Zócalo Apartments Artist-in-Residency Program Announces Fall 2021 Program Winners

Zócalo Apartments announces that Houston textile art R’Bonney Nola is the 2021 Fall winner of its second annual Artist-in-Residency program. Her application was selected by a three-judge panel from 82 applications from 23 states. She will receive fully-funded housing in a private apartment/studio, a monthly working stipend, need-based project funding, and hands-on support from the Zócalo property staff.

Fall Six Month Residency: R’Bonney Nola
R’Bonney Nola is a fashion designer and textile artist from Houston, Texas running an eco-conscious clothing line and that merges together textile manipulation, sustainability, and design. Nola traces her inspiration to growing up shopping at vintage thrift stores with her mother which led to her purchasing secondhand pieces and re-constructing them into new innovative designs. She studied Fashion Design and Fibers at UNT and learned to merge textile art with apparel design by transforming fabric through dying, screen printing, weaving, quilting, sculpting, heat pressing and other means.

Nola’s fabrics are sourced by recycling pre-existing clothing, scraps, or leftover bolts of fabric, modeling a low-pollution design process in stark contrast to much of the fashion industry,

Nola is also a generous teacher and has offered sewing classes through the MAKR Collective in a collaborative program between Houston non-profit design house Magpies & Peacocks and the Mayor’s Office of Human Trafficking and Domestic Violence (MOHTDV).

“We are delighted to include R’Bonney Nola in the 2021 Zócalo program,” said Sophia Collier. “In addition to her amply talent as a textile artist, she brings an interesting economic dimension to her art. By creating a company to sell her fashions as well as teach others earn money through textiles, she is fostering, beautiful human scale art and craft in an age of highly polluting, fast fashion.” Collier continued, “Her art is not only in the physical forms she creates, but also in her larger process of engagement with the market.”

This year’s judges included: Houston interdisciplinary artist, curator, and current Zócalo artist-in-residence, Theresa Escobedo; public visual artist, curator, and muralist, Angel Quesada; and Sixto Wagan, the inaugural Director for the Center for Art and Social Engagement (CASE) at the University of Houston.