Archive

Sitka Center for Art & Ecology 2017-2018

SITKA CENTER FOR ART & ECOLOGY, Oregon USA
September 2017 – January 2018

My time as Artist in Residence at Sitka was highly productive, invigorating and relaxing. The cabin I stayed in was on a slight incline backing onto the experimental forest with a view of the ocean in the distance. The staff were incredible: supportive, encouraging and great fun. Daily walks to the estuary, the ocean, the forest or more substantial hikes to enjoy the view of all of the surroundings were grounding and inspiring. I shared this time with biologists, poets and musicians, printmakers and an artist/mycologist.

Below are a mix of photos of the area, the Edelman studio where I worked, the cabin where I lived for the three+ months and some of the work I was experimenting with.

I am so appreciative of this residency. I was introduced to the time and space with a short talk from the co-ordinator where she told me that while I was chosen on merit of my previous work and my ideas, this time was an award – a gift of time and place. I was welcome to use my allotted tenure there however best served my work, and if that meant reading all day, that was fine; if it meant laying on the sofa looking out at the forest that was also fine. If it meant being productive, that was also good. What she wanted to make clear was that there are no expectations put on their artists and scientists and what a complete gift that was.

EDELMAN STUDIO & WORK IN PROGRESS

SITKA CENTER & SURROUNDINGS

How to Make an Island series  2017 (above)
Graphite, watercolour, charcoal, tracing paper & thread on paper
Sizes between 92 x 92 cm & 122 x 152 cm
9 of 12 in series

Inspired by my time on Haida Gwaii in northern British Columbia, Canada after receiving a gift of creation stories transcribed into English from Haida. Several were meant as studies for paintings made during my time as Artist in Residence at Sitka Centre for Art & Ecology but in 2018 I was able to exhibit three of the 92 cm square pieces at the three person exhibition Artists in Gwaii Haanas at the Haida Gwaii Museum. One piece is part of their permanent collection.

Byrdcliffe, New York 2012

Artist in Residence | Pollack Krasner Fellowship  | July 2012 |
Byrdcliffe Art Colony & Heritage Site  | Woodstock, New York

New work. New ideas: addressing my ideas of displacement from home. And, in a greater sense, displacement from nature, perhaps from human nature, therefore from our essence as humans. Adding elements of specific man-made things to the visual lexicon of natural. Cars. Houses. Architectural plans. Suitcases. Boats.

This is some of the work that came out of that month in New York.

I began with the idea of home and the tangible aspects of that. The plans, the beginnings. Pairing those ideas with the nature’s organic elements.