Hawthorne House Artists in Residence
Artists-in-Residence, Jason E.C. Wright and Shanita Nicholas
What does it mean to truly belong to a place — and to help a place belong to its people again?
That question sits at the heart of the Urban Ecology Conservatory (UEC), a think-tank devoted to living in right relationship with nature and the built environment. This year, UEC takes a significant step forward with the launch of the Hawthorne House – Case Study Residency and the announcement of its inaugural cohort: Jason E.C. Wright of Burntsienna Research Society and Shanita Nicholas of Quantum Seeds.
The residency is rooted in UEC's signature initiative, The Dead Mall Society — a poetic and practical reimagining of abandoned shopping malls across the United States. The vision was born from the lived experience of UEC founder Michelle Matthews, who grew up in Hawthorne, California, less than a mile from the long-shuttered Hawthorne Plaza. For years, she asked herself: What if this forgotten place became something alive again? What if dying malls could be transformed — like New York's High Line reclaimed an old railway — into cooling centers, urban farms, libraries, maker spaces, performing arts venues, and micro-housing? Into places where community actually gathers, breathes, and grows.
The Hawthorne House is the demonstration project bringing that vision down to earth. Built in 1962, the roughly 1,600-square-foot home was occupied for nearly four decades by Ann and Ronald Matthews — a family whose story mirrors Hawthorne's own working-class, multicultural spirit. Ronald, a Black and White minister and technical writer in the aerospace industry, came from North Carolina. Ann, an ethnically Chinese immigrant born in Vietnam, made her way to Hawthorne after marrying Ronald and moving to the United States in 1979. Together, they built a life in a city that sits at the intersection of industrial ambition and everyday resilience — just five miles from LAX, beneath the Hawthorne Airport flight path, in a region that offers its residents just 0.6 acres of park space per 1,000 people.
The residency asks its participants to work within that reality — and to imagine beyond it.
Over twelve months, Wright and Nicholas will live and work at the Hawthorne House, developing applied case studies that explore how creative practice can open doors to community, deepen belonging, and point toward more regenerative ways of inhabiting urban space.
Jason E.C. Wright is the Founder and Director of Burntsienna Research Society, an independent institute dedicated to slow research philosophies and a research library of art books and objects. A twenty-year veteran of the fashion industry in retail and product development, Wright has taught at FIDM and OTIS, and has spoken, moderated, or participated in programs with AIGA, the A+D Museum, LA Design Festival, and MOCA. Burntsienna Research Society has facilitated programming and research residencies in spaces including ARCANA Books, Arlington Garden, Berluti, Black Image Center, Hotel Figueroa, HOUS Studios, The Huntington, LINE Hotel, RIVIAN Venice Hub, Soho Warehouse, St. Supery, Tea at Shiloh, VENIA Studio, and Weber Gallery, among others. This residency marks Wright’s first participation in a year-long residency program.
Shanita Nicholas is the Founder and Director of Coffee Ecology at Quantum Seeds, a global coffee supply-chain platform that delivers coffee harvested and roasted in producing countries to brands worldwide through direct and private-label programs. With a background in chemical engineering, law, and business, Nicholas brings a systems-level approach to decentralized manufacturing, quality control, and supply-chain design. Through Quantum Seeds, she builds origin-based roasting partnerships that retain more value for producers while ensuring consistency and transparency for clients. Nicholas is an Arabica Q Grader, a member of the National Society of Black Engineers, a Black Ambition Prize mentor, and a MEKKA board member. She previously co-founded Sip & Sonder, a community-centered coffee space with former locations in Inglewood, Downtown Los Angeles, Sherman Oaks, and Downtown Disney, partnering with organizations including adidas, Jordan Brand, Nike, Netflix, the NFL, the LA Clippers, and the City of Inglewood, while platforming numerous community artists and initiatives. This residency marks Nicholas’ first participation in a year-long residency program.
Together, they bring complementary instincts — one slowing things down to look deeper, the other tracing systems to their origins — to a house, a neighborhood, and a question that UEC has been sitting with for years: How do we make places that actually serve the people who live in them?
The Hawthorne House – Case Study Residency is an invitation to find out.
