In January I was invited to be join the 2023 Cohort of Artists with the Desert Research Library. A project sprung from the High Desert Test Sites. This library is unique among special library projects I have experienced. The entire collection is curated through artist’s selections. In being invited as an artist, I was invited to curate a selection of reading materials for a library in the desert. Being a super fan of all libraries- so quiet! so full of ideas! so teeming with future potential! so careful in preserving history! I was so excited to contribute my own ideas and archive of thinking and material to the library.
Of course, I went down my own rabbit hole tangent which involved spending A LOT of time researching video games, gaming history and philosophy and interweaving research on desert landscapes as gaming landscape. By mid-March, I had surfaced a short list of games that I believed were worth including in a library whose focus is the desert. I was also prepared with my understandings of video games as a kind of cultural property which we can “read” like a long form novel as justification for inclusion in a library of artist’s researching.
Four of my paintings are up and available at Compound Yucca Valley Gallery through June 4th. Each is a watercolor on paper mounted on MDF which I custom cut with a jigsaw to match edges. The forms oscillate between landscape and object, challenging the flatness of an image surface with their substantial mounting as sculptural portal. The group show was co-curated by Caroline Partamian and Lara Wilson.
Imaginary Landscapes
Joshua Almendinger, Mary Jeys Amy Kim Keeler Tynan Kerr, Allegra Pacheco, and Emily Silver.
Compound Yucca Valley is at 55372 Twentynine Palms Highway, Yucca Valley, CA
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
