Black in the Woods

with Krista Franklin & Ayanah Moor
FIBER & PRINT 652 001 | 3 credits | $150 Lab Fee
June 23 - July 6, 2024

This interdisciplinary seminar and studio course examines notions of blackness and the woods. We will discuss art works and readings related to concepts of the gothic, identity, race, cultural studies and the landscape. In addition to more traditional processes including papermaking, sun printing, monoprinting and creative writing exercises, faculty will support and cultivate diverse approaches to media, such as performance, site-specific installation, and field recording. In this course, students will view and discuss works by artists such as Kerry James Marshall, Ana Mendieta, and David Hammons. They will be required to read a number of works such as selected poems and essays from the anthology Black Nature, edited by Camille T. Dungy, and will screen short films and an episode from the FX television show Atlanta. Student assignments are varied and will range from creative writing and text generating exercises both in and out of class to hand papermaking, drawing, collage strategies, and conceptual prompts informed by student driven research.

Krista Franklin is a writer, performer, and visual artist, the author of Solo(s) (University of Chicago Press, 2022), Too Much Midnight (Haymarket Books, 2020), the artist book Under the Knife (Candor Arts, 2018), and the chapbook Study of Love & Black Body (Willow Books, 2012). She is a recipient of the Helen and Tim Meier Foundation for the Arts Achievement Award and the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant. Her visual art has been exhibited at DePaul Art Museum, Poetry Foundation, Konsthall C, Rootwork Gallery, Museum of Contemporary Photography, Studio Museum in Harlem, Chicago Cultural Center, National Museum of Mexican Art, and the set of 20th Century Fox’s Empire. She is published in Poetry, Black Camera, The Offing, Vinyl, and a number of anthologies and artist books.

The poetics of Blackness and queerness are centered in Ayanah Moor’s approach to painting, print, drawing, and performance. She earned a BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University and MFA from Tyler School of Art, Temple University. Her exhibition venues include Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, (Davis, California); Museum of Contemporary Art; DePaul Art Museum, and Museum of Contemporary Photography, (Chicago); The Studio Museum Harlem, New York; Andy Warhol Museum, (Pittsburgh); ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives—University of Southern California Libraries; Te Tuhi Centre for the Arts, (New Zealand); Proyecto ‘ace, (Buenos Aires); daadgalerie, (Berlin), among others. Moor’s publications include, Incite: Journal of Experimental Media, SPORTS (2017) edited by Astria Suparak and Brett Kashmere, Nicole Fleetwood’s, Troubling Vision: Performance, Visuality, and Blackness (2011), and What is Contemporary Art? (2009) by Terry E. Smith.

Wild Sounds

with Skooby Laposky
SOUND 603 001 | 1.5 credits | $50 Lab Fee
July 21 - 27, 2024

Sounds are vibrations that carry intelligence, ideas, feelings, and memories. In this class students will become acoustic ecologists, sound designers, and deep listeners. We will use various microphones (contact mics, hydrophones, geophones, and binaural systems) to harvest and listen to the sound textures of Ox-Bow’s vibrant ecosystem and amplify its unheard activities and patterns. We will build listening stations around the Ox-Bow campus to immerse ourselves in the daily rhythms of the non-human world that go largely unnoticed. Additionally, we will create sculptural instruments out of foraged materials found on walks that will become the source for our electroacoustic recordings. These newly discovered rhythms of nature will be the foundation and inspiration for our sound compositions and visual works. 

The act of listening is crucial to our creative process and progress. We will engage in the deep listening and discussion of Chris Watson’s Cima Verde, Bernie Krause’s The Great Animal Orchestra, and John Cage’s Child of Tree (for amplified plant materials) to unlock new patterns of thought. This class aims to create a meaningful listening practice by engaging with the environment using various sound technologies that aid in pulling us closer to the natural world. Using amplification and sound editing software we’ll unlock the hidden languages surrounding us and use this to start our dialogues. Students should bring their own laptops for editing purposes and will be introduced to open source software to complete this part of the project. Assignments will invite students to compare field recordings as captured by their own ears versus through the microphone, create a listening station that will broadcast its live mic feed via short range FM transmission, and collaborate with the landscape in a final, sound station on display for the Ox-Bow community.

Skooby Laposky, as a film composer and field recordist, has enriched numerous documentary films, bringing depth and resonance to their subjects. His DJing and music production for the club space delivers a visceral experience, igniting communal movement and euphoria on the dancefloor. His uniquely designed sounds for consumer products infuse them with essential character, seamlessly integrating these devices into people’s daily lives. Laposky’s recent work in biodata sonification music has helped support environmental stewardship programs and the restorative practices of yoga and meditation. Recent projects include the public art project Hidden Life Radio and his ongoing site-specific project, Palm Reading, with Los Angeles-based guitarist Charles Copley. Palm Reading’s debut location releases were Malibu: Point Mugu and Joshua Tree National Park on the Myndstream wellness music label. Upcoming location releases include oases from Palestine and Israel. Hidden Life Radio was awarded NYFA’s Tomorrowland Projects Foundation Award in 2022 to support its 2023 broadcast location in New York’s Hudson Valley. Laposky is currently a Neighborhood Salon Luminary at the Isabella Steward Gardner Museum.

Rhyming the Land

with Hai-Wen Lin & Manal Shoukair
SCULPTURE 688 001 | 1.5 credits | $100 Lab Fee
August 4 - 10, 2024

This course is an exploration of land art, installation, and performance art that uses poetry as a framework to think about sculpting. As a class, we will consider the poem and its structures (rhyme, meter, stanza, verse) as form, material, and method. We will begin with a series of exercises that develop a relationship between writing, the land, and our bodies. Techniques demonstrated will include mold making, field recording, movement mapping, basic metal and woodwork. This is not a poetry class, but a class of poetic making and will entail mapping, listening, walking, sharing, caring, speaking, humming, singing, dancing, and meditating as forms of writing and research. We hope to challenge conventional understandings of the separation between body and environment by situating ourselves directly within the land. We will consider the works of artists such as Ana Mendieta, Liu Bolin, Richard Long, Andy Goldsworthy, Mierle laderman Ukeles, and Rebecca Horn. Readings and screenings may include Braiding Sweetgrass, the Tao Te Ching, and Leaning Into the Wind. The final project is the construction of a duet poem wherein one part originates from the artist’s body and one part originates from the landscape.

Hai-Wen Lin is a Taiwanese-American artist whose work explores constructions of the body and its surrounding environment. They are an alumnus of the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, previously a LeRoy Neiman Fellow at the Ox-Bow School of Art, and earned a Master of Design in Fashion, Body and Garment from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where they were selected as a Fashion Future Graduate by the CFDA upon graduating. Lin has published research on smart textiles and taught origami technique workshops at UC Davis, UC Berkeley, and MIT. They have performed publicly at the Chicago Cultural Center and MU Gallery, and have exhibited work in a variety of places including the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles, 3S Artspace in New Hampshire, the Pittsburgh Glass Center, the walls of their home, their friend’s home, within an envelope, on a plate, on a lake, and in the sky.

Manal Shoukair is a Lebanese-American artist whose work in video performance, sculpture, and site-specific installations explore the complex intersectionality of her multicultural identity, Islamic spirituality, and contemporary femininity. Shoukair’s installation work directs the viewer in space that is only partially physically accessible, forcing the feeling of being left out or cut off. It prompts the viewer to explore a space physically, psychologically and culturally; methodologies that parallel her intuitive practice. The work navigates a conscious space of being and reflection of place and directs awareness inward, engulfing its audience in the stillness of its gesture. Manal has been featured in art publications, including Hyperallergic, Sculpture Magazine and the Detroit Metro Times. Manal holds a BFA from the College for Creative Studies in Detroit and is a recent MFA graduate from the Sculpture and Extended Media Department at Virginia Commonwealth University. She is a recipient of the Master’s Thesis Grant from Virginia Commonwealth University, the Gilda Award from the Kresge Foundation, the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture Fellowship and the Vermont Studio Center Fellowship.