in the week before their final semester of grad school, four friends rented a house and made their own artist residency.

the focus of the residency was on craft — its intentional practice and its reverence for making.

on the final night of the residency, the friends joked about live streaming from the living room. “what if people watched us weaving, knitting, carving, spinning, sketching, and dipping our own birthday candles in real time?”

a hand is seen dipping candles into a pot of wax on a stove top
a person is seen holding a pair of hand-dipped beeswax candles. their head is not visible, they are wearing white overalls over a light grey sweatshirt. the candles are thin and hang from the person's hands
an aerial view of a someone using scissors to cut the wicks of hand-dipped birthday candles. in a corner, an in-progress knitting project and glass of wine are visible
a neatly arranged row of hand-dipped birthday candles is shown. they are laying on a wood surface. the foreground shows the first candle up close and then the row of candles recedes into the distance of the photo.

and in that moment, shhhh studio was created.