Erica Cardwell

Session 5: Monday August 23 - Sunday, August 29

Erica N. Cardwell is a writer, critic, and educator based in Brooklyn. She often writes about print, archival media, visual culture, and interdisciplinary performance; she centers Black feminist theory as her primary critical approach. Cardwell is deeply fascinated with the imaginations of people of color, as a tool for social, spiritual, and collective movement. Her work has appeared in Bomb, The Believer, The Brooklyn Rail, frieze, Hyperallergic, Green Mountains Review, Passages North, and other publications. Her memoir was named a finalist for the 2020 Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize, and she has been awarded residencies and fellowships from the Lambda Literary Foundation, Vermont Studio Center, and Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. Recently, she was invited to join the Queer Art Mentorship Fellows cohort to work with poet and mentor Pamela Sneed. In 2016, Cardwell received her MFA in Writing from Sarah Lawrence College. Currently, she teaches writing and social justice at the New School. erica-cardwell.com

Anthea Black

Session 4 (3rd week): Wednesday August 1 - Tuesday, August 17

Anthea Black is a Canadian artist, art publisher, and writer based in Oakland and Toronto. Her studio practice focuses on print media and publishing to address queer feminism, collaboration, and the tensions between visual representation, embodied experience, and abstraction. Black’s recent exhibitions include Loosely Assembled, SBC Gallery, Montreal; HARDCORE EINDHOVEN, Van Abbemuseum, Netherlands; Beginning with the Seventies: GLUT, Belkin Art Gallery, Vancouver; and Publishing Against the Grain, touring through Independent Curators International. Her artist’s publications include the newspaper The HIV Howler: Transmitting Art and Activism and HANDBOOK: Supporting Queer and Trans Students in Art and Design Education, a queer and trans pedagogy project that took form as a collaborative letterpress book. Her book The New Politics of the Handmade: Craft, Art and Design (Bloomsbury Visual Arts), co-edited with Nicole Burisch, features new thinking in critical craft theory. A 2021 Fellowship Artist at KALA Art Institute, she is an Assistant Professor of Printmedia, Craft, and Graduate Fine Arts at California College of the Arts.

1] HANDBOOK: Supporting Queer and Trans Students in Art and Design Education, 112 colour pages with gatefold letterpress cover on Mohawk carnival yellow paper, edited by Anthea Black and Shamina Chherawala, printed by Nick Shick, Anthea Black, and Queer Publishing Project. Edition of 1,200 copies. 6 x 9 inches. 2018; and Keep Queering the Syllabus, 16-page zine with hand-stitched binding and limited edition letterpress bookmark on Mohawk carnival yellow paper. Commissioned by The Pedagogical Impulse, University of Toronto. 7.5 x 4.5 inches, 2019.

2] Anthea Black and Jessica Whitbread, The HIV Howler: Transmitting Art and Activism, artist newspaper, 24-pages, edition of 1,500 copies. 11x17 inches, 2018-2020.

3] The New Politics of the Handmade: Craft, Art and Design, edited by Anthea Black and Nicole Burisch, Bloomsbury Press, 2020.

Jennifer Ling Datchuk

Session 4 (2nd week): Wednesday August 4 - Tuesday, August 10

Jennifer Ling Datchuk is a multidisciplinary artist based in San Antonio, Texas. Trained in ceramics, she works with porcelain and other materials often associated with traditional women’s work, such as textiles and hair, to investigate fragility, beauty, femininity, intersectionality, identity, and personal history. Her work is an exploration of her layered identity—as a woman, as a Chinese woman, as an “American,” as a third-culture kid. Datchuk received the 2017 Emerging Voices Award from the American Craft Council and in 2020 was named a United States Artist Fellow in Craft. An Assistant Professor of Art at Texas State University, she holds an MFA in Artisanry from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and a BFA in Crafts from Kent State University.

1] American Flag, 2020, porcelain, fake hair, collected affirmations, 60" x 30" x 2"

2] Exotic AF, 2017, porcelain, blue and white ceramic shards, acrylic, 15” x 9” x 8”

3] Money Honey, 2017, image of 3D printed, slip cast porcelain, blue and white transfers from Jingdezhen, China, blue and white nails by Glaze Nail Lounge, San Antonio, 36” x 48”

Emmy Bright

Session 4 (1st week): Tuesday July 27 - Monday, August 2

Detroit-based artist Emmy Bright works in drawing, writing, print, and performance. Her projects investigate the problems of empathy and the problems of boundaries. Her work asks: How do we be there for each other? For ourselves? And where is this “there” we’re all talking about? She looks to psychology, art history, comedy, and lots of lists and diagrams to figure out all of this thinking and feeling. Bright has exhibited widely in the United States and internationally. Currently, she is an Artist-in-Residence at Cranbrook Academy of Art, where she heads the graduate program in Print Media. She holds a Master of Education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art, and a BA in Art History from the University of Chicago. She is represented by David Klein Gallery, Detroit.

1] Worst Fear / Best Fantasy, 2015, Silkscreen, Posti Is and Marker on Cardboard, 16 x 20 IN, (made while at Oxbow!)

2] Rainbow Problems, 2019, Silkscreen on Manila Paper, 22 x 30 IN

3] Its Complicated, 2018, Silkscreen on Paper with Marker, 26 x 40 IN

4] More Stupids, 2020, Tarotesque Deck and Book Published by 3 Hole Press, 47 cards, 126  pages, 5 x 1.5 x 6.25 IN

5] Cruel Optimism / Emerald City, 2018, Marker and Tape on Yupo Paper, 43 x 52 IN

Ilana Harris-Babou

Session 3 (2nd week): Saturday, June 26 - Friday, July 2

Ilana Harris-Babou’s work is interdisciplinary, spanning sculpture and installation, and grounded in video. Her work confronts the contradictions of the American Dream: the ever-unreliable notion that hard work will lead to upward mobility and economic freedom. She has exhibited throughout the United States and Europe, with solo exhibitions at 80WSE Gallery, the Museum of Arts and Design, and Larrie, New York. She has also exhibited at venues including Abrons Art Center, the Jewish Museum, SculptureCenter, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and the de Young, San Francisco. She holds an MFA in New Genres from Columbia University and a BA from Yale University.

1] still from Cooking with the Erotic, 2016. 2-channel HD video, 11:37min.

2] still from Cooking with the Erotic, 2016. 2-channel HD video, 11:37min.

3] still from Finishing a Raw Basement, 2017, 4K video, 6:41 min.

4] still from Finishing a Raw Basement, 2017, 4K video, 6:41 min.

Nora Maite Nieves

Session 3 (1st week): Friday, June 18 - Thursday, June 24

Born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and based in Brooklyn, Nora Maité Nieves is interested in the expanded dialogue of painting. Her paintings, drawings, and sculptures explore how we define space through domestic ownership, making reference to ornamental details from architecture, especially floor and wall surfaces and tiles. She is drawn to the mystic values of objects such as amulets, heirlooms, and jewelry. Recent solo exhibitions include Full Room in the Sun Room, Fresh Window Gallery, New York; Paisaje Lunar, Flyweight Projects, New York; and Tangible, Hidrante Gallery, San Juan. Recent group exhibitions include shows at Embajada, Km0.2, and the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico, San Juan; Jessica’s Apartment Gallery, Unisex Salon, and Fresh Window, New York; Galleri Thomassen, Gothenburg, Sweden; the Latino Arts Gallery, Milwaukee; and the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art, National Museum of Puerto Rican Arts and Culture, and Terrain Biennial, Chicago. She has attended residencies including High Concept Labs, the Cooper Union Summer Art Intensive, and ÁREA: Lugar de Proyectos, Caguas, Puerto Rico. Nieves received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and her BFA from the Escuela de Artes Plásticas y Diseño, San Juan.

1] Full Moon in the Sun Room, 2019

2] Looking at My Neighbors Yard, 2019

Christine Wong Yap

Session 2 (3rd week): Monday, June 7 - Saturday, June 12

An artist based in Queens, New York, Christine Wong Yap uses social practice, drawing, printmaking, and publishing to explore dimensions of psychological well-being, such as belonging, interdependence, and collaboration. Born in California, she was a longtime resident of Oakland before relocating to Queens in 2010. She partners with organizations to conduct participatory research projects whose outcomes include site-specific public artworks, zines, and books. Her recent exhibitions include Between You and Me, curated by Shannon R. Stratton, at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, Wisconsin. Yap has completed over a dozen residencies, including Workspace at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and the Othering and Belonging Institute at the University of California, Berkeley. In 2021, she will be a Municipal Artist-in-Residence with the City of Berkeley via Kala Art Institute’s Print Public program. She holds an MFA and a BFA from the California College of the Arts.

1] Installation view, Between You and Me curated by Shannon R. Stratton, at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, WI, mixed media, dimensions variable, Photo: John Michael Kohler Arts Center

 2] Alive & Present: Cultural Belonging in S.F. Chinatown & Manilatown, 2020, community-engaged process, comic book, available in English and Chinese, 8.5 x 7 inches, 56 pages, Photo: YY Zhu, courtesy of the Chinese Culture Center of San Francisco

3] How Do You Keep Your Heart Open? (For Susan), 2020, Pencil on paper, tape, 3.5 x 11 inches (drawing) / 14 x 48 feet (billboard), Photograph by Jeff Scroggins, courtesy of For Freedoms and Unfinished.

Dario Robleto

Session 2 (2nd week): Monday, May 31 - Sunday, June 6

Dario Robleto is a transdisciplinary artist, citizen-scientist, researcher, writer, and teacher. Tapping into multiple creative traditions, ranging from astrophysics to paleontology to poetry to DJ culture, his work has focused with particular intensity on theories and practices of recording and on the material and emotional structures of intergenerational relay and memory. In 2015, he joined a distinguished team of scientists as the artistic consultant to Breakthrough Message, a multinational effort that aims to encourage intellectual and technical debate about how and what to communicate in the event that the current search for intelligent life beyond Earth is successful. In 2016, he was appointed as the Texas State Artist Laureate. In 2020, he was a research consultant to the popular science television series Cosmos: Possible Worlds, which aired on National Geographic and Fox. He is currently serving as Artist-at-Large at Northwestern University’s McCormick School of Engineering and Block Museum of Art.

Leslie Wilson

Session 2 (first week): Monday, May 24 - Sunday, May 30

Leslie Wilson’s research focuses on the global history of photography, modern and contemporary arts of Africa and the African diaspora, modern and contemporary American art, and museum and curatorial studies. She is an Assistant Professor of Art History at SUNY Purchase, where her current book project charts the development and popularization of color photography in South Africa. She has recently written for publications including Foam, on Luther Konadu, and Manual, on Aïda Muluneh, and she interviewed Larry W. Cook for Weiss Berlin. From 2019 to 2021, she was a Curatorial Fellow at the Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago, and from 2015 to 2017, she held a predoctoral fellowship at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts. She holds a PhD in Art History from the University of Chicago and a BA in International Relations from Wellesley College.

William J. O’Brien

Session 1: Wednesday, May 12- Tuesday, May 18

Chicago-based artist William J. O’Brien’s idiosyncratic and exuberant forms are born out of an improvised and intuitive studio practice, rich in material experimentation. Through drawing, painting, sculpture, and ceramics, O’Brien explores the traditional and historical application of materials, but also employs play to refute such definitive uses. Inspired by modernism, as well as the history of material usage of outsider art, his multidisciplinary practice is a search for identity and genuine expression through material and process. O’Brien has had solo exhibitions at venues including Atlanta Contemporary; the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, Wisconsin; the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; and the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, Kansas. His work is included in the permanent collections of the Cleveland Clinic, the Pérez Art Museum Miami, and the Art Institute of Chicago. He has received awards from the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation and Artadia.

1] Installation View: Shame Spiral, Atlanta Contemporary, May 9, 2019 – August 4, 2019. Also Pictured: Untitled, 2019, Mixed media, 72 x 40 x 16 inches; Untitled, 2019, Painted steel, muslin, acrylic, ink, lights, ceramics, mixed media 16 x 18 x 18'. Photo Credit: Erin Jane Nelson

2] Ceramic, 2017, 15.5 x 10.5 x 10.25 inches, Photo credit: Evan Jenkins

3] Shape Shifters, 2020, Colored pencil and ink on paper, 40 x 26 inches