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. 

Andrew Myers, Spring

Inaugural Artist in Residence, Spring 2018

Andrew Myers is a visual artist whose work incorporates the environment, conservation and preservation. A native Oregonian, Myers also works extensively with the idea of place. He currently teaches at Oregon State University. 

Myers’ work is often both very sculptural and very active. He creates his art in pieces and rearranges them while fine-tuning the placement of drawings, producing figures and gesturing at landscape. While working at Oak Spring, Myers noticed his art molding to the space he created in. His studio was once the firehouse of the Oak Spring airstrip, and still contains a maze of pipes, the old firehose, and other rustic features from the early 1960’s. During the program, Myers played with these features and nurtured a symbiosis of architectural detail and careful, artful craft. Inspired by Virginia’s hunt country, Myers incorporated a fox into one of his works. 

See more of Andrew Myers’ work here. To read our blogpost about our inaugural artists in residence program, click here. 

Annie Varnot, Spring

Inaugural Artist in Residence, Spring 2018

Alumni Artist in Residence, Winter 2020

Annie Varnot is a painter and sculptor living in Brooklyn, New York, with experience in a variety of mediums.  Her sculptures often deal with both personal and environmental trauma, and have included just about anything – from chicken eggs to repurposed drinking straws. 

When Varnot came to Oak Spring, she focused  on non-traditional landscape painting. Fresh off of a five-month expedition on the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT), Varnot sought to create art that was as vibrant, daring, and challenging as her experience. Varnot’s PCT paintings have an innate sense of place on the West Coast, but part of her art also involved Oak Spring. Stencils used in her painting process made their way into another project after use: Varnot arranged her stencils on the windows of the studio––another way in which her creativity worked to interact with the outside. 

In 2020, Annie returned to Oak Spring as an alumni artist in residence, where her work included creating paintings and paper cut-outs influenced by Oak Spring’s landscapes. 

See more of Annie Varnot’s work here. To read our blogpost about our inaugural artists in residence program, click here.

Donna Cooper Hurt, Spring

Inaugural Artist in Residence, Spring 2018

Alumni Artist in Residence, Winter 2020

Donna Cooper Hurt is a photographer living in Charleston, South Carolina, working with performance and movement in nature.  In her artwork, Donna choreographs solo, often nude performances in photos, a process that keeps her active behind and in front of the camera.

 While at Oak Spring, Donna explored the area and its spirit. As an artist focusing on places and their passing histories, her work spoke to the land in a broader sense. She also incorporated elements of Oak Spring in her photography,  playing with scraps of Bunny Mellon’s fabric to make streaks of color in her art. 

Donna came back to Oak Spring in early 2020 for our alumni program, where she spent time working on a book project and on bringing sculptural elements into her photography. 

Learn more about Donna Cooper Hurt’s work here. To read our blogpost about our inaugural artists in residence program, click here. 

Maxim Loskutoff, Spring

Inaugural Artist in Residence, Spring 2018

Maxim Loskutoff is a writer from Montana whose work is steeped in the American West and its beautiful, often tumultuous scenery. 

While at Oak Spring, Loskutoff completed the first draft of his novel Ruthie Fear, a haunting parable of the American West set in remote Montana, which was released in September 2020.

 “As a child in Montana’s Bitterroot Valley, Ruthie Fear sees an apparition: a strange, headless creature near a canyon creek. Its presence haunts her throughout her youth. Raised in a trailer by her stubborn, bowhunting father, Ruthie develops a powerful connection with the natural world but struggles to find her place in a society shaped by men. Development, gun violence, and her father’s vendettas threaten her mountain home. As she comes of age, her small community begins to fracture in the face of class tension and encroaching natural disaster, and the creature she saw long ago reappears as a portent of the valley’s final reckoning.”

Read more about Maxim Loskutoff and his work here. 

Ellie Irons, 2019

   Eliza Moore Fellow, 2019  

Ellie Irons is an interdisciplinary artist and educator based in New York. She is currently pursuing a PhD in Arts Practice, focusing on Public Fieldwork, urban ecology, and socially engaged art, at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. 

 Ellie’s work sits at the intersection of socially engaged art and urban ecology. As an Eliza Moore Fellow, she extended work on her Feral and Invasive Pigments project, which involved making watercolor paint from the leaves, petals, and berries of spontaneous plants growing in urban areas or places otherwise impacted by human activity. To learn more about Ellie, click here.

Jennifer Scheuer, 2019

Eliza Moore Fellow, 2019

Jennifer Scheuer is an artist and collaborative printer whose work focuses on lithography and the history of print. She currently holds a position as a Visiting Assistant Professor at Purdue University. Her artistic research is based on plants, medicine, the body and healing throughout history. 

“I have been working with archives and historical books in my artistic research and greatly value the time to spend with historical and contemporary primary documents,” Jennifer said. “Dedicated time at [Oak Spring] was an opportunity to create new series of work...and for internal growth in understanding of the relationship between humans and plants.” 

Jennifer spent much of her two week residency in the Oak Spring Garden Library, researching both herbals and the Doctrine of Signatures (a concept from the early 16th century which states that plants resembling certain body parts can be used to treat ailments in those body parts). Jennifer’s residency provided her with the time to develop new imagery and an artist book exploring scholarship, gardening, art, and the earth.

To learn more about Jennifer, click here. 

Dinora Justice, Fall

Artist in Residence, Fall 2019

Currently living in Newton, MA, artist Dinora Justice was born in Brazil. The themes her work explores include the feminine, nature, and environmental destruction.

“I am a beneficiary of (Bunny Mellon’s) vision, and where my vision and hers come together is perhaps my belief that art can carry ideas and emotions far and wide, and inspire people,” said Dinora, in a statement she wrote at the end of her residency. 

The series of paintings Dinora is currently working on, which feature silhouettes of  women influenced by nineteenth century “Odalisque” portraits reclining in natural settings, explores the exploitative ways that we relate to nature as a patriarchal society. Dinora spent much of her time at Oak Spring developing floral designs to use in those paintings, based on the work of botanical artists Margaret Mee, Maria Sibylla Merian, Lise Cloquet, and Elizabeth Blackwell. Among the oil paintings she produced during her residency is a portrait of a woman reclining against a mountainous landscape, her silhouette scattered with chrysanthemum and wallflower designs influenced by illustrations from the botanical artists Dinora studied. 

 Read more about Dinora at http://www.dinorajustice.com/.  To read a blogpost about OSGF’s fall 2019 Artists in Residence, click here. 

Regan Rosburg, Fall

Artist in Residence, Fall 2019

Artist, naturalist, photographer, and writer Regan Rosburg’s work is centered around the concept of Ecopsychology: the “emotional barrier” that people struggle with when it comes to facing enormous environmental issues such as climate change and species loss.  Based in Denver, Colorado,  Regan  is the Co-founder and Artistic Director of Cayo Residency in Eleuthera in the Bahamas, and  has conducted biology-based research trips around the world. She came to Oak Spring with the purpose of researching the work of early environmental explorers and master painters in the library.  During her residency, she also worked on writing and painting, as well as a project featuring anonymous letters penned to children about climate change, which she will turn into a 3D printed “bio-poem” in collaboration with Binomica Labs, NYC. 

Of her experience at Oak Spring, Regan said she found inspiration throughout the foundation, from the fragments of wasp and birds nests she collected on her walks to the property’s changing trees.  

“Every single part of the property has influenced me,” she said. “Bunny’s old greenhouses have been pretty impactful, just because the amount of care she put into everything is pretty astonishing.”

 Read more about her work here, and read more about her experience at Oak Spring in her blog.  To read a blogpost about OSGF’s fall 2019 Artists in Residence, click here.

Katie Holten, Fall

Artist in Residence, Fall 2019

New York-based visual artist Katie Holten grew up in Ireland.  Interested in exploring  the connection between nature and language, she has developed an alphabet using drawings of different tree species, which she used to write her book, About Trees, in 2015.   

“For me, the books are about creating a sense of community, and how everything is related to everything,” Katie said. “Alphabets are ways to think about language relationships to other species on the planet.” 

During her residency at Oak Spring, Katie worked on several upcoming projects, including a piece for Emergence Magazine that she is creating with poet Forrest Gander. For the magazine, she is working to develop an alphabet resembling dissolving seeds and spores that will be turned into a font, influenced by the wildfires spreading through California. She also worked on several other tree alphabet books, including a children’s book and a book of Irish trees. 

Learn more about Katie’s website (https://www.katieholten.com/). To read a blogpost about OSGF’s fall 2019 Artists in Residence, click here.   

Dolores Furtado, Fall

Artist in Residence, Fall 2019

Dolores Furtado is a sculptor who was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and now lives and works in Brooklyn. Her work focuses on matter, material, and formlessness.  

“I’m interested in the process itself,” she said, “It’s constantly transforming, a bit in the way nature does - not in a defined way. It’s more about transforming the material.” 

Dolores spent much of her time at OSGF experimenting with paper products. While she uses recycled paper at home, being at OSGF gave her the opportunity to use different types of materials - including wood and grass, as well as flowers, fruits, and vegetables from the Biocultural Conservation Farm and gardens - to create a variety of papers and small sculptures. 

Dolores said she found inspiration for her work in a variety of places: from the unique way Bunny Mellon’s use of frames to change the forms of plants in the greenhouse, to books on paper-making in the Oak Spring library, to the ever-changing autumn landscape.

You can learn more about Dolores at http://www.doloresfurtado.net/. To read a blogpost about OSGF’s fall 2019 Artists in Residence, click here.

Elissa Levy, Spring

Artist in Residence, Spring 2019

Alumni Artist in Residence, Winter 2020

Elissa Levy is a multimedia artist based in New York, NY. Her work, which includes drawing, photography, painting, and sculpture, utilizes a variety of materials, including objects such as newspapers, which she views as a “ found object that I can edit and transform.”  

During her six-week residency at Oak Spring, Elissa produced multiple sculptures, including several which included casts of a tree root, potatoes, and oysters. 

When she returned to as an alumni resident in early 2020, Elissa continued her sculptural work, creating multiple casts of rocks throughout the Oak Spring landscape.  

 You can learn more about her work here.    

John Liles, Spring

Artist in Residence, Spring 2019

Alumni Artist in Residence, Winter 2020

 John Liles is a poet, science writer, and living mammal.  His award-winning debut book of poetry, Following the Dog Down, inspired by John’s study of parasitic roundworms, was published in 2017.

During his six-week residency at OSGF, John wrote and researched in the Oak Spring Garden Library, where he left some of his poems.   He said of his time at the foundation, “Being here, and being in this space which such wonderful people and artists, has allowed me to take stock of the kind of relationships I want to have and the kind of people I want to be around.”  

John returned to Oak Spring in early 2020 as an alumni resident, where he worked on a series of poems about small biological processes in the natural world. 

You can learn more about him here.

Samantha Sanders, Spring

 Artist in Residence, spring 2019

Alumni Artist in Residence, Fall 2020

 Samantha Sanders is an artist based in Philadelphia, PA. Her paintings and drawings create worlds that are “constantly evolving, that accentuates the mystery and majesty of nature.” 

At OSGF, Sam produced a variety floral paintings inspired by the foundation’s spring blooms and plants over the course of her 2019 six-week residency. She returned in 2020 for an alumni residency, where her work included creating paintings from ink she made from the site’s dye and paper garden. Of her time at OSGF, she wrote on an Instagram post: “I’ve never felt more proud, inspired and excited to keep making artwork and to have more, and more experiences like this one in the future!”

You can learn more about Sam here. 

Autumn Von Plinsky, Spring

Artist in residence, spring 2019

Autumn Von Plinsky is a graphic designer, muralist, and illustrator currently based out of Brooklyn, NY. Having grown up surrounded by the natural world, most of her illustrations are inspired by nature, focusing on “the little details that are sometimes overlooked.” 

Autumn’s primary illustration medium is watercolor. Prior to her residency at Oak Spring, Autumn created the illustrations for Michael Gaige’s ecological survey of Oak Spring, a “An Oak Spring Landscape.” During her time at OSGF, Autumn produced several watercolor illustrations and prints inspired by the foundation’s landscape and wildlife, including a piece featuring all the bird species she saw on the property. That design was later turned into fabric and wall paper, available online here. 

You can learn more about Autumn 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.