Meet this month’s artists-in-residence!
Residency session: July 12th - August 8th, 2023
And mark your calendars for this month’s Open Studios on Thursday, August 3rd from 5-7pm!
Laura Sofía Pérez
Brooklyn, NY
Laura Sofía Pérez is an interdisciplinary artist who works in video, film, sound, and installation. She received her MFA in Film/Video from California Institute of the Arts. Her work draws from feminist and avant-garde cinema, phenomenological philosophy, Caribbean Postcolonial theory, and ancestral knowledge. She often works in collaborative settings of experimentation and improvisation with artists of varying disciplines and backgrounds to voice common perspectives on political, cultural, and social issues. Recent artist residencies include The Studios at MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA (2023), BAiR Emerging at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, Banff, Canada (2020), the AfA Masterclass: Radical Care with Terike Haapoja (2020), and La Práctica at Beta-Local, San Juan, Puerto Rico (2019).
Dylan DeWitt
West Hartford, Connecticut
Dylan DeWitt investigates the unusual, the everyday, and the puzzling territories in between. His experiential works aim to provoke heightened perceptual states in viewers, posing questions about perception and attention, how we decide which parts of the world are significant, and what counts as an image. Dylan holds a BFA in Illustration from the Rhode Island School of Design, and an MFA in Painting and Printmaking from Yale University. His work has appeared in New American Paintings, Floorr Magazine, and Art Maze Mag. He has been a resident at the Jentel Foundation, Vermont Studio Center, Hambidge Center, and Yale/Norfolk. Dylan teaches at the Rhode Island School of Design, and lives and works in Hartford, Connecticut.
“I create situations that encourage people to enter states of art-like heightened awareness. Often this entails finding ways of pointing out the latent image-ness within what already exists around us—coaxing viewers to respond to their mundane surroundings with the same attention and sensitivity we ordinarily reserve for works of art.
Using a variety of techniques, I quietly make alterations to everyday spaces such as hallways, bathrooms and elevators, playfully folding anomalies into the environment for viewers to discover. The physical pieces are not precious in themselves; instead I consider the experiences they engender the primary works of art. I expect viewers to overlook my interventions, discover them, second- guess them, wonder where they are or are not. In this way, my artworks are as much about what happens when someone looks away from them as when he or she looks directly at them. As the Buddhist proverb cautions: Do not mistake the finger pointing at the moon for the moon.”
Batoul Ballout
Dearborn, Michigan
Originally from Beirut, Lebanon, Batoul Ballout immigrated to the United States in 2014. Ballout’s studio practice uses painting, drawing, and installation to explore what it means to be— an immigrant, a person with PTSD, an Artist etc.— in an unstable world. In her work, she explores memory and the constant desire to hold on to fleeting experiences. She paints to maintain an archive, to understand her struggles and heal. Ultimately, Ballout’s art is a way for her to connect with herself and others, explore the complexities of the human experience, and work towards a more compassionate reality.
“I engage in forms of storytelling that contend with trauma, belonging, and identity. Growing up in Lebanon and later immigrating to the USA triggered my work to act as a form of resistance and rebuilding. I consider each painting to be a repository of life as I experience it in the present, live with its past remnants, and long for its future. I explore memory and the constant desire to hold on to fleeting experiences. Through my work, I aim to give space to the pain and anxiety that so often accompany these experiences, as well as to the hope and resilience that can be found through the act of making. My work also examines the fragile nature of the human body and the ways in which it can be both a source of strength and a site of vulnerability. I explore the poetic potentialities and mutual existence of oil paint, construction materials, personal clothing items, et cetera. My work encompasses states of being— like fear, hiding, comfort, gentleness, and sometimes childlike innocence. I am particularly interested in exploring the theme of transparency and concealment, both in terms of the ways in which we reveal ourselves to others and hide or protect ourselves. I paint as a process to understand my struggle, to heal, and to question where and when, if ever, the tether of home can be reattached.”
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Folayemi Wilson is as an object and image maker that celebrates the Black imagination as a technology of resistance and self-determination. She explores the Black Atlantic experience though sculptural and multimedia installations presenting speculative fictions that reference history, integrating inspiration from American vernacular architecture, literature, and science fiction. Using original sculpture, found objects, archival media, sound and video, her process utilizes training in art history and critical theory employing the archive and other research methodologies to mine history for use as material in her creative practice.
Wilson earned a MFA in Furniture Design from the Rhode Island School of Design with a concentration in Art History, Theory & Criticism and holds a MBA from New York University’s Stern School of Business. She is a co-founder and principal of blkHaUS studios, a socially-focused design studio founded in Chicago, now based in Philadelphia. Earlier in her career she worked as a graphic designer and art director in New York founding Studio W, Inc., working for clients such as Condé Nast Publications, Time Warner, The New York Times, Black Entertainment Television (BET), and Williams Sonoma. She has been a grant recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts, the Propeller Fund, and a two-time recipient of an individual artist grant from the Graham Foundation for the Advanced Studies of the Fine Arts. Her writing and reviews have appeared in NKA, Journal of Contemporary African Art, among other publications. Wilson has been awarded residencies or fellowships at ACRE, Anderson Ranch Arts Center, Djerassi Artist Residency, Kohler Arts/Industry program, Haystack, MacDowell, and Purchase College/SUNY Purchase, New York.
Bo Kim
Vienna, Virginia
Bo Kim is an artist-researcher, and educator who is based in both Chicago, IL and Northern Virginia. She was born in Busan, South Korea and holds an MA in Art Therapy and Counseling from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), as well as an MFA in Oriental Painting from Hongik University in South Korea. In 2009, she completed her BFA in Paintings from Dongduk Women's University.
Kim's work is deeply influenced by natural science research, ecology, and biology, and she has been producing a unique body of work that explores the intersection of her being for over a decade. Her art is notable for its combination of Western painting techniques with traditional Korean materials, such as natural stone-crushed pigments, animal skin glue, and Hanji [mulberry tree paper]. Kim's work showcases her unique perspective and the ways in which she incorporates diverse cultural and scientific influences into her artistic practice.
Kim's work has been featured in several national exhibitions, including those held at the Consulate General of the Republic of Korea in Washington, D.C., the Asian Arts & Culture Center at Towson University in Towson, MD, the Korean Cultural Center in New York, NY, the Sejong Center in Seoul, South Korea, and the CAFA Art Museum in Beijing, China.
Stephanie Simek
Portland, Oregon
Stephanie Simek has lived in the Pacific Northwest since 2007. At that time, she began making and performing with instruments she built from deconstructed obsolete devices. She continued on the path of researching the inner workings of materials and systems with unique and exceptional properties, becoming an artist in residence at the Museum of Contemporary Craft in Portland. This engagement was dedicated to an inquiry titled "Jewels/Joules", and led to a research residency at Signal Culture in New York, where she studied the magnetic recording potential of minerals. Looking further into visualizing what is happening under the surface, Simek worked as a physicist’s apprentice making ultrasonic sensors in Oregon’s Silicon Forest. This two-year partnership allowed her to incorporate specialized skills into her practice and further develop her perspective on material relationships and how they can be used to resist or work around preconceived limitations. Using a wide array of materials, she makes works in two dimensions, three dimensions, sound, and performance.
Benjamin Spalding
Portland, Maine
Benjamin Spalding is an interdisciplinary artist, and DJ based in Portland, Maine. Taking inspiration from his Puerto Rican grandfather’s profession as a big band leader, Spalding’s practice is preoccupied with movement and the pageantry of the body, weaving together elements of club culture, sports, and nature with narrative. After living in New York for college, Spalding relocated to Berlin, Germany for 8 years to define his studio practice. It is in Berlin where he found a love for queer club culture and ecstatic dance. This has found its way into his practice, where each project is loosely viewed as if it were a nightclub, with a focus on tension and material embodiment. In this sense, Spalding remixes disparate personal narratives through material into visuals that celebrate and share his experience in the margin. The dance floor is a crucial social tool for both physical release and group experience and for Spalding, it provides a conceptual space for radical, figurative storytelling.
Yana Nosenko
Boston, Massachusetts
Yana Nosenko obtained a Graphic Design degree and worked for an urban planning company before turning to photography and video. She explores immigration, displacement, nomadism, and familial separation, reflecting on her own experiences growing up in Moscow, Russia. Her work was recently exhibited at the International Center of Photography Museum in New York City, Black Box Gallery, and Abigail Ogilvy Gallery. Yana currently obtains an MFA in Photography at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design and resides in Boston, MA.
Gina Gwen Palacios
Brownsville, Texas
Gina Gwen Palacios was born in Taft, Texas. She earned an MFA in Painting from the Rhode Island School of Design, a Post-Baccalaureate Certificate in Studio Art at Brandeis University, an MA from The University of Texas at Austin in Instructional Technology, a BA from Texas A&M University - Corpus Christi in TV/Film and an AA from Del Mar College in Radio/Television. Gina is currently an Assistant Professor of Painting/Drawing and the Associate Director for the School of Art & Design at The University of Texas at Rio Grande Valley.
Gina has exhibited in the US and abroad, including the Arlington Art Center (Arlington, VA), Carlsbad Museum (Carlsbad, NM), Asya Geisberg Gallery (New York, NY), Villa Victoria Center for the Arts (Boston, MA), List Art Center, Brown University (Providence, RI), BAIT15 (Abu Dhabi, UAE), Anteism Gallery (Montreal, Canada) and the Newport Art Museum (Newport, RI).
”Drawing on my family history and Mexican American identity, I use traditional and non-traditional materials, including paint, cardboard, cotton, and sandpaper, to highlight an often underrepresented geographic and cultural narrative. Growing up in South Texas, I absorbed my parents’ stories about migrant farm work, cotton picking, and the discrimination they experienced in the region, including being punished for speaking Spanish, having their first names anglicized, and being forced out of school. Although vast expanses of the southwestern United States were once part of Mexico, Mexican American families who have deep roots in the area are treated as outsiders, as usurpers of the land and resources their families have occupied, in many cases, for generations. I create portraits of my family’s history, using colors and materials that emphasize their connection to their surroundings and the long cultural lineage of which I am a part of.”
Emily Velez Nelms
New Haven, Connecticut
Emily Velez Nelms (she/her) was born and raised in southern Florida. She studied painting at Savannah College of Art and Design (BFA 2013) and sculpture at the University of California Los Angeles (MFA 2019). Her work takes various forms from compact objects to video, writing, and installation. Velez Nelms’ work engages with Histories in the Southern United States, affect, and Indigenous Methodology.
Velez Nelms’ studio practice extends to the archive, revisiting non-ceremonial objects of Native American communities of the Southeast and Southwest. She is currently investigating an accession of 200 objects collected during fieldwork to the Everglades wetlands, by anthropologists from the Yale Peabody Museum.
She is also engaged in a long-term project titled, Sheba, part costume, performance, and moving image which documents her grandmother’s labor as an exotic dancer on Miami Beach during the 1980s. This work is an extension of a body of research on cultural tourist attractions within Florida from 1904 to the present day.
Velez Nelms is developing a text titled Domestic Exotic which documents this early form of economy in the State, centered on perceived racial difference as entertainment. Velez Nelms was awarded the International Sculpture Residency, as well as a residency at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Velez Nelms has also engaged in the study of architecture and spatial theory at the University of Miami and Yale University. This fall she will participate as a studio fellow at the Whitney ISP.