Jeanne Medina, Spring

 Two-week Curated artist in residence, Spring 2019

Jeanne Medina is an interdisciplinary artist based in LA who works between textiles, fashion, and performance.  She has served as a Visiting Assistant Professor in Fibers at Oregon College of Art and Craft (OCAC) in Portland, OR, and has researched and worked on projects in Belgium, Guatemala, and the US.

 Spending time at Oak Spring gave Jeanne, who said she is accustomed to working in urban environments, the opportunity to explore her relationship with nature and the materials she uses in her art via exploration of the foundation’s archives, Bunny Mellon’s design work, and the landscape.

To see more of Jeanne’s work, click here. 

Jamē McCray, Spring

 Two-Week Curated artist in residence, Spring 2019 

Jamē McCray is a dancer, choreographer, and ecologist. She holds a PhD in Wildlife Ecology and Conservation from the University of Florida, and is interested in using dance as a narrative to start conversations about climate change and other issues related to the environment. She spent much of her residency at Oak Spring exploring the library, where she said she was inspired by the different ways scientists in the past thought and communicated about the natural world.

Sarah Horowitz, Spring

 Two-week Curated artist in residence, Spring 2019

Sarah Horowitz, a printmaker, drawer, and bookmaker, lives in Leavenworth, Washington. Previously, she lived in Oregon, where she was a member of Atelier Mars printmaking workshop and taught printmaking at Portland State University. Sarah produces hand printed and bound artist's books under her imprint Wiesedruck along with prints and drawings.  

Sarah’s work is influenced by nature, poetry, and language. Spending time at the Oak Spring Library gave her a different perspective on the history of science, and how people understand and have researched plants and the natural world.

To see more of Sarah’s work, click here. 

Lisa Sewell, Spring

Two-week Curated artist in residence, Spring 2019

Lisa Sewell is a poet and the author of Impossible Object, which won the 2014 Tenth Gate prize from The Word Works, as well as The Way Out, Name Withheld, and Long Corridor, which received the 2009 Keystone Chapbook award from Seven Kitchens Press.  She lives in Philadelphia and teaches at Villanova University. 

Much of her work focuses on place, its ecological history, and the non-human world. At Oak Spring, she spent much of her time in the library researching early natural histories and species catalogues, where she was particularly influenced by the work of naturalist and botanical artist Maria Sibylla Merian.

To learn more about Liza’s work, click here. 

Naseem Rakha, Fall

Two Week Curated Artist in Residence, Fall 2019 

 An Oregon-based journalist, geologist, and award-winning author, Naseem Rakha’s writing has appeared in NPR, The Guardian, and the Los Angeles Review, among other publications. She is the author of the internationally acclaimed novel The Crying Tree. 

 During her residency at Oak Spring, Naseem penned a fictional short story about Bunny Mellon during her final days, speaking with OSGF legacy employees in order to get a sense of Mellon’s reflections on her place in the world and the experience of losing her vision. She made this video about the two weeks she spent at Oak Spring.

You can learn more about Naseem here. 

Pedro Ramirez, Fall

Two Week Curated Artist in Residence, Fall 2019

Visual artist and educator Pedro Ramirez, based in Brooklyn, NY, blends art and science with his vegetation-sprouting “living” pottery. His research explores the relationship between people and living plants. He currently teaches ceramics at Marymount Manhattan College, and is adjunct assistant professor at Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn, where he teaches art history.   

He worked on several projects during his time at OSGF, including harvesting local clay for sculptures, asking legacy employees to create clay pieces of their own and reflect on what the land means to them, researching the medicinal uses of invasive weeds, and installing a fake grass landscape on OSGF’s landing strip.

Learn more about Pedro here. 

Nina Elder, Fall

Two-Week Curated Artist in Residence, Fall 2019

Artist and researcher Nina Elder currently lives in New Mexico, where her multidisciplinary work focuses on changing cultures and ecologies. She is the co-founder of the Wheelhouse Institute, a women’s climate leadership initiative. Nina lectures as a visiting artist/scholar at universities, and has recently held positions at the Nevada Museum of Art,  the Anchorage Museum in Alaska, and as a Researcher in Residence in the Art and Ecology Program at the University of New Mexico. 

While at OSGF, Nina went through archives, books, and the land in order to research ways in which natural objects had been described, creating a cyclical poem that listed her findings. Learn more about her here. 

Ian Boyden, Fall

Two week Curated Artist in Residence, Fall 2019

Visual artist, translator, and writer Ian Boyden, who lives in Washington State, creates work centered around ecology, with a focus on East Asian aesthetics. He has collaborated on projects with famed Chinese dissident artists and writers Ai Weiwei and Tsering Woeser, including serving as the curator for the exhibit “Ai Weiwei: Fault Line,” in 2016. Ian spent his time at OSFG conducting research in the library for future projects. 

Learn more about him here.