June 26, 2026 - The Miller Art Museum is pleased to announce Juan Carlos Rodríguez Rivera as its 2026 Dome House Al & Mickey Quinlan Artist in Residence. Rodríguez Rivera, a Detroit-based artist, designer, and educator originally from Cataño, Puerto Rico, will be in residence on the Door Peninsula this summer.
Now entering its sixth year, the Dome House Artist Residency Program honors the legacy of artist and Dome House visionary Al Quinlan and his wife Mickey. Designed as a creative retreat for working artists, the Museum’s program supports early- to mid-career visual artists from across the Midwest by offering time, space, and resources to pursue new work in an immersive and inspiring environment. Rodríguez Rivera was selected from a competitive pool of applicants by the museum’s Artist Selection Committee and will receive a $500 stipend as well as access to the 5,073-square-foot live/work Dome House. His residency will culminate in a public program and presentation of new work.
During his residency, Rodríguez Rivera plans to produce an extensive series of natural prints using pigments extracted from locally sourced flowers and plant materials gathered from the grounds of the Dome House and the surrounding Door County area. Working with fragmented petals, handmade paper, and small batches of bio-plastics made from Lake Michigan water, he will explore how the Peninsula’s freshwater ecology and seasonal conditions shape both process and outcome. His goal is to produce over 1,000 prints and bio-plastic forms over the course of the residency, creating what he describes as a “deconstructed garden” within the Dome House’s circular architecture.
“The Dome House residency provides a rare opportunity to test how locally specific ecologies—like freshwater and humidity—will shape material outcomes, and to explore large-scale production within a truly unique environment,” said Rodríguez Rivera. “I’m especially interested in how this work will expand my understanding of temporality, ecological engagement, and the material potential of pigment and bio-plastic systems.”
Rodríguez Rivera holds a BFA from Miami International University of Art & Design and an MFA in Communications Design from Pratt Institute. His work explores diasporic memory and ecological vulnerability through speculative practices, material experimentation, and collaborative projects, spanning image-making, print, installation, and sculpture. Grounded in his Caribbean experience and diasporic identity, he embraces processes of fragmentation, repetition, and soft destruction as making methods that allow the environment itself to shape the work.
In 2025, in collaboration with Puerto Rican artist Claudia A.G.P., Rodríguez Rivera co-created Imágenes para futuros decoloniales: Continente antillano at Galería Francisco Oller, Universidad de Puerto Rico—an exhibition imagining an alternate reality in which the islands of the Antilles are united as a single decolonial territory, drawing on the writings of Édouard Glissant and Ramón Emeterio Betances. His work has appeared at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico, Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, SFMOMA, and Beta-Local, among other institutions. He is currently an Assistant Professor in the Art, Art History, and Design Department at Wayne State University in Detroit.
“Juan Carlos brings a rare combination of material rigor and conceptual depth to his practice,” said Elizabeth Meissner-Gigstead, Executive Director of the Miller Art Museum. “His interest in how landscape and ecology shape the making process aligns beautifully with the spirit of the Dome House, and we’re excited to see how Door County’s waters, light, and seasons leave their mark on his work.”
Rodríguez Rivera also plans to engage directly with the community throughout his residency, including a public introductory talk, open studio dates, and a workshop on pigment extraction and printing. Following the residency, the works developed during his time at the Dome House will be incorporated into Becoming Post-Tropical, an ongoing installation project imagining a present shaped by absence, in which nature has ceased to exist yet persists as memory, residue, and fiction.
The Miller Art Museum launched the Dome House Al & Mickey Quinlan Artist Residency Program in 2021. Since then, it has supported six artists: Ariana Vaeth and Amy Usdin (2021), Nicole Shaver (2022), Christopher T Wood (2023), Jessica Harvey (2024), and Douglas Pendleton (2025). Each artist has used the residency to develop in-process bodies of work or ambitious new work, often in dialogue with the natural and cultural landscape of Door County. “The program continues to grow in impact and visibility,” said Meissner-Gigstead. “Juan Carlos’ ecological and collaborative approach will add an exciting new chapter to the residency’s evolving legacy.”
“This project allow me to develop new strategies for creating immersive environments where memory, decay, and regeneration intersect, while deepening my responsiveness to both architecture and landscape,” said Rodríguez Rivera.
The museum will announce dates for Rodríguez Rivera’s residency and public programs in the coming weeks. All events will be free and open to the public.
About Juan Carlos Rodríguez Rivera
Juan Carlos Rodríguez Rivera (b. 1988, Cataño, Puerto Rico) is an artist, designer, and educator based in Detroit, Michigan. His work spans image-making, print, installation, and sculpture, constructing pieces that respond directly to the environments he inhabits. His practice inhabits the fragile space where what breaks also transforms constantly—embracing fragmentation, repetition, and soft destruction as core making methods.
Recently, Rodríguez Rivera participated in the Radio 28 International Program in Mexico City, where his projects addressed care and rage through cycles of collapse, reconstruction, and dispersion. He has held fellowships and residencies including the Solid/Liquid/Gas Residency at Fallingwater, the Haystack Open Residency at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, and a Bridging the Divides Fellowship through Hunter College and Princeton University, and has received grant support from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Instituto de Cultura de Puerto Rico.
He holds a BFA from Miami International University of Art & Design and an MFA in Communications Design from Pratt Institute, and currently serves as Assistant Professor and Co-Coordinator of the Graphic Design Program in the Art, Art History, and Design Department at Wayne State University.