Studios > 2009 Residents
Eve + Bowie
Eve + Bowie are artists Eve Biddle and Bowie Zunino working as a collaborative team, creating relational, community-oriented, participatory events. edible sculptures and temporary tattoos engage the viewer through eating and wearing. These absurd and intimate experiences of consuming or physically handling the art create common bonds between participants. through conversation and private thought we cause people to question and expand their perceptions with the firm belief that challenging the way people think can bring about social awareness and change.
We will be creating and exhibiting the project Temporary Vitals. We began working with women who have had their thyroids removed. We created temporary tattoos of drawings made of thyroids and asked the women to wear the "temporary vital" on their necks where their thyroid used to be. We photographed their necks and then presented the photographs along with temporary tattoos so that viewers could apply the tattoos to themselves and each other.
We will be expanding the project to the entire endocrine system, and designing new interactive materials and distribution models for learning. Each major gland in the endocrine system is integral to our bodies but most people do not where they are or what they do.
Eve + Bowie, along with Elan Bogarin created the Wassaic Project, an annual event of free art, music, dance, performance and camping in Wassaic, NY.
Tai Hwa Goh
Recently I am interested in the irony and the contrast between fragility of prints on paper and concrete architectural elements. These represent vulnerable human and monumental layers of history. I would like to continue combining installation and prints but extend to experimental display of my prints using not only interior environment but also urban surroundings.
The body not only acts as a container of my soul but also leads my minds and thoughts into various investigations. My body is both outward and inward, and it is also a widely open "site." My works present scenarios of the imagination regarding bodily experiences. I use hand waxed Korean paper exploring layers of selfhood and markings of memories. The layered waxed papers mimic both the vulnerability of the body and the strength of selfness.
Hyo Jeong Nam
I tie thread endlessly. It is a natural act. I unconsciously start tying it and then my purpose becomes clear. Metaphorically I see thread as female. This is partly because thread is used for sewing, which is considered women's work. Thread plays the role of connecting separate parts. Extending the width and length of my work mirrors how our lives succeed from our great ancestors to our grandchildren, and from the past to the present.
The thoughts, speech and behavior which define my character are largely formed in my inner world. This inner world has been formed and affected by the spirits of my parents, ancestors and Korean heritage. Everything is affected by everything else. This is a reflection of life and the urge to live.
A Room of One's Own is a site specific installation I will work on, a space formed by thread. Although the space created with thread is not completely separated from the studio space, it shows woman's sensibility of her own space.
Kathryn Okeson
I want to make a book. Another one. Bigger. The pages disambiguated, not bound. Hung. Handled. A maze. I am the mouse. You too. Follow my life. Left turn after adolescence. And meet me now. I will be making a book that dismantles book, that alters the surface which is read. Inter/feres with the act of reading. These pages, graphic. Novel. An artist’s book. Yes, really. Art. I swear! Real art processes will be used! Drawing! Photographs! Alternative means of printing! I mean it! I will im/prove myself! I am a real artist! I have skills! And ideas! I will use them together!
The community. I am around educators. All of the time. Not artists. And while I am working with kids to become artists, they still struggle with critique. I need the access to conversation, reflection, constructive critique. Plus, I really don’t want to flesh out autobiographical stuff with 17 year olds. I need the immersive experience which re-orients the creative process that happens by being in a location associated with artmaking.
Previous projects and books I have made are small, precious, quick-put-away-the-knife-and-oh-dear-the-expensive-paper-too size. I have made work which begins dialogue, which pursues a question, and resists an answer. I have made work which creeps into public spaces, that whispers: bookmarks in the library, rubber bands at the post office, photographs which document the body politic. With this project, I want to make a book which says “Let us stop keeping too much information. Let pages be released of their responsibility as narrators, and instead simply bear witness.”
Ben Pranger
All my sculpture and drawings are embedded with language. Codes, such as Braille or Morse, take possession of an object to create an opaque, tactile art containing hidden messages. Braille pegs and alternating colors communicate a verbal content accessible to a few (the blind and telegraph operators) but the code influences and structures the form as a whole.
During the residency, I will develop three projects: interactive Braille block installations, sculpture embedded with coded language, and a series of large-scale conditional text drawings. For the interactive piece, I will make a set of custom-designed Braille blocks and invite blind and sighted participants to make a large rhizomatic constructions that looks something like a cross between a Scrabble, Tinkertoys and Braille. I will continue to embed language and information in objects, and will experiment with other materials in combination with found wood. I will also be working on a series of large Morse code drawings that respond to a text according to a series of instructions.
Ryan Roa
"People today are constantly on the move. We exist in a time influenced by technology, one of bigger, faster and more. Western culture is best described, by the gas station chain slogan of Mobil “on the run”. Constantly inundated with massive amounts of information, people have grown to process information at amazingly high speeds. Through this constant state of mass organized confusion that we all live in; I wait for a break in time, a moment of peace, a chance to rest and clear my head so that I can separate my agendas from societies.
I am interested in the notion of freedom defined by Webster as the quality or state of being free. My work is derived from personal observations, and is dependant on my need to physically interact with materials, and the world around me."
Ryan will be creating a new body of sculptural work with interactive aspects influenced by the larger context of Newark.
Kwabena Slaughter
I think of cameras, along with photographs, as cultural artifacts. In the same way that an anthropologist can look at jewelry or clothing to learn about the culture that created those things, the design of a camera and the photos it takes can tell us about the culture that created them. Stripped of its cultural history a “camera” is simply an enclosed object with a hole in one side through which light enters. As such, the camera predates photography by thousands of years. With these factors of origin, evolution, and technology as a starting point, my work asks the question: “what would photography look like if it had grown out of a different aesthetic tradition?”
The photos I make explore the representation of space, time, and narrative through a panoramic style. Using a specially modified camera I shoot directly onto long rolls of color slide-film. The image fills the entire film-strip, without any frame breaks, looking much like a photographic scroll. The strips of slide-film, which can be up to 100-ft long, are displayed on light-boxes. The long horizontal strips of film serve as both as a measure of the dimensions of the subject and also as a record of the subjects movement over time.
I will be designing and constructing sets, choreographing movements for dancers, lighting the scenes and photographing them. I am aiming towards a work that is in the range of 6 feet tall by 20-40 feet wide.