Residencies
Announcing Hearst 2026-27 Residencies
3rd James Hearst Writer-In-Residence: Poet, Seth Thill
Inaugural Gary Kelley Artist-In-Residence: Printmaker, Indo Fulcher
“These residencies reflect something the Hearst believes deeply: artists and writers belong at the center of community life, not at its edges. Indo and Seth both grew up as artists in the Cedar Valley, and both have already given a great deal back to it. We are proud to give them the time, space and support to make new work here.” -Cory Hurless, Cultural of the Hearst Center for the Arts.
Indo Fulcher
Gary Kelley Artist-In-Residence
The Gary Kelley Artist in Residence is a 12-month studio residency at the Hearst Center for artists working in two-dimensional media. The resident receives a stipend and a framing allotment through VanDoren’s Framing, presents a solo exhibition at the close of the residency, and gifts one work to the Hearst Center’s Permanent Art Collection. The program honors Gary Kelley, the nationally recognized illustrator and longtime Hearst Center supporter. Funding for this opportunity is made possible through the Friends of the Hearst, through the establishment of the Gary Kelley Artist in Residence Endowment Fund with the Community Foundation of Northeast Iowa. Gifts for this residency can be made on the Community Foundation’s secure website at cfneia.org/donations/garykelleyhearstendowment/. Gifts to the endowment fund are eligible to receive a 25% state tax credit through the Endow Iowa program. Learn more about the program.
Fulcher holds a Master of Fine Arts in print media from Pacific Northwest College of Art at Willamette University in Portland, Oregon, and a Bachelor of Fine Arts in printmaking from UNI, with a secondary focus in photography and a minor in art history. Fulcher’s work has been exhibited locally as well as at the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, the Octagon Center for the Arts in Ames, and galleries in Portland and Minneapolis.
Fulcher teaches foundations and photography as an adjunct instructor at Hawkeye Community College, has taught printmaking and art history at Wartburg College, and co-curates The Backyard Gallery in Waterloo. Fulcher has worked as an artist assistant and senior grant writer for artist Sara Siestreem, as a printer’s assistant for UNI’s Meryl Norton Hearst Visiting Artist Series and, in 2026, as a bead strand fabricator for “Regeneration: Long Island’s History of Ecological Art and Care” at the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill, New York.
Seth Thill
James Hearst Writer-In-Residence
The James Hearst Writer-In-Residence is a year residency named for the Cedar Falls poet whose home and legacy the Hearst Center carries forward. Funding for this opportunity is made possible through the Iowa Arts Council’s Cultural Leadership Program, which includes a writing stipend, rent subsidized through the IAC, and the opportunity to partner with the Hearst on a community engagement project.
A Dubuque native, Thill holds a Master of Arts in English and a Bachelor of Arts in English with a minor in creative writing, both from UNI, where Thill received the Outstanding Creative Master’s Thesis Award. Thill’s chapbook “Cover, Recover” was published in 2022 with support from the Hartman Reserve Visiting Artist Program, and Thill’s poems have appeared in Indiana Review, Pidgeonholes, Magpie and Plainsongs, as well as “The Cities of the Plains: An Anthology of Iowa Artists and Poets.”
Thill served as assistant editor of the North American Review from 2022 to 2024 and leads writing and educational workshops as a programmer at the Waterloo Public Library. Thill is a familiar voice at the Hearst Center: a featured reader in its Final Thursday Reading Series, Thill launched “Cover, Recover” at the Hearst in 2022 and in 2025 presented “Community Nature Quest at Hartman Reserve” with the Cedar Falls Public Library in collaboration with the Hearst.