Becs Epstein

Artist Statement

Becs’ practice is anchored in the dynamics of human non-human relationships. She makes research-based ceramics, performance, painting, and installation which culminate in transformative moments for participants. Becs creates imagery that is assertive and dream-like by combining hand making and digital technology. At this time of the human-created climate crisis, she oscillates between anthropocentrism and ecocentrism. Becs is exploring what saying sorry and thank you means to creatures who cannot audibly respond. She experiments everyday in how to become coequal kin with botanical life by confronting the harm humanity causes. Through apology we recognize wrongs and the need for change while gratitude provides moments for potential rebuilding. She mines her personal relationship with the non-human to create opportunities for viewers to engage in thinking of climate change without becoming paralyzed.

BecsEpstein_A Year of Apologies_laserEngravedCeramic HandmadeBooks Performance _2023_70inx150inx170in_Washington Gallery SAIC This is the culmination of a year-long, durational work in which Becs apologized to a different plant every day through speech, sculpture, ceramic, and written text. To interact with the installation, Becs encourages touching and becoming close to the sculptures which in this installation involved viewers laying in the bed and reading in this dreamscape. The custom bed, side table, and shelves are covered in a mosaic of laser-engraved tiles. The tiles oscillate between ghostly and legible to call upon the power of the past year of apologizing and the artist’s childhood relationship with plant life. Each is individually laser engraved through layers of underglaze to destructively reveal and create the image. Becs created this technique. She activated this piece by performing the apologies while lounging on the sculpture. Picture Credit: Eugene Tang

Bio

Becs Epstein is a transdisciplinary artist whose work explores human-plant relationships through sculpture, ceramics, and performance. Her work has been exhibited internationally and across the United States, including venues such as Links Hall (Chicago), August Wilson Center (Pittsburgh), Legend Galleries (Philadelphia), Elbow Room Gallery (New York City), and Manifestos of Systematic Change (New Zealand). Becs has undertaken residencies from South Korea to New York City to Washington State in rural and city environments. She received an Arts, Science + Culture Initiative Graduate Collaboration Grant from the University of Chicago and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago for the publication of a book. Becs holds a BFA in Contextual Practice and Sculptural Installation from Carnegie Mellon University and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She squiggles into tight spots of toxicity and feeling with the non-human

Nina Wise

Artist Statement

I work in many genres, primarily performance, music, and writing. What characterizes my work across genres is my focus on integrating personal narrative with pressing socio-political issues. I have created large-scale high-tech multimedia productions, most recently immersive works designed for planetarium domes. And I also create low tech solo performance works often improvised and autobiographical. I write, My stories and essays have been published in many journals and anthologies. And I am composing songs for an album based on the Tibetan Buddhist teachings of Anam Thubten Rinpoche. I am devoted to addressing the most pressing issues of our era through the intimate lens of our lived lives in an effort to cast light on the complexities of human nature and how we can give rise to wisdom and compassion.

NinaWise_TheKeplerStory_2016. An immersive solo performance work about 17th C astronomer and mystic Johannes Kepler created in collaboration with the California Academy of Sciences for planetarium domes.

Bio

Since earning her degree in Religious Studies and the Aesthetics of Movement, Nina Wise has devoted her career to developing theater that addresses the complex relationship between body, intellect, and spirit. She is the founder of Motion Theater®, a highly physical form of autobiographical improvisation that is both an art form and a transformative pracitce. Her original theater works, performed in prestigious venues in the US, South America, Europe and Asia have won awards for playwriting, innovative design, and new theater including four NEA fellowships and seven Bay Area Theater Critics’ Circle Awards. She is the writer/director of The Kepler Story, an immersive theater piece about 17th Century astronomer and mystic Johannes Kepler designed for planetarium domes developed in collaboration with the California Academy of Sciences where it premiered at Morrison Planetarium. Nina is also the author of A Big New Free Happy Unusual Life (Broadway Books), and many of her written pieces have appeared in magazines and anthologie including The Sun, Tricycle, Yoga Journal, and Shambala Sun. In addition, Nina is a longtime practitioner of Buddhist meditation and teaches at Spirit Rock Meditation Center. Nina lives in San Rafael, California.

www.ninawise.com, www.motiontheater.org, www.thekeplerstory.com

Su-Yee Lin

Artist Statement

As a first-generation Chinese American, my writing draws inspiration from the storytelling of both my cultures as well as the clash of their differing concerns. My work revolves around the themes of environment, mythology, and identity: I think about the ways in which we as humans perceive the world and our own identities. About how habits are defined by background, how people are changed into stereotypes, how there are so many nuances to what it means to belong and to connect. More recently, my concerns have broadened to incorporate nature and ecology and our place in local ecosystems. I’m moved by the ways in which nature constantly surprises us with its creativity, its resilience, but also its fragility.

Work-in-progress for Infinite Islands

Bio

Su-Yee Lin is a writer from New York. Her work has been published in The Offing, Day One, Electric Literature, Strange Horizons, Bennington Review, EVENT, Tor.com, Nashville Review, Quarterly West, khoreo magazine, and other literary journals, and have been anthologized in Best Small Fictions and the Pushcart Prize anthology. She is the recipient of a Fulbright fellowship and residencies and grants from the Center for Fiction, New York Foundation for the Arts, Jentel, Storyknife, Crosstown Arts, Santa Fe Art Institute, Seoul Art Space, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and others. Her writing has been translated into Chinese and Italian. She is currently working on a collection of short stories and a novel.

https://suyeelin.com

Landon Newton

Artist Statement

Landon Newton is an artist, gardener, and independent researcher whose practice explores the reciprocal relationships between plants and people. Landon incorporates installation, photography, and site-specific works to explore themes of permanence, historical distortion, custodianship, care, and maintenance using living plants as materials. Her ongoing project The Abortion Herb Garden, considers the marginalization of plant knowledge and investigates the pluralist identities of plants and the historical amnesia surrounding the use of plants for contraception, birth control, abortion, and plant medicine.

Landon Newton, FEMM HORTUS, 2021, multimedia installation. An interactive installation and animation documenting herbariums in the year 2121 focusing on the biennial Daucus carota, (Wild Carrot) encompassing medicinal use, abortifacient and contraceptive use, wild cultivation, plant migration, and communication exploring speculative plant futures.

Bio

Landon's work has been exhibited at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Frieze NY, WIENWOCHE, Vienna, Austria, CICA Museum, South Korea, EcoFutures: Deep Trash, London, UK, Open Engagement, Queens Museum, Queens, NY, and Gagosian Quarterly. Recent recognitions include an Emergency Artist Grant, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and On Our Radar 2021, Creative Capital. Fellowships and residencies include Denniston Hill, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Studios at MASS MoCA, and Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. Landon received her MFA in Photography from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design and her BA in History from Smith College.

https://landon-newton.com/

Mallika Singh

Artist Statement

My art practice/s are rooted in my environment/s and my relationships. In everything I do, I am deeply committed to process and play. Even when cooking and farming, I am a poet. I believe in poetry that is active, an action. Poem as something we do. River as something we do. I am interested in food, poetry, and ritual as tools to access our singular and collective imaginations. Food has always been a sensory and embodied experience for me. I am inspired by the ingenuity and skill of my mama/s, the histories and archives of culinary practice, and the innovation, exchange, and care that occurs through/with food – amidst apocalypse and amidst celebration. I dream of a food system that enacts a life beyond capitalism through collectivity, knowledge sharing, and the redistribution of resources, land, and power.

PHOTO CREDIT - mk blurry gloves hand reaches for a lamb chop resting on a bed of mashed turnips and stewed greens. other dishes on the table include a citrus salad and radicchio salad.

Bio

mallika singh is a poet, farmer, and cook who makes work about ecosystems and intimacies. in collaboration with Rebeca Alderete Baca, mallika ran OOZE— an event series that celebrates poetry, ritual, and gathering. mallika also facilitates a study and writing group called Rivering Towards: Desert-Water Poetics and Politics. their debut chapbook, Retrieval, was published in 2020 from Wendy's Subway. mallika was born in Delhi, India and raised in the Bay Area, CA and Santa Fe, NM. they are currently living under the open skies of New Mexico and growing vegetables, herbs, and flowers with their coworkers at Ashokra Farm.

Nathalie Miebach

Artist Statement

Nathalie Miebach explores the intersection of art and science by translating scientific data related to meteorology, ecology and oceanography into woven sculptures and musical scores/ performances. Her main method of data translation is that of basket weaving, which functions as a simple, tactile grid through which to interpret data into 3D space. Central to this work is her desire to explore the role visual and musical aesthetics play in the translation and understanding of complex scientific systems, such as weather.

Ian and Nicole, 2023, 15'x9'x1'. This is a piece that looks at the destruction and rebuilding of Daytona Beach after Hurricane Ian and Nicole passed through in the Fall of 2022.

Bio

Miebach is the recipient of numerous awards and residencies, including a Pollock-Krasner Award, Virginia A. Groot Foundation Award, TED Global Fellowship and two Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowships. She did her undergraduate studies in Chinese and Political Science at Oberlin College. She received an MFA in Sculpture and an MS in Art Education from Massachusetts College of Art. Her work has been shown in the US, Canada, Europe and Australia and has been reviewed by publications spanning fine arts, design, and technology. She lives in Boston.

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www.nathaliemiebach.com