I’d like to share with you some of the highlights of my first year in the wildly freeing and welcoming place I have been treating as a self-made artist residency and new home.
Hello from “other desert cities”
The high desert which includes Joshua Tree, Pioneertown, Landers, Yucca Valley, 29 Palms and Wonder Valley is an area indicated on a highway sign on I-10 as “other Desert Cities”. I first came here with friends in 2019. After the pandemic insisted road trip escapes only, Hashem and I visited here and agreed it was special and inviting. Over the summer of 2021, we took the plunge to make this “other” rural desert our home.
This painting, Days 227-229 is on view at the Mind’s Eye exhibition at Joshua Tree Art Gallery in downtown Joshua Tree, CA. Artist’s Reception (6-8pm) and Gallery Talk (7pm) on Saturday, September 10.
Observatory exhibition, Tahoe Gallery, Sierra Nevada University, Nevada January 2022 Mary Jeys and Sarah Logan
The work presented in Observatory was the first version of presenting from the archive of collected livestream videos. I presented a burning candle at a window at sunset on a TV monitor, a pot of water going from cold-poured to boiling on an iPad, and myself and my own watching and waiting on an iPhone. I installed a dorm room to call to the visitor’s mind and body an experience of watching and waiting at a networked happening in a site-specific sleeping quarters. I chose to perform toasting bread as an everyday activity that shifts bread or stale bread to palatable toast.
The work was available not only in the gallery, but also on Twitch whose daily active users spend an average of 95 minutes watching streamers stay at their camera for over 8 hours in any given day. The opportunity that I saw was to introduce my own artistic play into a place of durational long watching that might offer an introspective offering that could invite a togetherness across the experience of our screens.
I view this work as an invitation to consider our position of solo screen time as both a site of unknowing or otherspace that can invite or provoke emotional conditions for change within the visitor and to point to the place of online engagement as instructive in our solitude.
Untitled Portal, Candle Video of recorded livestream, video monitor Livestreamed October 18, 2021 TRT: 02:34:37
For this project, I am working with live internet time. Ever since we were forced by health and safety guidelines to stay at home during the Covid-19 pandemic and many workplaces became our homes we lived our lives evermore in front of our screens. This work was developed exclusively considering the meaning in this context. I have created programming for live-streaming on my Twitch channel towards unknowing each day through December 5th as follows:
My portion of this artist talk starts at the 1:22:10 point of the video. I talk about what it feels like to be making work during the pandemic and coping with mental strategies to both address my body and my mind while hiking. During this Zoom presentation, I present a recording of myself while wearing the same clothing as the recorded version of myself.
A collection of currencies I have come across through my Brooklyn Torch Project will be on display in a group show at the Galveston Arts Center in an exhibition curated by Dennis Nance titled Value Exchange this summer/fall. If you are in or near Galveston, please check it out.
July 13 – October 6, 2019 Opening Reception, Saturday, July 13, 2019 6:00 – 9:00 PM Artist talks at 6:30 PM
I created and co-curated this six week residency and exhibition. See below for detail photos and curatorial statement. Click “read more” to see postcard invitation and more installation photos.
Opening Reception: November 30th, 2018 6-9pm Artist Talk: Saturday, January 26th, 2019 2-4pm Closing Reception: February 16th, 2019 6-9pm
Regeneration has an embedded notion of loss. Loss of limb, loss of life, loss of deadweight. In this residency, we considered the work of rebuilding artistic practice after having lost something. Many of us have experienced loss in our community, in our perception of safety, in political decency, and in our personal economics as independent creators. In this residency, we recombined our efforts, tackled our own challenges and met them with powerful regenerative forces.
For six Sundays in the fall, artists Autumn Bree, Kate Godfrey, Constance Moore, Stephanie Potter Corwin, Tracey Rolandelli and Noga Wizansky met as a group with curators Mary Jeys and Shoshana Zambryski Stachel to discuss topics brought forth in their proposed projects. Weekly discussions addressed issues of regeneration and process as they related to each artist’s practice.
Given the curators’ interests in artist/gift economies and community arts access, artists were also encouraged to create companion works available in the gift shop during the fall/winter season. All artworks are on sale — both gallery-installed and smaller companion works available in the shop.
ArtVale Gallery 3463 Champion St. Oakland, CA 94602 WEDS-FRI: 1-7PM SAT: 12-6PM artvalegallery.com
A short-length audio file for your dogwalk, your daily exercise, your short commute. Topics include local wildlife sightings, neighborhood legends I’ve heard, field recordings and more. The show is a weekly 10-30 minute audio show with neighborhood news/updates; segments on local legends/lore; field recordings; and personal musings about wildlife, history, technology, and the ways that we do and don’t communicate with the people closest to us. The podcast will be available exclusively within the neighborhood through September 2016. A compilation for broader interest will be available in the fall. Read the rest of this entry »
A set of 50 + holiday cards produced for The Robertson Family for the 2015-16 holiday season.
Each work is a unique individual work of art- a cyanotype capturing a shadow/blocking the UV rays that will expose the paper to a resulting photograph. Materials were prepared in advance of a live workshop/activity at The Robertson’s home in Terra Linda. The workshop took place on a partly cloudy weekend day and we produced images using the sun’s ultraviolet light.
The Robertsons were an ideal family to produce the workshop and materials for since they also live in an Eichler home similar to the home these works were inspired by (mine). These sunprint works are a direct reaction to the strength of the California sun and finding a way to capture the strength of its shadows. The sun as a force in my experience in California is heightened by my experience in the Eichler home which features large picture windows as walls in a conceptual experience of indoor outdoor living space.
