Anika Luna Wild: North Hill’s Artist in Residence

Anika Luna Wild has never been interested in sticking to one medium.

She paints and collages. She works with clay, makes jewelry, builds with wood and quilts. She farms, teaches yoga and incorporates the things she grows and gathers into her creative practice.

What she makes changes with the seasons, her travels and the materials she encounters. Beneath that experimentation is a connection Anika has cultivated for years between creativity and wellness, people and place.

“I collect a lot of images and save them,” Anika said. “I’ll photograph a rusty fire hydrant or chains, definitely trains. I’m really into the way things age, what things were versus what they are now. It goes back to ‘what’s the story behind this?'”

Anika is an Akron native and Buchtel alumna. For a time, she lived in the bustling, culturally rich New York City.

She returned home to Akron to care for her grandparents and found herself drawn to North Hill.

“This side of town is the closest to New York for me in Akron because there are so many different cultures,” she said. “There’s access to things that you wouldn’t have on the other side of town.”

Her connection to the neighborhood goes back generations. Anika’s maternal grandmother was born in a North Hill home, the youngest of 14 children. Her aunt, the only one of those siblings still living, remains in that same house.

Anika hadn’t fully considered that connection when she first came to the neighborhood. While exploring the possibility of moving to the area, she learned the Exchange House was vacant. Soon after, she made it home.

“So now it’s deeply personal, all of a sudden,” she said. “Things are just supposed to happen sometimes, you know?”

The connection between memory and place is a cornerstone of Anika’s art.

Her collage, “Assembly,” began in 2017 and was inspired by a print belonging to the grandmother she came home to care for.

Anika had loved the print since childhood. She said she’s drawn to flea markets, farmers markets and spaces where people gather, and that energy is depicted in the artwork.

“There’s all this conversation, people reuniting, digging through things, shopping and sourcing what they need for the week,” she said. “There’s something about the marketplace that has always made me feel at home and happy. I’m obsessed with marketplaces.”

Now, as an artist-in-residence with North Hill Community Development Corporation, elements of her past work and current inspirations are converging in a project centered on memory, legacy and ancestry.

As part of the residency, Anika plans to invite community members in to consider what they remember, what they keep and what they want to pass on.

“All of the projects encourage people to think about how they share their stories, how they hold their stories and what their stories are,” she said.

Participants will be invited to contribute fabric and family items to a community quilt and bring photographs for a community scrapbook. Anika also plans to collect recipes.

A listening room will create space for neighbors to simply talk and share stories, while a memory garden will explore saving seeds and growing food. Anika will document the gatherings throughout the residency and eventually weave them into a film to be screened outside at People’s Park.

“I’m excited about meeting new people and connecting people with others in the neighborhood who they didn’t even know were around,” she said.

In many ways, the project echoes Anika’s draw toward the exchange of goods, as is depicted in “Assembly.” Only here, people are exchanging memories.

She hopes those connections last beyond the residency.

“I’m also excited about getting people to think about how important it is to preserve our stories for the people who come after us,” she said.

About the Residency

Anika’s Artist-in-Residence Program runs through April 2027, exploring the memories, hidden histories and roots of North Hill through quilting, recipes, gardening, scrapbooking, storytelling, shared meals and visual documentation.

Community gatherings are held on the last Monday of each month from 5-7 p.m. at the Exchange House, with each centered on a different theme. Upcoming gatherings will explore home, ancestors, harvest, winter traditions, repair, love and legacy through hands-on projects and conversations.

Throughout the residency, she will collect photographs, recipes, family stories, interviews and other pieces of neighborhood history while documenting the project through video, photography and journaling.

The residency will culminate with a community celebration featuring the completed memory quilt and scrapbooks, a listening room, table of objects, shared meal and memory garden, along with the premiere of Anika’s documentary on the process at People’s Park.

Learn more at northhillcdc.org/exchange-house. Follow Anika on Instagram @anikalunawild.