward the relationship between the body and its surrounding environment, combining painting, frottage, and printmaking to generate bodily responses to urban space. During her residency in Spoleto, she explored the landscape through drawing, writing, and gel plate printing.

Curzon writes: “My attention has been drawn to how controlling and containing water shapes the architecture of Spoleto: fountains, pipes emerging from crumbling walls, the aqueduct, water heard trickling beneath the street while standing on a manhole cover on Piazza Piancini. Combining watercolour and gouache with oil pastel and print-making techniques, I have made a new series of paintings responding to the seepage and flow of water in the city. Colour drips, pools and leaks through the grids and geometric forms in this work.”

Brazilian artist Màrcia Nemer currently lives in Stockholm where she is a doctoral student at the Stockholm University of Art (SKH) with her project ‘Staging Absence’. She is interested in exploring the possibilities relating to presence and absence in theatre, more specifically what happens to the work of the actor when we move it past representation. In her practice, she enjoys creating friction between theatre, visual arts and performance, as well as reflecting on reading and writing, memory and time.

Sarah Cain lives and work in Los Angeles, CA. She paints exuberant abstractions that often extend beyond the canvas into installations, site-specific painting, stained glass, and furniture.

Cain writes: “In Spoleto, I have been working on a new series of paintings on paper. These works were a continuation of my Music Sheet series which originated 20 years ago after finding vintage music sheets in Europe. The paintings are a daily meditation-like practice. I’ve been painting each day from early morning to dark taking breaks to walk the loop around the fortress, having a cappuccino and hanging out with the stray cats. Fragments of what I saw on  my walks found their way into the abstraction in my paintings. It’s been lovely watching Spoleto turn to Spring, the light in the sky, plants blooming and awe inspiring architecture has been a gift to work around. LeWitt’s wall drawing practice is of specific importance to me. I visit his permanent exhibition of 105 wall drawings annually at Mass Moca. Color, abstraction, the importance of handmade marks and how all those translate the notation of time are huge to me. It was likewise very inspiring to go to Assisi and witness a painting pilgrimage that was so important to him.” 

Kathleen Henderson is a visual artist living and working in the Delaware River Valley, USA. She is the founder and Executive Director of Studio Route 29, a progressive art studio in Frenchtown, New Jersey which provides artists with disabilities the space, materials and support to explore an artistic practice. Her work has been the subject of numerous solo shows in LA, and San Francisco as well as the Drawing Center in New York.

In Spoleto, Kathleen began working on a new body of work – an ‘illustrated history of Fascism’. She says: “Fascism has come to America and many artists here are finding ways to meet the moment. I have been thinking about how we got here and looking at the ways artists throughout history have responded.” She also spent time exploring ways the studios could expand its opportunities for artists with disabilities.

Cal Peternell is a celebrated chef and author. He has published four cookbooks, the New York Times bestselling ‘Twelve Recipes’, ‘A Recipe for Cooking’, ‘Almonds, Anchovies, and Pancetta’, and ‘Burnt Toast and Other Disasters’. His drive to teach people the pleasure and satisfaction to be found cooking at home led him to co-create the Cooking By Ear podcast.

Peternell currently runs the New Jersey restaurant, Finnbar, which, in addition to serving delicious, locally sourced cuisine, partners with the local progressive art studio, Studio Route 29, to promote and exhibit works made by people with developmental and intellectual disabilities.

Cal writes: In Spoleto I hungrily dug in, immediately stocking my kitchen with local olive oil, wine, pecorino, and bags of roveja: tiny round heirloom beans hard to find outside Umbria. Foraging in the hills turned up fennel and mint, slender stalks of wild asparagus, fig leaves, and black truffles, all of which went into several feasts I was pleased to be able to cook for the cohort. I also found inspiration for a steamy culinary romance novel I’m working on in the cafes and bars, and quiet space to write in the Torre Bonomo, whose rooftop terrace provided excellent views for making landscape paintings when a break from cooking and writing was needed.