Angela Dieffenbach
Angela Dieffenbach lives and works in Chicago, IL. Her research based sculptures focus on the intersection of science and art with particular interest in strange and peculiar experiments and medical treatments. Angela is from rural, central Illinois, and earned her MA and MFA from the University of Iowa, concentrating in ceramics. She graduated summa cum laude from Bradley University in Peoria, IL earning a BFA in studio art and a BS in K-12 art education. In 2014, She was awarded a Luminarts Cultural Foundation Fellowship and has received multiple grants. Angela participates in artist residencies across the nation and actively exhibits work. Dieffenbach is a full-time Lecturer of Art and Design at Chicago State University running the ceramics program and the university’s permanent collection. Learn more about Angela by visiting angeladieffenbach.com
Tara Gilchrist
Tara Gilchrist has been working with clay from an early age . She grew up in Toronto, studied at The Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax and began her full time commitment to clay when she opened Chetolah Pottery Studio in May 2007. Currently working, selling and living out of her freshly restored barn in the heart of Dorset, Ontario. The barn also boasts a quality espresso bar and yoga classes taught by her wife Caitlin Hutt. She connects with her natural surroundings to create relaxed & truly unique pottery. A wide range of ceramic products are sold out of the Dorset gallery. She creates primarily practical wheel thrown items like bowls, mugs and platters and fires them in her electric kiln. She has spent the past 5 winters travelling and seeking out traditional pottery villages in countries most recently including India, Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia and the USA. Producing works in clay while living abroad and returning to sell these pieces in her Dorset gallery. She believes in the art of living and that her own life is an artwork in progress.
Betsy Foster
"Betsy is a ceramic artist from Rochester, New York, working mainly with porcelain coils and slabs. She attended the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University and graduated in 2011 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts.
During her time at Elsewhere she focused on making functional pieces inspired by her cross country road trip out to Elsewhere, and from the North Fork Valley itself.
Sarah Freeman
Sarah Freeman graduated from the College of Santa Fe in 2009, and currently lives and works in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Lately, she has been focusing on landscapes as well as figures within landscapes, often with a slight narrative, mythical, or allegorical context. Her style is monochromatic and depends on the texture of the linen, conveying some of the feel of old illustration. More of her work can be seen at SarahFreemanArt.com.
ELISABETH ARZT
During her time at Elsewhere Studios, Elisabeth Arzt formulated a body of work, both three dimensional and two dimensional, that emphasizes the human-arboreal interrelationship. By breaking down the corporal barrier between man and tree, this work aims to renovate the null of the viewer's antiquated relation. Trees have been inherent factor in our survival as a species, and, in turn, are an integral part of humanity's culture. They are the ultimate matriarch, they protect us with shelter, they keep us in motion by providing fuel and fire, and nourish our bodies with medicine and food. Due to their essentiality, their presence is implicit in our civilization: references to trees live in our language, mythos , and provide a leeway to a higher understand beyond our existence.
Elisabeth earned her BFA in Sculpture from the Corcoran College of Art in Washington, D.C. For the past 4 years she has been carving large scale wood sculptures with the chainsaw as her tool of choice. Her carvings can be found all throughout the country. To view more of her work visit: www.FineArzt.com or to take a gander at her instagram: https://instagram.com/elisabetharzt
Arendse Lund
Arendse Lund is a writer and Danish-translator. She studied English Literature and Medieval Studies at the University of California-Berkeley. Her work has been featured in Alchemy: Journal of Translation, Audeamus, and The Asahi Shimbun.
Her writing takes a critical look at control in its various forms: control over death, over nature, over other people. Even though the urge to control our surroundings is natural, at what point is it taken too far? The line is a tenuous one and through a series of short stories, she explores the uncomfortable tension between the desire for control and evidence of inadequate control.
You can follow her on Twitter.
Nazish Chunara
The need for organization has met my fascination of color, which has led to designing fabric patterns and creating paintings and installations that fit like puzzle pieces.
An abstract artist from Los Angeles, CA who is in constant exploration of color and organization.
Amber Imrie-Situnayake
Amber Imrie-Situnayake was born and raised in the Ozark Mountains of Northwest Arkansas. Amber was largely home schooled throughout her youth. Her family was often nomadic during the winter months, traveling to warmer climates in their bubble-top van and spent much of their time in Arkansas, unreachable by modern conveniences. Amber first attended public school consistently in Fayetteville, Arkansas at the age of 12 shortly before her mother moved her to California. At 16, Amber moved out on her own and left high-school to support herself. In 2013, Amber graduated from UC Berkeley in Studio Art and was awarded ‘Excellence in Sculpture.'
"In 1985 my parents' home burnt to the ground. It was their dream home which they built with their own hands. Our house was located in the Arkansas wilderness. So, by the time they walked the half mile to our neighbors and called the fire department, it was a lost cause. They stood in the snow and watched the timbers turn to ash; nothing but the clothes on their backs survived the fire. Afterwards, they moved into a tent on the other side of the hill and began to build their second home; the ‘Cabin’. By 1990, when I was 2, my parent’s divorced and the cabin was never fully finished. In the coming years we would live in countless apartments, cars, vans, campsites, houses, duplexes, and tents. I investigate home as memory. I speak about home as a feeling larger than the structures we inhabit. A house is not a home but home can be encapsulated by a house. We can find a sense of home through a smell, a flavor, or an object; making ourselves the origins of home. While home resides in our memories, we yearn for triggers which entice and awaken our sense of home."
Christine Lee Smith
Exploring drawing and painting while at Elsewhere, photographer Christine Lee Smith is created and displayed pieces of photographic work from her documentation in Colorado, acrylic abstracts studying color and movement, and charcoal figure drawings. She is working on developing more photo-transfer/acrylic works now that she is home. You can view her work from her time at Elsewhere at the following links. Contact Christine directly at: info {@} christineleesmith.com
Check out her work here: http://www.christineleesmith.com & http://christineleesmith.vsco.co &instagram.com/christineleesmith
Adriana Villagran
During her time at Elsewhere Studios, Adriana Villagran collaborated with Amber Imrie-Situnayake on the Paonia Cocoons Project. Together, they visited the homes and businesses of several Paonia residents, exploring what made their homes uniquely theirs. The result of these home-visits was a large interactive fiber art installation made of hand-felted cocoons strung from a woven canopy of sticks and twigs. The installation as a whole brings investigates the idea of home, both personal and communal.
She also started a new series of paintings and sculptures that render portions of the female body adorned with candy and sweets. The new series draws on current media trends linking women’s bodies to candy and essentially manufacturing them into idealized sexual trophies intended for consumption. The intention is to anthropomorphize the absurdity of such images and the devaluation of identity that inevitably occurs as a result of incessant and detrimental media imagery. It is her hope to encourage a closer examination of the female experience in contemporary culture.
Adriana currently lives and works in San Francisco, CA. See more of her work at www.adrianavillagran.com and follow her studio practice on Instagram: @adrimakesart.
Rose Sanderson
Rose is a UK based artist who has been living and traveling around America for the past 2 years.Whilst at Elsewhere Studios she explored ideas based on her journey and experiences throughout the wonderful and varied States of the USA. Influenced by the Natural World, Rose produced an array of drawings and paintings, experimenting with a variety of processes to help develop future work.
To see examples of her art work, go to: www.rosesanderson.com or visit her artist FB page: https://www.facebook.com/rose.sanderson.art
Ky Burt
While at Elsewhere Ky focused on a number of collaborations and performed large and small venues. Below is an small glimpse the incredible talent he shared with the community. A talented songwriter and mulit-instrumentalist musician, Ky Burt, plays this original tasteful fingerpicking tune in a stripped down cabin in the Rocky Mountains during a cold winter's night. For more on Ky Burt, check out his website at www.kyburt.com
stefania urist
Stefania Urist is a fine art sculptor based in Brooklyn, NY. She received her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in the Glass Department. Her work engages the ever changing nature of personal relationships. She uses an array of different materials to express her concepts like making a transparent glass dress to symbolize the way individuals present the way they want to be perceived outwardly, but can feel otherwise on the inside, or creating a hammock/net out of found materials from her family to create a self portrait. While in Paonia, Stefania collected and created a portrait of her mother out of mushrooms and documented it as it deteriorated and changed. Stefania adored Paonia and loved to share her new work with the community.
mara & tyler
::BIO::
Husband-and-wife duo Tyler Lewis and Mara Marxt Lewis began collaborating in 2013 at the Banff Centre, Canada. There they completed two installations together that involved sound, sculptural objects, interactive elements and audience participation. These immersive multimedia artworks have continued to be the main focus of their collaborative practice as their working relationship strengthens and evolves with each piece.
The artists share a common love for nature and continue to research the dynamics of how humans fit into and use the natural environment. This primordial dichotomy of people and nature has become the theme that ties their most recent artworks together. Found objects, audio field-recordings, and other installation elements constitute these projects.
In their artistic partnership they combine the forms of installation art and sound artbecause they believe that engaging multiple senses creates a stronger experience for the viewer, allowing for various perspectives of consideration. In all of their creations, Mara and Tyler are propelled by this combination of the visual and the aural to achieve lively installations that encourage reflection on the complex relationships proposed in the work.
::PROJECT INFO:
Their project is based around the idea of the Anthropocene, the latest proposed geological epoch in which the effects of our growing human population, technological advancements and ever-changing economy can be found in our planet’s natural systems. Indeed, climate change is one of the biggest signals happening in the world making it obvious that our individual or global decisions and actions trigger lasting effects, intertwining the leveling methods of nature and our ability to manipulate or influence those systems. As our humanized nature follows the trajectory of our economic and cultural desires, how do we understand what is artificial and natural? At what point do we become so determined to control nature that we become some mutant form of it?
Their installation 'markers of their presence' approaches this coupling of humans and nature from a rather literal perspective; nine pairs of Levi’s blue jeans are filled with rigid spray-foam, appearing as human legs sticking out of the ground in a natural landscape. Surrounding the legs are 75 vacuum-sealed t-shirts, the layers we put on our bodies becoming the substance of this Anthropocene strata. This site-specific installation is documented with photos, the work is also installed in the exhibition space (along with the photos), and a five-channel sound composition reinforces the harmony / dis-harmony between the natural landscape and human-made objects; our tumultuous relationship with nature.
A multimedia video installation joins the project which continues with the Anthropocene theme, but brings in a new subject after the blue jeans. A Golden stone, fabricated out of wire, plaster, and emergency blankets wriggles on a small riverbed, about to break free and ride down the stream but never does. This video loop is accented with digital video glitches, offering a glimpse of what our reformed nature could look like under the influence of human actions, the golden stone signifying our shaky horizon. A stereo sound composition is played through headphones, serving as a sonic interpretation of the nervous emotions around our environment’s future.
::Link for sound of the installations in Paonia: : https://soundcloud.com/soundsoftylerlewis