Emily is a dancer, interdisciplinary artist, and philosophy PhD candidate based in Toronto, Canada. Her philosophical writing and dance practice explore connection between and alienation from people and place, respectively. Emily’s dance practice is shaped by her training, competition, and performance over the past two decades in various dance styles, including ballet, contemporary, and bachata.
Video by Rebeka Naydenova @thenymphalid & music by “Ein Klota” by Eivor
In residency at NES, Emily worked on two projects. In dance, she focused on exploring the intuitive moulding or resistance of the body in response to changes in the natural environment. Building from this practice, she collaborated with cinematographer and fellow resident, Rebeka Naydenova, by choreographing and performing in a short film. In the shared studio, she sculpted a clay portrait of a live model that she carved into a life-size mask. https://www.instagram.com/emily.bachata/
image by Rebeka Naydenova @thenymphalid
image by Rebeka Naydenova @thenymphalid
image by Maria Fernanda Rodriquez Torres @adnanref12
Image by Maria Fernanda Rodriquez Torres @adnanref12
Rebeka Naydenova is a cinematographer with a degree from the National Academy for Theatre and Film Arts in Sofia, Bulgaria. Her project in Iceland focuses mainly on a documentary film about runes, magic staves, and the captivating power of mountains. See more of Rebeka’s work at https://www.instagram.com/thenymphalid/
The Life Plan: Food, Pottery and Travel. Educated as Microbiologists. Owned a Natural Food Store and Organic Flour milling company. Lived in Japan and apprenticed in ceramics.
The work we produce in our studio in Indianola, WA, USA is primarily functional ware with an asian influence. We also enjoy diving into raku and sculptural work.
The geology of Iceland has inspired us to focus on the Japanese ceramic technique of kurinuki, which means ’to carve out’. We appreciate the opportunity to be here at NES to explore this technique.
Kathryn Allen Hurni is an American fine art photographer living and working on the East Coast of the United States. Her work during the NES artist in residency is a sharp departure from what she usually photographs; turning her lens from portraiture and focusing instead on landscape, color, and the tension between abstraction and environment. You can follow her @khurni or visit her site www.kahurni.com
I am excited and delighted to be with NES during October. I will be working on a photography project using camera obscura long exposures to portray the role of elves and religion in Icelandic and contemporary global culture.
With the rise of extremism, I want to explore the role of belief systems in trying to understand the world.
I’m sharing some of my first images here for you; I would love to hear what you think. you can see more of Alan’s work at https://gignouxphotos.com/
Teuta Pashnjari is an Albanian fine artist currently participating in an artist residency at NES AIR in Iceland. Her practice delves into themes of cultural memory, identity, and the intersection of tradition and contemporary life. Through painting and video art, her site-specific projects explore the subtle ways in which inter-generational knowledge shapes identity, highlighting the traditions that bridge the past and present. During her residency at NES, Pashnjari is focusing on site-specific paintings that engage with the natural environment of Skagaströnd, with a particular emphasis on color and form.
For me art is a tool to follow my questions and exploring them by diverse means and often with the people around.
I am very much interested in specific socio-spatial situations – buildings, streets, villages, cities – the interplay of their social, psychological, architectural, historical characteristics. I often take up methods from other disciplines and modify them, e. g. like in a psychological test I ask neighbours to draw their neighbours as animals/ I modify the sound of a showroom together with an acoustic engineer to prepare it for an experimental concert/ I involve people in a residential area in Berlin in urban planning, simulating the gigantic dimension of a planned construction site in their street etc.
I track down the specifics of a situation and work on them in a cooperative, investigative and interventionistic way – with the people on site. Their perspectives and personal skills become core part of the working process. The results are developed according to the input of the participants and the local conditions. They can appear in diverse formats: a common walk, a public concert, a record, a photograph, an interview or something built etc.
In Skagaströnd I ask residents to make two blots with me and to describe what they see in them. I record their interpretations/associations: What images lie dormant in the specific social surroundings? Which personal, social and political motives may become recognizable? How are the realities of life reflected in the interpretations? Is there something like a local subconscious? Can it be reached by blots?
In the meantime more than 70 blots have been made by residents of Skagaströnd and some of them have already been realized with diverse means: a giraffe, a scaphoid bone, a begging dog, a monster etc. – it’s an ongoing story…
Thea Elder is an Australian analog film photographer and mixed-media artist, working out of London. Thea’s practice is concerned with her identity as an ecosexual, queer woman, and what that means for her relationship with the Earth, other humans, and the Erotic (Eros) in relation to her liberated body. Her practice is dictated by her sexuality and connection to her body; when embodied wholly, she is mindfully engaged with her practice. She holds a Bachelor of Arts (Sociology) – HONS, obtained from the University of New South Wales, Australia.
Both Thea’s artistic and personal healing practices are deeply rooted in Eros and the power of Ecosomatics. Her most recent photographic series, ‘Carnal Dynamics’, examines the nuanced stages of recognising and processing trauma/s stored within the body by capturing subjects in motion – nude. This series was a culmination of the past few years of her artistic journey and aimed to challenge oppressive societal norms around showing vulnerability. Her nude portraiture is reminiscent of natural landscapes, and awkward, unusual cropping of final images represent an understanding of physical and mental healing that is simultaneously both obvious and difficult to pinpoint.
In her time at NES Residency, Thea will be creating a new body of work, and expanding her practice into printmaking and watercolours. By blending media, and experimenting with her photographic practice in all weather conditions, Thea hopes to create a series of tonal transfer prints and watercolour paintings exploring her inherent and infinite connection to nature. She hopes this series will continue to entangle her as vibrant matter in whatever surroundings she finds herself in.
My artwork is a manner of understanding the ancient spiritual practices of pre-abrahamic/cultures around the world, with a focus on goddesses and other female and female-adjacent entities. The research process is intense, and I hope that the resulting portraits will honor these beings and the cultures who revered them over the centuries. https://corazonhiggins.weebly.com/https://www.instagram.com/corazonhiggins1313/
Erik Schurink is a visual storyteller, an artist creating imagery and settings intent on evoking connections between viewer and the subject, and the setting of his paintings and installations.
During his month at NES, he is exploring image making in partnership with rocks, rain and wind, to interpret the land, sea and cloudscapes of Skagaströnd.
The paintings he creates in his studio in Brooklyn, New York often reflect on people in relation to their environment, whether it is museum guards in the gallery they are assigned, or people-at-rest riding the subway waiting to arrive at their destination.
Outdoors—in his “Landscape Arrangements”—he arranges materials found in an environment to create an image using that environment as its canvas, for the unsuspecting passersby to experience a moment of awareness of that landscape, and their place in it.
The fellow artists-in-residence, people living in this town, at these headlands—home of Þordís and those who have come after her—and the conversations had are other sources of great inspiration. Karen Winzer’s “Flecke” project, a sociocultural Rorschach-inspired exploration, seeing people in town readying their homes for winter, and the possibility of witnessing the northern lights before returning to the U.S., have inspired a painting he titled “Transported.”
I love everything about music and photography. I am a composer, sound artist, photographer, educator and curator of music and other media. I keep my ears and eyes always wide open and grab hold of any sound and/or image that tickles my fancy! I am passionate about collisions and fusions between art, music and popular culture as a process for reconstructing the familiar and inviting us to have a dream or two.
Marie Sørensen is a Melbourne based writer, married with four adult children. She has a Master’s degree in Contemporary Liturgical Music and is a trained Mus Therapist.Her writing passion is about life experience, writing under the name of Emmell Sørensen. Marie’s book Walking her way backwards, a memoir about walking a Camino pilgrimage, is published by Shawline. She recently won 3rd prize in an Australian national writing competition with the topic Finding a Voice. Marie’s piece Not all that I am was published in a national magazine. Marie also made the shortlist for a global poetry competition on the topic Coming Home. Her work of the same title is published by Oprelle publications.
Nora Fuchs is a German sculptor based in Berlin and Dortmund. She studied sculpture at the art academies in Braunschweig and Stuttgart. Her works are mainly three-dimensional and often site-specific. Since 2003 she has been a professor at the University of Applied Sciences in Dortmund, where she teaches three-dimensional design and artistic strategies on the bachelor and master courses in scenography. She is active in a network for the improvement of art education at universities. She has participated in many solo and group exhibitions and has been working and curating at the art and culture association Alte Schule Baruth for 20 years. Her artistic work can be seen here: www.norafuchs.de.
"This is my fourth stay at Skagaströnd since 2018, each time has been very different, each time has been inspiring. I am currently working on the theme of tipping points. As a fragile state, the moment of breakable equilibrium leaves open what will happen. But what happens when the process tips over? Is it even possible to try to reverse a process? How do you deal with process artistically? How real or how abstract should the work be? How much beauty do I need, do people need? Is that the escape door? To get rid of this stupid feeling of being controlled by bureaucracy and AI-driven processes?
Having experienced sending my material from Germany to Iceland, I started working on Parcel Clearance as an example of how Post, AI, Customs and people get misunderstood. Printed out, the email correspondence is 11.22 metres long.“
“Lea Gasser is a freelance accordionist and composer from Switzerland, who grew up in Zurich and lives in Lausanne at the moment. Fascinated by the versatility of her instrument, she lets it take on different roles in various projects and gives it a very personal and intimate expression through her own compositions. She completed a Bachelor’s degree in classical music and followed a Master’s program in Jazz Performance & Composing. In Skagaströnd, the artist focused mainly on composing new music, inspired by everyday’s life, the crazy weather and the stunning nature of Iceland: never stopping wind, dancing birds, endless summer days, elves, … Thank you so much for this great place! @leagasser.music https://linktr.ee/leagasser
Sonya Trolliet is an artist based in Lausanne, Switzerland. She works on several projects in illustration and graphic novels. She came here to feed her interests with rocks and micro-organisms.
“I’m interested in awkwardness, in what fails or malfunctions, in failure, in the feeling of otherness in the world or in the body. Social inequalities, stones and micro-organisms are all part of my research.
I also like to work with characters I invent who behave in ways that are inappropriate or disturbing. They allow me to evoke the construction of relationships of domination between living beings and psychological conditioning. Violence, fear, notions of danger and confinement are never far away.
During my stay in Skagaströnd at NES, I’m producing some pictures of the graphic novel called Vivant.es, a post apocalyptical story about alterity. And I’m writing The Applebaum sisters, a story about resilience.
I also developed a day to day drawing diary about the thoughts I had during my walks around Skagaströnd.
Thank you to Vicki who makes that possible, it’s a really nice residency with lovely people.”
Courtney N. Ryan is a ceramic artist and professor at the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) in Atlanta, Georgia. Her work draws inspiration from the diverse materials found in nature, such as rocks, seeds, flora, and shells.
In her current body of work, known as “Travelers,” Ryan utilizes clay to create both wall-mounted and freestanding sculptural forms, each distinct and individualized, showcasing a variety of naturally inspired shapes, colors, and textures. The forms often repeat and duplicate, emphasizing both uniqueness and a sense of continuity in nature. This interplay between singularity and repetition mirrors the diversity and patterns Ryan has observed in the organic life she is drawn to gather, observe, and recreate.
During her two-month residency at the NES Artist Residency in Skagaströnd, Iceland, Ryan will further develop her project, “Travelers and Company: Light and Shape in Iceland’s Midnight Summer Sun.” This project, initiated in 2022, has been partially funded by a Presidential Fellowship for Faculty Development from SCAD for the past two consecutive academic years. The project aims to explore the interaction of light and form, through clay sculpture, watercolor, photography, artist book, video, and writing.
Ryan has exhibited and presented her work at numerous venues, including The Delaware Contemporary in Wilmington, DE; Swan Coach House in Atlanta, GA; Columbus College of Art and Design in Columbus, OH; SCAD University in Atlanta, GA; Jacksonville University in Jacksonville, FL; Wofford College in Spartanburg, SC; Westobou Gallery in Augusta, GA; Bridgewater College in Bridgewater, VA; University of Georgia in Athens, GA; MINT Gallery in Atlanta, GA; and Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, VT. Internationally, she has showcased her work at Aalto University in Helsinki, Finland; Waterford Institute of Technology in Waterford, Ireland, and NES Artist Residency in Skagaströnd, Iceland.
Ashley Kidner is a Baltimore based environmental artist. Kidner’s work reflects issues such as global warming, habitat loss, sea level rise and the decline of pollinators. Kidner likes to work with natural materials like stone, wood, plants and water when doing earthwork installations around the world. When in the studio Kidner works with a variety of mediums ranging from watercolor, pencil and ink, found objects to printmaking. This is the second July residency Kidner has attended at NES and this year will be collaborating with Guido Hundrup on work about Icelandic forests, specifically the Downy Birch tree (Betula Pubescens). You can see more of Ashley’s work at https://bakerartist.org/portfolios/ashleykidner
“Swalevine” art installation by Ashley Kidner at Adkins Arboretum.
I’m a musician and I studied classical piano at the University of Münster and Jazz Piano at the Glenn Buschmann Jazz Academy in Dortmund, Germany. I am happy to be able to do my second artist residency at NES in Skagaströnd. During this residency, my focus will be on a few piano compositions. Additionally, I will be collaborating with Ashley G. Kidner on a reforestation project for which I will be composing the music as well as creating videos, photos, and other graphics. A brief insight into my work can be found through the provided links and photos.
Kamari is an Internet filmmaker/documentarian born and raised between the UK, Germany and US. Having a fascination with different cultures, her work centers around local history and local people in the Nordics, finding the similarities that make us human. Her professional background is in content production for MTV, HBO and Red Bull across the US and Europe. She became a nomad three years ago to produce her first season of content, filmed in Greenland, Svalbard and Iceland. The episodic series lives on YouTube with a new story released monthly. www.youtube.com/@anordicheart
Heejoon June Yoon is an interdisciplinary artist and educator whose work aims to uncover the ecology of absurdity and abnormal settings within the contemporary life through audiovisual making. Yoon’s recent work focuses on the interplay between body, form and shape in relation to semiotic theory.
Inspired by how media technologies shape perception and communication, often leading to impressive miscommunications, she is making a series of landscapes and portraits of “unknown lumps” with A.I., 3D scanning and digital manipulation, collecting the machine’s algorithmic interpretation of her human-hand-drawings.
During her time at NES, she is creating a pseudo-documentary video to elucidate her observations on the glitches in imaging technologies. By tackling photographic and digital imaging, she seeks to investigate the multi-dimensional nature and complex hierarchy of reality and virtuality, and how this interplay influences our perception of the visual world.
Päivi Liski is a Finnish writer and a teacher of creative writing. Her first book a short story collection Erään kanan tarina (Story of a Chicken, S&S 2022) explored human-animal relationship and showed how we live in multispecies communities. The reviews of the book were overwhelmingly positive and it was nominated for two important literature prices Helsingin Sanomien kirjallisuuspalkinto and Runeberg-palkinto.
While in NES residency she is writing a novel titled Kaikki mitä ikinä halusin (Everything I Ever Wanted). The novel revolves around the same themes as the short story collection but it also discovers the uncanny both in ourselves and in everything around us. As a source material for writing she uses mythology, fairy tales, folklore animal studies, biology and history. The novel takes place on a fictional volcanic island, which is famous for its pilgrimage site and a cave where a mystic creature lives.
My name is Cole Roberts, I am a producer, photographer, radio host, and multidisciplinary artist from philadelphia, pa.
I am interested in exploring the infinite mutability of sound as it relates to the many different forms of queered connection. sound, and photography without fail, manifest in my practice; whether through video, sculpture, installation, or music. I am drawn to creating works that heighten the viewer’s awareness of their bodily functions, bring awareness to the conditions of their immediate surroundings, and ultimately bring the viewer closer to themselves.
During my stay at NES, I have been allowed to slow down and work on composing music, collecting sounds, and producing my second album. when not working on music production, I have been wandering around Iceland shooting photos, and collecting and cataloging things to scan.
Emmélin is a Danish-born, London-based artist, composer and poet. With a poetry book already to her name, Emmélin explores a sonic tapestry in an ethereal nordic spectrum, blending spoken words and improvisation as a core practise to her live performances. Inspired by the struggles of numb culture and the sounds of everyday life, she writes about the most destructive and vicious thoughts we harbor in the suffocation of the repetitive rat race in modern society. All translated into poems and compositions ranging from solo work to orchestral work. https://linktr.ee/emmelin
Fabiola Carranza [she/they] is a visual artist, writer and educator working on a practice-based PhD at the University of California San Diego. She/they trained as a media artist in Canada and grew up in Costa Rica. Carranza’s interdisciplinary work offers entry points to the consideration of complex cultural phenomena. Through textuality, photography, experimental video and weaving, Carranza brings together issues that arise from the historical and cultural specificities of her/their source material. Carranza’s artwork has been exhibited in Canada, México, Costa Rica and the U.S. Her/their play The Mexican Husband was published by Blank Cheque Press in 2019 and has been staged as a reading event in Tijuana, Manila, Birmingham (AL) and Vancouver. Carranza’s art writing has appeared in Canadian Art, Public Parking, Charcuterie, C Magazine, PubLab and The Capilano Review. She/they gained a BFA from Emily Carr University and an MFA from the University of British Columbia. While in Skagaströnd, Carranza will work on her/their dissertation taking breaks to draw, watch birds and soak in the thermal depths of this island’s waters.
Kayla Kurin is a writer, comedian, and journalist from Toronto, Canada. She explores themes of health, disability, immortality, and world mythologies in her work which includes writing fiction, comedy, and creative non-fiction. While at NES she is working on a satirical fantasy novel and a book of essays on health, culture, and location. She is visiting every hot pool near Skagastrond in research for this project. You can find more about her work at kaylakurin.com or see her comedy @SickBaeComedy
Christina Oyawale is a Toronto-born self-proclaimed “anarchist punk boy” and emerging multi-hyphenate artist, graphic designer, researcher + curator. Oyawale holds a BFA in Photography from Image Arts at Toronto Metropolitan University and currently is an MFA candidate at University of Manitoba for Fine Arts. Working with film, photography and text, they use memories, shared Black feminist history and knowledge sharing in order to create work that emphasises curiosity of learning and documenting the importance of slowness. Currently they are attempting to break free from the expected and frequent uses of identity politics under our current neo-liberalist society, that requires marginalized people to sell their identity in exchange for “visibility” in the art world and academia. You can see more of Christina’s work at https://christinaoyawale.com/ and https://www.instagram.com/christinaoyawale/
Inspired by mourning research, Connie’s work is a visceral response to emotions, body sensations, and experiences in nature. She works across media, installation, sculpture, video, performance, and sound to contextualize imaginings of unknown spaces before life and after death that bookend the transitions into and out of consciousness. In a meditative process that allows the world’s noise to dissipate, she looks for answers to difficult questions, focusing on the work’s essential qualities in the moment. The isolated and spare visual results create an intimate and immediate connection to the work and serve as a reminder that this moment is all there is.
She is using her time at NES to begin research on a new body of work. Through the lens of her grief research, she will look at the loss of ocean ecosystems and water’s relationship to human and non-human bodies. Her profound connection to the Pacific Coast of Northern California is the impetus for this new work, as kelp forests continue to die due to the imbalance of the ecosystem from ocean warming.
Born in Washington, DC, Connie received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and attended Notre Dame de Namur University in Belmont, California, where she received an MA in psychology. To support her current research, she was awarded the Cabins Haystack Residency Fellowship in Norfolk, CT, received two Artist Grants from the City of Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs, trained as a death doula, and studied Butoh. You can see more of Connie’s work at https://www.connienoyes.com/ and https://www.instagram.com/connienoyes/
Martin lives and works in Brussels. Artist and craftsman, he explores different media in order to find new shapes and contours. Graduated from Arts et Métiers in leathergoods design, he received the Prize of the Minister of Culture of the Wallonia/Brussels Federation in October 2022 during the BeCarft competition.
Passionate about experimentation and research, his practice takes various forms (objects, painting, writing, installations). https://www.instagram.com/m.schepkens/
Stephanie Rohlfs is a visual artist and occasional writer based in Oakland, California (USA). In her work, she explores the way humans and animals interact with objects. Her recent body of work grows out of these interests to explore American doomsday prepper and new-age wellness cultures, creating a series of sculptural objects to be activated “in case of emergency.” In her time at Nes, she will continue this work with a series of small ceramic and painted works, as well as complete a series of short stories loosely inspired by doomsday prepper acronyms.
Matthew Thomas is an artist and architect exploring the built environment through reimagining landscape, infrastructure, and community engagement with a multidisciplinary approach spanning art, curation, public art and events, architecture, and urban design. His recent work has focused on infrastructure and the natural resources that support contemporary lifestyles; with explorations in water, food, and acts of extraction and consumption of natural resources. Utilizing the time and space at the NES Residency, he is creating new site responsive works and designs reflective of the Icelandic landscape and the systems and infrastructures impacting it.
He received his MA in Architecture and Urban Design from Columbia University in New York City, and currently operates his practice through Studio Taos, and the nonprofit he founded, The Paseo Project. His work has been included in exhibitions in KOHI-Kulturraum, Germany; Storefront for Art and Architecture and Vivian Horan Fine Art, New York City; Joshua Tree, California; Santa Fe Art Institute; and the Harwood Museum, New Mexico. Solo shows include Central Features, Albuquerque; and Taos Art Museum, New Mexico. Thomas is a MacDowell Fellow and was an artist in residence at I-Park, Connecticut; Ucross, Wyoming; StudioWorks in Eastport, Maine; Santa Fe Art Institute; Arteles Creative Center in Finland; The PORT Hackathon at CERN, Switzerland; and Art Farm in Nebraska. Thomas currently resides in Taos, New Mexico with his husband and 40 chickens.
Lindsay Forbes Brown is a writer, editor, and professor from
Richmond, Virginia. She works primarily in the genres of literary fiction and creative nonfiction, which often speaks on behalf of women as consumers and ripe for consumption, women who are looked at as serviceable objects, who, to be recognized at all, must allow themselves to disappear. While at NES, she is writing a novel, which revolves around body horror and the fraught relationship between mothers and their daughters in an Icelandic setting. You can find her on instagram @lindsayforbesbrown or her website: lindsayforbesbrown.com.
Born to a family of factory workers and raised in front of a television in Detroit, Michigan, Dupuy earned an associate degree, two simultaneous honors bachelor’s degrees, a Masters in Classical Liberal Arts at St. John’s College, and an MFA in Fiction at Washington University in St. Louis; since that time he has been teaching fiction and writing courses, first at Washington University in St. Louis and, most recently, in Astana, Kazakhstan, at Nazarbayev University, where he has developed over five new creative writing courses–the first ever offered in the country in English–and has been nominated for six teaching awards, winning one for Overall Teaching Excellence. He is the co-founder and the fiction editor for the multilingual literary journal Angime.
Dupuy’s fiction is heavily influenced by music, film, pop culture, television, commercials, his education in classics, philosophy, literature, and his time in the workforce as a dishwasher, Harley Davidson mechanic, golf caddie, bartender, film critic for public radio, journalist, DJ, and the four and a half years he served in the US Marine Corps infantry–traveling to over twenty-five countries, during which he was distinguished with the Marine’s highest non-combat award and a certificate of commendation for service.
His work has been published in Signal to Noise and The Santa Fe Reporter, and he has contributed writing to separate projects by local St. Louis artists Jose Garza, Michael Powell, and Serhii Chrucky. His novel in progress has been read publicly in four countries, awarded a $10,000 Seed Grant, two retreats at Breadloaf, and residencies at The Edward Albee Foundation and NES in Iceland, where he has spent the ninety days. During his residency he has completed a short story currently out for consideration titled “And the Night Turned In,” along with completing five chapters which conclude the first half of his novel in progress Ipsum Esse. His work and readings at NES has been invaluable, immersed in a community of like-minded passionate artists, beautiful landscape and solitude needed for continued progress.
After 20 years working in the field of music production, Bart has spent over 10 years working with young people experiencing chronic physical and mental health issues. Bart has spent the last two years specifically practicing therapy with young people, helping them to discover a path through their mental health issues. At the NES artist residency, Bart has created a number of films/soundtracks to raise awareness of mental health issues, using themes of rhythm and changing contextual imagery to depict our relationship with unhelpful thought patterns, rumination and often subconscious self-judgement, learned through messages received from our environment, since birth. You can see more of Bart’s work at https://www.youtube.com/@BartElsmore and https://www.instagram.com/milleniumhut/
Emily is an early career artist and musician from London. She uses a variety of mediums to explore strange and unknown worlds, such as that of the past, future, or alien, and creates fictions to consider the possibilities within them. She also enjoys taking inspiration from the landscape and natural materials.
In her music, she likes to explore the personal subjective world; the world that is unstable; that constantly oscillates between the dream and physical world, the world of past and future and the within and without of oneself. You can see more of Emily’s work at https://www.instagram.com/emily.b.b/
Virginia San Fratello is an architect, artist, and educator. She is Chair of the Department of Design at San José State University in Silicon Valley but is on sabbatical this spring and has chosen to spend it in Greenland and Iceland, exploring the Arctic landscape in search of new and ancient materials and ways of building and being.
She is the co-author of Printing Architecture: Innovative Recipes for 3D Printing, a book that reexamines the building process from the bottom up and offers illuminating case studies for 3D printing with novel materials like chardonnay grape skins, salt, and rubber tires. She is a partner in Emerging Objects, a creatively driven, 3D Printing MAKE-tank specializing in innovations in 3D printing, and Rael San Fratello, an experimental architecture studio in Oakland, CA.
Her work is included in the permanent collections of MoMA, The Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian Art Museum, the Carnegie Museum of Art, SFMOMA, the Albuquerque Museum, the CSMVS Museum in Mumbai, LACMA, and the Design Museum in London. Websites and Social Media:
Nick Broad is a journalist, author, activist and campaigner who co-founded and directs The Busking Project (busk.co), the world’s largest community of street performers. He is now writing a book on the cultural impact of street performance. nickbroad.com
‘I am a graphic and printmaking artist focusing on phenomena of landscape. In wintertime there can be seen special formations, when parts are covered in snow whilst other sections lay bare. I extract these forms and set them into the white of the paper where snow and sky cannot be distinguished anymore. The mountain is pending. It has to be reconstructed in the viewer´s eye’.
Born and raised in Pittsburgh PA. Works and lives in Los Angeles, CA.
I strive to illuminate the profound interplay between texture, solitude, vulnerability, and the cosmic connection that binds us to the vastness of the ocean and the universe.
Texture, for me, is a language of emotions. It’s the tactile brushstroke, the roughness of weathered materials, and the smoothness of the untouched canvas that convey the essence of our experiences. It’s through texture that I invite viewers to immerse themselves in the tangible layers of existence, to feel the depth of solitude and vulnerability that defines our human condition.
Solitude, often misconstrued as isolation, is, in fact, a space for introspection and self-discovery. In my work, I seek to capture the quiet moments when we confront our own vulnerabilities, when we acknowledge the fragility of our existence. Solitude becomes a canvas upon which we paint our truest selves, exposing our vulnerabilities as we reach out to the cosmos for connection.
The cosmic and oceanic motifs in my art symbolize the infinite and the eternal. They remind us that, despite our vulnerability and solitude, we are part of something greater. The ocean, with its rhythmic tides, mirrors our emotional ebbs and flows, while the cosmos, with its stars and galaxies, beckons us to explore the boundless possibilities within and beyond ourselves.
Through my art, I hope to evoke a sense of wonder and contemplation, inviting viewers to embark on their own inner journeys. It is my belief that in embracing our vulnerability and seeking connection with the cosmic ocean of existence, we find not only solace but also the profound realization that, like stars in the night sky, we are all connected, and our vulnerabilities are the threads that weave the tapestry of the human experience. My website is www.catherinebaumhauer.com and Instagram @catbstudio
portrait of the artist Joé Côté-R photo by Noémie Sylvestre
Born in Limoilou, Joé Côté-R moved from the suburb of Atontarégué, Kebec (Quebec) to Hochelaga to pursue a Bachelor’s degree in sculpture at Concordia University.
Joé’s works, which employ ever-changing mediums, bear witness to our interactions with the environment, with beings, and with materials. Through the various contemplations reflected in his works, one finds intertwined actions and political directions. Raising questions about our ways of functioning, interacting, and communicating. Joé’s work pierces through the methods by which things are constructed, how they fall, and what benefits these movements yield. It questions the writing of our collective history.
5 pieces from the Ratafa serie; ceramic, glass, plastic, flowers. 2022 photos by Noémie Sylvestre
Les coltures de préfontaine; paint sample from hardware store. 2022 photo by Noémie Sylvestre
chemise de charbonnier.e; graphite, eraser, paper. 2019
Tired students ; End of life tired, reusable bags, bolts. 2020
His undisciplined work allows the collagist from Hochelaga to extract creationism™ from the act of creation. Composing a populist art aiming to be a vantage point, a fixed stopping place, alone or together, to always look at the landscape with a fresh perspective. https://www.instagram.com/joe.c_r/
In September 2023, I worked with charcoal and other black-white materials with the theme of the power of movements of lines. This time I’ve been so charmed by the nearly floating atmosphere of the wintry landscape. For it is the season between winter and spring: it is snow and ice, the melting of snow begins, grass and rocks are appearing again. The chain of mountains, the “fells” in Icelandic, the Westfjord-coast, behind the sea, between sea and sky, it all seems to float.
Nearly mystical this changing of light on these snowy landscapes, transparent, shining… between surreal and real, between sky and earth. Silence. Wide endlessness! It makes a special sound I feel in my soul…
So I took out the dry pastel sticks to try to give this inner and outer magic of flying an expression that could be adequate. Most of these drawings are not bigger than 15 cm x 40 cm.
Now with the snow storms the world turns more closed, reduced, mysterious, the roaring sound of the blizzard…everyday weather changes here! Things and thoughts are reduced to the elemental extract of life.
I mainly create ceramic jewelry and small objects, but currently I am thinking about how the colorful and visually noisy urban environment in Pakistan causes some level of anxiety in residents because they lack empty visual and mental space to think. I have been working on this project to create 2D designs for Pakistani textile surfaces which could create some sense of calmness, visual depth and empty perspectives in order to bring some serenity and calmness to our environment. Since I was born and lived my entire life in visually rich Pakistan, I needed to learn the language of real minimalism and serenity. I came to Skagastrond to physically exist in an open space to cleanse my visual palette.
In addition to that, impressed by looking at the thin black electricity poles in white snowy landscape on the way to Blondous, I decided to construct delicate small ceramic sculptural objects.
I am not the first to say that the arts is one of the purest records of our history, sociology and mythology; it is a glimpse into the truth of the past and often – at its greatest, a glimmer of the future. As bias, division, and indoctrination carve holes into our reality on a macro and micro level, it is art that continues to weave an honest fabric that will perhaps one day be the binding force we need.In the last few years, as my work began to define itself to me, I realized that my storytelling serves a provisional function of offering options, until, I hope, those options become a reality.
I am a playwright, screenwriter and director from New York City and within all these mediums devote myself to the investigation of the soft underbelly of human experience, my work often has a utopian ideology at its backbone, because well, we must imagine it until it becomes true.
While at NES I have mainly focused on writing a deeply personal feature film that is largely autobiographical – a very new kind of project for me. My two months here have been filled with honest self-reflection and acrobatic fantasizing, a maddeningly wonderful dichotomy to work from . As with all my other work, my new piece attempts to stand up to prescribed societal norms and expectations, especially those relating to women (self-identifying and defining), and offer up alternatives.
My wish and dream for American (and international) arts is a release of perfection, of a “final product”, of an ideal and instead to accept global permission to deep dive into process, investigation, and the singular beauty of experimentation. NES has provided beautiful time and space for just that. https://www.instagram.com/kotryna________/
Sandra Kruisbrink is a visual artist from the Netherlands, her main focus is drawing but she often integrates printmaking and photography in her drawings.
Her works on paper appear light and open, yet they are highly complex and the product of an extremely labour-intensive process.
She works precisely, drawing the finest of lines, and her interest in craftsmanship is evident. Her inspiration is drawn from nature; mountains and trees are predominant in her recent work.
Two years ago she was in Iceland for the first time, for a residency at the Fishfactory in Stöðvarfjörður. Since then, she has continued to long for the silence and emptiness of the Icelandic landscape, which has been a is a big inspiration.
Here in Skagaströndthe main subject of her drawings is the Spákonufell mountain and its various appearances.
Margot Stage is an eclectic artist who uses a variety of methods and materials in response to what she sees around her. At NES she is focusing on drawing, both the landscape and the Icelandic alphabet soup! You can see more of Margot’s work on her website https://margotstage.com/
In my artistic practice, I focus on exploring the relationship between women and nature, seeking to express their strength and determination through the symbolism of the natural world. My current project, which I am pursuing at the NES artist residency, titled “Iceland is a Woman,” delves into this interconnected dynamic, portraying women as an integral part of nature, reflecting their strength, beauty, and independence. This project is holistic, combining not only visual art but also elements of a healthy lifestyle and harmony with nature. This encompasses both the conditions of nature and the actions I undertake during the project. My inspiration stems from personal experiences seeking strength and balance in Iceland. It is a country that captivates not only with its landscapes but also offers the opportunity to explore various health practices, such as proper diet, regular running, cold exposure, cryotherapy, meditation, and energy work. All these elements influence my creative processes and constitute an integral part of my artistic life in Iceland.
Lito Apostolakou is a visual artist based in London UK, working with drawing, moving image and installation. Her work investigates the architecture of remembered space, where the real and the fictional merge creating uncertain, often fragile narratives. She is currently developing an installation on the theme of hypnagogia, the state between wakefulness and sleep – an in-between space, where it is possible to dream without losing consciousness.
Sleep on Snow drawing – pencil and oil stick on Khadi paper, underwater sound recording
Drawn to NES by the promise of snow, solitude and darkness, Lito is filming the interplay of ice and water at the seafront of Skagaströd, and also capturing sounds with a field recorder and hydrophone. She is exploring ways of merging this visual and audio material with her drawings to create an immersive dreamscape installation, perhaps a Museum of Sleep.
Linda Saul is a painter working in mixed water-based media and collage.
She produces semi-abstract and highly textured mixed media paintings focused on the landscape in its varieties – urban, rural, coastal and sometimes wild. She is particularly interested in how the landscape changes with the passage of time – not just seasonal change but how the landscape is shaped by human intervention, environmental forces, climate change and nature’s adaptations.
Linda is currently working on a body of work based on her residencies at NES and road trips around Iceland for a major exhibition in London in October 2024. You can find more of Linda’s work at https://lindasaul.co.uk/ and https://www.instagram.com/linda.m.saul
Jackson Gearing is a classical composer from Denver, Colorado, currently working on writing a symphony during his one month stay at the NES Artist Residency. He has previously written various chamber pieces for wind instruments, large brass ensemble music, and music for wind ensemble and orchestra. He also frequently conducts his larger ensemble music, such as Meditations for Brass and River, the latter winning an “Outstanding Performance of a Student Composition” award from the Lamont School of Music in June 2023. This residency follows his first orchestral premiere of “Moskstraumen,” an 8-minute piece performed by the Sofia Philharmonic Orchestra in Bulgaria.
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