![\"three](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/LivingWageArtists-7ee6ca7c.jpg\")
<\/p>\nThe Lab\u2019s Living Wage Residency program has announced its 2027 recipients.<\/p>\n
Oct 14, 2026<\/p>\n
Updated 10:24 am PT<\/p>\n
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From L to R: Amma Ateria, Zachary Epcar and Alexa Burrell are The Lab’s Living Wage artists in residence for 2027.\u00a0(Courtesy The Lab)<\/p>\n
How much does it cost to be an artist in San Francisco?\u00a0<\/p>\n
It isn\u2019t too hard to calculate. First, there\u2019s the normal expenses<\/a> we all rack up: food, housing, healthcare, transportation. Then there\u2019s renting a practice space or studio, purchasing equipment and materials, hiring collaborators and more.<\/p>\n The stark reality of this math has shaped the relaunch of a much-needed initiative: The Lab<\/a>\u2019s Living Wage Residency program, which will provide three artists with $17,530 each to develop new work.<\/p>\n Keeping those calculations visible is intentional. \u201cOur goal is to actually demonstrate that this is in response to a crisis that\u2019s happening in the Bay Area,\u201d Smith said.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Living Wage Residency program first launched in 2014 under former Lab director Dena Beard, providing nontraditional artists with rare institutional support, along with significant funding, time and space. With this \u201crelaunch\u201d of the program, The Lab held an open call for the first time, and received over 400 applications. Funding for the residencies comes from the San Francisco Arts Commission and the National Endowment for the Arts.<\/p>\n The three residents represent the range of experimental practices The Lab supports, including some truly ambitious-sounding projects. Ateria, a composer, will premiere an expansion of her Entropic Arias at The Lab on a newly installed Meyer Sound spatial audio system in January 2027. Epcar, a filmmaker, will present an expanded cinema project for June 2027 about the \u201cHavana Syndrome<\/a>\u201d experienced by U.S. intelligence agents in Cuba. And Burrell, a visual artist, will create an immersive installation scheduled for October 2027 that uses sheets of falling water as screens for projected video work.<\/p>\n Key to each of these projects is an expansion of scale and scope that necessitates bringing others into the mix. In that way, the residency fees are designed to ripple outward. \u201cEach of these artists has an established and very high-level practice in a particular discipline,\u201d Smith said, \u201cand they\u2019ve put forward these projects that expand that through a network of collaborators.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"wide](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/250802_TheLab_Renovation_RDH_031_2000.jpg--cffaed83.jpg\")
The recently expanded space of The Lab, which includes the former ballroom of the San Francisco Labor Temple.\u00a0(Robert Divers Herrick)<\/p>\n