Household is on the heart of Components & Labor, San Antonio’s latest artwork residency.
Positioned in Southtown, the nonprofit’s residency program is constructed round supporting artists who’re caregivers.
“After we began Components & Labor we had been dedicated to serving artists which are caretakers, whether or not it’s artists with youngsters or artists with dependent dad and mom or dependent companions,” mentioned Meaghan Mitts on the most recent episode of the “bigcitysmalltown” podcast.
She and co-founder Liz Stehl Kleberg joined host Robert Rivard on the podcast to debate the origins of Components & Labor and its position in San Antonio’s artwork neighborhood.
Mitts and Kleberg orginally turned buddies whereas working within the artwork scene in New York for a few years. In 2020, the pandemic motivated Kleberg and her household to maneuver to San Antonio to be nearer for her husband’s household.
Kleberg mentioned that she and her husband needed to “discover a house that we might make right into a reside/work house,” which they present in a studio house in Lavaca. When a bungalow subsequent door turned obtainable, that sparked the concept of internet hosting artists and households — and bringing inventive connections and friendships to San Antonio.
Kleberg invited Mitts — who had relocated to San Antonio in 2022 — to a cup of espresso. “[Meaghan is] unimaginable on the nuts and bolts of how these stunning inventive visions come to life and the best way to construct supportive networks,” Kleberg mentioned.
The dialog over that cup of espresso birthed the concept for Components & Labor.
San Antonio is house to different arts residencies — Artpace San Antonio’s Worldwide Artist-in-Residence program, Up to date at Blue Star’s Berlin residency, and The Casa Chuck Residency at Sala Diaz — and Kleberg and Mitts reached out to the artwork neighborhood as a way to supply a novel expertise and forestall redundancies.
What makes Components & Labor stand out is its flexibility and deal with lodging. The nonprofit invitations artists from outdoors of San Antonio to remain for 2 weeks as much as six or eight months, working with artists’ schedules round their spouses, kids or dependent dad and mom and serving to with requirements akin to securing childcare.
Artists are requested to work together with the neighborhood by offering public programming, akin to workshops, artist talks or native faculty visits.
“We really feel like that’s one of many actually distinctive issues concerning the San Antonio arts neighborhood is that it’s so hospitable, accepting, heat and gracious,” Mitts mentioned. “And it could be a disgrace for our artists to return right here and never have a lot of factors of publicity to that.”
From now till July, Components & Labor is lined as much as host eight artists, which is busier than they anticipated. Over the last half of 2025, Kleberg and Mitts are desperate to host Los Angeles-based artists and their households who’ve been affected by the California wildfires.
Such alternatives assist the duo to refine the residency program for the advantage of the artists and the artwork neighborhood in San Antonio.
Pay attention the to full episode of the “bigcitysmalltown” podcast beneath.
Disclosure: Robert Rivard is the co-founder of the San Antonio Report.
