Based in Victoria, BC, Sharon is a Canadian artist who loves capturing the spirit of places. She has been in Skagaströnd for one month and will be here for another, soaking in both the dramatic Icelandic landscape and the creative energy of the artists around her. 

With the studio situated right next to the water, she loves watching the ever-changing waves and swirling seafoam. Long walks exploring the coastline before or after her time in the studio have become part of her routine, allowing her to take in the shifting light and raw beauty of the landscape. Sharon has been captivated by the slow reveal of spring—watching the snow melt to uncover bursts of color, witnessing the dramatic shifts in light as storms roll in from the sea, and looking up each night in hopes of catching the dancing Northern Lights. As the weather warms, you’ll find her outside with her sketchbook, capturing quick impressions before translating them into larger watercolor paintings back in the studio. Every day brings something new to experience, shaping the way she sees and translates the world onto paper.

You can see more of her work at www.artbysharonlam.com or on Instagram @artbysharonlam

Simone Gericke is an artist based near Berlin. Currently in Skagaströnd for March 2025.

Has been working for years with figurative painting, drawing, linocuts and woodcuts, sculpture and photography. Works with different materials, with a focus on oil painting; inspired by encounters with people and nature.

More on instagram @simone.gericke

Robert Gericke is an artist and family doctor. In his work, he deals intensively with social
and political issues of the time. Robert Gericke draws his themes from his biography, as
a contemporary witness to the Monday demonstrations in 1989 and the fall of the Berlin
Wall, the mass unrest in Johannesburg before the abolition of apartheid, from his
military deployments in war zones (Kosovo, Bosnia and Afghanistan), as an observer of
refugee camps on Lesbos and as a GP during the coronavirus pandemic, and as an artist
in residence in Israel in 2024 and in Iceland in 2025.

Robert creates works in a predominantly dark and muted colour palette with oil paints
on canvas or beech wood both al a prima or with underpainting in several layers. He
often uses materials he has used himself or found that have a special meaning for him
or are charged with content by time or place. He subjects these to a transformation
process such as melting, bending or environmental influences to which the material has
been exposed, such as corrosion or abrasion by the sea. They are often used in his
works as religious, military or mythological symbols. The forms emancipate themselves
from the transformed materials, first as underpaintings and then as independent,
mystical figures. They could be bred hybrids of living creatures and machines, even war
machines, or they could spring from an earth that man has long since ceased to control.
Robert Gericke wants to be an eyewitness and develops his pictures from what he has
experienced.

With surrealistically transformed figures, their metamorphosis and an independent
material iconography, he encourages the viewer to reflect.

You can see more of Robert’s work on his website https://www.robertgericke.com/

Adéla Valchařová lives in the Czech Republic. Last year, she graduated with a BA from the Faculty of Fine Arts in Brno and is now pursuing an MA in the painting studio at the same institution. In the spring of 2022, she completed an internship at the University of Art and Design in Cluj, Romania.  

In her current work, she continuously explores landscape painting. She is interested in how the aesthetic perception of landscapes has evolved throughout history. She creates minimalist spaces that are defined by their silence, vastness, and remoteness. 

Her inspiration comes from the aesthetics of sci-fi landscapes bearing traces of human presence, with an air of ambiguity about whether life and people are still there or not. Her paintings resemble distant worlds or post-apocalyptic scenery, where natural elements take on geometric precision. The color palette consists of muted, earthy tones, reinforcing a sense of melancholy and silence. 

She first visited Iceland last summer, working on a farm. The Icelandic landscape, characterized by its empty expanses and towering mountains, captivated her so deeply that she wanted to return, immerse herself in its solitude, and focus on intense, concentrated painting during her stay in NES.  You can see more of Adéla’s work on her instagram page https://www.instagram.com/adelvalcharova/

Daniel Rode is a Dresden and Berlin based conceptual artist, drawing and installation.

Currently in Skagaströnd for March and April 2025. You can view more of Daniel’s work on his website – https://danielrode.de/

Agnes Black is a visual artist based in Brooksville, Florida. She holds
a Bachelor of Fine Arts and a Master of Arts in Social and Emerging
Media at the University of Tampa. Her academic journey reflects a deep
commitment to both traditional and contemporary art forms, blending
classical techniques with technology.

Agnes’ artistic repertoire is diverse, encompassing painting, 3D art,
sculpture, and immersive installations. Her works are known for their
vibrant colors, intricate details, and the seamless integration of
various mediums. Recently, she has been delving into the innovative
field of Mad Mapping, experimenting with visual light projection to
enhance her paintings and sculptures. This exploration allows her to
create dynamic, interactive art experiences that engage viewers on
multiple sensory levels.

Living in Brooksville, Agnes draws inspiration from the natural beauty
of Florida, as well as the bustling urban landscapes she encounters
during her stays in Tampa. Her art is a reflection of her surroundings,
infused with a sense of place and a deep appreciation for the interplay
between nature and technology. www.agnesblackart.com

Vittoria Chierici is a painter originally from Bologna, she lives and works in Eastport, Maine. In the 1980s, she participated in important groups of young artists, whose works culminated in the exhibition Examples of New Italian Art at the Riverside Studios in London in 1989. In the same year, Vittoria Chierici was nominated to represent Italy at the international exhibition in Tokyo, 7 Artists. In the late 1990s, Chierici began work on a new mixed media project on the historical theme of the Battle of Anghiari, based on a lost mural by Leonardo Da Vinci. A large painting of the same subject, Anghiari Verde, is also permanently exhibited at the Humanities Initiative, New York University. Since 2004, Chierici has begun a series of collaborations with American artists working in different art forms: choreographer Liz Gerring, composer Eve Beglarian. In 2010, Chierici participated in the project No Soul for Sale, organized by the art gallery Lucie Fontaine at the Tate Modern Gallery in London. In 2011, Chierici commissioned violinist and composer Ana Milosavljevic to write the music for her latest video project, Luci in the Sky, directed by director Yuko Takebe. Vittoria Chierici’s paintings and video installations have been exhibited in galleries and museums in Italy and abroad.

In 2012, Chierici was invited to participate in the group exhibition Estate, organized by Lucie Fontaine at the Marianne Boesky gallery in New York.

In 2012, Vittoria Chierici created the project Sailing away to Paint the Sea, based on a journey on a cargo ship from Holland to Cleveland, Ohio. In 2021, she presented the project The Philosophers’ Clothes at the Rossi&Rossi gallery in Hong Kong, with which she collaborates and with which she exhibited at Art Basel Hong Kong and at TEFAF in Maastrichtm and at Arte Fiera 2025 in Bologna.

She has returned to Skagaströnd after ten years to improve upon ideas and techniques in painting the Arctic light.

www.vittoriachiericiart.com

www.vittoriachierici.com

www.vivawitt.wordpress.com

www.rossirossi.com/new-contemporary-artist

Jesús Robisco is at NES working on the UNO:UNO project. A project of 50 photos to promote the great value of dance in Spain. He has come to NES for two months in search of peace, to focus his work on this project.

Jesús Robisco holds a degree in Physical Education from the Autonomous University of Madrid. By chance, he discovered a link between corporal expression in dance and photography. It was then that he decided to change teaching for dance photography. Although he has always been self-taught, he undertook formal photographic studies. He then went on to do the Professional Photography Course at the prestigious School of Photography and Image Centre in Madrid (EFTI – Escuela de Formación de Técnicos de la Imagen). He completed his studies with a Master of Photography in «Concept and Creation» also at «EFTI». Jesus Robisco specializes in dance and movement. He works mainly between Barcelona and Madrid, however has also worked with several international dance companies across the globe.

Publications

Collaborates with the Suzy-Q Dance magazine team and publishes in The New York Times, Unblogdedanza,  Danza.es, ARTESCÉNICAS – Academia de las Artes Escénicas de España, El País, La Marea, El Duende Magazine, Balletymás and Tiempo de Danza.

Awards


Official selection Barbican Screen3 London 2019

Official selection Short On Tap-Londos 2019


International meeting Videodance and Videoperformance in Universidad de Valencia 2017


Official selection Agite y Sirva 2016

Best videodance VIII Festival Internacional de Video Arte de Barcelona 2015

Official selection BANG VIII Festival Internacional de Video Arte de Barcelona 2015


1ª Muestra de Video Danza Desterro Florianópolis Brasil 2013


12º Festival Danzalborde 2013 Valparaiso, Chile
Official selection Agite y Sirva 2013


5º Festival Itinerante de Videodanza de Oxaca, Mexico 2013


2º Festival Angelopolitano de Danza de Puebla, Mexico 2013


5º Festival Itinerante de Videodanza Mexico City, Mexico 2013.

Web site www.jesusrobisco.com

Instagram @jesusrobisco

Jen Fitzgerald is a poet, essayist, photographer, and a native New Yorker who received her MFA in Poetry at Lesley University and her BA in Writing at The College of Staten Island (CUNY). Her essays, poetry, and photography has been featured widely, over the past decade, in venues such as The Nation, PBS Newshour, Tin House, Boston Review, NER, Colorado Review among others.

Her first collection of poetry, “The Art of Work” was published by Noemi Press in September of 2016. It follows the working realities of New York City’s Butcher’s Union, UFCW Local 342, through job sites on all five boroughs and upstate–intermingling her family’s working-class lineage and current lives with those of the documented and undocumented members populating our grocery stores, processing plants, slaughter houses, and agri-farms.

As a community activist and organizer, she has hosted free-for-the-community Grassroots Workshops, created spaces for the literary community to organize outside of academia, hosted podcasts and readings, organized the literary community around issues of representation in publishing as Count Director for The VIDA Count, worked in tandem with the National Writer’s Union to organize at AWP, and started the campaign for Staten Island to name its first ever Poet Laureate.
She works with organizations to bring writing & literacy workshops to incarcerated youth and adults on Rikers Island and other jails/institutions around NYC. 

You can view more of Jen’s work at https://jenfitzgerald.com/

Bea Austin is a director, producer, and filmmaker from London, whose work primarily focuses on documentaries addressing human rights, current affairs and community. Currently, she is exploring more experimental
filmmaking, researching a project that blends documentary and fiction to create a surreal and comedic portrayal
of the relationship between trees and humanity. She is the co-founder of Beeline Studio, a production
company focused on storytelling.

During her time here, Bea will be writing, filming, and editing a short film centred on themes of connection and resilience, inspired by the local landscapes. The film will feature a mix of footage shot over the years, bits shot here, and archive footage.

https://www.instagram.com/beaaustin/ and https://www.instagram.com/beeline.studio/

Noga Harel is an Israeli artist and goldsmith based in Dundee, Scotland whose practice is focused on a love for materials, textures, tactility and a sense of place. Her works are investigations of the environment and her relationship with the local landscape through wanderings, poetry, photography, and the collection of objects. She uses her goldsmiths skills to make jewellery pieces, objects and sculptural pieces integrating both natural and manmade materials. 

Driven by a deep relationship to the land she works with these raw materials sourced from the landscape whether it is bones, seaweed, rocks or driftwood. Noga translates elements of her personal journey through space and time as unique and small objects and jewelry pieces, quintessentially intimate in nature, in a slow meditative process.  You can see more of Noga's work at https://www.nogaharelcontemporaryjewellery.com/

María Fernanda is a Puerto Rican-based photographer, environmental interpreter, cyanotype artist, biologist, and outdoor adventurer. This year she’s been working with alternative photography processes like cyanotype and polaroid emulsion lifts. She created dream-like photography capturing ethereal and fragile moments using crystals and prisms on her camera lenses, adding movement with long and double exposure. 

Her strong connection and intimate knowledge of the natural world runs throughout her work as a common thread. During NES artist residency, María has been experimenting with all these techniques and with film photography using different experimental 35mm films. Lyrical photography of the common daily elements of Skagaströnd and around Iceland are her creations.

Instagram: @adnanref12  and https://www.mafernandarodriguez.com/

Rebecca Dyck is a comics artist from Toronto and Berlin. She is interested in personal themes such as family, memory, and storytelling, and works in variety of traditional media.  You can see more of Rebecca’s work on her websites rebeccarebeccabreakfast.com and rebeccasketch.com

joj (them/them) is a France-based American nonbinary writer of creative nonfiction–memoir, essay, prose poetry. They are a self-described collector of unused graduate degrees, the most recent (2020) an MA in Creative Writing from Ball State University. Their work explores themes of place, class, queerness, parenthood, infant loss, plant medicine, and the nomadic/peripatetic. Their writing has appeared in Insider, Parents, Yes!, Five Minutes, Your Life is A Trip, and The Matador Network and New Lines.

While at NES, they are finishing the revisions of the memoir they completed at NES in May of 2023–entitled HOW I LEARNED FRENCH–which weaves the story of their year of study abroad in France into glimpses of their backstory couched in the experience of movies that suggested France (and French) would be socially transformative–an interrogation of how television and film shape expectations and reality perception of the low/poverty class. 

Instagram and Linktree: @jojthefirst

Facebook: Joj Thefirst

Bluesky: @jojthefirst.bsky.social

Blur boundaries, explore uncertainties, maintaining indistinct contours that can be assembled together, is what I am interested to do within my art. In the twilight, forms blend together, this semi darkness, those low and blue lights stretches here. There is no longer room for sharp, straightforward, and confident visions. One can mistake a human being for a tree or a sheep for a rock. And perhaps this is where my creations of hybrid beings come from. I want to create spaces for hesitations, and the overlapping of sensations and emotions. There is no need to choose between being a human or a leaf. You can see more of Soléne’s work at http://www.solenemilcent.com/ and https://www.instagram.com/solene.milcent/

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.

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/

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/

I am a visual artist based in Miami Beach Florida.

This is my second residency at Skagastrond.

I also maintain studios in France and Bali.

Over a long career I have developed several distinct styles: realism (roadside structures), portraiture, skies and seascapes, and assemblages.

Currently I am painting works focusing on the world’s pathways and trails for an exhibition at BIA Bangkok.

Books:

“South Beach: Two Decades of Deco District Paintings Paintings by Mark Rutkowski”

Schiffer Publications 2006.

“In a Butterfly’s Dream” A magic realism novel set in Bali published in 2013.

“Man in a Puddle” An illustrated memoir kayaking the backwoods of the Western Everglades published in 2017.

I’m currently working on a second memoir “Frightening Tales from the Art Center”. 

A short list of collections: 

Fort Lauderdale Museum of Art

BIA Bangkok

Mars Corporation

US Chamber of Commerce

Sites:

MarkRutkowski.com

MarkRutkowski.fineartstudioonline.com

facebook.com/markspaintings

tiktok.com/@marks.paintings

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.

Website: www.indianolapottery.com

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.

You can see more of Teuta’s work at https://www.teutapashnjari.de/ and https://www.instagram.com/teutaptea/

Karen Winzer/ Berlin/ Germany: 

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…

For more information:karenwinzer.de and https://www.instagram.com/flecke__international and https://www.instagram.com/winzerkaren/

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.

You can find more of her work at www.theaelder.com and @theaeldercreative.

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.” 

www.erikschurink.net 

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.

https://www.australianmusiccentre.com.au/artist/pollard-mark

Mark Pollard: The heavenly Muzak Machine part 4

From these lips photography and music Mark Clement Pollard

We notice raindrops as they fall

Collaborative audio-visual composition

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.

Link to published book:

https://www.shawlinepublishing.com.au/our-titles/display/186-walking-her-way-backwards

Link to poetry publication https://www.amazon.com/Coming-Home-Carefully-Curated-Poetry/dp/B0CZPMYKKM Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/emmell.sorensen/

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.“ 

Website: www.norafuchs.de 
Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/schwimmtieralarm/

“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.”

https://www.sonya-trolliet.ch , https://www.instagram.com/sonya_illu/

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.

Website: www.courtneynryan.com Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/courtneynryan/

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

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.

You can see more of Guido’s work at https://www.guidohundrup.com and listen to his music at

https://on.soundcloud.com/zTwGq. https://on.soundcloud.com/1mQnc. https://on.soundcloud.com/pKgWZ

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. 

website: joonjuneyoon.com

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.

Päivi Liski is also writing a guidebook to creative writing. Here is her introduction at the Publishers S&S webpage https://kustantamo.sets.fi/kirjailijat/paivi-liski/

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.

https://coleroberts.one https://soundcloud.com/cole_roberts

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.  

website: fabiolacarranza.info

IG: fboogabooga

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.

you can see more of Stephanies work at https://stephanierohlfs.com/ and https://www.instagram.com/srohlfs/

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.

Instagram @jmattthomas   & https://www.jmatthewthomas.com/

Lindsay Forbes Brown is a writer, editor, and professor from

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. 

You can follow and receive updates at: www.jcddupuy.com & https://www.instagram.com/jcddupuy

Music Producer/Film Director

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/