2023 Artists-in-Residence
Santo Jacobsson (he/him)
2023 Visual Artist-in-Residence
“here for the community.”
Santo Jacobsson is a Swedish-Ecuadorian illustrator based in East Village. He is a proud American Illustration Award winner and has had work at Lincoln Center. Currently working on his brand @coming4yourneck and doing freelance graphic design. His work focuses on the surreal experience of living as a trans person. He uses art as a tool to build community with other trans and non-binary people around the world.
Franco Giacomarra (he/him)
2023 Performance Artist-in-Residence
“Finding your place in between two worlds”
Franco Giacomarra is a New York City-based writer, composer, and performer who makes original works for the stage, page and screen. From an early age, Franco always knew that my path in life would be to cultivate my passion for music and writing in order to tell impactful original stories. Franco hails from the Philadelphia area, and maintains a borderline unhealthy preoccupation with all the requisite sports teams and cultural ephemera (Go Birds). He moved to New York to receive his B.A. from Fordham University Lincoln Center in Theatre and Music, and subsequently became radicalized about the importance of an asset-based approach to making one’s own work.
Franco’s obsession with collaboration has led to an eclectic body of original projects in media ranging from theater, to original music, short films, comics, and a touch of cultural criticism - all as either a writer, actor, composer, technician or some combination thereof. Franco identifies as a pop culture omnivore who draws from sources far and wide, often resulting in unique and idiosyncratic combinations of forms, genres, subject matter etc. He is most often drawn to writing about identity, and characters that feel ill-at-ease in different aspects of their being - whether it’s shapeshifting aliens acclimating to Earth, or a bicultural kid like him trying to roll his R’s just so.
Franco is currently an artist-in-residence with The Village, A Fenix 360 Artist to Watch, and a member of the Barrow Group and the Freeman Studio. His work has recently been presented with The Green Room 42, Alchemical Studios, The Latine Musical Theater Lab, The Crypt at Columbia, and more. Franco is proudly first generation Sicilian and Puerto Rican!
