Culture and Community at Penn Center Names 2026 Artist in Residence and Community Fellow
For its two annually rotating community outreach positions this year, Culture and Community at the Penn Center National Historic Landmark District has named a renowned master art quilter and a James Beard Award semifinalist chef, who will engage with Sea Islands communities and visiting learners through programs supported by the Culture and Community project.
Culture and Community is a partnership between St. Helena, South Carolina’s Penn Center and the University of Georgia’s Willson Center for Humanities and Arts funded by a grant from the Mellon Foundation. It supports an artist residency each year for a project that engages or partners with Penn Center and surrounding Sea Islands communities in the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor, as well as a community fellowship named for Charlotte Forton Grimké, the first Black member of the teaching faculty at the Penn School, whose historic campus the Penn Center now occupies, soon after its founding during the Civil War.
The artist in residence for 2026 is Torreah “Cookie” Washington, a fourth-generation needleworker, award-winning fiber artist, curator, and educator based in Goose Creek, South Carolina. Her work centers African American textile traditions, ancestral memory, and environmental responsibility through art quilts, Gullah rag rugs, basketry, and sculptural forms.
A leading practitioner of Gullah Rag Quilting, Washington honors this no-sew Lowcountry tradition – developed by enslaved Africans – as a living practice that transforms discarded materials into objects of care, resilience, and cultural memory. She is the founder of the Beautility movement, her legacy project, which reimagines upcycling as both an artistic practice and a way of life – where function meets art, and what remains is transformed into beauty and meaning.
For over two decades, she has curated the African American Fiber Arts Exhibition in North Charleston, taught at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, and led workshops nationwide. Her work has been featured in museum collections, national exhibitions, PBS’s “Hidden Gems of Charleston,” and The Saturday Evening Post.
“For me, Gullah Rag Quilting is a language of memory,” Washington said – “an act of honoring the lives, labor, and creativity of those whose stories were rarely recorded but deeply felt. This residency at Penn Center allows me to root that work in place, history, and community, drawing from archives while engaging directly with community members. I intend to elevate Gullah Rag Quilting and other upcycled textile traditions as both art form and cultural record, connecting past to present through hands-on making and a practice of craftivism. Through workshops, collaborative quilting, and intergenerational programming, I seek to create spaces where memory is honored, stories are shared, and tradition is carried forward as living, shared legacy.”
“I am awed by the many narratives that are a part of Torreah “Cookie” Washington’s textile masterpieces,” said Valerie Babb, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of the Humanities at Emory University and a member of the Culture and Community project’s steering committee. “Her works are visual documents, literal and figurative reclamations of Gullah practices and memories. Her re-forming found materials is deeply rooted in traditions of creating beauty through resilience.”
Washington succeeds the Grammy-nominated tenor Victor Ryan Robertson, who served as artist in residence in 2025. Outcomes of each residency – readings, exhibitions, performances or installations – are shared with the public at Penn Center and in other appropriate community spaces in the region. Washington will also engage with participants in the Culture and Community partnership’s upcoming Student Summer Research Residencies in May 2026, which are scheduled for May 18-22. The residencies provide undergraduate and graduate student place-based studies which are embedded in courses taught by faculty at participating institutions.
The Charlotte Forton Grimké Community Fellow is Bernard Bennett, executive chef of Ọkàn, located in the heart of Old Town Bluffton and coastal South Carolina, who was recognized as a 2023 semifinalist for Emerging Chef by the James Beard Foundation. Okàn’s menu showcases how ingredients originated, changed through the course of forced migration, and now celebrate an elevated pairing of cultures. The restaurant’s concept reflects Bennett’s passion for learning how history and culture have shaped how we eat and where our food really comes from. Like Washington, Bennett will contribute to the Penn student residencies in May.
The community fellows program bears the name of Charlotte Forton Grimké, who became the first Black teacher at Penn School and in Beaufort County, South Carolina in 1862. Her commitment to intellectual advancement helped to lay the foundation for Black education in the United States during and after the Civil War. Her belief that literacy, self-sufficiency, and education were essential to freedom elevated the role of educators and thought leaders, which are ideals that continue to inform the understanding of Reconstruction and education today.
“We are delighted to welcome Torreah “Cookie” Washington and Chef Bernard Bennett, whose work embodies the richness and evolving legacy of Gullah Geechee culture,” said Angela Dore, experiential learning specialist of the Culture and Community partnership. “Their work reflects the depth, innovation, and resilience of cultural traditions, while their artistry and scholarship invite a deeper understanding of how culture is lived, preserved, and shared. We look forward to to collaborating with them in creating meaningful experiential learning opportunities for our students and community.”