When Isabella Collins ’23 moved into St. Joseph’s Home for Artisans, she didn’t arrive with a fully developed plan. Instead, she carried a spark that had been glowing since a trip to Ireland the previous year, when she wandered through a narrow alley and saw fabric hanging overhead, swaying in the wind like a living canopy. When Collins learned she’d been accepted into the three-month residency in Boston’s North End, that spark ignited into a flame.
St. Joseph’s Home for Artisans provides emerging Catholic and faith-inspired artists with affordable housing, studio space, and a community-oriented environment designed to foster new work and local engagement. Residents live together on the fifth floor of St. Leonard’s former convent, spending three months developing a project that interacts with the surrounding neighborhood. Collins, a textile-focused visual artist, arrived ready to create her first outdoor installation: an ambitious, flowing fabric structure suspended above All Saints Way, one of the North End’s most recognizable community landmarks.
For Collins, the residency was a natural extension of the self-guided studio work she started at Merrimack. In her senior year, she completed an independent study structured like a small artist residency, producing a comprehensive body of work for an exhibition. That experience served as a foundation for navigating this new project.
“It taught me how to plan, pace, and build something large from scratch,” she explained. It also sparked her interest in textile installation, a medium she embraced after years of working primarily in two-dimensional design.
Her project for St. Joseph’s grew from that exploration. Using layers of nylon mesh—some soft blue, some deep navy, some shimmering with hand-applied beads—Collins began constructing the form that would eventually hang above the walkway of All Saints Way. She aimed for the piece to evoke multiple elements: the movement of water, the Catholic visual language of the neighborhood, and the feeling of being gently enveloped by something protective.
All Saints Way, a narrow alley filled with icons maintained by residents, was the perfect site. Collins collaborated closely with community members, including the caretaker who now looks after the shrine. The location is intimate, rich in tradition, and constantly lively with passersby.
The installation amplifies that sense of connection. Suspended overhead, the fabric creates a canopy that moves with the wind, catches sunlight, shifts in color, and casts subtle shadows along the bricks. Its structure—three bands of lighter mesh layered over a darker, more decorated band—guides the viewer’s eye up and down the alley. Collins envisioned the piece as being gently present rather than overbearing.
Although her artistic direction was self-directed, Collins regularly consulted her former Merrimack professors during the process. She reached out to artist and professor Jonathan Latiano for advice. These conversations reaffirmed the importance of the close-knit creative community she experienced at Merrimack, where small classes and ongoing mentorship greatly shaped her growth as both a student and emerging artist.
Life within the residency was equally influential. The program hosts painters, writers, musicians, and craft-based artists from across the country, all living, cooking, and creating together. Collins shared the space with artists from Massachusetts, California, and Oregon during her time there. Each resident proposed a personal project and contributed to community outreach events, workshops, or performances. Musicians debuted new albums at house concerts, visual artists prepared exhibitions, and everyone participated in the daily rhythms of life in the North End. The residency intentionally emphasizes community engagement, offering artists opportunities to share work publicly and collaborate.
For Collins, the community energy was invigorating after two years of working solo after graduation. “It helped me feel like an artist again,” she said. She kept working part-time with children in an after-school program in Lexington during the residency, but the studio environment reignited her creative momentum. As she put it, being surrounded by other artists and living in a space designed for artistic practice changed everything.
Adjusting to life in Boston, especially in the North End, was a different experience. Although she grew up in Massachusetts, Collins found that living in the city offered a very different perspective from simply visiting. The neighborhood is dense, historic, and full of character. Even the convent’s bathrooms overlook a courtyard that serves as a stage for daily life. “You hear everything; the performers, the tourists, the neighbors. It becomes part of your background soundtrack,” she said.
As Collins’ installation opened to the community, the project became a visual invitation, meant to be walked under, lived with, and revisited. It reflected her time in the residency, her roots in Merrimack’s Creative Arts program, and her evolving identity as a textile installation artist.
What comes next remains open-ended. Collins says she’s exploring whether to pursue additional residencies, apply to graduate programs, or continue balancing art with other work. Completing this installation and reconnecting with the collaborative spirit she first discovered at Merrimack has strengthened her commitment to making art a sustainable, ongoing part of her life.
“It’s been rejuvenating,” she said. “This helped me get back into the rhythm of creating again.”
