Since starting the residency program in March of 2026, we have hosted 12 artist for between 1 week and 1 month. We are so proud of the first year’s Residents, and are looking forward with so much excitement to bringing together next year’s creative residents. Our program is not limited to people who self define as artists, but rather invites people from various backgrounds who resonate with our research strands. You can read more about the residency program here: https://www.polumbolum.org/the-residency
Katherine Shaughnessy is an artist living in Boise, Idaho. She was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1970. Shaughnessy has an MFA from The Art Institute of Chicago and spent over a decade in the vibrant art community of Marfa, Texas. She is married to Tom Michael who founded Marfa Public Radio and currently runs Boise State Public Radio. Together they have two teenage children at Boise High School. Shaughnessy is the co-founder of The Common Well, a creative league and co-working club in Garden City, Idaho, where she also has an art studio. Through painting, drawing, sculpture and video, Shaughnessy examines the natural world and ponders nature's awkward intersection with human demands and desires.
Katherine’s website: https://www.doegirl.com/
Muff Jones is a multi-disciplinary visual and performance artist specializing in textile, screen printing, and soft sculpture. Muff is co-owner of Wear Haus Boise with their spouse Xander, providing second hand gender affirming/fluid fashion and upcycled screen printing options.
Muff has spent the past ten years curating spaces for queer centric performance art to thrive in Boise, ID from building community stages to larger productions as Femme Von Follies and the Queerly Arts Festival.
Muff’s project “The Nest” includes donated clothing from the queer community, reclaimed items from their ancestors, and other articles of clothing that represent the stages of self and home. Muff invites the community to build with them by bringing an article of clothing to add to the nest in efforts to reclaim our identities to create homes that are made by us for us.
Atropos Textile Studio is a collaboration between fiber artists Khara Oxier-Mori and Sarah Burke. They are passionate about learning and training our hands in fiber activities shared by so many since the development of spliced threads throughout pre-history.
According to myth, the fates spin, weave, and cut the thread of life. In the spirit of our muse, Atropos, we work to cut the final threads from objects created from raw materials that we hold close to our hearts.
My name is Isabelle Coffin, I am an interdisciplinary artist who recently graduated with a BFA in Fine Arts, with an emphasis in sculpture. At Boise State University, I also received a Certificate of Excellence in Undergraduate Research and Creative Activity. I was born and raised in Boise, Idaho, and have deep roots throughout Idaho and Montana, where most of my family currently lives. I am a mixed Native woman and a descendant of the Cherokee Bird Clan (Ani Tsiskwa) through my matriline.
My recent work has been born out of a fascination with perception and perspective. It explores what truly builds our internal and external realities, and how our inner worlds shape what we see. What tracks were put down before us by our ancestors? How does that live on in our bodies, and how might we fall into their grooves? What is destined or predetermined, and where does our authority live? Where do we have choice in the reality we inhabit? How does what happened to our ancestors impact what we are able to see and experience currently? The lens through which we perceive reality can be a source of suffering, but also of freedom. My work is a space for that shift to happen. I want viewers to feel safe enough to feel, to look inward, to acknowledge truth even when it is painful, and to question the stories they tell themselves, finding compassion in the confusion. Perception is powerful, reality is malleable, and healing begins the moment we dare to look at what hurts, with love instead of fear.
We thank amy Iddings, Stelios Panageotou, Daniel Peltz, CL Young, Tim Andreae, Lily Black and Léa Rainey for their time in residence, and will have their photos added here soon!