This year, acclaimed figure sculptor Nilda Comas, FNSS was selected as the NSS Affiliated Artist-in-Residence at Chesterwood. Comas will spend July 2024 working out of the Morris Center Studio on a commission from the National Council of Negro Women. Accompanying artist talks, open studios and exhibitions will be announced.

Applications for the Residency were accepted from sculptors nationwide and reviewed by a jury of three: NSS President Greg Glasson, NSS Fellow Alicia Ponzio, and Michael Lynch, Interim Director at Chesterwood.

Growing up, Nilda Comas spent many hours at the Museo de Arte de Ponce in Puerto Rico. She studied at the Universidad de Puerto Rico, Sam Houston State University and the University of Houston. In 1998, she graduated cum laude with an MFA from the New York Academy of Art. She splits her time between Florida, Italy and Puerto Rico. In 2022, Comas unveiled her statue of Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune at the Capitol’s National Statuary Hall. On July 10, Comas will unveil the original plaster of Dr. Bethune at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture. Comas’ commission from the National Council of Negro Women is for a sculpture of civil rights activist Dr. Dorothy Height. It will be installed at the NCNW headquarters in Washington, DC.

The co-sponsor of the residency, Chesterwood, is a site of the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the former summer home, studio, and gardens of America’s foremost sculptor of public monuments, Daniel Chester French (1850 – 1931). French is best known for his sculptures of the Minute Man and for the seated figure of Abraham Lincoln at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. French was a founding member of NSS. Situated on 122 acres in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, Chesterwood is recognized as both a National Historic Landmark and a Massachusetts Historic Landmark.