Corey Watanbe's Community Spotlight

Corey Watanabe is our 2026 Artist in Residence. He is an interdisciplinary artist, landscape architect, and educator whose work explores the fluxes and flows of nature and how it impacts us as humans. His residency project, Gardens of Resonance, will dig into the interconnected internal landscapes that are formed and transformed by our personal relationships with nature. 

We sat down with Corey for this month’s Community Spotlight to discuss what drew him to the Eliot School and what he is looking forward to during this month’s residency intensive.

You’ll be able to see the work Corey and our Teen Bridge Artists create during the intensive at their exhibition at Piano Craft Gallery from Friday, August 21 to Sunday, August 23. Learn more about the work at the exhibition's Opening Reception on August 21 from 6 to 8 PM!

Transcript

My name is Corey Watanabe. I'm the Artist in Residence for 2026 at the Eliot School. I'm a landscape architect and designer. I work with a lot of tactile, outdoor media, like plant material and textiles. I'm really open to all sorts of media, but I think a lot of my work revolves around understanding our relationship with nature and the environment, and incorporating community engagement within that process as well. 

Do you have a favorite artistic medium? 

I really love charcoal. It's a very kind of fluid, messy medium, which I like because it allows you to draw what I like to call invisible forces, like wind or light or shadow; more ephemeral things. 

What initially drew you to the Eliot School? 

It was definitely the Teen Bridge Program. I was involved with a lot of youth engagement with students of color around landscape architecture and design, and exposing students to that field. I wanted to continue doing that work, and the Teen Bridge Program seemed like a great way to explore and continue to develop that avenue. For me, it's really important to tie community engagement and youth development with my own practice to both learn from students and also to share knowledge and build relationships that way. I think that's the source of a lot of the work that I do. 

What have you been doing with your residency folks so far, and how has it been going? 

We had a series of four workshops in April. There's a meadow plot that's right down the street from the Annex, so we were observing its change over the four sessions and did some collage and charcoal sketching, observing its growth and form over time, which was really fun. I also just got to know the students a bit more. They're all really fun, with different personalities and exciting practices, and they’re making all kinds of interesting things. So, it's been a real pleasure just to get to know them and understand them more as artists and see how my own skills and experiences can help support their growth. 

What are you looking forward to most with the residency? 

We're going to be building this large, Resonance Tapestry from a variety of different media: cyanotype, natural dyes, and eco printing, all with found materials from various sites and different partner organizations. I'm excited to play with these new mediums and be open to the process of collaging, meshing, and sewing together all these different pieces. 

I’m also excited to bring the Teen Bridge Artists into that process by developing the concept behind it with them, showing them different skills and mediums involved with it, and just getting them excited about working with outdoor material. 

What are your hopes for the future of the Eliot School? 

I just hope that [the Eliot School] is able to continue to host new artists every year and continue to grow the Teen Bridge Program. It's really important to create a diverse community of artists to help share and tell their stories and support their artistic growth. 

It would also be really exciting to have a scholarship program for some of these students coming through this program and even some more professional development, like connecting them with artist mentors and potentially collaborating with other mission-aligned organizations in the area as well. It's been a real gift to be a part of this whole mission and movement here.