Echo Arts

Echo Arts is an experiment in process-driven art-making led by artist Ada Friedman. This summer, Friedman takes on the site of KAJE—a converted industrial exhibition space in Gowanus, Brooklyn—as a model for Echo Arts, the in-development artist residency she founded in 2025, located in the rural Texas Hill Country on a small portion of former grounds of Echo Hill Ranch, the noncompetitive, child-centered, Jewish summer camp established by her grandparents in 1953.

For Friedman, Echo Hill is not simply one physical place, but a philosophy of living that prioritizes collectivity and asks the slowest camper to lead the hike and set the pace. It is a group of social and creative conditions that her grandmother Minnie Samet Friedman spoke of being replicable anywhere. This exhibition takes up that premise, using embodied research to bring an artist residency into being across space and time.

Friedman has invited a set of artists, collaborators, friends, and the public to engage four interactive modalities within the overarching Echo Arts exhibition framework:

• Studio Residencies — Guest Artists will use KAJE as a temporary studio, working distinctly, but alongside Friedman.
• Sunday Open Rehearsal Programs — Studio Residency related events.
• Tuesday Evening Drop-in Drawing — Performative figure, still-life happening, drawing sessions.
• Saturday Evening Programs — Visiting Artist events, installation activations.

An opening reception for Echo Arts was held on Saturday, July 11, 2026 from 6-9pm, including a launch event for Star, Friedman's first monograph designed and published by Hassla, New York.

Echo Arts Studio Resident lineup: Alina Tenser, Jul 2–Jul 16; Theadora Frost in collaboration with Jake Manning, Jul 20–Aug 2; Kyle Marshall and Edo Tastic, Aug 3–16. Additional participating artists and program details to be announced.

Ada Friedman has had recent solo and two-person exhibitions at the Ana Mendieta Gallery, University of Iowa, Iowa City; Kendra Jayne Patrick, Bern, Switzerland; and David Peter Francis, New York. She holds an MFA in Painting from Bard College and was the 2025-2026 Grant Wood Fellow in Painting & Drawing at the University of Iowa.