La Fuente · Valle de Bravo · A Homestay Intensive
Artist & Musician Residencies
Quiet weeks in the studio for musicians, writers, and visual artists. A recording rig, garden meals, the land — and no agenda but the one you bring.
Room to make the thing.
Some work only happens when the noise stops. A residency at La Fuente is a private stretch of days — a week, two, sometimes longer — with a room of your own, a studio full of instruments, and meals that appear without you having to think about them.
We are not curators, and there is no showcase at the end. You set the hours. We keep the house running, cook, and hold the space around you; the steam bath, the cold plunge, and the garden are there for when the work stalls and you need to move.
Who this is for
For makers who need to finish, start, or find something — away from every other claim on their attention.
- Musicians tracking an EP or writing the next one
- Writers with a draft that needs a locked door and a long table
- Visual artists and composers between commissions
- Producers who want to record in an adobe house with a garden outside the window
- Anyone whose creative practice has gone quiet and needs coaxing back
How a residency comes together
Booked by conversation, shaped around the project, and left alone once it starts.
Tell us the project
A short call: what you're making, what you need in the room, how long you think it takes. We'll say plainly what the house can and can't provide.
Settle in
A room of your own, the studio at whatever hours you keep, three meals a day from the kitchen. Days are unscheduled unless you ask for structure.
Leave with it
Rough mixes, a draft, a body of sketches — whatever you came for. If you want one, a closing session to talk about what happens next.
The house, for makers
The studio
A live room with a recording rig and a wall of instruments gathered over twenty years — guitars, keys, percussion. Bring your own or use ours.
The long table
Organic meals from the garden and the market, three times a day, with tea and coffee always on.
Heat and cold
The Turkish steam dome and the cold plunge — the fastest way we know to reset a stuck afternoon.
Gardens and trails
Hammocks, the pergola, the reflecting pond, and walking trails into the pine forest above the lake.
Morning practice, optional
Breathwork, movement, or meditation with Luke most mornings — join when it serves the work.
Bodywork
Thai yoga massage for the shoulders that have been hunched over a desk or a fretboard.
Your hosts
Your Host
Luke DeStefano
Keeps the studio and the mornings
Twenty years of holding space, on ceremony floors and in somatic work across Asia and the Americas. At La Fuente Luke keeps the studio running and the mornings gentle — present when asked, otherwise out of the way.
- Thai Massage Therapist
- Guide — breathwork, QiGong, meditation
- Integrative Health Practitioner — Level 2
Your Host
Alexandra Ellis
Keeps the kitchen's rhythm and the calendar
A mental health counselor and integrative health coach. She keeps the house's rhythm around your work, and is available for a session if the work stirs something up — as it tends to.
- LPC · Integrative Health Coach
- M.A. Psychology, Salve Regina University
Tell us about the project
Residencies are booked by conversation, not by form. Write us a few lines about the work and the time you have.
One of the four homestay pathways. See all ways to stay at La Fuente.