The Walkaway House - TEND Artist Residency

The Walkaway House  provides physical space and opportunities for visiting artists, overnight guests and the local arts community to make meaningful work and connections in downtown North Adams, Massachusetts.

TEND Artist Residency  at the Walkaway House

Situated within the larger framework of the Walkaway House, the TEND Artist Residency is an ongoing project of artists/hosts Carolyn Clayton and Benjamin Westbrook. Artists reside in beautifully renovated live/work studios on the first two floors of their unique historic home, located downtown North Adams, walking distance from MASS MoCA. Our residency season runs from March - December, offered as nine 4-week sessions. Artists may apply for more or less time, for stays ranging between 2-14 weeks.

We welcome any type of artist, emerging or established, who embraces the ongoing pursuit of creative practice as an essential element of life and living. TEND residencies are designed to create space for and nurture work/ideas that need tending to - highlighting the long-game of creative practice. By bolstering artists with time, space and a fresh context for their work, we support the uninhibited incubation of new ideas that will in turn feed the creative heart of our community.

TO TEND is to participate in a gentle, slow and persistent labor. It's about the maintenance and upkeep of something you care deeply about. It requires time, care and attention.  The name functions as is a framework, a mindset, an invitation...

WE INVITE artists into the domestic realm of the Walkaway House (two at a time), to participate alongside our family in a genuine effort to merge art and life. As we tend to the building, the home, our family and our practices, we invite artists to join us and spend a month tending to their practice in a way that is meaningful to them. 

We believe art making is a life-long practice and that residencies can create distance from the fast-pace demands of the outside world in order to focus on what is most important. We hope to foster an environment where artists can live among their work in a fresh setting to work on the maintenance of their practice and person in tandem. Art and the artist both need tending. In return, art will not only feed the soul of the maker but those who bear witness to the results of this care.