In this series, we highlight the many gifted artists who contribute to the deep creative culture of Concord and recognize the organizations dedicated to supporting the arts.
Courtesy of Umbrella ArtsAnastasia Sierra, a Cambridge-based photographer, focuses her creative practice on examining the complexities that accompany womanhood and, more specifically, motherhood. Her series Swimming Towards the Sun is a collaboration with cold-water swimmers that captures the process and intricacies of swimming in frigid water.
Sierra’s images are intimate portrayals of women gliding through water, reveling in ice, and experiencing total immersion. “I photograph the transformative process of cold-water immersion—an act that functions as both a somatic challenge and a spiritual ritual. Within the water, the social expectations placed on female bodies are stripped away, replaced by a visceral reclaiming of agency.” Sierra’s series explores the intersection of freedom and strength, shattering arbitrary and oppressive ideas about women’s bodies in the process. Walden Pond is central to the series—Sierra views her work as “inextricably tied to Walden Pond and the Transcendentalist movement.”
During her 2026/2027 Umbrella Arts residency, Sierra aims to utilize the proximity of Umbrella Arts to Walden Pond and the surrounding landscapes to build upon her series. Her residency will provide a space to arrange images for publication—those from Swimming Towards the Sun as well as its counterpart, The Witching Hour, a series informed by the realities, fears, and pressures of intergenerational care. “I envision the [Umbrella Arts] studio as a critical workspace for the final synthesis of these projects—a place to engage in the large-scale physical sequencing necessary to refine their narrative arcs.”
Golden Tempo
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Courtesy of Umbrella ArtsAndrea Manning
For Boston-based artist Andrea Manning, anticipation and surprise are fundamental to her work as she explores illusion, distance, and magic through her large-scale abstract paintings. “There is a moment in a magic show, just before the reveal, when the audience holds their collective breath in suspension, waiting. This moment, where anticipation collapses into surprise, is where my painting practice lives.”
Central to her material process is the act of layering. Beginning with sketches, Manning applies layer after layer of translucent oil paint, adding and removing pigment to create a final image built on chance, revealing as much as obscuring. Relegated to a palette of blues, oranges, and greens, Manning’s layering technique forges linear compositions full of expressive geometric and organic shapes. The optical illusions created through her line work, limited palette, and repeating patterns allow for a steady reveal. The resulting effect is one of visual and psychological astonishment.
Playing with the theatrical history of illusion and perspective, Manning’s works examine how a viewer interacts with their present moment when they are only provided part of the full story. “In a moment when so much of public life is shaped by sleight of hand—when reality itself seems to fold and double back on itself—I find the iconography of illusion newly charged with meaning.”
Her residency at Umbrella Arts will give Manning the physical space to push her art practice as she scales up to larger canvases, giving her painted layers the visual space to breathe.