Special Projects
Residency: One of the most sought after things for an artist is finding uninterrupted time to focus on the artistic practice - time to make mistakes, discoveries, and evolve themes and personal mythologies. The work that comes from such time is then shared and we all learn and get inspired together. Time and space to focus can come in a variety of ways...
SEPTEMBER 2022
I was awarded a 10-day residency in the heart of the Mississippi River Delta at JX Farms.
I spent the week kicking around the Delta swamps and creeks, finding odd treasures, bones, rocks, and soils for paint making. The work I was to complete during my stay was open-ended. During the process of collecting and exploring the Delta region I found a kind of language develop and when I sat down to work it was with a new set of glyphs, informed by both my own emotion and the place where the soil samples had come from.
I found the most interesting thing was having to switch gears from the way I find colors in Oklahoma where the soil is easy to find in rich reds and oranges. In the Delta, much of the soil is a one note neutral colored deposit from thousands of years of the river swinging through and leaving deposits. The banks of the creeks kinda grab your feet with rich grey brown mud and the cotton fields blow with a dry version of the same. I was interested to find a few metal objects, ornamental and long discarded to rust in the mud. Some of the brightest yellow tones came from this delta mud rust.
September is harvest season and all of the cotton has been sprayed with defoliant and the un-harvested fields almost look like crop rows of snow balls. Trucks with cash crops cross every road. My host, Mule, took my self and the other resident to see a tree in a field near to JX Farm. The tree was called “The Anomaly” because it is left alone in the middle of a field. the tree stands as a reminder of someone who came before and planted it near a house long gone and through the years was used as a place to rest in the shade while working
A word from Jx Farms:
"Who we are"
"Once a horse farm, the property had become a blank slate of land dotted by barns, empty stables, willow trees, and possibility. Inspired to commemorate their family’s land, the Jacks family saw an opportunity to fill it up with facilities to be shared by artists and makers. Here, creators and thinkers and doers come together to share ideas, bring them into the world and reflect on all that this land’s heritage has given.
Jx farms pairs community ideals with the fine arts and well-being. We believe inclusivity and experiential learning are key to being our best selves, as artists as well as individuals. When you join the festivities, sit at our table, make art in our studios, you’re a part of the bigger process in better understanding one another."
An art Gallery located in Norman Oklahoma featuring rotating shows and open studio events. I opened the gallery to the public in October of 2021. My current studio is paired with the exhibition space.
More information:
Tallgrass Artist Residency
In September of 2020 I was awarded a two week residency in Matfield Green Kansas through the Tallgrass Artist Residency. My project was originally open ended and I quickly settled into the the sensory elements of place and the image making materials of colored clay found in creek beds, drainage ditches, and walking paths. Along with a variety of pigments I found a world of tiny fossils left over from millions of years ago when the Midwest region was a shallow inland sea. The shapes of the fossils mimicked both the marks I had already been making, and the simplified elements of the gates, entrances, barbed wire and bridges that give structure to the management of the land. Everything combined into a new language of the prairie as I experimented with clay, egg yolk paint binder, encaustic, and painting arched and lines. Below is a powerpoint presentation of my time there.