Hopper Prize

Æmen Ededéen: The Glass Dream Game

The Glass Dream Game is a divination game I developed in 2024, and practice on a daily basis. The idea came to me after reading Hermann Hesse's 1943 Nobel-Prize-Winning novel The Glass Bead Game. But the Glass Dream Game's underlying structure is ultimately owed to I Ching (The Book of Changes), an ancient Chinese divination system. The Game begins through a bibliomantic process selecting six books, by chance, from my private library of about 1,000 books. One page in each of these books is selected through the same chance process, resulting in a Hexagram. From these six pages, I take notes and makes sketches, looking for connections and noting any synchronicites emerging from the Hexagram. This process is called a Trial. Using the notes and sketches from the Trials, I compose a Dream in Movements, written passages connecting the elements across a Hexagram. From the Dream comes the Vision, a painting or object, not about the Dream, but in some way informed by it. Through the Hexagrams, Dreams, Visions, and Trials, an extensive network of relationships begin to emerge.

Underlying my interest in Hesse and I Ching is my personal involvement in Taoist practice and Jungian dream analysis.

Uncanny synchronicities between texts often have intense and surprising personal significance. I understand myself and my library to be entangled in an ongoing collaboration through which the Unconscious reveals Itself.

This approach aligns well with my longtime approach to painting. Any single painting I've made over the past decade or so, and any shown here, has perhaps four or five different paintings beneath it. Each layer I add to the work is done on temporary substrates that stick but don't bind to various areas of the surface. Sometimes some imagery remains in the final work. Other times, it appears to the viewer as non-representational or abstract. Different viewers tend to focus on different aspects or passages in a work, and therefore seem to have highly individualized encounters. Painting, for me, is a kind of iterative unconvering toward ever-deepening memory and mystery. I like believing that painting is to do with awakening, that it can be one valuable aspect of a larger contemplative or devotional practice.

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Announcing the 2026 Joan Mitchell Center Artists-in-Residence

Celia Eberle: 2026 Artist-in-Residence

January 14, 2026

We are thrilled to announce the 31 visual artists who have been selected for residencies at the Joan Mitchell Center in New Orleans. The dynamic and diverse 2026 cohort includes 14 artists who will travel to the Center from across the United States and 17 artists based in New Orleans—all of whom will participate in either 6- or 14-week residencies in the Spring, Summer, or Fall sessions, with up to 9 artists in residence at any given time. The participating artists range in age from 27 to 75 and represent a variety of ethnicities, personal backgrounds, and creative practices rooted in the visual arts.

Residencies at the Joan Mitchell Center support individual artistic growth, while also fostering community in the heart of one of America’s most creatively rich cities. The program provides artists at pivotal junctures in their careers with critical resources, including private studio space, a weekly materials stipend, on-site studio assistants, professional development, and community-building opportunities. Now in its 11th year of operation, the Center has hosted over 350 artists, more than a third of whom are local to New Orleans. This mix of visiting and local artists working together in all sessions is a hallmark of the program, as local artists can serve as ambassadors to the city’s culture and resources, while national residents bring expanded networks and experiences that can benefit the local residents. This year, four of the selected national artists are native to New Orleans but living elsewhere—an outcome that aligns with one of the residency program’s goals of supporting the return of displaced artists to the city post-Katrina.

The 2026 Artists-in-Residence are:

Vee Adams, New Orleans, LA
Michael Arcega, San Francisco, CA
Rachel Berwick, Killingworth, CT
Farah Billah, New Orleans, LA
Efrem Z. Boles (Big Chief ZeeBo), New Orleans, LA
Kelly Pearson Boles (Big Queen Kelly), New Orleans, LA
paris cian, New Orleans, LA
Dillon Dillon, Bronx, NY
Michel Droge, Arrowsic, ME
Celia Eberle, Ennis, TX
Brandon Felix, New Orleans, LA
Rachel Gorman, New Orleans, LA
Shana M. griffin, New Orleans, LA
Ana María Agüero Jahannes, New Orleans, LA
Fred H. C. Liang, Boston, MA
Felicita Felli Maynard, New Orleans, LA
Jessica Monette, East Palo Alto, CA
Nadrea Njoku, Atlanta, GA
Hakeem Olayinka, Brooklyn, NY
Rachel Parish, Atlanta, GA
Mary Jane Parker, New Orleans, LA
Sienna Pinderhughes, New Orleans, LA
Naomi Kawanishi Reis, Brooklyn, NY
SÉAN, New Orleans, LA
Analia Segal, Brooklyn, NY
Shaina Simmons, New Orleans, LA
Edra Soto, Chicago, IL
Jade Thiraswas, New Orleans, LA
Trish Tillman, Brooklyn, NY
Gabrielle Tolliver, New Orleans, LA
Caitlin Ezell Waugh, New Orleans, LA