Alchemy: Collaborating with the Unknown (Double Artist Residency / Double Fellowship)

January 5-19/ 19-30 Double Residency/ Double Fellowship
at Penland School of Craft, Spruce Pine, North Carolina

“Alchemy: Collaborating with the Unknown” is about weaving relationships. The word “technology” comes from the root techne, “to fabricate,” “to weave.” Weaving the detritus (offcuts/scrap piles) from other residents’ art studios to build my photography palette, my visual toolbox will develop in relation to the other artists’ material production at Penland. Focusing on how taken-for-granted objects/materials can be gleaned and repurposed, I will reanimate fragments of others’ “refuse” to create improvisational, unexpected juxtapositions in my photographs—an unanticipated collaboration. My project highlights how craft-making is rooted in interdependent processes. A dialogue between the artist’s body and the artist’s materials generates objects that tell stories. These objects are grounded within infrastructures of storytelling (i.e., supply chains: where did the wood, metal, clay/earth, textiles, + come from? Where are they going?). Following nature as my guide in which there is no waste, these reclaimed collages/montages will explore how what is deemed disposable is actually valuable, depending on how it is perceived and used. I will include the images I take at Penland in ALCHEMY: Unlearning What We Think We Know, my forthcoming book (Vernon Press, December 2025). The theme of my book is how to embody a supply-chain consciousness in our daily lives. The theme of the images I will shoot at Penland will reflect this process by weaving together objects that are considered waste.