Arteles catalogue 2019-2015

2019-2015

Funders
ARTS PROMOTION CENTER FINLAND
EUROPEAN UNION / JOUTSENTEN REITTI RY
SKR - FINNISH CULTURE FOUNDATION
PIRKANMAA REGIONAL FUND
HÄMEENKYRÖ

About
This catalogue presents residency artists and their projects.
All the past residency program participants have been asked
to send information about their projects done in Arteles
Creative Center. Those who have given the information so far are
presented in this catalogue.
Arteles catalogue was published first time in the beginning of
2012 and it is updated regularly.
You can find the latest version of the Arteles Catalogue from
http://www.arteles.org/artists_projects.html
Kiitos - Thank you
Arteles would like to thank all the residents, workers collaborators,
funders and supporters for their work, participation
and activity.
This all would not be possible without you.
Best Regards,
Arteles Team
Arteles
Creative Center
Hahmajärventie 26
38490 Haukijärvi
Finland
info@arteles.org
www.arteles.org
Design: Teemu Räsänen. All rights reserved. Arteles 2020

Residents 2019
Silence Awareness Existence - Theme program
January, February, March & December
Argentina
Diego Javier Alberti // Electronics Arts
Australia
Christina Marks // Multi-disciplinary
Cecilia White // Interdisciplinary art, poetry
Catherina Leone // Drawing
Alicia Douglas // Painting
Kenneth Lambert // Media, installation
Nicki Brancatisano // Drawing, animation, installation
Phoebe Anne Taylor // Photography, writing, performing arts
Fiona Kemp // Visual Art
Ilija Melentijevic // Visual and interactive art
Jovana Yoka Terzic aka Animal Bro // Visual art
Melissa Delaney // ext, drawing, performance
Mattie Sempert // Ficto-critical writing, essays
Belgium
Matthieu Levet // Music, sound art, programing
Brazil
Pauline Batista // Visual arts, photography
Nathalia Favaro // Sculpture, drawing, video
Canada
Sasha Amaya // Dance, choreography, spatial design
Louise Page // Painting, installation, video
Elin Kelsey // Hope and the environment; resilience in other species
Denmark
Jacoba Niepoort // Painting, drawing, public murals
China
Jia Zeng // Painting, fiber
France
Emma Barthere // Photography, visual art
Germany
Franziska Walther // Book author, illustrator, designer
Hong Kong
Jennifer Kumer // Self-publishing, creativity coach
Italy
Ioana Vrabie // Analogue photography
Giulia Mattera // Performance art
Japan
Asako Shimizu // Photography
Natsuki Suda // Composer
Netherlands
Ellen Ter Beek // Visual arts, writing
New Zealand
Charlotte Watson // Drawing, sculpture, writing
Norway
Henning Gärtner // Writing, theatre, performance
South Africa
Leanne Olivier // Oil painting, sculpture, performance
South Korea
Ji Yoon Lee // Painting, installation art, media art
Taiwan
Eric Chi-Puo LIN // Literary writing, journalism, art criticism
UK
Imogen Davis // Photography
USA
Josh Bell // Poetry
Amy Loder // Research, education, curation
Soramimi Hanarejima // Creative writing, cognitive linguistics
Erin Purcell // Photography
Victoria Smith // Painting, mixed Media
Alexander Lumans // Fiction Writing
Michael West // Writing
Paul Rubery // Philosophy, art history, photography
Tanya Long // Visual art
Carter Scott Horton // Actor, writer
Andalyn Young // Dance, performance, writing, video
Brooke Larson // Writing, performance, collage
Leslie Schwartz // Writer
Hungary
Dóra Lázár // Conceptual art
Gábor István Karaba // Conceptual art
New Course - Theme program with Margi Brown Ash
April, May
Australia
Courtney Cook // Painting, photography, mixed media
Anita Nadia Lever // Art Therapist, installation, art therapy educator
Brooke Krumbeck // Visual art
Melita White // Composer, poet, writer
Rozina Suliman // Theatre design, installation
Anna Loren // Acting, writing, theater
Corrie Hosking // Literature, illustration, art therapy
Jake Moss // Art, writing, Film
Megan Louise // Performance, Design, Visual Art
Canada
Hazel Bell Koski // Painting, stencil making, storytelling
Luke Nicol // Painting, drawing
Paige Cooper // Writing: Fiction
Germany
Andrea Frahn // Singer, songwriter
Netherlands
Sophia van der Putten // Dance, theatre, dramaturgy
Julia van der Putten // Dance, theatre, dramaturgy
UK
Miranda Gavin // Photography, text, performance
USA
Connie Noyes // Multidisciplinary
Kate Mulley // Theatre, fiction, poetry
J. Matthew Thomas // Art, architecture, curation
Erin Purcell // Photography
Serena Gelb // Digital drawing, painting, video
Sam Paige Smith // Drawing, lithography, performance
Brian Patterson // Video, film, writing
Donna Glee Williams // Writing: novels, poetry, short stories
Iceland
Olafur Johann Olafsson // Painting, writing, drawing

Back to Basics - Theme program
July, August, September
Enter text - Theme program
October, November
Australia
Marie Bogoyevitch // Drawing, printmaking, works on paper
Emily Weekes // Writing
Jennifer Rooke // Drawing
Stuart Cooke // Poetry, essay, translation
Andrew Goddard // Sound, light, space
Canada
Catriona Wright // Poetry and fiction
Jason Wright // Art education, drawing
Ireland
Lian Bell // Performing arts, visual arts
Japan
Chiho Iwase // Painting, sculpture, drawing
Mexico
Ana Gómez de León // Photography
Netherlands
Ea ten Kate // Textile
Norway
Agnieszka Foltyn // Installation, social intervention, public art
Per Stian Monsås // Installation, social intervention, public art
Singapore
Namie Rasman // Music, sound, voice
South Africa
Hiten Bawa // Architecture, art, accessibility
Carlie Schoonees // Composer
Peter Pitout // Painting
Spain
Mapi Rivera // Photography, creation, mysticism
Taiwan
Tingying Lin // Photography, visual arts
Ingbing Tsiu // Photography, visual arts
UK
Carly Seller // Visual art, performance
Isolde Freeth-Hale // Singer-Songwriter, producer, choral music
Dan Shay // Projection, installation, moving image
USA
Shawn Creeden // Sculpture, performance, social practices
Jaime Maseda // Performance, writing, music
Vanessa Castro // Music
Michael Heyman // Poetry, performance poetry, music
Kerry Downey // Video, drawing, writing
Jojin Van Winkle // Video, sound, photography
Pamela Salen // Design, photography, text
Michelle La Perrière // Drawing, collage
Phil Harris // Photography
Hannah Donovan // Poetry, photography, visual art
Anjali Khosla // Wvvriting
Sylvia Montesinos // Painting
Australia
Sherryl Clark // Writing
Sabine Pick // Paper collage
Jessica Raschke // Writing, text-based installation
Dale Collier // Trans-disciplinary, performance, av, installation
Brazil
Daniela Avelar // Text, printed matter
Paloma Durante // Performance, site specific, writing
Canada
Matthew Hollett // Writing, photography
Mélodie Vachon Boucher // Graphic novel, poetry, illustration
Kai Choufour // Public art, food, hypernarratives
Leah McInnis // Conceptual, interdisciplinary, building
Croatia
Snježana Banović // Theatre & cultural history
Russia
Tatiana Bonch-Osmolovskaya // Prose, poetry, visual poetry
Spain
Carlos Battaglini // Literature
Singapore
Berny Tan // Visual art, writing, curating
South Africa
Benjamin Stanwix // Graphic novel, poetry, illustration
Catherine Boulle // Live art research, writing, podcasting
South Korea
Suji Han // Media & web installation, video
UK
Jerome Holt // Writer, photo therapist, human being
USA
kt coleman // creative non-fiction, poetry, conceptual art
Nicole E. Miller // Fiction, Memoir, Translation
Erin Kate Ryan // Fiction-making
Zoe Chronis // Interdisciplinary
Carolina Wheat // Writing, drawing, & sound
Julie WillsI // nterdisciplinary drawing & sculpture
Ayoto // photography, visual arts
Lucas Southworth // Creative Writing, fiction

Silence Existence Awareness program / DECEMBER 2019
Jacoba Niepoort
Denmark
www.jacobaniepoort.com
About
I spend most of the year painting street art around the globe.
I have an obsession with big-scale art projects, and a love
for painting in public spaces. The way we use and own our
common spaces and the politics and money surrounding this
interests me greatly. And so I paint outdoors to share my art
and messages, and to add art to an audience of everyday
people who might not attend gallery or museum shows.
In between wall projects, I make smaller works on paper. I find
this stage equally important in balancing my own creative
process. It is a time for solitude, hitting reset and developing
new ideas in an otherwise fast-paced, physically demanding
and social mural-life.
My works are inspired by everyday interactions with the
world around me. I work with topics of universal feelings and
connections between people, as well as exploration of the
self. When I work indoors it is usually with permanent ink
on paper. Outdoors it is with giant paint markers and house
paint. In both cases I work figuratively.
Focus
The purpose of my month-long stay at Arteles was focus: to
reflect, plan, and to create sketches for new works. I work as
an urban artist creating public murals in different locations
globally, so daily life is full of week-to-week changes, in
location, time-schedules and projects. Every year, a quiet
month in one location creates the necessary space to hit
reset. This year it also allowed time to plan an upcoming solo
exhibition with ballpoint pen works on paper.

Silence Existence Awareness program / DECEMBER 2019
Caterina Leone
Australia
www.caterinaleone.com
About
Caterina Leone is a Melbourne-based artist revitalising
the historic drawing technique of silverpoint to create
intimate self-portraits that question societal notions of
gender. She inserts herself into the religious, mythological
and art historical iconographies that have fascinated her
since childhood, and which, due to her biological sex, hold
conflicting connotations of exclusion and reverence. In doing
so, the artist is able to explore her identity and how it has
been shaped by patriarchal, societal ideas of femininity.
Born in Sydney, she studied at the National Art School and
worked in arts administration, writing and curating before
moving to Melbourne in 2017 to pursue her own art practice.
Her work has been featured in online and print publications,
most recently in Synaesthesia Magazine in April 2018.
Caterina has been included in numerous group exhibitions
and juried art shows in both NSW and Victoria, such as The
Way We See Ourselves, a group exhibition at West End Art
Space that was selected for the 2018 Melbourne Fringe
Festival. A solo show at Rubicon ARI in May was followed
by exhibition at Scott Livesey Gallery alongside Lily Mae
Martin and other figurative artists in August, and FUTURES
exhibition in November 2019.
Art, ecology, spirituality
My experience at Arteles was affected by my having
backpacked across Europe for two months beforehand. It
also came at the end of a difficult year of extreme burn out
and resulting health issues. As such my expected prolificacy
had to make way for rest, and my usual fast pace reduced to
a crawl. This is the best thing that could have happened to
me. I embraced meditation for the first time. I spent time in
reflection and redefined my art practice.
I began with a daily self-portrait. These were experimental
and varied in length and materials. Some are almost invisible,
having been painted with snow, or with the barest hint of
watercolour added. Others are white oil stick or paint on
white paper. They allowed an element of play and freedom
usually missing from my practice. They were eventually
abandoned, but without them I could not have found my
true, ongoing, body of work for the residency. Working in my
customary silverpoint (drawing with silver and gold), these
works explore my - and by extension humanity’s relationship
- to nature, placing myself in the landscape, slowly dissolving.
There is an uncomfortable element introduced by the fully
realised figures being the ones to interact least with the
surrounding scenery, hinting at our need to return to a more
simple, natural existence for our own survival.
My residency at Arteles allowed me to find a path forward for
an art practice that is sustainable for my health and aligned
with my beliefs. The completed body of work will show at
Tinning St Presents in Melbourne later in 2020.

Silence Existence Awareness program / DECEMBER 2019
Christina Marks
USA / Australia
www.christinamarks.com
About
Christina Marks is an Australian multi-disciplinary artist and
dramaturg living in Brooklyn, New York with her husband and
many plants. Her work currently focuses on inter-genarational
inheritance, the legacy of trauma, and the relationship to the
natural world in connecting to individual and cultural agency.
You can find her on insta @inclement.air and @ditch.witch, as
well as www.christinamarks.com.
Let Go or Be Dragged
Approaching my time at Arteles, I had planned many
projects, had many ideas started primed to be finished. I
hardly touched the plans I had packed with me. Instead, a
number of new process were birthed into my practice.
Finding inspiration in the space opened in my eyes and mind
by sweet and confrontational silence, I came across an
illustrative style that was unlike any other I had experimented
with. This I hope to develop into a picture book for adolescents
and adults.
The world I have created in these illustrations lives in the grey
area. My characters inhabit the space between identity as
it is experienced, as it is told to us in narrative, and as it is
chosen. The monochromatic scale and permanency of ink
drawing leads the generation of these images on a path of
definition - something which the characters themselves will
never attain.
I am incredibly grateful to my fellow artists, the space (mental
and physical) provided by Arteles Creative Center, and Ida,
Teemu and Guilia for welcoming these brand new babies
brought into the cold-yellow winter light of the nation of birch
trees.

Silence Existence Awareness program / DECEMBER 2019
Eric Chi-Puo LIN
Taiwan
www.ericthink.com
About
A literary writer, a journalist, and an art critic, Eric Chi-Puo LIN
paints a picture by taking three different threads—”literary
creation”, “trend observations”, and “news reporting”—and
weaving them into a cohesive image.
He has worked as Deputy Editor-in-Chief at Business Today
magazine, Chief Editorial Writer at CommonWealth Magazine
Group, Acting Editor-in-Chief at Taiwan Panorama magazine,
Special correspondent for GQ magazine, and Art Director at
Queen Stone Jewelry.
Because he is both author and journalist, and has worked
as a foreign correspondent, he had opportunities early on
in his career to observe life closely all around the world, and
these experiences have been a rich source of inspiration
in his literary writing and commentary on trends. Over the
years, he has developed a literary style rooted in what he
calls “observation on the move”.
His essays in recent years have focused on two topics: “Fold
in Time and Space” and “Practicing How to Live”. With his
“Fold in Time and Space” writing project, he has sought to
explore how globalization and the rise of the Internet have
caused time to change shape in our lifestyles and in our
sensory perceptions of the world around us. Based on the
results of the research and field investigations, two styles of
“new journalism” and “Literary Prose” will be intertwined in
his writing.
Fold in Time and Space
During the residency, I closely observed and explored the
subtle changes in temperature, silence, light, and color of
the Hämeenkyrö wilderness in winter. And with Silent Days,
I smoothly returned to myself and explored internally. Many
issues of life and creation have been therefore gazed clearly
and transparently.
This made my creative results beyond expectations. In
addition to completing parts of “Fold in Time and Space”
writing project, I also created a new literary style and started
new creations on photography, drawing at the Arteles
Creative Center.
It is particularly worth mentioning that the artists and writers
who were in residency at the same time can be described as
a ”Dream Team”. Through daily communication and creative
brainstorming, we not only help each other to explore new
artistic realms, but also have precious international and
cross-disciplinary friendships.
Everything happened in residency is a real and perfect dream.
This residency was supported by The Department of Cultural
Affairs, Taipei City Government.

Silence Existence Awareness program / DECEMBER 2019
Alicia Douglas
Australia
www.aliciadouglas.com
About
Alicia grew up on the Central Coast of NSW, Australia, and
she now lives and works in Sydney, Australia. As a painter, her
work is focused on capturing the landscape, greatly inspired
by the lands of Australia and also by far away shores.
She has been oil painting since childhood and after high
school studied fine art at a technical institute and then at
University level. Since this time, she has been involved in a
variety of group and solo exhibitions and now works as a
Visual Arts assistant at a high-school and also at a gallery
in Sydney.
As an artist and as a human being her interest lies in the
psychology of how we see the world and visually respond to
it. She is endlessly fascinated by the process of interpreting
what we see and creating a visual image/language from
this. Her last solo exhibition was inspired by a period of time
spent in the Scottish Highlands. So greatly affected by the
vastness of the landscape and the silence due to its isolation,
she focused on creating work that reflected felt emotions
experienced from being immersed in such an environment.
Creating a quiet contemplation in her work that reminded us
just how noisy our lives can become.
Before darkness descends
The days are short in Finland in winter time, very different
to Australia. I completely underestimated the impact that
this environment would have on my practice. As a landscape
painter I found myself chasing the light at Arteles. I built
my days around the ability to explore the countryside and
paint en plein air, knowing that the sun (if any) would begin
to appear after 9am and then start to disappear around 3pm.
With each new day, I felt the Finnish countryside gradually
seeping into my psyche. I walked and walked and walked
and looked, really looked at the landscape around me.
Breathing the fresh air and looking at the colours and all the
intricacies of the trees, the sky, the lakes and at the same
time experiencing the overwhelming silence. When I wasn’t
in the landscape I would close my eyes and imagine the
colours and shapes of the land – it felt like it all was becoming
a part of me and this would spill out through my brush and
onto the paper.

Silence Existence Awareness program / DECEMBER 2019
Jennifer Kumer
Hong Kong / Netherlands
www.jenniferkumer.com
About
Jennifer Kumer is a visual artist, design activist, trained
creativity coach, and creator of the Empathic Wisdom Cards
(project funded on Kickstarter). As an avid advocate for
emotional literacy and mental health, she devotes to helping
empaths heal & thrive through embodying their fullest
creative potential.
She walks her own talk by living a semi-nomadic lifestyle
based in the Netherlands while traveling and creating from
artist residencies around the world as she coach and facilitate
experiences helping people reconnect with their emotions
and creativity. She uses mixed-media and publication as a
medium to express her fascination with the human psyche
and make light of the often-overly-serious world of personal
development. You can often find themes of abstract marks,
organic shapes, and dynamic colors featured in her work.
Sign up to her newsletter to follow her journey and receive
updates on news, events, and offerings.
Conscious Relating Deck
Conscious Relating Deck is a simple way to explore
communication and deepen intimacy. I designed the deck
along with my partner initially to stay connected even
though we were physically apart during the time I was at the
residency. To make the best of the limited time we were on
the phone with each other we often did authentic relatingstyle
sharings with a prompt that one of us would come up
with and a 5-minute timer for each to share. Sometimes we
would reuse prompts from previous sharings, and sometimes
we’d come up with new ones. Now and then we’d try hard to
remember that one prompt we both loved and look through
journals to find it, that’s when I had the idea, why not compile
them together into a collection so it’s accessible? What’s
even better, why not design it to be visually and functionally
inviting so other couples can also experience the beauty of
such a communication practice?
With these inspirations in mind, we created the card deck.
It contains all the prompts we’ve used to deepen our
relationship and many new ones co-created to support
couples celebrate their love.
We designed each prompt to give couples the space to
reflect, explore, and connect on the many aspects of their
relationship.
Through testing and feedback, I created a working prototype
in the last week of the residency. It’ll soon be available for preorder,
stay in touch via my newsletter if you are interested!

Silence Existence Awareness program / DECEMBER 2019
Ellen Ter Beek
Netherlands
www.ellenterbeek.nl
About
I am what I have become I guess. But I always thought I could
become everything I wanted to be. Inventor, writer, painter,
traveler, philosopher, poet, soothsayer; those kind of things.
I’ve never fantasized about working nine to five being a
consultant in what I call a corporate environment. Quite
interesting though if you can float above it to observe that
world. Observing is something I like to do and lately I try not
to find anything of what I find.
In order to make my dreams come true, I started studying
visual arts at a later age at the Royal Academy of Art in The
Hague (NL) and graduated in 2010. A theme in my work is
deconstruction and transience. I am fascinated by the
beauty of deserted places where traces of human existence
are erased by nature.
Through my stay at Arteles I want to consciously give back
the time to myself to discover in silence what my own source
is. And maybe discover that I still am despite what I have
become.
Re-collections
My stay at Arteles was all about concentration and taking
the time to be. From that concentration and the freedom to
create whatever you want, I started to draw a lot. It’s hard
not to be inspired by the Finnish landscape, nature, dead
straight birches and lakes that lie like mirrors in the woods
or fields. The days of silence helped me to spend hours
with that, which I experienced as the greatest luxury there
is. But also the interaction with the other residents and their
work proved very fruitful for me. My intention was to find my
source and, more than that, I found a further development
for my themes and visual language. Everything was a gift at
Arteles. The coincidental finds, the encounters, the silence
and the people. Under the windowsill in my room I found the
word ‘grateful’ written. I couldn’t think of a better word to
express my experience with the silence awareness program
at Arteles.

Enter Text program / NOVEMBER 2019
Jerome Holt
UK / USA
www.jeromeholt.com
About
Often described by others as an environmentalist or a treehugger,
I see myself as a simple human being who has an
appreciation for the nature of the planet earth and an interest
in human interactions, culture and education. I often cause
reactionary behavior in others, sometimes merely through
an act of self expression, even when I am not trying to
illicit reactionary behavior. Tapping into a large array of life
experience, I am on a path to share my art, in the hope that it
will help others see things they might not have seen before.
I write non-fiction, fiction and social commentary. My
current work includes commentary on the need for big
picture thinking education, humorous short stories about
relationships with women and a screenplay about the moldy
culture of Hollywood.
In our current sea of image based society, I feel the
power of photography is being diluted by commercialism,
consumerism and the advertising culture now ingrained in
nearly every human being, as we become more driven to sell
ourselves. Photo therapy is a new term for an old concept,
based around the idea of using photography as a mirror.
The photographer attempts to allow the subject to see their
facets, their true selves - in my current work I attempt to show
the affect of concepts of loneliness on human individualism.
Writing, Music, Photography
For two weeks I worked four to five hours a day on writing
short stories, based around the theme of relationships.
These short stories I intend to use in a collaborative book
with a female writer from Finland, whom I met after I left
Arteles in Helsinki. Together we will share our funny, serious
and somewhat cathartic stories from our male/female
perspectives, highlighting the dynamics of having intimate
relationships with other human beings.
Once I had put to paper the bare bones of about these
short stories, I then changed course and set up the Arteles;
keyboard, drum machine, laptop and mixer - to experiment
with music, eventually managing to finish two experimental
sound scapes using samples taken from walking the woods,
fields and lakes of the area.
By the end of the residency I started venturing out into
the dark night with my camera, with the idea of doing long
exposure night photography - which you can see on the
opposite page.

Enter Text program / NOVEMBER 2019
Kt Coleman
USA
www.instagram.com/k.t_coleman
About
kt coleman (b. 1994) is a Portland, Maine based multidisciplinary
artist and writer. Her often text-based works nod
to self-discovery, interpersonal connection, and the role art
plays in offering room for self-reflection. She aims to foster
empathetic connection with the viewers’/readers’ selves and
their environments and finds inspiration in the peculiarities of
the everyday. She spends her free time romping in the Maine
woods with her very polite dog, Timber, who shows up from
time to time in her self-referential works.
Self-reflective interventions
In Arteles, I spent a lot of time with myself. I’d been
generating statements from autobiographical assessments,
all I-statements, which I’d been compiling in a master list. It
occurred to me that the autobiographical perhaps wasn’t so
important and that this work was about me relating not only
to myself, but to others. I began considering my contextual
audience and translated the statements into Suomi. I printed
the statements onto pull-tab flyers and put them out into
the Tampere public. Unfortunately, they were removed.
Regardless of their short life span, I’d like to hope that they
were accessed and reflected upon, providing a moment of
unseen intimacy in a broad gesture between myself and a
mystery reader.

Enter Text program / NOVEMBER 2019
Daniela Avelar
Brazil
www.danielaavelar.com.br
About
Investigates the relation between visual arts and litterature
creating from the possibilities of the white colour, silence,
collection, appropriation and writting. Currently, the
investigations around the white colour as concept and
experience, appear with the desire to exhaust the colour
through objects and writting restriction procedures. Is also
part of her process editing and creating printted matter
works: trabalho produz riqueza (2019); Álbum (2018); além
da página – exposição impressa coletiva, pela plataforma
parentesis (2018); o enviou-lhe uma mensagem (2016);
encontros possíveis e A arte a maneira de abordar seu chefe
para pedir um aumento (2015).
Tente perceber devagar
Tentar perceber devagar
or try to perceive slowly
as it is language that structures the universe and not reality
to start something in another language
I read about the test
there is nothing in the world today that is not
tested or subjected to test:
what is this? what is for? it works?
maybe that is why I tried the word maybe twenty times
shared different ways of failure
folded almost a hundred paper boxes
moved the snow from one place to another
wrote empty texts with masking tape
and kindly destroyed small things
possível e impossível
a set of concret accomplished possibilities
in contrast to imagined possibilities
the failure of not getting things done
o ritmo involuntário das coisas
e o teste como realidade temporária

Enter Text program / NOVEMBER 2019
Suji Han
South Korea
www.sujihan.com
About
My work focuses on the process of compression and
translation happening between cyber and physical space.
The compression happens when human existence enters
cyberspace. The translation when information wanders into
the sea of data and gets distorted, edited, and reinterpreted
through the process of downloading, capturing, copying. My
research-based work explores the blurred space between
the physical space and the digital through pseudo-scientific
methods such as educational video, digital installation, data
collection, and sound composing.
“I spend most of my time in digitized space where time and
space feel compressed, “iron-ized”; as if it had been ironeddata
stacked on top of itself and then flattened again. This
compressed time and space runs differently from the space
where body temperature and scent can be felt. Because of
that, I can stay connected with others in the same space even
through time differences and long distances. The blurred
line between cyber and physical space continues to expand
new opportunities for relationship such as ego sharing,
intertwining, interlacing, and interfacing.
오늘 나는 단어 아마도로 하루를 시작할 것이다
hoje vou experimentar a palavra talvez”
Collaboration with Daniela

Enter Text program / NOVEMBER 2019
Zoe Chronis
USA
www.zoechronis.com
About
I re-enact methods of public address and propaganda
according to my own political fantasies. I’ve constructed
solar balloons to distribute leaflets by air; installed a
commemorative plaque at the location of an anti-war sitin;
and filmed hand-lettered cards based on early cinema
conventions. I’ve often viewed communication as a problem
to solve or a secret to reveal, but the politics of language is
never what I expect. I am digging myself deeper into doubt
about the public role of an artist or a citizen. I am looking for
a true meeting. I want to be pinned to the wall with a spear.
And should I tell everybody or just you? I have a bad habit of
asking the wrong person the wrong question at the wrong
time. In spite of this, I have faith in the power of communityled
media and currently work for public access television in
Brooklyn, New York.
Amarillo Ramp
Thought I’d found, in someone else, a way to reconcile an
impossible choice between a solitary life spent posing
problems for art and power (antisocial) and a concrete
intimacy full of hope and commitment (communal). I started
with a word on the wall, moved onto sentences, then images.
I was thinking about modes of public address and the kinds of
audiences brought into being through speech. I was reading
for the hundredth time, Michael Warner’s notion that “a public
exists by virtue of being addressed.” I started falling down,
then rolling down the dirt ramp out back, an image of Robert
Smithson’s Amarillo Ramp. I constructed fake bricks and
crashed into them. I composed a site-specific pamphlet and
distributed it to my fellow residents. Nancy Holt and Robert
Smithson travelled from place to place creating site-specific
earthworks. In 1973 Smithson was my age when he died in a
plane crash while surveying the site for Amarillo Ramp. For a
long time I’ve been in serious doubt about the public role of
art, the politics of politics. Never considered myself a fan of
land-dominating art (just a participant in a land-dominating
nation-state); but on my way to Finland He’d asked me about
Smithson and I surprised myself by defending the work:
“Isn’t it extreme? The state of a person who puts themself in
a room with salt and mirrors!? How to exist alongside all this
material, and this perception?” Going public means building
a structure through which others enter, either by force, or—

Enter Text program / NOVEMBER 2019
Matthew Hollett
Canada
www.matthewhollett.com
About
I’m a writer and visual artist from Newfoundland, Canada,
currently living in Montreal. I love long walks with a camera and
notebook, and much of my work revolves around landscape
and memory. My first book, “Album Rock” (published by
Boulder Books in 2018) uses creative nonfiction and poetry
to explore the history of a strange photograph of 1850s
nautical graffiti. My collection of poems about photography
and seeing, “Optic Nerve”, will be published in 2021. Right
now I’m working on a novel about a quirky kid who imagines
the ghosts of beached whales drifting through the forest.
My academic background is in visual arts, but writing has
gradually taken over my life. Still, I love working between
language and image, and past projects have included
photographing handwriting or composing visual poems with
leaves and seaweed. I also write code, and am interested in
new media and interactive narratives. I have an MFA in Media
Arts from NSCAD University, and make a living as a web
designer. My most recent publication is “Between Seasons
on the North Head Trail” (betweenseasons.ca), a visual essay
about hiking in one of my favourite places.
Walking, writing, looking closely
At Arteles I crunched footprints in frost-blasted fields,
lay in the snow and looked up at Orion, watched birds flit
through a field of dead sunflowers, bought opera glasses
at a secondhand shop, crashed a tiny lichen dance party,
wrote a poem about frost (“it froths tall grass into a rollicking
snickersnee”), traced the shadow of a plant on the studio wall,
watched moss catch raindrops, read Tove Jansson’s short
stories, didn’t know the names of birds, wrote about walking
outdoors (“the field-edge cuffed in uncut wheat”), shook
reindeer lichen’s tiny hands, held up a frosted leaf so the sun
shone through, asked many questions, took a selfie under
a mushroom looking up, lived on lingonberry jam, showed
everyone the “hair ice” in the woods, wrote a poem about
xanthoria lichen (“dime-a-dozen sunbursts bespangling
trees”), ate a Sibelius Monument’s worth of macaroni, left
footprints on a frozen lake, wrestled with a novel, listened
to the swans (“an orchestra tuning down instead of up”),
followed my own footprints from the day before, tried sauna
and smoked trout and salmiakki ice cream, enkindled healthy
rituals and new friendships, pilfered a shoelace from the lost
and found, startled a huge hare, tried hard to find the right
verbs, and lingered outdoors so long my fingers stung.

Enter Text program / NOVEMBER 2019
Carlos Battaglini
Spain
www.carlosbattaglini.com
About
One day I realised that my belly was growing and I got scared
by the idea that I had life all worked out. A mortal lack of
vertigo. Thousands of walks along the beach forced me to
listen to that voice, “it’s time to do what you want, write full
time, man, explain what you think about the world”. It was
the same voice that celebrated death “don’t you think it’s
wonderful to know that you will cease to be, one day, so as to
convince yourself of what you really want to do now?”
So, I finally pushed my job at the EU external action service
into the background to fully focus on writing, my real passion.
Hence, I live now only for literature – most likely I have
developed Literary Asperger’s syndrome, if it exists.
I write because I have a strong need to express what I see
around. I write about different topics, being the realism the
genre I work the most. Novel is the core of my job, but I also
deal with poetry and plays. I’m about to publish a book of
short stories about people who want to change their lives.
On my website I also write about my trips around the world
(with especial emphasis on Africa), books reviews, opinion
articles. I also make interviews to different writers. During the
following years, I will transform all my material (that currently
stays at the computer) into new books.
Moreover, I have collaborated with plenty cultural institutions
including El País (main Spanish newspaper). I hold a
bachelor on Political Scientist and Sociology and a Master
on environment. My latest award was a finalist prize at a
Spanish short story contest.
Poetry, novel, learning
CARLOS BATTAGLINI - I left everything to become a writer,
join me.
Does inspiration exist or not? Many writers swear that yes,
others deny that such a “”muse”” is a reality of this world.
Debates aside, the truth is that I never felt as comfortable
writing as in Arteles. Aided by the charm of the place: snow,
pines, swans, walks on the lake ... the words came to me in a
surprisingly placid way.
Undoubtedly, meetings and conversations with others (the
kitchen turned into a temple for exchanging experiences and
knowledge) or the reading of Finnish authors, also helped me
to write fluently.
So I made significant progress in writing a book of poems that
deals with identity, the search for meaning, absurd journeys
... In addition, I had time to progress with the research phase
of a novel that asks about what’s behind human intentions
I don’t know if inspiration is an illusion or a certainty, but
what I am sure of is the immense creative power that Arteles
and Finland propitiates.

Enter Text program / NOVEMBER 2019
Sabine Pick
Australia
www.sabinepick.com
About
Sabine Pick is an Australian artist based in Byron Bay. Her
career as a graphic designer has played an integral role in
her art making practice of collage and mixed media. With
this background in typography, she gradually developed a
vocabulary of wooden letterpress forms and found materials
— old art books, and print materials. Pick became fascinated
by the patina and worn, old colours of archival and discarded
papers. Through her, delicately balanced compositions, Pick
seeks to create new stories and conversations in this slow,
subtle and intuitive process of collage.
Minimalist paper collage
The majority of my time at Arteles was making paper
collages. I had no set intentions, in coming to Finland, other
than to have time and space. My art practice consists of
using fragmented shapes, that have been created by cutting
or tearing letterpress printed letters, parts of my handwriting
and parts of pages from old art books which are then
arranged into minimalist collages. Each piece is very intuitive
and unplanned. The shapes or papers take the original
readable letter, image or word and turn it to an unreadable
form. The edges of the paper and the hidden parts of the
letters or shapes, are meant to evoke ideas, thoughts or
questions.
I spent my month reading, listening to music, cutting up
paper, cooking and looking out at the landscape. And of
course made some wonderful new residency friends.

Enter Text program / NOVEMBER 2019
Sherryl Clark
Australia
www.sherrylclarkcrimewriter.com
About
I’ve been writing for more than 30 years, initially short
fiction and poetry and gradually moving into novel writing.
In 1996 I had my first children’s book accepted, and began
to focus more on writing for children and young adults. In
2013 I completed an MFA in writing for children and YA at
Hamline University in Minneapolis/St Paul, and then a PhD in
creative writing at Victoria University in Melbourne. My thesis
topic was the writing of new fairy tales for today’s children.
All along, I continued to work on my adult crime novels, and
the first of these - “Trust Me, I’m Dead” - was published in
July 2019 by Verve Books UK. I have also continued to write
poetry and short fiction. I find that a focus on character,
voice and structure helps me to build and wrestle my ideas
into stories that flow better and become stronger as I rewrite.
Novel works
My plan for Arteles was a crime novel - I had worked out
a way to bring my character to Finland, and Ida helped me
contact a detective at the Police University College who
gave me lots of good information and insights. However,
almost as soon as I arrived, a children’s verse novel I have
been thinking about and wanting to write for nearly two years
pushed its way to the front. So I worked on this first, and as
well as loving the solitude and peace of writing in my room,
I found the vege cafe in Hameenkyro to be really inspiring -
probably two thirds of the verse novel was written there.
I did also write almost half of the crime novel (first draft),
weaving in the streets of Tampere, the landscape, the
weather, and my police information. But along the way I
found and researched some fascinating Finnish history that
created an exciting new idea for the story. Everything about
being at Arteles has found its way into the work I created. The
silence and solitude that I embraced was a great experience,
and led to a piece about “”looking into the abyss”” of what it
means to be a writer.

Enter Text program / OCTOBER 2019
Catherine Boulle
South Africa
www.nyupress.org/9781776144648/acts-of-transgression
About
I am a writer and researcher from South Africa, based at the
Institute for Creative Arts (ICA), University of Cape Town. My
research is on contemporary live art in South Africa, and
I’m currently producing a podcast that features in-depth
interviews with South African artists and curators who
perform or curate live, interdisciplinary works.
The idea for the podcast came out of the book ‘Acts of
Transgression: Contemporary Live Art in South Africa,’ which
I co-edited with Director of the ICA, Jay Pather. The book,
published early this year, was initiated in response to a literary
vacuum: before 2019, there was no text dedicated to live art
in South Africa. There was also no substantive discourse to
speak about the politically resonant form that it takes in our
country. The book sought to begin filling this gap.
The vision for the podcast is to extend the work begun by
‘Acts of Transgression,’ but in a more accessible manner –
free from academic jargon and freely available for download.
We want to immerse listeners in the ways in which artists see,
think, respond and create, and to consider how the talking
and thinking through of complex performative artworks
becomes a facet of the work itself.
Listening, re-listening
My time at Arteles was dedicated primarily to the ICA podcast.
I only appreciated the complexity of the project when I
sat down to edit – distilling hours’ worth of conversations
with artists and curators, both site-specific and in-studio
interviews, as well as music, narration and performances,
into coherent hour-long episodes. This entailed mapping
out the recordings (electronically and on post-its around my
room), listening and re-listening, chopping and changing,
until I’d shaped a draft ready to be shared with my colleagues
at home. Arteles provided an invaluable period of focus and
contemplation, where I could be completely consumed by
the meticulous task of audio editing, while refining the vision
for the podcast.
In addition, the connections I made with other artists
encouraged me to pursue a personal project that I’d been
thinking about for some time – since interviewing my mother
about her experience of endometriosis, and the impact it
had on how she perceives her body. This conversation,
which I shared with my Arteles cohort, led me to interview
many of my fellow women residents about personal stories
of embodiment – how our bodies “keep the score” of our
struggles and traumas, telling the stories of our lives even
when we don’t have conscious words for them. I am in the
beginning phase of turning these conversations (and more
still to be conducted) into a podcast titled ‘Embodiment’. The
generosity and openness of the women around me was a
tremendous gift.

Enter Text program / OCTOBER 2019
Kai Choufour
Canada
www.tomorrowgallery.ca
About
Septic Age
I see art and life as a hypernarrative, a web, with pathways
connecting the physical, digital and spiritual. I am interested in
food hacking, metamorphism of value, comedic investigation,
naturalization of technology, inventions of the contrary, and
metaphysical presentation. I am a conceptual artist invested
in the capturing of natural phenomena and propagation of
wonder through relationships with nature. It is important for
me to work poetically, freely, sincerely and constantly. In my
practice everything collapses into itself repeatedly; song,
poetry, architecture, literature, design, food, and visual art
are used as tools for uncovering the new, illuminating the
past, navigating utopian ideals, and for discovering intrinsic
parallels that are present within dreams, art, film and daily
life. I believe in love, kindness and gratitude. I believe that
by exaggerating the present, we can put more emphasis on
our future.
I don’t care
what they say
blue sky
sunshine
free wifi
rock and roll

Enter Text program / OCTOBER 2019
Leah McInnis
Canada
www.leahmcinnis.com
About
How does the space of our minds relate to the constructed
spaces our bodies inhabit? Lately, I have been seeking to
define my relationship to working and thinking through the act
of constructing large forms out of reclaimed materials. These
forms reference familiar architectures and can be climbed
and rested on by others. I wonder how these constructions
relate to the space of the contemporary art gallery? Or
the junk yard? The home? Through writing, another space
is created. Located in the mind, the space of reading and
writing is fleeting and intangible. A few years ago, I began
constructing specialized spaces for reading, and then later
I built exaggerated stations for writing. Both endeavours
carried their own successes and failures. Perhaps the
failures are more exciting... I hope that through this practice
of building and thinking I can better understand how to be in
a world that embodies contradictions: beautiful, sad, sincere
and ironic.
Where’s the beach?
Why do people seek out familiarity in new places? What is
the same about these trees and the ones that scratched
my face when I was two inches tall. Where does your hand
go when your eyes are focused on the screen. Deliberating
between sharpening pencils with a buck knife and moving
debris around the barn. Or, we could climb higher into the
forest and whisper about ufo’s. We could tumble failed
projects onto the fire so the night lasts at least one hour
longer. Prancing over deadfall in my stolen parka. Seeking
out delights within small cardboard boxes, imported and
inexpensive. I asked how public space is used back home,
and the best response was that it doesn’t exist. Except for
the opera houses, which seem to be infallible. But then there
was the beach. The metaphorical Xanadu populated by
surfing dogs. I noticed the grass was eroded so I tried my
best to fix it up. I sharpened pencils with knives until they
were smaller than a lentil. I watched people move from room
to room and I watched the leaves fall until that tree looked
like a death metal band logo.
A fleet of little swans talking to a team of tiny devils. And
what information would be sought? Perhaps, they would ask,
”Where is the beach?” and the laughter could lead you home.

Enter Text program / OCTOBER 2019
Dale Collier
Australia
www.dalecollier.com
About
Conceptual artist Dale Collier fuses sculptural objects
with digital technology to perform contemporary historical
critique while re-examining the 21st Century roles of the
First Nations artist, activist and ally. Collier’s work utilises
intertextuality to challenge and interrogate postcolonial
frameworks, contemporary falsehoods, nationalistic
propaganda and northern European convict/settler tradition.
Often manifesting as institutional critique, their site-specific
projects traverse live spaces and places of key cultural,
geo-political and environmental concern. Dale was raised
on Yuin Country and now resides between the Wonnarua,
Worimi & Darkinjung Nations. Since 2015 their work has
exhibited extensively as solo projects, as a collaborator
and also artistic producer with renowned Australian artists,
choreographers and curators in multiple institutions and
organisations internationally.
In 2010 Collier graduated with 1st class honours in a
Bachelor of Digital Media from the Queensland College of
Art receiving the Award for Academic Excellence. Collier has
won numerous awards including the Margaret Olley Post
Graduate Art Scholarship Award, University of Newcastle
2014, the Brenda Clouten Memorial Travelling scholarship
Maitland Regional Art Gallery 2016 and The Annual Student
Art Prize, Wattspace student Gallery 2017. Collier was also
recently awarded the 2019 Windmill Trust Scholarship to
deliver a large-scale reciprocal creative project, taking place
between Barkindji Country/Broken Hill and Worimi Country/
the port city of Newcastle.
Incommensurable Con Text
Dear Ned,
I Thought it would rain.
I hope you get this. Been reading for you. Not books or words,
no academy, just the swamp of my temporary surroundings.
Birch, pine, a great spotted bird and golden leaves. Falling.
I thought maybe, if the swan danced for you things might
change.
We can’t keep going around like this. Parading about town
with our head in bucket, guns blazing. Won’t stop them
criticising, we’re still going to get shot down y’know. Besides,
it looks mighty stupid.
Been thinking of you lots, how you hold such esteem, such a
loose canon. Makes me wonder, what if I danced for you. Like
a swan. What would happen? Would everybody stop carrying
on like we exist on an island, only an island? Would we still
be a sensation not a place? It’s not really that either, I mean,
sure it’ll float. Doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. Doesn’t mean
we’re free from context. Seriously though, we can’t keep
going around like this.
I really thought it might rain. But not in bullets, not a meteor
shower, not fish from the sky. But falling water, rising tides,
we could go swimming don’t you think? Let off some steam,
get outa that rusty old suit. Still, I’m devoured by dehydration.
Some kind of madness, so much moisture, breathing but the
air’s not the same. Just want to know how to help, just thought
maybe, if I dance for you. Like a swan. To give it water..
This project has been assisted by the Australian Government
through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and
advisory body.
This project is supported by the NSW Government through Create
NSW.

Enter Text program / OCTOBER 2019
Carolina Wheat
USA
www.elijahwheatshowroom.com
About
Carolina Wheat (American b. 1974) currently works in
Brooklyn. Born in Detroit, bred in surrounding wetlands and
vacant industrial wastelands, her writing, soundscapes,
visual art-work, and curating attempts to tap into spirits.
Playing with ancestry and historical temporary dance places,
she incorporates a supporting mystic yet scientific artistic
expression system.
With a BFA in textile surface design from the UofM and an
MFA in Writing from SAIC, early on she realized working
for the NYC fashion industry wasn’t as cool as fabricating
installations for the Detroit electronic rave scene in the mid-
90’s. Later, her deep dark love of vocals, sound, music and
radio transmitted her to volunteer for WCBN, FreeRadioSAIC
and was one of the founding members of CHIRP (Chicago
Indie Radio Project).
She has exhibited her textile and sound work, as well as
curated numerous politically and socially conscientious
exhibitions in Detroit, Berlin, London, Chicago, and New
York. She is one of the 10 original founding members of the
Nasty Women Exhibition and continues to work with artists/
collectors as activists Internationally with the gallery she
co-owns and operates, Elijah Wheat Showroom. Carolina
has been nomadically curating innovative exhibitions for
the last 25 years in creative spaces. As a leader in Higher
Education admissions, she has professionally fostered the
careers of thousands of aspiring artists. She and her creative
expertise has appeared in The New York Times, Vulture,
Hyperallergic, Fast Company, MAAKE Mag, The Brooklyn
Rail, The Guardian, China Daily, among others.
YA Mystic Fiction
Focusing on lucid dreaming amongst the rolling autumnal
hills and yellowing birch trees and deciduous forests of
Finland, Wheat-Nielsen’s writing folded into the otherworldly.
Waking daily to record nightly adventures, the remainder of
the sunlight was spent exploring the woods, researching
binaural beats, writing by hand a YA ‘Mystic’ Fiction Novel
and voraciously reading. There were hours upon hours of
dedicated creative time, with no phone and little internet
contact, nourishing a grieving soul. This writing is loosely
based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead, therefore, Wheat-
Nielsen considered human existence and the afterlife deeply
within the work. Channeling her younger self, higher spirits
and working to exchange knowledge amongst the Akashic
records, the writer completed about 35,000 words towards
her first novel.

Enter Text program / OCTOBER 2019
Berny Tan
Singapore
www.bernytan.com
About
Berny Tan is a Singaporean artist, curator, and writer. Her
interdisciplinary practice explores the tensions that arise
when one applies systems to – and unearths systems in –
intangible personal experiences, complicating the false
binary between rational and emotional. Her projects are
attempts to reframe this space of ambivalence as generative
rather than paralytic.
Tan’s strategies reflect a fundamental interest in language
as it is read, written, and spoken by her. She sees language
itself as a system through which her subjectivit(ies) can be
simultaneously articulated and encoded, allowing her to
interweave the confessional with the analytical, the affective
with the critical.
Tan recently concluded an MA in Contemporary Art Theory
at Goldsmiths, University of London, and holds a BFA (Hons)
in Visual and Critical Studies from the School of Visual
Arts. She previously worked as Assistant Curator for OH!
Open House, a non-profit that explores Singapore’s cultural
geography through art. She has also exhibited her work in
Singapore, New York, and the United Kingdom, with two solo
exhibitions in Singapore in 2018.
Talismans for Disentanglement
This series of textual embroideries plays with the form of the
Taoist paper talisman, much like the ones my grandmother
gives me as a good luck charm. Here, the traditional talisman’s
red print on thin yellow paper is echoed by the use of red
thread on unbleached calico fabric. Each piece features a
single sentence sewn in a vertical column centralised on a
narrow piece of fabric, with one word per line. The end of
each line is always connected to the start of the next, as if
the entire sentence was sewn with a single thread, giving the
back of each piece a calligraphic quality. Hanging by a thin
thread, rotating in the air, the content of the sentence on the
front and the pattern of the stitching on the back become
equally important.
The sentences I have composed are written from the second
person point-of-view, addressing myself as ‘you’, as if I have
detached from myself and am contemplating my thoughts
and behaviour from a forced change in perspective. These are
direct statements that position themselves at the intersection
of confrontation, warning, mantra, truism, instruction.
Each sentence also contains words in parentheses, sewn
in a lighter pink thread, providing a second reading of the
sentence that reveals a fallacy in my thinking. Though the
sentences take the form of a talisman, they are not prayers
or blessings. They are intentionally encoded in analytical
language yet loaded with emotion, situated at the interstice
between the cryptic and the confessional.

Enter Text program / OCTOBER 2019
Lucas Southworth
USA
everyoneherehasagun.blogspot.com
About
I grew up in Oak Park, Illinois, and am currently a professor
of writing at Loyola University Maryland. My collection of
stories, Everyone Here Has a Gun, won AWP’s Grace Paley
Prize (University of Massachusetts Press, 2013). Recently, I
have started focusing on using creative writing toward social
justice and community engagement pursuits, working with
a literary non-profit in Baltimore, a branch of the Baltimore
public library, and in a public school.
My fiction tends to investigate spaces between form or
genre. My interest lies in blurring or layering a range of styles,
structures, and voices to explore how stories are consumed,
written, and dreamed. I am also interested in ways sudden
disruptions of the familiar, the traditional, or the cliché can
unsettle, alter, and ultimately add to the reading experience.
I am working on a novel now, for example, that uses jagged
transitions between science fiction, speculative, and literary
realism to represent the rifts caused by a murder in a
seemingly safe space. Ultimately, it focuses on characters
dealing with trauma and shock and then surfacing from it as
they assign new symbols of safety. The book is interested
in both the incredible fragility of the human experience and
how recovery often happens deep in the meaning-making
apparatus. I am also finishing a new collection of short stories
that studies characters living on a spectrum of silence—from
the voiceless to the disenfranchised to the severely quiet
or reclusive. Characters include D.B. Cooper and Buster
Keaton.
The Holy Sandwich
I ended up making significant progress on the late draft of a
novel at Arteles and, surprisingly, writing a long short story. I
hadn’t planned on writing the story, and, in fact, hadn’t written
a short story in about a year. But I started it on my solo travels
to Arteles and then kept going. The residency provided me a
depth of time, focus, and space to write what became a really
language-based piece, where every sentence in each section
began with the same word. It’s the kind of thing that would
have taken months in my regular life, since I would have had
to dip back in over and over, work for two hours just to find a
groove, and then inevitably run out of time and start all over
again. At Arteles, I never had to leave that groove, so the
story came fast. It’s a story that takes a look lots of different
monsters (including a diabolic sandwich) and ultimately the
interplay between safety and fear. Other residents might find
references to conversations we had in there, too. Ideas and
images from our sauna discussions worming their way in.

Enter Text program / OCTOBER 2019
Julie Wills
USA
www.juliewills.com
About
My work is inspired by the tools of desire: wishes, hopes,
pleas for divine or cosmic intercession, and superstitious
rites. These are the things we turn to when something is
desperately wanted but cannot be achieved through hard
work or other rational means. I create work about strategies
for emotional survival—and particularly, the strategies we
utilize when there is no logical course forward.
Much of my recent work incorporates a longstanding interest
in text, signification, legibility and poetic language. I create
lists that present themselves as a rational ordering of like
items, but carry an emotional weight through metaphor and
implied narrative. I frequently draw imagery from celestial
sources; the moon, stars and cosmos recur throughout in
varying forms. Stars fall from the sky, disrupting the known
order of the universe. Through such imagery I explore
constancy and volatility, current conditions, and hope for an
unrealized but longed-for future.
Astronomy Explained
“Astronomy Explained,” a college textbook found on the
Arteles bookshelf, served as an unexpected source of
linguistic material for my work over the Enter Text residency
period. I appropriated, recombined and repurposed language
fragments found in this text; these passages became the
basis for a month’s worth of drawings, installations, and
collage compositions.
Some phrases are section headings found intact in the
book’s table of contents:
THE FATE OF A LOW MASS STAR
THE STARS THAT NEVER RISE
Others are snippets pulled from one context and paired with
another found elsewhere:
A LITTLE SALT SPRINKLED IN THE FLAME // INTENSIFIES
THE DARKENING
The cosmos is a recurring metaphor in my work. It offers
mystery and potential and the chance that even though
the laws of physics and social convention are not working
in my favor, something else might be. I’ve culled these text
fragments for their open-ended metaphors, less interested
in learning about the structural phenomena described than I
am in the possibilities evoked through the language.

Enter Text program / OCTOBER 2019
Tatiana Bonch-Osmolovskaya
Australia / Russia
antipodes.org.au/en.aboutTatianaBonch.html
About
I am a writer and an artist with natural science background. I
prefer texts that make a reader think, texts with inner layers,
texts with non-linear path of reading. Having a mathematical
education myself, I practise combinatorial writing / writing
in formal restrictions, in poems and visual poems as well as
in prose. The subjects I am interested in vary from ancient
mythology and history of Crimea, amazing Australian nature
and its cultural heritage, to contemporary social, cultural and
political situation, human rights, feminism, and especially
freedom of expression. Though this is a wide spectre
of topics, they all call to me as a part of my motherland
history and family heritage, my own life story, as well as the
contemporary social and political situation.
I write prose and poetry and make visual artwork using my
knowledge of mathematics and formal literary restrictions
as developed by French group OuLiPo and other authors of
ergodic literature like Vladimir Nabokov, Italo Calvino, Mark
Danilevsky etc. I am attracted to intellectual joy and gaining
new knowledge from texts. This reading should not be not
easy, with hidden riddles and puzzles without clues, but its
comprehension provides a delight as finding a way through
a maze.
I am also interested in visual representation of beautiful
mathematical objects like polyhedra, labyrinths, and visual
illusions. And I love sharing my knowledge and passion for
knowledge with children and adult learners.
Writing, walking, seeing
I came to Arteles to work on a novel and most of the time I
focused on this. It went well, and I wrote the first chapters
and a bit of culmination, for the first draft of course.
But Arteles surrounding called for long walks, meditation
on the nature, and making photos and videos. And I walked
by enchanted forest, filled with fly agaric mushrooms and
broken cars. I haven’t seen a moose but was almost eaten by
a dozen of squirrels just outside the house.
I played with reflections turning images of semi frozen lake
upside down. Maybe it’s my Australian background to look
at the sky upside down, but this provides an interesting
perspective.
I saw swans on the lake and made a video poem “migration/
emigration” walking by the fields after swans.
Some spaces in the forest asked for a spider web, as
concentrating from the cold wet air, and I weaved webs there.
In Arteles library I noticed a book with “Fallen” by Jane
Hammond and made a homage photo series “Tears on the
Fallen”.
It was a wonderful experience and I am happy to become
familiar with amazing Arteles people.
Even if Charles Maier claimed, “Nostalgia is to memory as
kitsch is to art,” so photos are surrogates of the memory, I
made lot of photos to remember Arteles.
And, almost forgot, I worked on a series of meander poems
like this: “Everything written here is a sincere truth, except for
this very last sentence”.

Back to Basics program / SEPTEMBER 2019
Emily Weekes
Australia
About
I’m a writer. I’ve been writing professionally for over a decade,
mostly non-fiction and often for others. My writing work is
varied and purposeful but it leaves little time to wander and
wonder … consumed by finding the perfect words to help my
clients tell their stories. I love my work but I miss my writing.
I began writing to make sense of the world. In a time before
social media, I wrote travel pieces about far-flung places not
yet Insta-famous. Writing grounded me as I took in the world
around me. Once home, I came back to writing to capture my
experiences and share different stories with the world.
But I’ve now lost the spaciousness that once sparked my
creative mind, and feel torn by two worlds – the creative
versus the productive. At work, I can transform a blank page
into beautiful prose, at speed and to brief. But is that a valid
creative process? It feels too mercenary. Besides, it’s not my
story being told.
Coming to Arteles is a chance to reconnect with the part of me
that began writing from the heart. All the artists, musicians
and writers I admire have led me here; as I laugh, cry and
wonder at their expression, I think, I need to do this too.
Animistic Observations
Being at Arteles gave me a sense of quiet and the
spaciousness I was craving. In the space created for us,
removing iPhones and the Internet, I was able to listen to
ideas and stories calling to be told. I toyed with fragments,
characters, settings and wisps of memories tugging at my
attention – only this time, I had the space and time to tune in,
listen and meet them on the page.
I disappeared into books, articles and zines, reading
whatever caught my eye and seeking out new voices and
ways of playing with words, curious to see what others found
beguiling. I flexed my beginner muscles by drawing and
playing the guitar. Shutting down self-criticism for a time.
For me, this was the point. At Arteles I was free to follow my
whims and desires as they came knocking.
Exploring the landscape of Hameenkyro was its own gift,
watching the natural light change as a new season dropped
in. I cycled and walked for miles, happily lost and talking to
locals wherever I could, collecting treasures from the forest
floor and dancing with strangers at a local Finnish tango
meet-up. I was part traveller part writer, gleaning what I could
from every moment.
Sharing this month with twelve strangers – soon to be friends
– was profound. I swapped my usual world of deadlines for a
soul-enriching schedule of sauna and meditation, tuning into
my creative instincts, the changing landscape and a sense of
stillness within.

Back to Basics program / SEPTEMBER 2019
Namie Rasman
Singapore
www.namierasman.com
About
This human has cat-like instincts and is constantly intrigued
by sounds around her. Ideally, Namie would like to be a cat
but obviously it isn’t the task that the universe has assigned
to her. Aside from taking care of cats, she loves listening to
and writing music. Her daily routine also includes using her
voice to sing, teach and have conversations with others.
Drawing inspiration from nature, relationships and various
affairs of the world, she colours her compositions in a delicate
and cathartic manner. You’ll hear musical influences from
Jazz, Soul, Folk and Electronica. To date, she has released a
4-track EP titled, “”Notes”” as Namie Rasman. She currently
writes and performs her original works as Namie & The Waves
with 4 other musicians and is working towards releasing their
music in the near future.
On another note, an eye-opening collaboration with George
E. Lewis—under the Nu Ensemble assembled by Dr. Timothy
O’Dwyer at Singjazz Club in 2016—sparked her interest in
Extended Vocal Techniques (EVT). During her final year
in LASALLE College of the Arts, she explored EVT for her
practice based research dissertation. Her paper was about
vocal mimicry of environmental sounds in Singapore. Armed
with curiosity, creativity and her quirky charm, Namie
strives to incorporate all her artistic interests into her works;
finding balance among free improvisation, use of EVT, Jazz,
Electronica and many other influences. She embraces
challenges and finds herself collaborating with fellow
musicians and artists of various disciplines.
What lies beyond...
September 2019 was nothing but magical. The dreamy
days and nights offered a safe and cosy environment to
disentangle all the knots that were left unattended over the
years of being in a crowded country. Courage was needed
in order to have love, acceptance and patience for myself.
Inevitably, there were many internal battles in my head which
subsequently became songwriting ideas. What lies beyond is
a song conceived during the final week inspired by the sleep
paralysis I encountered earlier in the month. The demon
talked about in the song is a metaphor for all my fears and
insecurities that became apparent. It is about time to stand
up against all of those.
Although songwriting has always been an intimate process
with my notebook, pencil, piano and laptop, arranging and
performing songs have mostly been a group effort with other
musicians. Having time alone during the residency allowed
me to dive back into practicing being a self-reliant vocalist. I
spent my days analyzing my usual songwriting process and
thinking about the steps I needed to take or erase that will
allow me to conveniently and creatively create a song that
can be performed live using the instruments and equipment
I have; voice, midi keyboard, TC-Helicon’s Perform VE and
laptop with Ableton Live.
There was a lot of introspection, exploring and admiring
nature, making friends, practicing and creating. And I’m glad
explored what lies beyond my comfort zone.

Back to Basics program / SEPTEMBER 2019
Jennifer Rooke
Australia
www.jenniferrookeart.com
About
My artistic practice centres around drawing as a diaristic
process, incorporating various forms of mark-making and
writing. I keep personal written diaries based upon my
everyday experiences and surroundings which become
resources for my visual works. My drawings vary in scale,
medium, time, detail and subject matter. These drawings
can sometimes transform into full installations. My recent
research has been centred around women writers, poets
and artists with particular interest to how they represent
themselves through their life-writing, including collections
of letters, diaries and autobiography. The journal is an
important solitary space for women to explore and perform
identity outside of traditional gender roles. Drawing
functions as a similar space in which to practise the private
self; an opportunity to visualise and develop ideas, personal
histories and feelings. I am interested in the private practice
of these forms and how these shift when made public.
To be continued
I sketched most days of the residency, working from photos
of my recent travels in northern Europe and looking to my
surroundings in the Arteles house and studio. I morphed
these observations into more imagined scenes and began to
develop some larger drawings. I appreciated having the time
and space to let my larger drawings rest and work on them
when it felt right.
It was liberating not having a phone for a month. I started
reading more and re-discovered my love for fiction; a long
influence on my practice. I continued my daily habit of
journaling and learned a new way of setting up my diary to
create an ordered space for reflections, a calendar, notes
and ideas.
I really enjoyed getting to know the other residents throughout
the month; there was a balance of having space to myself
and being with other creative minds. We would eat breakfast,
go for walks, swim in the lake, play drawing games, watch
films, talk, laugh, sauna, go for day trips, watch the sky, sit by
the fire, and dance in our barn-based Klub Krümble.
My mind felt calmer and more focused throughout the month
and since leaving, I have been thinking about what habits
I want to continue outside of Arteles and what I want to
change. The Back To Basics residency refreshed my way of
living and working and I take with me a lot of starting points
for new drawings and things to work on professionally and
personally.

Back to Basics program / SEPTEMBER 2019
Marie Bogoyevitch
Australia
www.instagram.com/marie.bogoyevitch.art
About
I am a Melbourne-based artist inspired by the beauty of the
natural world, the plants, the sea, the sky, to create works on
paper. A major part of my art practice builds on the attention
to detail and accuracy of centuries of traditional botanical
art. By presenting enlarged portraits of Australian native
plants, my aim is to encourage the viewer to appreciate
their incredible structures and beauty. By removing the
distractions of colour and creating each work with delicate
black ink marks, I seek to capture the abstract qualities of
leaves, seedpods or flowers. More recently, I have developed
interests in printmaking, based on the use of solarplate
etching to transform my drawings, photos and other natural
objects including leaves, flowers and feathers into prints.
This is allowing me to introduce colour, image overlays,
repetition and image distortion into my work in a way that
was not easily possible with drawing alone. During my time
in Arteles, I am looking forward to developing these ideas
further.
Thinking & Inking
I explored ideas around image collection, distortion and
magnification. Over many days throughout the residency
month, I painted black ink directly onto leaves, bark or
flowers of plants to create abstract images to retain the
essence of each plant form. Later, slicing and interweaving
these mages developed more complex inter-relationships,
provoking thoughts around living systems and our human
contact with them. In contrast, stippled ink drawings of
birch bark were a meditative escape exploring the detailed
beauty of the magical silver birch trees of the Finnish forests.
It was an incredible month at Arteles- watching the colours
of the forest change, seeing mists roll in over the lake, taking
the time to find new mushrooms and lichen, stargazing
and experiencing wonderful sunrises and sunsets – these
memories will influence many projects into the future.

Back to Basics program / SEPTEMBER 2019
Peter Pitout
South Africa
www.peterpitout.com
About
I am a South African artist, currently residing in the south of
France.
The coastal city of Durban, South Africa, where I spent my
childhood, has had a large impact on my work.
Memories in color of the KwaZulu-Natal coastline and of
the Indian ocean, have remained with me and influenced my
palette greatly.
The diverse cultural landscape, heavily influencing my
relationships with others and my personal conception of the
human condition.
Its mainly from these origins, that I believe, my principal
subjects of choice arose
- Human form and identity and ethereal landscapes.
Beyond the symbolism of my work, there is the creative
process itself. It’s an essential part of me, that I need and
depend on. Studio time, the unfolding of a new piece, and the
act of painting, in itself, is what drives me.
Animistic Observations
Arteles was a time of silent reflection.
A time to invite nature back in.
The context of the residency, induced a gradual dissipation,
of the need to research and classify.
No need to name the days, the trees, the town…
A new found freedom of abstract analysis, of things not
known,
led me to artificial constellations, maps of nowhere and
seasonal based color studies.
It was liberating, and an essential element of my experience
I hope to conserve.
I discovered an ancient light.
Light amongst the clouds.
Light on the lake.
Static in the mist.
Lightning in a cloudless sky.
Starlight and Auroras.
Light Being.
One subject, I’ll take with me moving forward.
The impact of the surrounding environment.
The river in the sky.
The movement of the clouds.
The reflections on the lake.
Bodies of water scattered amongst the landscape.
Analysis of the displacement of water arose.
Ideas on the history of the storm are forming.
I’ve left Arteles with newly formed ideas concerning my work
and concrete future projects in mind.
The experience was both one of artistic exploration and a
moment of very personal self analysis.
Many elements of which, Im still working through …
It was a special, privileged time and space, to discover,
contemplate and crystalize new ideas.
I re-evaluated what art could be, thanks to the artists I was
fortunate to share the residency with.
I am eternally grateful to the Arteles team, for inviting me on
this beautiful and unforgettable journey.

Back to Basics program / SEPTEMBER 2019
Chiho Iwase
Japan
www.chihoiwase.com
About
I am a visual artist based in London. In my practice, drawing
is one of my essentials to expand on my ideas and build up
my observational skills. Therefore, my work generally begins
with drawing and is developed into painting and sculpture.
I am currently working on portrait paintings which are
not reproduction of individual expressions but refer to
our sensibility and spiritual energy. I attempt to portray
contemporary mythological figures rising up within my
imaginary narratives based on my social experiences and
cultural background. I also focus on depicting human beings
as parts of nature and tend to add abstract expressions
inspired by natural phenomenon. I am searching potential of
portrait paintings and approaching functions of portraits in
ancient believes and primitive societies.
Animistic Observations
I caught sight of trees with branches looking like arms when I
was in the train from Helsinki to Tampere. Each branch had a
different expression and every tree was showing its emotions.
That image had been in my mind during the residency.
I had grown up in Japan and the nature worship behind
Japanese culture always influences my artwork directly
and indirectly. Shinto, Japanese original religion, has full of
animistic thoughts. The term animism is used for primitive
cultures and generally considered to be naive. However,
the idea of non-human beings having souls is still found in
everyday life in Japan and I believe that makes Japanese
culture unique. Considering about animism is also an
occasion to face modern issues in different angles. Animistic
life indicates logical relationships between human and nonhuman
beings. I have tried to reflect that view in my art but
recognised myself loosing the sense of animism.
Arteles gave me an opportunity to observe nature in animistic
way as I realised that I could only open the doors of my
perception when I feel I am a part of nature. I walked around
sketching and I was purely inspired by the nature. The talking
clouds drifting in the blue sky, forest dressed in autumn
costumes, fog flowing on the field like a dragon, countless
stars blinking in darkness, fallen tree walking on the lake, and
mushrooms mysteriously grown…
I came back to London and saw a group of mushrooms
growing in my garden for the very first time. A mushroom
fairy must follow me.

Back to Basics program / SEPTEMBER 2019
Lian Bell
Ireland
www.lianbell.com
About
As an artist, set designer, and arts manager I do lots of
different kinds of work. Sometimes I imagine spaces that
communicate to an audience, that augment or challenge
an audience’s reading of a live performance, that try to give
people a different way of looking at the world around them.
Sometimes I make art that considers our intimacy with objects
and spaces – and how those things exist in our memories
and imaginations. Sometimes I work with artists to help them
safeguard the time they need to think creatively, to introduce
them to new ideas and new people. Sometimes I embed
myself into arts organisations to deliver events. I always work
with groups of people in organic and collaborative ways to
imagine and forge our own path through unknown territory.
Conversations and walking are always important parts of my
process, and sometimes are the outcome too.
Profile photo by Conor Horgan
Silence, circles, conversations
My time in Arteles feels like it might be a stepping off point,
but I don’t know yet where I’m stepping off to. I don’t usually
make work on my own, so this was a challenge and an
opportunity for me to see what kind of things emerged from
myself alone. I came with no specific project in mind and
tried to listen hard and follow interesting thoughts as they
appeared.
I took photographs, I came across unexpected new friends,
I made things with my hands and gave them away, I wrote
things and kept them to myself, I drew things and burned the
drawings, I cycled very slowly and waved at passing cars.
I thought a lot about hospitality, about obligation, about
misremembered colours, about hugs, about being happily
lost in translation, about rowan trees, about things in pairs.
I tried to think about my brain from the inside. I tried to
recalibrate how I think about the body that carries that brain
around. I tried not to think about what to do with all these
thoughts.
For the month we had no phones and limited internet, and
being removed from the world was pure pleasure. It felt
good to be among people who were always fully present. It
felt good to be warmed through by the sauna. I was happily
selfish and missed no one. I stopped reading the news, and
haven’t started again. I ate too much smoked salmon. Being
introduced to meditation and starting a daily practice gave
me something new that I’ve taken into my life. The beautiful
land, the changing clouds, and the little gravel roads around
Haukijärvi are still in my thoughts every day. I’m very grateful
for the lessons in how to be still and quiet and present.

Back to Basics program / SEPTEMBER 2019
Mapi Rivera
Spain
www.mapirivera.com
About
Creation is for me a path of initiation, of approach to the
Mystery, a way of transcending my boundaries as human
being. Photography is my main means of expression. I am not
interested in photographing the moment, but in documenting
interior states; visions, dreams, vivid and experienced
perceptions. My photography is felt, pre-felt, since there is a
previous preparation, on a physical, emotional, psychic and
spiritual level.
Through the photographic images I believe and I re-create
(“Creo porque creo”. In Spanish this is a play on words). And
I create because I believe in the regenerating and healing
power of images. For this reason I intend to create images
from love, joy, enthusiasm, so that, in turn, they have the
power to broaden our heart, widen the vision of the beholder
and point the way back to our true selves.
Kääntää (elävän elämän) juuri
I traveled to the end of the earth (Finlandia) to reverse my
roots (käänna juuri), restore and orient them towards the
living light from the center of my heart. I didn’t know it before
going, but I realized when I arrived at that place of wide
horizons and huge skies.
I was told through a dream to procure gold leaves in order
to transform some roots that I’ve found in the forest. The
gold leaf is an element that has been used throughout
the centuries, both in the east and in the west, to restore
works of art and cracked objects. The skies of the baroque
altarpieces and the cracks of the Kintsugi pottery inspired by
the Japanese wabi-sabi philosophy, are symbolic wounds,
access roads to the supernatural.
In this place where I was a foreigner, I felt at home and I
recovered my inner space. I uprooted my fears, deployed
hidden experiences that lost their strength when I brought
them to light. Finally, I focused all that power to make a total
turn towards pure love, the sensitive manifestation of living
light.
From the present moment and focused on my future, I
uprooted my past, healed my own wounds, and surrendered
myself to living life (elävän elämän).
* The photos I present are not definitive images but works in
progress

Back to Basics program / SEPTEMBER 2019
Hiten Bawa
South Africa
www.hitenbawa.co.za
About
Hiten Bawa is an artist, architect and Accessibility
Consultant based in Johannesburg, South Africa. Hiten is a
profoundly deaf person with bilateral cochlear implants. He
works primarily with acrylic paints, watercolours and inks
to express his cultural identity and perspectives of people
with disabilities. Bawa’s artwork overlaps his interest in the
South African Indian diaspora and South Africa’s Apartheid
based architectural structures which manipulate access as
a medium of control. Bawa also goes on to parallel the hand
signals of sign language with Classical Indian Dance hand
movements and local taxi hand directions in a creole styled
visual language from his unique perspective.
He holds a Master of Architecture (Prof) degree from the
University of Cape Town and runs his own creative practice
called Studio HB. He is currently working on designing
barrier-free environments for people with disabilities across
housing, transportation, interior design, urban design and
landscape design. Bawa was a finalist for the inaugural SA
TAXI Foundation Art Award in 2015 and is a part of the J.P.
Morgan Abadali Art Collection.
The Architecture of Painting
My time at Arteles was filled with periods of deep
introspection, experiments and engaging in multiple creative
processes from designing a residential house to sketching
and painting. It was a good opportunity for me to re-evaluate
my creative practice which had been pulling me in different
directions and return to the basics of drawing and painting as
well as what it means to be a visual artist.
Taking the cue from the program title, Back to Basics, I
returned to experimenting with different painting techniques,
creating colour swatches and compiled a library of scaled
architectural elements. My creative process started with
the elements of the art and drawing inspirations from my
surrounding including the magical forests of Finland. The
process then evolved into an exploration of stories about the
South African Indian diaspora inspired by Ahmed Essop’s
book “The Haji and Other Stories”.
The outcomes of the process are a portraiture painting of an
Indian bride and two unremarkable buildings in downtown
Johannesburg called Master Mansions and Orient House that
featured in Essop’s stories. The painting of Master Mansions
incorporated South African hand signs and Indian influences
along with explosive colours scheme to convey my identity
as a South African Indian.

Back to Basics program / AUGUST 2019
Jason Wright
Canada
www.jasonwright.ca
About
Jason Wright is a practicing artist and arts educator based
in Vancouver. Jason teaches with the Vancouver School
Board, Arts Umbrella, and is faculty at Kwantlen Polytechnic
University where he teaches drawing and sculpture. Jason
has participated in various teaching initiatives including the
Vancouver Biennale/ Liceo Boston Open Borders project
in Bogota, Columbia, Connected North (Northern Arts
Connection), Arts Umbrella Teen Scholarship Program and
Arts Umbrella Summer Teen Intensive.
In the summer of 2019, Jason presented his arts-based
educational research at the INSEA World Congress at the
University of British Columbia and exhibited new work at the
Arbutus Gallery, KPU-Surrey Campus.
Jason has a BFA in Visual Arts from Simon Fraser University, a
BEd in Art Education from the University of British Columbia,
and an MFA in Sculpture from the University of Regina.
Pedagogical Drawings
I came to Arteles wanting to draw (which is good, because
I brought a lot of paper and pens and pencils). I spent the
last year thinking about drawing in relation to teaching, (I’m
a drawing teacher), drawing-as-pedagogical-action, drawing
that shows and guides, and I spent a fair bit of time looking
at instructional manuals and step-by-step DIY drawings and
examining how they function, and how simple-not-simple
IKEA instructions and beautifully rendered architectural
drawings, and even quickly drawn maps on napkins for
confused tourists can still be useful, even in the age of
YouTube tutorials and Google searches, and whether usevalue
has any place in art at all, really.
In Arteles, I tried to draw like those schematics and diagrams,
yet the early drawings felt superficial and a bit illustrative and
empty, and I became frustrated by the stupidity of trying to
mimic these real-world things, mimicking the arrows and
squiggled lines of instruction in aid of something helpful and
utilitarian. So I embraced the non-utility of them all. I began
to create diagrams for nothing-in-particular, how-to drawings
for non-sensical acts, undecipherable charts accompanied
by working notes (equally without rhyme-or-reason), and
simple (comedic, smart-ass) disruptions of the recognizable.
Blueprints of folly. For folly’s sake. (Which sounds like a
pretty nice swear. like “For folly’s sake, stopping eating all
the licorice.”)
The Finnish landscape made it’s way into the drawings
too, the black and white birches in particular (tall drawings
themselves).
Plus there was sausages and cider.

Back to Basics program / AUGUST 2019
Jojin Van Winkle
USA
www.jojinprojects.com
About
Jojin Van Winkle is a visual artist, writer and assistant
professor of art, teaching foundations and new media. Her
film/video and audio practice centers around the practice of
listening, focusing on resilience, environmental stewardship
and human rights issues. Her current research is a
multimedia, documentary-based project which examines the
roles and impacts of destruction in everyday lives of women
in rural areas.
Van Winkle has participated in artist residencies internationally
and nationally. She exhibited large-scale installation art
across the United States before working in video and film.
She is an associate producer for the documentary, “The
Land Beneath Our Feet” (2016, 60 min.) and the USA-based
cinematographer for PBS/ Independent Lens documentary,
“In the Shadow of Ebola”, (2015, 27 min.).
Jojin has a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) and a Master of Arts
(MA) from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, both focused
on film and video. Her Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) is from
the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She enjoys the
experience of “flow” through meditation, running, swimming,
scuba diving, and being outdoors.
Destruction Project Studies
My first day at Arteles I took a run. Parked on a nearby
property were several dented cars with racing number
painted on them. Curious, I wrote the neighbor, dropping off
a translated letter in their mailbox.
A week later experiences unfolded. Kai who owns the racing
cars and keeps them at this parents’ farm, agreed to talk with
me.
Kai brought out more cars from the barns as we discussed
Jokamiesluokka (Jokkis), an unique racing sport. During the
next several weeks, I meet his partner Tiina, also a Jokkis
driver, got to know them as a family, joining them at their
nearby summer cottage and taking portraits of them with
their daughter.
I attended a Jokkis race in Laitila. Kai introduced me to Ilona.
I photographed her preparing her orange VW bug, racing and
winning the women’s competition.
In Jokkis—the playing field embraces equity. At the end of
the competition, if someone wants your car, you have to put
it up to be sold via a lottery.
I spent time documenting Kai’s “car graveyard” that is really
his spare parts storage. Old cars are nestled in the forest,
enveloped in moss and lichen. His very first racing car lives
there amongst other treasures.
At the start of my residency, I worked on a narrative film script,
“Driving in Reverse”, writing 40 pages. I ran daily, culminating
with a 14km run to a local veggie buffet. I saunaed as much
as possible at Arteles and the Wednesday’s public sauna.

Back to Basics program / AUGUST 2019
Andrew Goddard
Australia
www.andrewgoddard.art
About
Andrew Goddard is a sonic and visual artist based in
Melbourne, Australia. Andrew’s practice at present generally
begins with a process of material collection; using various
recording technologies to collect sonic, visual and sculptural
materials, which are then presented in an installation
context. This allows the viewer the freedom to navigate the
relationships between elements in a spatially and temporally
unfolding environment. Having recently completed his
Honours year in Fine Arts at RMIT, Andrew is seeking to
expand upon the projects developed during this study in
order to prototype new works.
Observe, Transduce, Transform
When I arrived at Arteles at the beginning of the month, I
had brought with me a range of audio recording and lighting
equipment, and had a fairly open plan to work on developing
my knowledge with the equipment through a process of
material collection and prototyping. I found the combination
of the landscape, a mediation routine, the lack of internet
and the nearby presence of such wonderful artists to be a
really fertile environment for working through ideas. I ended
up developing several projects as outcomes, including a
small number of sculptural works, which were relatively new
territory for me.

Back to Basics program / AUGUST 2019
Carly Seller
UK
www.carlyseller.com
About
I am a multi-disciplinary artist, artist facilitator, and yoga
teacher based in Plymouth. Through my playful and meditative
practice, I respond to the intertwining of the land, the body
and the breath. I create quiet, observant work using processled
practices that navigate a balance between control and
interruption. My work spans photography, moving image,
textiles, objects, and performance. Opening my practice
up to experiment with different mediums has enabled me to
intuitively explore states of flow, and find fluidity and stillness
in my making process. My current research involves sacred
spaces and places, and the innate healing qualities of the
environment.
Sensitivity. Uncertainty. Discomfort.
I arrived at Arteles with questions rather than ideas.
I went swimming in lakes. I sat in meditation. I felt the intense
heat of the sauna followed by the shock of cold water. I
moved my body on my mat, and then off of it. I got naked in
nature, and was bitten by mosquitoes, many times. During
these experiences, I felt heightened sensitivity, uncertainty,
vulnerability, and discomfort. These feelings were often
followed by the sensation of release; this is where my work
came from.
Following a desire to work with performance, I learnt new
things about my body and encountered some limits. Some
performances were long, taking days to prepare and hours
to action. Some performances had the same duration as the
daily meditations. Other performances were fleeting, within
the 10-second parameter of my cameras self-timer function.
There was a simplicity to life at Arteles that was reflected in
the simplicity of the modes of working I found myself using.
I found new ways of working, more sustainable ways of
maintaining my practice.

Back to Basics program / AUGUST 2019
Afternoon Collective
(Agnieszka Foltyn & Per Stian Monsås)
Norway
mishifoltyn.tumblr.com
About
Afternoon Collective is a multi-disciplinary arts collective by
Per Stian Monsås and Agnieszka Foltyn founded in 2016. Our
goal is to highlight the role of art in every day spac-es and
life, creating a durational exchange or dialogue between site
and the public. Through site-specific installations and social
performative interventions, our work is at once provocative,
spectacular, ephemeral, subtle, monumental, temporal,
long-lasting, accessible, and mundane.
ALLOFIT
We want to directly engage in everyday life with art.
Through our work, we define value.
We make art present.
We forage, ferment, grow, and change.
We live our politics.
We respond to the physical and social context in which we
are located.
We participate in community.
Our projects aim to:
Bring people together
In meaningful ways
In a certain space
For a certain duration.
• cider workshop • pizza oven • shooting range • collective
dinners • Babette’s Feast • portal raising • nest walk •
kombucha making • Flåklypa Grand Prix • mushroom
foraging • berry popsicles • Pina • cider party • cider
balancing activity • pinnebrød •

Back to Basics program / AUGUST 2019
Michael Heyman
USA
www.nonsenseliterature.com
About
Michael Heyman is a scholar and writer of literary nonsense,
poetry, and children’s literature, and a Professor of
Literature at Berklee College of Music in Boston, where he
teaches courses on Children’s Literature and music, Poetry,
Performance Poetry, and Arthropodiatry. He is the head
editor of The Tenth Rasa: An Anthology of Indian Nonsense.
His poems and stories for children and adults can be found
in the journals Poetry International, Solstice, and FUSION;
and in the books The Puffin Book of Bedtime Stories, The
Moustache Maharishi and other unlikely stories, and This
Book Makes No Sense: Nonsense Poems and Worse, the
latter of which he also edited. His latest work wanders into
the hills and dills and dales and bales of sound poetry for
children.
Moosefly Madrigals
Representative of the itchiness of artistic yearning, the
fruitless struggle for home and family, the overcommitment
to all the wrong things, the persistence in folly, the triumph of
wrong-headedness in the face of flaming failure housed in the
cathedral of corrupted endeavor ensconced in the flaming
fruitcake of futility, my “Ode to the Moosefly” will surely be
better than the Cats reboot and an antidote to Schprongfest
2019.

Back to Basics program / AUGUST 2019
Kerry Downey
USA
www.kerrydowney.com
About
I am an interdisciplinary artist and educator based in
New York City, with a practice that includes video, works
on paper, performance and writing. My work explores
relationality through the many ways we inhabit our bodies
and access forms of power. I am interested in the boundaries
of the self and how we are physically, psychologically, and
socio-politically entangled in our environments. Driven
by experimentation, my techniques present the body as
sensorium and the self as process – a visceral, materially rich
place of flux and multiplicity. Stemming from my experiences
as a queer and gender nonconforming person, I’m inspired
by art’s ability to help us connect with our vulnerability and
desire. My art poses new models for transformation that
challenge capitalist modes of production and recognition.
This is a world of messiness and reverie.
Hauntings
While at Arteles I finished a series of drawings (over two years
in the making) and developed writing that accompanies the
images. These writings, both poetry and prose, act as a
parallel body of work, exploring the same concepts, themes,
imagery, and sensations as the works on paper. My process
for both drawing and writing involved shifting from automatic
drawing and free writing to careful editing. My practice was
deeply influenced by my time in nature - sitting and walking
meditation, hiking and biking, alone and with others.

Back to Basics program / JULY 2019
Anjali Khosla
USA
www.anjalikhosla.com
About
Anjali Khosla is a writer and a professor of journalism &
design at The New School. Her fiction, nonfiction, and poetry
have appeared in Gossamer, Fast Company, Tarpaulin Sky,
Juked, the New York Daily News, Glitter Pony, and other
publications. Broadsides of her poems have been printed
by the Massachusetts Center for Renaissance Studies and
Broadsided Press. This past March, her first poetry chapbook
and chatbot were published by Wendy’s Subway and Nor By
Press in Brooklyn. Now Anjali is working on a novel.
Water Writing
I swam nearly every day.
In this way, I made enormous progress on my novel.
“My father’s father died before my father landed in Sydney. I
suppose he was my grandfather, my Dada, though it is hard
to match such names to people you never met because they
were not interested in meeting you. My father brought me
back, from the Sydney airport, which he did not leave before
returning to the States, a t-shirt printed with aboriginal
artwork, a Quantas vanity set (eye mask/kidnapper mask,
bar of soap/weapon, sewing kit/more weapons, toothbrush/
also a weapon, comb/harmonica, pre-moistened towelette/
no other use, tiny toothpaste that tasted like glue, zip-up
pouch in which I stored my rubbery Alvin and The Chipmunks
figurines) and some small souvenir koalas, each one wielding
a paper Australian flag glued to a toothpick, if you squeezed
their backs their hand paws and feet paws would spread
apart and you could clip them to your jacket or your pant
leg, your lampshade, a dried-out purple marker, the dining
table edge, your My Little Seahorse Pony’s petroleum back
as it bobbed in the bathtub or your then-patient mother’s hair
as it cascaded down the back of a chair, glossy as a black
grackle’s wing. Arjun would attach his to his penis just to
upset us. I still have one of the koalas, it’s clipped to a hanger
in my clothes closet. The flag is long gone.”

Back to Basics program / JULY 2019
Carlie Schoonees
South Africa
www.soundcloud.com/carlie-schoonees
About
I am classical music composer who likes to explore different
sound worlds, colours and techniques and the way one can
create music out of vastly different forms of inspiration. The
themes in my music vary from my own profound experiences,
nature and mental health to atrocities such as the holocaust
and apartheid. I also compose absolute and film music and
enjoy musical problem solving. In my future work I aim to
focus more on social issues such as gender-related themes
and circumstances and events in my home country.
Braille to music
The main composition I worked on at Arteles is about The
Aversion Project. During Apartheid homosexual and bisexual
men in the South African Defense Force were submitted to
electric shock therapy in an attempt to change their sexual
preferences. If these men did not seem “cured” they were
given involuntary gender reassignment surgery without
proper medical care. Many of the victims committed suicide.
I have come to learn about this atrocity only on the internet
and nobody I have asked in South Africa has ever heard
thereof. Thus the theme of this composition is being unheard
and unseen. This led me to the idea of converting the text
of the Wikipedia article on The Aversion Project into Grade
1 Braille which I taught myself at Arteles. I used the dotted
patterns to construct rhythms, textures and chords. The
composition will be an interdisciplinary stage production in
multiple parts. It is still a work in progress. The aim of this
composition is to spark discourse about gender identity
and confront the audience with this painful chapter in South
African and LGBTQ+ history.

Back to Basics program / JULY 2019
Dan Shay
UK
About
I seek to create space for us to reflect on our relationship
with technology.
My work has explored experimental film, installation,
performance and visuals for live music and theatre - with a
consistent thread of the projected moving image. I have been
drawn to working with projection as it represents a metaphor
for the material and immaterial spaces in our lives, the visible
and invisible. I am interested in exploring experimental forms
of moving image and projection.
This situation enables me perspective on my ongoing
practice, time to advance my ongoing research and develop
narrative for my Navigating Technologies project, and a
comparative natural context to respond to.Going offline for
this residency provides a valuable opportunity to evaluate
the effect of contemporary online connectivity on focus,
privacy and mental state.
Aspiring to cultivate a greater awareness of our mediated
ways of seeing the world around us, and the impact of this
on us as humans. Through this we can develop and guide
ourselves towards a deliberate, appropriate balance and
affirming our autonomy in our world of technical immersion.
Practising Balance
My time at Arteles was reflective, engaged and prolific.
Responding to the rural environment and residency context
lead me to complete a series of varied projects within my
ongoing field of research into how technology mediates
our experience in the world. Establishing a well-balanced
routine of research and studio practice, engagement,
experimentation and meditative reflection has set a valuable
precedent.
Comprising of personal and collaborative projects over
the month I created: a balancing performance video, live
projection mapping on woods to sound, crafting a cardboard
viewfinder, converting a Sauna into a Camera Obscura,
projected international photographic collages, a performance
walk to Nokia (in Nokian boots), A handmade Hashtag fishing
Line, Boot phone connecting people photograph, Interactive
installation of ‘luminous woods’, projected poetry dialectic
and installing a working model lighthouse on the Hämeenkyrö
Jarvi.
Applying a playful approach to serious issues around
our relationship with technology allowed for instinctive
outcomes. Constructing these prompted valuable capacity
for consideration and conversation. The month ‘offline’
allowed experience of one extreme to counterpoint habits
of excessive time ‘online’ and this perspective helps to
find considered balance. Throughout this I reflect on the
term ‘Nature’, exploring a hypothesis that as technological
developments have become absorbed into our phenomena
of the physical world; we could now look to re-define ‘nature’.

Back to Basics program / JULY 2019
Sylvia Montesinos
USA
www.sylviamontesinos.com
About
Sylvia Montesinos began painting as a child, and in spite of
studying graphic design, her curiosity about human biology
and behavior drew her to medicine and psychiatry. She went
on to earn an MD specializing in psychiatry in 2002 and
worked for eight years in mental health. When opportunity
arose, Montesinos decided to refocus her efforts on her first
love by studying art at the University of New Mexico. Born
and raised in Costa Rica with a bicultural background, she
has been inspired by the many painters in her Ecuadorian
father’s family.
Montesinos’ current body of work is informed by past
and recent memories as well as by the natural residential
surroundings where she lives in Florida. She responds both
intuitively and visually to the composition as it unfolds before
her thus exploring impermanence and the mutability of the
moment. Analogous with the idea of “going with the flow”,
she allows water to make its way across the paper creating
organic forms, as it plays with the medium. After a recent
health crisis, unpredictable, amorphous, permanent ink blots
have become metaphors of her life. Painting has become a
way for her to grapple with uncertainty. Like a splatter of black
ink on a white sheet of paper, mediums such as watercolor,
gouache and ink reflect her reality—this spontaneity,
unpredictability, and ephemeral sense of control we all feel
in our lives.
Memory and Space
Finnish countryside, open space, a house full of kindred
spirits, daily meditation, a day of silence, and nightless
nights resulted in the emergence of fragments of memories
assumed lost. During a brief time three years ago after a
stroke, when vision meant seeing shadows, visual perception
no longer was the means to catalog experience and sound
became the principal sensory experience. Two bodies of
work emerged exploring fragments of memory through
abstractions depicting sound and limited visual perception.

Back to Basics program / JULY 2019
Ea ten kate
Sweden / Netherlands
www.eatenkate.com
About
My practice revolves around the way in which all cultures,
through all ages, choose to signify that objects have value,
are sacred, are of importance. How we tend towards
symmetry, rhythm, patterns and bright colors.
This fascination stems from people reacting to my work,
different people being convinced that the same work was
definitely influenced by traditional crafts of a people or region
they recently visited or were otherwise interested in. So one
and the same work could be, according to viewers, from the
Amazon, from India, and from Lapland.
These interactions made me realize that there are far more
similarities than differences between how we visually express
that things are of value, like humans are born with this innate
visual vocabulary that is influenced by its surroundings but
still follows the same basic shapes and patterns.
My work does not represent any specific culture, it represents
humanity’s urge to create culture from whatever is around
them. Using textile to create my works is a very deliberate
choice. It is a tactile material, engaging more senses than
just sight. It is soft and harmless, yet capable of carrying
identities, uniting people, and projecting vast ideas in one
single work.
The resulting works and projects range in size from intimate
to monumental. Color plays an important role, and works
evolve organically – each segment relating to the previous
and informing the next one.
Bits of Nature
Instead of using the nature around Arteles as an inspiration,
I used it as a library of building blocks. Breaking down plants
to their smallest components, I rebuilt them into shapes that
merge the natural and the man-made to form the mythical.
On a practical level i experimented with ways of preserving
plant matter and the construction of embroidery into 3D
shapes.

Back to Basics program / JULY 2019
Phil Harris
USA
www.pharris.art
About
I’ve spent about two-thirds of my life working primarily in
photography, with some detours into other media. My major
preoccupations over the years have ranged from history,
memory and narrative handmade photo processes to the
spiritual quality of deterioration. My current work is about the
patient observation, recording, acceptance and encoding of
the processes of time and change.
”Duration” photographic project
The Duration project is a photographic depiction of the
passage of time and the process of change. The same scene
is photographed multiple times with a handheld camera. The
resulting images are then stitched together in the computer
and printed on paper or another substrate at a large enough
scale to see clearly, both close up and far away. At Arteles, I
used the quiet and drama of the summer Finnish landscape,
waters and sky to push this project further.

Back to Basics program / JULY 2019
Pamela Salen
USA
www.pamelasalen.com
About
My interdisciplinary creative practice and research is
significantly informed by the documentation of lived
experience utilizing narrative and visual storytelling. My
practice foregrounds positive psychology, self-reflection,
embodied creative processes, and visualization as a way of
sense-making. Through material and digital-mediated ways
of documenting and coding everyday lived experiences,
I generate insights and create meaningful and authentic
narratives that address issues of: memories and domestic
space, displacement, loss and healing, social and individual
wellbeing, gender equity, and belonging by examining
psychological, emotional and spatial environments. From
visualizing ideas; to working with materials; to the physical
and digital spaces that we occupy; to the places we inhabit—
through deep observation, I discover and uncover patterns
and make connections that challenge the status quo to raise
awareness about the above issues to provoke meaningful
social and individual change. I work with processes of image
making that combines analogue and digital photography,
paper sculpture, and dimensional typography to capture the
emotional aspects of narratives and as a new way of seeing
these issues and reconstructing experiences.
I was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA. I hold a AAS
(2000), BFA (2009) and PhD (2015) in Visual Communication.
From 2010 to 2019, I lived and worked in Melbourne, Australia.
I am currently looking for my next destination to call home.
You Are Home
I am no longer searching for home. I am no longer seeking
an address, dwelling or destination to claim my sense of
place, identity or belonging. I am home. My body, my being,
my presence is home. My connection to matter and spirit
is home. Everyday I run to meditate, exercise my strength
and exhale negativity. I walk to collect beauty and absorb
mysteries and histories. I inhale the wind and the gravel. I
collect and create to make joy, patterns and marks to signify
what is felt. What I have made, arranged and pieced together
during my residency is my home.

Back to Basics program / JULY 2019
Hannah Donovan
USA
www.hannahdonovanart.com
About
I am a poet, photographer, and maker of all things wacky
and whimsical. My art, in whatever form it may take, helps
deepen my connection to mind, body, and spirit as I navigate
this life. We are our only constant companions, and how do
we make sense of that, come home to that, find solace in
that, and expand that to involve higher selves and deeper
relationships with others?
Inhabiting the realm between fantasy and reality, my poetry
details my inner landscape as I engage with the outer world.
My writing excavates unexplored truths and unearths what
confuses, alienates, depresses, or uplifts me. It awakens me
to what is, what has been, and what could be in terms of a life
well-lived and authentically carved.
While my poetry serves as a reflective, often serious selfexpression,
my photography, collage work, embroidery, and
drawings make their home in lightness and quirk. I seek to
capture the humor of everyday objects and the cohesion of
unlikely pairs, twisting the viewer’s attention to see what they
may have missed as they were rushing through their day.
My work as a whole reveals in me the playful and the pensive,
the polished and the rough. I offer my creations to my
community and beyond as a chance to be seen, heard, and
understood, hopefully opening the door for others to discover
their deep wells of creativity, their capacity for growth, and
their truest version of self.
Back to Play
Freedom to play was at the forefront of my experience. The
structure of the program (no phone, no internet) allowed
for me to create, experiment, fail, and succeed without the
distraction or self-judgment that technology and social
media can sometimes foster in me.
I began the month by carefully cutting up a book, page by
page, to create erasure poems that could both stand alone
and converse as a collective unit about longing, loss, and
the destruction anxious thought and action can have on the
psyche. I also wrote original poems throughout the month
(my primary medium), and as my bond deepened with my
fellow residents I wrote two poems collaboratively with
another poet at the program.
Much to my surprise and delight, what I am most proud
of creating during my time was in a brand new medium.
About halfway through the month, I stumbled across some
cyanotype chemicals and decided to experiment, having
always wanted to try. Using a mixture of Finnish flora and
shapes cut from magazines, I created visual poems on both
plain paper and magazine clippings and then exposed the
treated pages to the never-ending summer light. Some of the
cyanotypes explore the interconnectedness of humans and
the natural world, while others simply celebrate the variety of
shapes and textures found in Finnish plant life.

Back to Basics program / JULY 2019
Stuart Cooke
Australia
About
Born in 1980, Stuart grew up in Sydney and Hobart,
Australia. He has travelled widely, and lived in Argentina,
Chile, England, Mexico and the Philippines. One of the
most widely-published and -recognised Australian poets of
his generation, he is the winner of a number of prestigious
grants and prizes, including the Dorothy Porter Prize and the
Gwen Harwood Prize. His second book of poems, Opera,
was hailed as “remarkable” by Cordite Poetry Review, and
JM Coetzee called his recently published collection, Lyre,
“a triumph.” In 2012 he completed a doctoral dissertation
on Indigenous Australian and Chilean poetics, which was
later published as the critical work, Speaking the Earth’s
Languages (2013). His innovative translation of an Aboriginal
(Nyigina) song cycle from Australia’s West Kimberley,
George Dyuŋgayan’s Bulu Line (2014), received international
attention, and was included in the 50th anniversary edition
of Jerome Rothenberg’s seminal anthology, Technicians of
the Sacred (2017). Stuart has also published short fiction and
creative non-fiction, and many translations of Latin American
poets, including João Cabral de Melo Neto, Gabriela Mistral,
Pablo Neruda, Pablo de Rokha, Gianni Siccardi, and various
Mapuche poets from southern Chile. Stuart lives with his cat
Pablo in Brisbane, Australia, where he is a senior lecturer in
creative writing and literary studies at Griffith University.
A New Project
Back to Basics gave me the time and space to step out of
my normal practice (poetry & scholarly essay) and consider
a new project in a completely different form (creative prose).
I wanted to make the most of the opportunities - life without
internet or phones, daily meditation, a thriving workspace
with lots of different artists - so I deliberately went in to
the residency without too many plans or goals. Instead, I
wanted to see how wide I could cast my net: each day, in my
wandering, reading, meditation and conversations, ideas and
feelings about how to proceed would come to the surface,
and I tried to explore as many of these as possible. I didn’t
want to over-determine anything, either, so I tried to avoid
struggling for too long with any one scene or idea; rather,
my focus was on looking for emergent narrative threads
and themes, and experimenting with different structural
possibilities and voices. What emerged wasn’t much more
than a collection of fragments and notes, but together they
constitute something like a path forward, or a skeleton on
which my book will be able to grow. Given that the project
largely autobiographical, I needed time to sit with the history
of my self, no matter how uncomfortable it might be; I’m
really grateful for the opportunity to do this. If it weren’t for
Back to Basics, this book might never have begun.

New Course program / MAY 2019
Miranda Gavin
UK
www.outsideherart.com
About
I create works using photography, text, film and performance,
sometimes under the guise of a persona, The Handbag
Projectionist. This work is personally motivated and
responds to my life and passions—it is raw and intuitive with
the process being as important as the outcome.
These bodies of work often explore identity, gender relations
and power dynamics using a variety of approaches that
embrace experimentation. Some are situated in domestic
contexts in which there is a focus on themes of love, abuse and
betrayal. The dissemination of the work, including the spaces
in which the work is shown, is as integral to the concept of
the work as its subject—context as well as content. Creative
personal self-expression knows no boundaries: it is porous,
flexible, dynamic and vital.
I am fascinated by life, by philosophy, psychology and the
human situation; by flora, fauna, stars and seas. Nature
grounds me, inspires me and heals me. I have had a varied life
and career. My life and work are difficult to separate and run
in tandem, often involving travel including living and working
abroad. I am very curious and like to peek round corners to
see what is there. I love narratives but also fragments and
find myself drawn to paradoxes.
Everything was covered in pollen
Dandelion clocks & Atlantis unbound
This was time out of time to experiment and play, to feel inner
sense and to share ideas, histories and food. My process
was a free form jazz song set to the rhythm of spring bursting
through the studio windows. It was rapid fire intoxication
and metamorphosis. The experience of pushing limits,
confronting dreams and of finding peace and structure
through ritual and receptiveness.

New Course program / MAY 2019
Brian Charles Patterson
USA
www.briancharlespatterson.com
About
I’m interested in consciousness and the role “art” plays as an
essential and universal language within it.
Rites
My work at Arteles was largely internal and long in coming.
The month was full of synchronicities and uncanny
coincidences that began as soon as I boarded my plane
for Finland. It immediately became clear big shifts were in
play. My creative work during the residency served as an
interface between the corporeal and ethereal; it shadowed
a deeper, intrapersonal work done through meditation,
ritual, and play. The work shown derives from the collision
of karmic cycles that run as deep as the elements and seem
to occur as predictably as an orbit. The making of this video
helped me heal and close unresolved chapters in my life that
have dogged me and my practice for years. It opened new
chapters with a greater, gratitude, compassion, and insight
into my trajectory as an earthly being.
https://briancharlespatterson.com/arteles-1

New Course program / MAY 2019
Julia & Sophia van der Putten
Netherlands
www.sophiavanderputten.com
About
Julia:
Dramaturgy, rituals, writing
Sophia and Julia van der Putten are sisters, both working in
the field of performance, dance and theatre in Amsterdam
and abroad.
Sophia (1992) is choreographer, performer and dance/theatre
teacher. Julia (1994) is dramaturg. In 2019 they collaborate
on the solo performance NOBODY, which will premier at
Amsterdam Fringe Festival the same year.
During their residency at Arteles they continue their research
for NOBODY. As well as establishing a healthy daily work
practise on a collaborative and individual level.
Sophia:
Movement, camera, rituals
My time at Arteles has been a deep inner journey of healing
my past and planting seeds for my future. In the first two
weeks of the residency I developed the base for my own
movement practice, together with my sister and collaborator
dramaturg Julia van der Putten. The practice, which I named
Chimera practice is based on physical experiences I had with
alienation from my body. In our research Julia and I question:
In which way are we in contact with our body? And what
happens if this contact is disrupted?
I ended the second week with an open studio, which the other
residents attended. I asked them for feedback on what they
experienced while watching me. Their feedback has played
an important role in deepening my practice.
The last two weeks I collaborated with video artist and
resident Brian Charles Patterson. We researched relations
between the body, camera and projection. Our collaboration
has been inspiring and fruitful to me. In the closure night we
presented a performance with movement, camera and voice
over, in which I researched the discrepancy between what is
shown in live performance of the body and on the projected
camera image.
I left Arteles with precious memories, my rituals of practice,
with trust in myself and with renewed energy and inspiration
for my art.
I started this residency under the title ‘dramaturg’ which in
my eyes means: not the artist.
Artistic yes, collaborator yes, academic author sometimes,
independent artist/author no.
The first few weeks I therefore spend working on my masters’
thesis and collaborating as dramaturg with my sister Sophia.
Especially the second week was very fulfilling and inspiring,
when we worked in the studio on her movement practice.
But I started to realise that this title of dramaturg was a safe
haven that I needed to be able to leave.
Thanks to the residency’s program, place and residents I
felt balanced again. Which is why I created and performed
a group ritual in the context of the workshop on personal
myths, in the second week. I called it ‘For the Remembering
of the Forgotten Words’ and it was fully complete with
singing, fire and the amazing words from the Earthsea books
by Ursula K. Le Guinn. Whilst preparing the ritual I wrote
down the following:
Steal, borrow, remember, contextualize, de-contextualize,
re-contextualise, use with care, listen, be quiet, stutter,
whisper, speak.
After the ritual I started doing just that: I borrowed some
confidence, remembered my love of writing, wrote a lot,
painted, had great conversations, danced, facilitated a
session on feedback (still a dramaturg), started to let go of
my fear of stuttering, and finally I spoke the words I wrote
myself out loud.
I claimed my creative authorship, which I will continue to
grow alongside my work as dramaturg and academic.

New Course program / MAY 2019
Rozina Suliman
Australia
www
About
Rozina Suliman is a theatre designer with a background in
installation art, independent curating and arts administration.
She holds a Bachelor of Fine Art from the Queensland College
of Art (2005) and a Bachelor of Production & Design from the
Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (2017).
Previous theatre work includes set and costume design
for The Talk and The Advisors (The Last Great Hunt),
costume design for Coma Land (Black Swan State Theatre
Company), Mangoes, earrings and a glimpse of hope,
The Wedding, Skinless and Ad Infinitum (LINK Dance
Company), The Threepenny Opera (WAAPA) and set design
for Grease (St Hilda’s Anglican College), Salon (Timothy
Brown Choreography) The Little Mermaid and Sleeping
Beauty (Ballet Theatre of Queensland) Video Set, Cavill Ave,
Slowdive, The Pitch and Hey Scenester! (Claire Marshall
Choreography) and Journey (Connect 2 Productions).
Rozina worked as design assistant to Bryan Woltjen on A
Flowering Tree (Opera Queensland) and Good Little Soldier
(Ochre Contemporary Dance Company) and Bruce McKinven
on Let the Right One In (Black Swan State Theatre Company).
She has also been part of the core creative team for the
Woodford Folk Festival Fire Event & Closing Ceremony since
2017, co-designing and making the Auryx puppets in 2017
and designing and making set sculptures in 2018.
Freedom, Fiddle, Frolick
“Rozina wholly embraced “time out of time” on the New
Course Residency at Arteles. Coming to the program without
a current project and a pending deadline was incredibly
freeing. It allowed her to fully disconnect from the outside
world and created space within which to explore and
interrogate her own creativity and ways of being.
Rozina spent her time spent fiddling with creativity in ways
that were outside of her usual ways of working, participating
in workshops, meditation and yoga practices and frolicking
in nature. She collected stimuli in abundance, new rituals,
experiences, memories and collaborators. She conducted
experiments in 2D art forms, did a group collage, re-wrote
and performed a myth, found her entelechy, re-discovered
a long lost writing practice, started a photographic series
involving the landscape and rubber boots, did a collaborative
animated performance of ‘Hope for the Flowers’, spent two
Sundays cooking with others for five hours creating themed
feasts for the rest of the group, started writing a series of
stories, visited land art nearby and walked and explored for
hours in the landscape near the residency as well as the local
nature reserve.
At times she struggled without a deadline, at times she
embraced it. Most importantly, she spent the time creating
from a detached perspective without judging the outcome.
The month was rich and full and the work she did at the
residency felt like just the beginning…

New Course program / MAY 2019
Anna Loren
Australia
www.annaloren.net
About
Anna Loren is an actor, theatre maker and educator. Former
Artistic Director of heartBeast Theatre, Loren studied at The
Actors Workshop, Brisbane and later at the Rose Bruford
College of Theatre and Performance, London, after being
granted a postgraduate scholarship. Here she developed her
skills in devised and experimental theatre practices, exploring
innovative modes of storytelling. Loren has trained with a
diverse range of companies, directors, voice and movement
specialists including Beatrice Pemberton (Complicitè),
Gabriel Gawin (Song of the Goat), Struan Leslie (Movement
RSC), Irina Brown (Director), Niamh Dowling (Alexander
Technique), Barbara Houseman (Voice RSC), LaBoite, Punch
Drunk, Zen Zen Zo and the Trinity International Playwriting
Festival. As a drama facilitator, she has taught for The Actors
Workshop and NIDA Open (Brisbane), as well as The Rose
Bruford Youth Theatre, NCS The Challenge and the Drama
Club (London).
An Australian woman, of Burmese-Indian descent, Anna is
strongly motivated by the need to diversify the landscape of
Australian Theatre and, by doing so, broaden our perspective
of the Australian experience. Through an MA and a string of
productions, Loren has explored ensemble-devised work,
as a way of taking greater ownership over her practice. Now
a participant in Playlab New-Writing Theatre’s Incubator
program, she is continuing this journey by writing new work
for the stage, work that better represents her as a theatre
maker and as a person and, that gives voice to suppressed
women’s narratives.
Visibility matters, and what place is more visible than centre
stage.
Find the Form
I arrived at Arteles with the concept for a play, and a pile
of relevant research. The program provided the space
and guidance necessary to take these abstract concepts,
and find the form into which to funnel them. I used the
opportunity to experiment with the language, shape and
form of the piece, through both collaboration and focused
solitude. While I had a clear idea of what I hoped to achieve,
there were many surprises along the way. I learned so much
more than I could have anticipated from Margi Brown Ash
and the other residents, many of whom have left a lasting
impact on me personally and, on my rituals of practice. In
leaving the program I can confidently say that I have found
the form, the voice and language of the play, and that I have
a clear roadmap moving forward into the next stages of
development.

New Course program / MAY 2019
Paige Cooper
Canada
www.twitter.com/paigesaracooper
About
I’m a fiction writer from the Canadian Rocky Mountains. I’m
interested in complicity and escapism in the face of this
slow-motion apocalypse we’re living in, which usually means
that my realist short stories have fabulist elements.
My first book, Zolitude (Biblioasis, 2018), won the 2018
Concordia University First Book Prize, was longlisted for
the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and was a finalist for both the
Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction, and the
Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction. CBC, Toronto
Star, The Walrus, The Globe and Mail, The Puritan, and Quill
& Quire all listed it among their best books of 2018.
I live in Montreal where I edit fiction for Cosmonauts Avenue
and pay the rent with freelance copywriting.
Next book
I came to Arteles with nothing but an image and a few
unfinished short stories, and left with the first two chapters
of a new novel. Am I too superstitious to describe it? Yes, I
am. But I haven’t been so excited about a project in a long
time.

New Course program / APRIL 2019
Luke Nicol
Canada
www.lukenicol.com
About
Originally from Canada, I have lived in Turku, Finland with my
family since 2015. I have primarily been a landscape painter
for about 15 years. My main interest has always been Lake
Superior, one of the world’s largest bodies of fresh water,
and its surrounding boreal forest.
Along with my landscape practice, I maintain an avid interest
in a range of human activities. I am fascinated by our use of
tools, equipment, and machinery for everything from shaping
land and providing for ourselves to communication and
personal expression. I like to use realist depictions of these
things, and our physical interactions with them, to explore
our versatility as a species.
Like many, I am concerned about climate change, and feel
that an in depth exploration of how and why we continue with
unsustainable activities that damage ecosystems will, if not
inspire change, at least help me to understand.
Human Activity Studies
My time at Arteles was used to create small, realist, acrylic
paintings of various human activities that can be linked
to climate change. I am interested in how we are able to
continue with activities despite knowledge of the ecological
harms they cause. The paintings depict some aspect of the
cycles of marketing, demand, production, or consumption.
These studies are preparatory work towards a future project
in which many elements will be combined into large paintings
that portray a large scope of human activity and its ecological
impacts.

New Course program / APRIL 2019
Courtney Cook
Australia
www.courtneycookartist.com
About
Exploring the idea of nostalgia, my work is layered just as
memories are. My practice navigates liminal space, the
threshold of the non-physical spaces between two points in
life. I am drawn to our vast internal worlds which are more
often than not, reflected in our external lives.
My work is process driven by colour, shape, shadow, form
and the varying emotions of life embed themselves into my
memory. These memories evolve into painterly thoughts,
which wait to be responded to in the studio. Through the
process of laying down material and intuitively placing
colours upon colours, shapes and forms evolve and the work
begins to take on a life of their own. This process is often
quick to start and then it eases into a slow, gentle and honest
dialogue about painting itself. I am not afraid to leave works
in places of untidiness. A place that leaves the viewer and
often myself wondering whether something is finished or
whether it is not.
In-between Finnished
I attended the Arteles without a project or expectation.
However, I did come with intentions. One being to establish
a practice and process that will be sustainable through life’s
challenges and restrictions. Through my time at Arteles I
adjusted my practice based on the limitations of space as
well as being limited in what surfaces I could paint on due
to luggage size and weight restrictions. Through exploring
these limitations, my process was pushed into a space
that opened up many doors for me to enter and explore. I
explored new concepts and ideas that had been wanting to
surface. I believe it was the surrender to these limitations that
have allowed my process to shift and change in a way that I
truly feel is going to be career long sustainability.

New Course program / APRIL 2019
Hazel Bell Koski
Canada
www.hazelbellkoski.com
About
Hazel is a self-directed, Metis woman of mixed Anishinaabe,
Finnish, Irish, and English heritage. Hazel was born and
raised on the unceded Coast Salish Territories of the
Səl̓ ílwətaʔ, Xʷməθkwəy̓ əm, & Sḵwx̱ wú7meshsi First Nations.
She is grateful to have been mentored by mountains, ferns,
eagles, bears, cedars, slugs, and barnacles.
She has a BFA in Film Studies from Ryerson Polytechnic
University and has maintained a multi-disciplinary arts
practice for over twenty years, including filmmaking,
painting, textiles, installations, public interventions, creative
facilitation, and stencil making.
The central themes of hazel’s art and life work are truth and
beauty, kinship and the radical inter-connection of all beings,
and colour and play.
Hazel is a bridge between Indigenous and European cultures,
youth and elders, and the human and more than human
world.
She has extensive experience working with diverse
intergenerational communities. She currently works with
an organization called, IndigenEYEZ, they use land based
learning and the creative arts to empower indigenous youth
and adults through out British Columbia.
Hazel has partnered and collaborated with many
organizations including Partners For Youth Empowerment
Global, Brittania Community Services Centre, the Toronto
District School Board, Sketch Working Arts for Street Youth,
The Transformative Learning Centre University of Toronto,
Toronto Public Libraries, the Institute of Noetic Sciences,
and Grassy Narrows First Nation.
Her first language is colour.
My feet listen
“I had a wonderful time at Arteles. Deep gratitude to Ida,
Carrie, and Teemu for the support and care.
I spent my time resting, reading, exploring the rituals of my
practice, painting, sewing, stencil making, and being guided
and mentored by the fabulous Dr. Margi Brown Ash (MBA).
While at Arteles I made many small paintings and stencils.
One of my large stencils was of a pair of Joutsen that are
filled with Finnish Mythology and stories.
This trip to Finland was both an ancestral pilgrimage and
creative rejuvenation. My ancestors had been calling me
Finland for many years. I listened with my feet and quieted
my mind.
Through daily meditation, yoga and collaborative workshops
I was able to develop practices that support my studio work
and life. I have yet to see what will unfold as I integrate my
time in Finland and at Arteles.
I had a healing time practicing the art of Sauna!

New Course program / APRIL 2019
Connie Noyes
USA
www.connienoyes.com
About
I am a multidisciplinary artist currently living and working in
Chicago/USA. I received my MFA from the School of the Art
Institute of Chicago and MA in Psychology and Art Therapy
from Notre Dame de Namur University, Belmont, California.
My work is an immersion in mourning research.
Two-years ago when my father and husband died within
days of each other, the fundamental drives of my practice
changed radically. Raised in a culture where the delicate and
complicated process of mourning was rushed to clear the
way, move on, or “get back to normal”, this stoic posturing
left no room for ritual or its importance in healing the complex
emotional experience of grief. As my research expands,
mourning rituals created in the studio based on personal loss
have given way to an increased focus on the socio-political
climate of the moment. Due to an escalation of violence and
disparity the collective felt experience of grief is palpable.
Regardless of our differences grief is a common ground.
By acknowledging this commonality, my work is a path to
connect individuals and communities in intimate, creative
and regenerative spaces for healing.
Movement, video, performance
“Breathe” is a project I began in 2018. This project navigates
grief by drawing a relationship between birth, death and the
unknown. The unknown before life and after death, the places
we’ve been or the places we go bookend the transitions
in and out of our corporeal reality. In the images and as
performance the bag is a symbol of both womb and body
bag. I carried the bag with me to Arteles knowing I wanted to
somehow embody these transitions in nature.
At the beginning of the residency I walked to find sites for
this performance. First was the lake. It was quiet and made
yawning sounds as it woke from its icy nap. Within three
weeks it would flow renewed. The second site I spotted as
we walked the meditation circle during our morning ritual.
The snow was falling hard and put a temporary stop to the
spring thaw. I wanted to live snow - bury myself in its flurry
and depths.
I never know what will happen once inside the bag. I listen
to what is going on outside of me and feel the ground
underneath. Starting in stillness and with a breath I begin.
Breath often informs the first movement. Each vignette, this
small moment in time inside the bag will assume a perfect
path, no matter the outcome.
Images:
Breathe: Frozen Lake, Arteles, Haukijärvi, Finland, still video
image, stretch vinyl fabric, zipper, thread, nature, 2019
Breathe: Blizzard, Arteles, Haukijärvi, Finland, still video
image, stretch vinyl fabric, zipper, thread, nature, 2019

New Course program / APRIL 2019
Kate Mulley
USA
www.katemulley.com
About
Kate Mulley is a playwright, librettist/lyricist, producer,
and dramaturg whose work explores gender, power, and
sexuality through a feminist, and often historical, lens. Her
work has been developed and performed on three continents
at theaters including Luna Stage, Shanghai Dramatic Arts
Center, Dixon Place, the Flea, Theatre503 and the Soho
Theatre.
She has an ongoing collaboration with composer Andy
Peterson. Their musical Razorhurst was commissioned by
and had its world premiere at Luna Stage and will receive its
Australian premiere at the Hayes Theatre in Sydney in June
2019. Outlaw was workshopped at Dartmouth College and
Barn Arts Collective and performed in part at Dixon Place.
Kate has been a Playwriting Fellow at Shanghai Theatre
Academy, a Tennessee Williams Scholar at the Sewanee
Writers Conference and a finalist for the Juilliard Playwriting
Fellowship. She graduated from Dartmouth College with a
degree in Theater and History, received an MA in Writing for
Performance at Goldsmiths College, London, and an MFA in
Playwriting from Columbia University. She currently lives in
New York.
American Drama
My time out of time at Arteles was spent on a number of
projects, some of which I intended to work on while in
residency and some of which came out of workshops and
conversations with Margi and other residents. I completed
a second draft of my novel American Drama. I started
painting watercolors for the first time since middle school.
I compulsively created collage poetry until it filled my entire
studio space. I have since created an instagram account for
the work I made (@rhizomaticgloss) and will continue that
practice. I went for long walks in the forest. I rode a bike
for the first time in 20 years. I made fires and read books
and watched the days get longer and longer. It was an
unforgettable month.

New Course program / APRIL 2019
Brooke Krumbeck
Australia
www.bk-dieci.com
About
Working under the pseudonym, BK DIECI, I am an emerging
artist working across a variety of mediums including painting,
drawing, textiles and digital media.
My art practice has been evolving over the last four years as
I have continued to explore the concepts of perfectionism in
relation to the female form, chronic illness and environmental
themes with particular attention to endangered flora and
fauna.
Tired of the female form having been depicted at times
with the typical ‘pretty’ face and the ‘ideal’ body I have
challenged these notions and created works that are scarred,
bleeding and littered with abstract forms incorporated within
disintegrating bodies that are bound within nature. Diagnosed
over a decade ago with several autoimmune diseases I have
continued to battle these internal conditions, which play mind
games on sufferer’s physical appearance that in turn lead
can lead to depression and anxiety. Coupled with countless
images of the ideal woman, societal expectations and the
demands we put on ourselves it can begin to implode both
physically and psychologically as reflected in my artworks.
Closely intertwined within these narratives are stories of our
local environments with a dedicated focus on endangered
flora and fauna. Within each artwork I explore the impact
of humans on their surroundings in pursuit of perfection.
I want to raise awareness of what we are losing within our
communities and ignite discussion around these issues that
maybe not everyone is aware is currently occurring.
Wild Woman
My intentions for the residency were not to execute a project,
but to work on my arts practice processes and see what
evolved over my month’s stay at Arteles. I came with an open
mind and prepared to learn new rituals of practice that I could
implement into my artworks to ignite new ideas and projects.
During the residency I set about experimenting with materials
that I had brought with me and found materials from the
Arteles studios, local secondhand stores and objects found
in nature. I explored new techniques and played with various
mediums including painting, drawing and textiles.
I took inspiration by soaking up the sounds, sights and smells
of Arteles and its surrounding environment in the Finnish
countryside. Throughout the month I iterated on ideas to
eventually arrive at a set of projects I am executing in my
studios located in Sydney, Australia. These include a series
of large-scale paintings, an illustrated book and a series of
original hand-made, ethical tapestries and kimonos made
from sustainable materials.
The New Course program at Arteles provided me with a
framework to intensively work through my own personal
self and arts practice leading to an entire new body of work
to come in the following months. I continue to maintain the
rituals of practice learned during my stay and through various
iterations this is set to inform the final works.

New Course program / APRIL 2019
Anita Lever
Australia
About
My creative practice shapes, defines and redefines how I am
in the world, how I think, relate to myself, to others and to my
environment.
This creative practice evolves, expands and contracts
as I am shaped and reshaped by my internal and external
experiences.
Having had a strong career spanning twenty years within
University contemporary art galleries and creative workshops
in Sydney, I decided to embark on further study in art therapy.
I am particularly focused on the fusing of multi approaches
and creative thinking within therapeutic environments, in
particular, within adult mental health.
As an artist and art therapist working within an openstudio
setting, I am immersed within a studio environment.
This allows me to witness on a daily basis, how creativity
can inform as well as transform not only who I am working
alongside, but also my own shifting relationship to materials,
media, art-forms and self.
Focusing on materiality that speaks to my own emotional and
psychological geography, I am drawn to the fluidity of inks,
the un-controlling nature of encaustic wax, the concealing
qualities of gouache, the poetry of paper, fabric and thread
as they intersect, dialogue and awaken new possibilities for
creative exploration.
Currently, I am mining the therapeutic investment within
my own art making through my own energetic and somatic
awareness that can leave its trace not only in the artwork but
the spaces and places of creation and contemplation.
Leaning into RED
April became the month when time went out of time, when
the silver birch trees, woodpeckers and the frozen lake
invited me to reshape my inner emotional landscape through
call and response. I willingly surrendered to this wisdom and
ancient knowledge and learnt about the Finnish ancestors.
My creative process reflected the ever-changing colours of
the fields, the forest stories and the enchanted lake as they
woke from the long winter to summon in the call of early
spring. The cool grays of the forest became white with the
late fall of snow, the trees over the fields turned rusty red
and the cool white of the lake mellowed into warm blues and
yellows of budding pussy willows along their banks. Easter
was coming. Renewal.
The changing colours and the outlines of the natural
environment I saw everyday from my studio window, became
my brush and palate as I grew the work through installation,
drawing, video and performance. ‘Songs of Sorrow’ night
snow series, the ‘Into Red’ lament in the woods, the contours
of trees as I rubbed their secrets onto fine tracing paper, all
whispered their stories to remind me to care for them, to care
for myself.
Rituals of dancing with sticks, meditative walking the sacred
stone circle, the healing power of sauna and snow, myth
making, new friendships and fish soup all collaborated to
remind me that life is fragile and precarious and if you slow it
down, you will witness a depth of such richness that is a true
awakening. It is real.
“

New Course program / APRIL 2019
J. Matthew Thomas
USA
www.studiotaos.com
About
J. Matthew Thomas is an artist, architect and community
organizer based in Taos, New Mexico. He uses the tools of
architecture to explore both social and aesthetic patterns,
confronting issues of identity through community activation
and material culture. With solo exhibitions at Central
Features in Albuquerque, and at the Taos Center for the Arts,
Thomas’s mixed-media paintings are well known throughout
New Mexico. His work has also been exhibited in Germany
and at Vivian Horan Fine Art in New York City. He received
the Visionary Artist Award from the Peter & Madeleine Martin
Foundation for the Creative Arts in 2015.
Thomas creates platforms for local engagements through
The Paseo Project, an initiative that fuses art and temporary
events as the impetus for community involvement and
transformation. He regularly curates events and community
programs at The Harwood Museum of Art, Pecha Kucha
Night Taos, and The Paseo Project. Thomas received a
Bachelor of Arts in Architecture from Kansas State University
and a Master of Arts in Architecture and Urban Design from
Columbia University.
”You can actually see a lot doing
nothing...”
Finland is the most forested country in Europe with forests
covering three quarters of the land area. Trees are a
major economic driver in the country, with 25% of exports
consisting of wood or wood products. Driving along the roads
that weave across the countryside of this Nordic country,
piles of wood line drives and pull offs. Wood is a part of the
culture - from saunas to architecture. Since 1935 Finland has
increased forest growth by over 55 million square meters. It
is a renewable resource they have stewarded and continue
to use and enjoy.
I’m here at the turn of the seasons. By the time I leave, the
day’s light will have increased by two hours. With the sun
rising an hour earlier at 5:00 am and the sun setting at 9:30
pm. They are the longest sunrises and sunsets I’ve ever seen.
The haze of pink, baby blue and deep gray that lingers for
hours. The sun making a wide arc across the sky, framed by
the tree branches.
The trees support the many birds that wake up the morning
sky, the magpie, the blue tit. Flying by their webbed branches
are white swans and cranes. Moss comes to life around and
on the trees. Dripping from the branches, wrapped around
the trunks. The soft pillow moss emerges from the ground in
patches, crawls up large boulders or lines dead tree trunks.

New Course program / APRIL 2019
Melita White
Australia
www.melitawhite.com
About
I am a composer and musician, and have recently started
writing poetry and creative non-fiction. My work across all
mediums focuses on feminist themes and personal issues.
I have researched, explored and created feminist music
since the early 2000s, an under-explored area of study and
creation.
As a composer, I work with instruments and recorded sounds,
ranging from small-scale solo and chamber works to epic,
electroacoustic works centred around feminist themes and
stories and personal tales. I prefer to work with sounds that
are organic in nature and like to work with the human voice.
Sometimes my music is deeply personal and is a form of
therapy for me, while also bringing to light important issues.
Intimacy, connection and vulnerability are themes that I
explore in all of my work. My focus on feminist issues aims
to validate women’s experiences and give them a place
in the world. My work as a composer and poet stimulates
discussion and brings deeper human issues to the surface,
where they can be shared and worked through. I believe that
artistic expression is intrinsically connected to the social
structures around us, and that it has the potential to heal and
change.
Meeting the Self
My month at Arteles consisted of intense periods spent
looking deep within, surfacing shadows, and drawing
inspiration and creative materials from without. Rather than
focus on a particular project, my primary goal was to stay
open to the process of the residency and reconnect with
my music making. This happened quickly and in new ways.
The themes of movement and play guided my choices and I
found myself improvising on unfamiliar and unconventional
instruments in experimental ways; often in the forest, in
the snow and in the sunshine. The results were surprising
and I found myself returning to my roots as a musician and
performer. Freeing the body and creative process from initial
constraint or structure resulted in the creation of a plethora
of rich and interesting sounds. Nature and interactions with
nature were another focus of the recordings I made: from bird
song to a frozen lake and bees entering a hive. As always,
nature delivered some of the most complex sounds of all.
Back home this raw material will be shaped into a series of
electroacoustic compositions. I also aim to develop a new
experimental performance-based practice using all kinds of
objects and instruments to make sound with.

Silence Awareness Existence program / MARCH 2019
Nathalia Favaro
Brazil
www.nathaliafavaro.com
About
Nathalia Favaro is an architect, designer and artist. These
fields plays complementary roles in her research. Through
clay, drawings, photography and video she explores our
relation with the territory. She holds a Bachelor in Architecture
from Mackenzie University in 2006, Buenos Aires University
- UBA in 2004 and Design from Senac in 2010. She was an
artist-in-residence at EKWC-European Ceramic Work Centre
in the Netherlands 2017, at Gaya Ceramics, Indonesia and
Labverde, Brazil 2018.
Walking, writing, reading
The starting period of the residency period was into studying
the different types of silence that exist once we stop talking.
This lead me to think about situations we put ourselves in
when we use speak. Also, I learned that for Finnish people
“silence is better than gold” and I developed a series of
collages called “Finish Dialogues”.
As a manner of being present and recognizing the space I
was in, I practice daily walking and meditation. I got amazed
by the variety in shape, texture, form, density that snow can
have and how the white landscape contributes to calm the
mind.
This atmosphere reflected in my work and it turned in multiple
medias: drawing, watercolor, photography and video. The
first ones ended up in an artist book, I tried to reproduce
the experience of walking among the birch trees. The
photographs are at the same time a memory and a presence
in the place, where I can just have part of the experience with
me. The video brings a comparative force in different levels:
the nature and the human.

Silence Awareness Existence program / MARCH 2019
Natsuki Suda
Japan
natsus3.wixsite.com/aqua
About
I am inspired by sounds of nature and scenery. There are no
human beings in my music. It expresses a mysterious world
in the depth of plants, objects and living things, invisible to
the eye. I process the sounds of nature to make a rhythm to
express my feelings felt from nature. I make songs based on
that sound. I use instruments like a piano, a violin, drums, a
guitar and digital sounds. I process the sounds of nature like
rain, wind, and waves, and more.
I have cultivated my musicality with influences such as
classic, jazz, bossa nova, EDM, pop, and electronica.
My music is a fusion of noise and instruments. I express the
growth and change of life with gradually changing sounds
and music.
There is this mysterious world that forms the deep, unseen,
internal core of all that we see. I aim to bring that world to life
more than ever before though sound and music.
Life to Sound
I had time to face myself at Arteles. I want to make music I
want to make, which expresses the formation of the world and
all of its things through sound. In order to make that happen,
I have to get away from my busy daily life, my work, noisy
towns and the ties of people. By coming to Arteles, I could
make that split more concrete. So I could find my potential.
I surrounded myself with nature to hone my senses and feel
its essence untouched by human hands. I thought about what
meaning each part has and why it exists. I felt the primordial
energies of nature.
I recorded the sounds of the wind, the water, the snow, the
cries of birds, and so much more. I processed these sounds
and made music based on them. For everything that exists,
nothing is in vain. If even one thing were missing, this would
all fall apart. I could feel every part of the life that supports
such a fragile world, and expressed the contrast between the
seen and unseen worlds through music.

Silence Awareness Existence program / MARCH 2019
Melissa Delaney
Australia
www.sociocreativetrust.com
About
Currently living and working in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Melissa’s recent research dwells in the intersections
between wellness practice and social sculpture. Drawing
from a background as an electronic and experimental artist,
Melissa uses whatever medium suits at the time. This includes
directing festivals, sound art, video, digital photography,
performance, text and writing, drawing, installation, textile
art, strategy as art, and making spaces for herself and others
to be creative.
As an individual artist and part of the collective sociocreative
trust, In addition to a rich experience of experimental art
practice, Melissa is exploring wellness studies including
meditation, nutrition and yoga which coincides with her
interests in the slow movement, in food, in food systems, and
influences the way she works with others. Melissa is keen
to always make her own time, and also values those small
moments.
Forest performance
The red thread of fate : forest performance
The red thread of fate is a story with universal traces
throughout many cultures including chinese, japanese,
korean, jewish and others. The red thread links soulmates,
they are forever connected by a red thread and upon meeting
can recognise each other by the thread that binds.
I found a site in the forest near the residency, it was a few
days after we’d had the last snow and following the spring
equinox. There was a small clearing in the forest with mossy
rocks which appeared perfect for the performance site. The
rocks had naturally formed seats and ledges and held both
the ball of thread and myself perfectly.
The performance was enacted privately and documented
through photography on my huawei android device. It was a
day of silence at the residency which added to the intensity
of the site and my actions.
I started by binding myself by the wrist 7 times, seven having
significance as a spiritual number and a number of creation.
I then began to bind trees in the forest, again using 7 to
bind and to create a sacred space within the ritual. After a
meditative and deliberate binding ceremony i then sat on the
largest mossy rock and finished binding myself. I bound my
legs and my ankles.
To close the performance I removed the bindings and they
remain in the forest.
This performance was a call out to my soul mate(s), a call out
to the forest and to nature, to being grounded and supported.

Silence Awareness Existence program / MARCH 2019
Ilija Melentijevic
Australia / Yugoslavia
www.ilkke.net
About
I started drawing from an early age and never stopped. My
first solo exhibition was at age 5 in ‘Honey Bee 2’ kindergarten
in Belgrade, Yugoslavia.
To me, pursuing art feels much like scientific research,
discovering things that are already “”out there”” but dormant
and unseen. I take special interest in creating narrative,
interactive and procedural media such as comics, animations
or games.
Being at a new chapter of my life, I am in a period of
heightened open-mindedness, and am learning a lot by trying
new things and letting my environment and circumstance
take me in unplanned directions. After years of flamboyantly
lush wilderness of Australia, I welcome the understated
eloquence of Finnish winter.
Spaces Between Spaces
The program’s focus on silence and meditation led me to
become interested in emptiness, something I tried to explore
visually as negative space. In an effort to make this allcontaining
medium more tangible and subject-like, I played
with equating white and black areas on paper. I also wanted
to make the drawing process itself a meditative experience
where I can be fully immersed in the detail of the moment and
let the larger picture grow in an almost emergent manner.
I was happy to find that the resulting organic style has an
ornamental esthetic that wouldn’t feel out of place on a cave
wall or the bark of a tree.

Silence Awareness Existence program / MARCH 2019
Jovana Yoka Terzic /
Animal Bro
Australia / Yugoslavia
www.animalbro.net
About
My art practice is closely related to my relationship with nature
and often with my current environment. Most of my work
revolves around universal themes of rebirth, transformation,
interconnectedness, personal quest and ancestral heritage.
Animal Bro is my attempt to embrace and manifest my animal
persona and is the backbone of my mission as an artist to
reconnect people to nature.
I don’t premeditate the creative process much in advance as
it naturally comes into focus as I grasp what the character
is of a place. My only plan is to be quiet, listen, and make a
visual record what I hear. I look forward to spending a month
in a wintry forest in Finland, and take part in the silence that
man, bird, bug and beast share together in awareness and
awe of the land that they grew out of.
Overlapping Realities
I used the time at Arteles to merge my artistic and spiritual
practice into one. My work is centered around nature, my
understanding of it, and relationship to it. I am always mindful
of the mood and spirit of a place, something I find often
reflects in the local mentality and culture as well. Recently
I also started visually exploring the notion that bringing
heightened perception into everyday life enables one to see
multiple realities all existing in the same space and time.
The minimalistic elegance of Finnish landscape in winter
greatly influenced my style and use of colour in this series of
ink drawings.

Silence Awareness Existence program / MARCH 2019
Victoria Smith
USA
www.vsmithpaints.com
About
I am an American artist based in New York City.
I depict my experience of environments, emotions and
memories in an interconnected way.
Realizing the advantage of limitation as a means towards self
liberation, I choose to work in solitude with minimal materials.
Living in a fast-paced, stressful world has proven to be
unhealthy. Getting lost, allowing my mind to wander and lose
track of time gives me access to imagination and awareness.
I earned my B.F.A. in painting at the School of the Museum of
Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts.
At Arteles Creative Center, I intend to get lost in every
moment.
Reboot the Soul
My time at Arteles helped me in my attempt to move away
from the influence of competitive corporate culture that has
increasingly defined art as an abrasive urban career.
Through my long walks, meditation and time spent in the
sauna, I allowed myself to re-examine my art practice.
Shifting from a process primarily based on imagination to
one of awareness, I was able to incorporate imagery with
abstraction, making it a richer experience.
During the silent days, I read a lot which led me to decide
to permanently withdraw from social media. I also built
an installation in my room which reflected my time in the
surrounding forest and farmlands.
I hope this reclaimed awareness permeates not only my work
but my lifestyle structure as I move forward.

Silence Awareness Existence program / MARCH 2019
Giulia Mattera
Italy
www.giuliamattera.com
About
Giulia Mattera is an Italian performance artist, whose
research-led practice questions ecology, gender, daily life
and social structures as ritualised behaviours.
With a strong visual focus her research based practice
explores natural elements via the body. By using repetition
as a tool to erase pre-constructed meanings, she sets herself
tasks that deal with failure and challenge the preconceptions
of body-mind limitations.
She has showed her work in the USA and all around Europe:
Grace Exhibition Space (Brooklyn, NYC), Venice International
Performance Art Week (Venice, Italy), Warsaw International
Performance Art Weekend (Warsaw, Poland) and in numerous
British venues.
She holds a Masters degree in Performance Making from
Goldsmiths College (London, UK), whereas her undergraduate
studies focused on theatre, art and communication.
Seeing youRself sensING
During my time at Arteles I spent 18 days in silence, without
speaking. Meditation has changed flavour, consistency. Not
verbalising makes it easier to break off the loops of thoughts.
I wanted to observe the effects of prolonged silence on my
body, in my mind.
Arteles itself is an enchanting place; the residency a lifechanging
experience, a spiritual sensorial journey. The
bonds with the other residents have given rise to stimulating
experimentations which have triggered openness and trust
towards the creative process.
I shared the gifts of silence in a site-specific performance.
The performance Seeing youRself sensING took place in the
woods near Arteles at dusk on the 20th March 2019, when
the spring equinox and the full moon coincided (this overlap
only happens once every fourty years circa).
On the day of the performance, every participant received
a personalised envelope containing: an invitation letter with
instructions, an origami airplane, a folded paper to open
only once arrived to the roots, a quote. The invitation letter
suggested to dedicate the day on retrieving denied feelings.
The instructions invited the participants to embark on a
group silent walk in the woods, following a path marked by
27 ribbons around tree trunks. The last ribbon was attached
to the roots of a fallen pine tree; I was inside the roots. The
performance was a ritual of acceptance and emancipation
during which each person burned their denied feelings and
saw themselves sensing.

Silence Awareness Existence program / MARCH 2019
Fiona Kemp
Australia
www.fionakemp.com
About
I am a multidisciplinary artist whose body of work explores
the way certain objects, images and repetitive practices
resonate memory. The media varies according to the nature
of each project and additional study in clinical psychology
informs the theoretical underpinnings of some of the work.
There are certain patterns and themes that have become
identifiable in the work over time. This is interesting to me as
it has not been driven by a conscious process.
Often, going on in the background, there is some sort of
collection developing, and this can, over time, evolve into a
work.
It also seems work emanates out of a lived space or activity.
For example, I spend time each week swimming laps in a
pool and many works are conceived from within this fluid and
moving space.
World View
This residency implicitly acknowledged that artmaking is
a form a meditation and I was excited to be entering into it
without a distinct project in mind. My aim was to engage with
the spatial and temporal landscape in order that it inform the
work produced. A number of significant projects emerged,
and rituals developed;
Every day I walked down to the lake and stood in approximately
the same place at the same time and filmed the lake.
Every day I carried with me a cheap plastic inflatable earth
which changed my relationship with the earth around me.
Toward the end of our time at Arteles a fellow resident, on
viewing the body of work, said that it made her feel time
passing which she found challenging.
For me, I felt like a conduit. From the moment I arrived and had
the time and space to focus on the work it took up residence.

Silence Awareness Existence program / MARCH 2019
Alexander Lumans
USA
www.alexanderlumans.com
About
I spent part of 2015 as a Fellow on The Arctic Circle Residency
for its Summer Solstice Expedition in Svalbard, Norway. This
residency involved a three-week June excursion aboard
a tall ship that sailed the international waters of Svalbard.
Since the residency’s conclusion, I have worked on a novel
manuscript entitled The Half-Finished Heaven. Personally
visiting the Arctic gave my manuscript the nuanced
foundation successful fiction requires. I was able to research
climate change, survival practices, and phenomena unique
to the region. Thanks to this influential visit, I have acquired
a deep love of all things Arctic. Most importantly, I met four
female Norwegian Polar Guards. (A Polar Guard’s main job
is to protect their hires from polar bears.) These four have
since served as the inspiration for my novel’s protagonist
and story.
Living in the Colorado has inspired me to be more focused on
contemporary climate change as a subject matter; Norway’s
terrain and ecology reflect much of what my work addresses
in terms of the most serious environmental threats. In
addition to this, I have become invested in portraying what it
means to be a woman working in an industry, environment,
and culture that has historically and predominantly been
the realm of men. By addressing the Arctic’s people and
environment in novel form, I will offer insight into a region
shaped by both international and local decisions in hopes
that those decisions can be made with increased awareness
and empathy in the future.
The Half-Finished Heaven
While in Arteles residency, I greatly advanced the current
draft of my in-progress novel manuscript. I read, researched,
explored, and developed a greater understanding of my
project as a complete artistic piece.

Silence Awareness Existence program / FEBRUARY 2019
Phoebe Anne Taylor
Australia
www.phoebe-anne.com
About
As a child, I would daydream. I often found myself caught
on the thread of a story and I would let it unravel through
the recesses of my subconscious. It was in this space that
I found my passion for narrative, and started to explore
artistically what that meant for me; in ways expected, such
as writing, theatre and film - and mediums which could
capture a single moment in time and reveal something larger
under the surface - music, visual art and photography. This
was how I went about life, discovering my own point of view,
throwing myself at every art form with gusto and seeing what
stuck.
Today, I am an independent artist working out of Melbourne,
Australia. This allows me the freedom to experiment and
continue to develop my practice, particularly looking at multifaceted
work. I am known primarily as a theatre practitioner
and actor, but I am also a writer and photographer, a textile
artist and clown, a musician and occasional painter, a teacher
and a student, an explorer and home-body… I am infinitely a
visitor in my own brain, finding out new ways to go and see,
ever open to the next dreaming.
Waiting for Snow
Phoebe spent the unseasonably warm month of February
dreaming in thought bubbles, thawing frosts and surreal
landscapes. She created the seeds for four multidisciplinary
projects to take formal shape when she returns to Australia,
but also spent her time allowing the landscape to lead her
creative journey. She explored many avenues of her practice,
including but not limited to: completing the first draft of a
full length stageplay ”Transition/Transmission - a love letter”,
researching sound design techniques, concocting bubble
mixtures, wireworking, crocheting snowflakes, falling in
the snow, painting the forest with light, philosophising,
meditating, baking bread and, perhaps most preciously,
sharing in different artists’ approach to their own work.
Phoebe enjoyed the time and space to regroup and not judge
what her mind wanted to explore on any given day; and was
reminded that when one gives themselves freedom, there is
no limitation, label or construct that restricts the output and
desire of the imagination.

Silence Awareness Existence program / FEBRUARY 2019
Elin Kelsey
Canada
www.elinkelseyandcompany.com
About
I am fascinated by the extraordinary capacity for resilience
and agency that exists within ourselves and within the 8.9
million other species on Earth. Trees have more senses than
humans. Evidence of tools used by stone age chimps date
back 5,000 years. When you gaze into your dogs eyes, both
you, and your dog experience a rush of endorphins that are
similar to the chemical reaction that occurs when a mother
looks into the face of her baby. I am coming to Finland
because I want to be immersed in the productive silence of
the forests in the dark of winter. I want to let my mind go
quiet so I can shift from an intellectual understanding to a
felt visceral awareness of the existence of all of the other
plants, animals and microorganisms whose lives make my
life possible.
The combination of days spent in silence and free of the
internet created an unexpected gift of unallocated time. I
found myself waking at 3:00am with a fully formed poem just
waiting to be written down. I let myself revel in this sense of
time unfolding as it wished - writing, eating, hiking, forest
exploring - at whatever hour, and for as long, as the trees and
wind and thoughts and ice dictated.
I came with the intention to write about resilience in ourselves
and other species. Every moment, the changing state of ice
on the driveway, the groaning of the lake, the emergence of
the song birds’ voices immersed me and reminded me of the
intricacy of forces and relationships that drive the forming
and reforming of winter and spring.
Snow has a clever way
of teaching impermanence
A Cure for Hope Blindness
One moment, you’re confidently walking atop the crust
and the next
crash,
sink
flail
You’re sunk.

Silence Awareness Existence program / FEBRUARY 2019
Tanya Long
USA
www.tanyalong.com
About
Tanya Long’s artistic practise is largely focused on finding
out what else can be done with analogue photographic tools
and materials other than using them in the service of creating
a mechanically rendered representation of reality. She works
primarily in the color darkroom without negatives. Long is
guided in her work by three major interests:
1) The reduction of photography to its essence: light and
time.
2) The application of the characteristics of Minimalism and
other 1960’s conceptual art to photography. For example, the
emphasis on surface, color and objecthood. As well as the
use of seriality, systems, standardized industrial materials
and performative, pre-conceived actions.
3) Freeing the Photograph from the genre of Photography: the
Photograph as Painting, as Sculpture and as Performance.
These interests are also applied when working with nonphotographic
materials.
Site responsive installation
”The woods are lovely, dark and deep...”
I worked intuitively and in direct response to the Finnish
winter landscape while employing some of the constant
themes that run through my practice:
Light and Dark
Time and Space
Color and Surface
Objecthood

Silence Awareness Existence program / FEBRUARY 2019
Diego Alberti
Argentina
www.diegoalberti.net
About
I live and work in Buenos Aires. Since I was young, I
was interested in computers, robotics, and electronics
technologies in general. Video games, radios, sound
equipment and videocameras, served as games in my
childhood influenced by television, in particular by popular
80’s programs about science and technology.
Then I studied Image and Sound Design, and Graphic Design
at the University of Buenos Aires where I found an Electronic
Arts fields thanks to my teachers and students (most of them,
great artists today).
I spend most of my time making electronic stuff, programming
and also dedicated to electronic synthezisers music. I also
teach in many of the Electronics Arts degrees on several
institutions here in Argentina.
If I would have more free time, I will cook and read much
more.
From Transcription to Translation
I always think in electronics as a part of nature. Actually
like some kind of nature itself. I found that SAE at Arteles
was an excelent enviroment to challange this believe. The
experience was so enjoyable and exiting that a simple idea
that I was keeping in my mind became a real full scale artistic
project.
My friend and fellow resident at Arteles, Brooke Larson, put
my ideas and images in words in such a way I was never be
able before. She wrote:
”I remember being struck by the fluidity of the movement.
So often we think of code as fixed and linear. But here was
code interacting with light, with people, with nature, and with
accident (as people fell into the snow!). The result looked
almost like a musical notation of relationship moving through
the landscape. Code behaving more like poetry than a set
of commands. I was struck with the realization that code is
both artificial and organic, in much the same way that poetry
is artificial and organic: a balance between human ingenuity
and deep natural patterns. I was also struck by the way the
lights in motion create a pattern that resembles the striations
of birch tree bark. It was as if the code shined a flashlight
behind the lines and dots present in the bark of the forest.”
Many thanks to Brooke, Phoebe, Andalyn, Leanne and
specially Imogens for her invaluable collaboration.

Silence Awareness Existence program / FEBRUARY 2019
Franziska Walther
Germany
www.sehenistgold.de/Gold2017/
About
Creating a book means to me creating a synthesis of the
arts. Being the graphic designer as well as the typographer,
illustrator, writer and researcher I combine artistic and
scientific strategies in an interdisciplinary approach. I work
process-oriented and with an open mind – meaning that the
journey is the reward and also the journey influences the final
outcome in a way which is not predictable. This agility and
natural growth requires trust in the process. This is both a
considerable task and a great joy to me.
As a kid I wanted to become an archeologist – to decipher
secret scriptures. One reason for that was the exotically
decorated living room of my aunt Grete who had worked in
Egypt and had brought back home objects which sparked my
imagination. Later on I wanted to discover the wonders of the
world on the vessel of French film maker Jacques Cousteau.
The heroine of my youth was Sophie Scholl – I wanted to
become as bold as her. In my books I continue that path: by
exploring new shores and cultivating courage.
A Random Collection of Silence
I spent my time at Arteles working on the conceptional
foundation of my new book project. I developed the plot
and sketched a rough, first draft. Working on a book about
happiness I also used my time in Finland for an experiment: I
was very curious what might happen if the inner voice doesn’t
have to shout anymore to drown out the hustle and bustle
of everyday life. I wanted to discover new perspectives and
different facettes of myself by taking a look inside. After a
while I also started to draw a silent comic. By letting go of
my usual result-oriented approach I rediscovered my joy.
Beside that I also enjoyed many hours of wood burning
sauna, breathing crystal-clear air, walking through the
forest, watching the sky and the clouds, daily meditation
and yoga, feeling free of expactations, being part of a group
of like-minded people without being consumed in social
constraints ...

Silence Awareness Existence program / FEBRUARY 2019
Andalyn Young
USA
www.andalynyoung.info
About
A majority of my work has appeared as collaborative
performance incorporating dance, theater, and design. More
recently I have expanded into explorations of writing, video,
and the merging of contemplative practice with artistic
practice.
The work gravitates toward consistent interests: unearthing
the sublime in the banal; inviting intimacy in the face of
vulnerability; seeking the funny in the tragic and the tragic
in the funny.
I begin with the body as a site of inquiry. I’m drawn to states
that embrace multiplicity and contradiction. Some days it’s
all precision and speed; other days, a slow and steady melt.
Stayeth Empty
I spent much of my time at Arteles exploring movement
practices that invite presence, full-bodied awareness, and
release from control. I also deepened my meditation practice
and allowed this foundation to transform my approach to
artistic work.
Inspired by the lush language of seekers and contemplatives
throughout history, I began using found text to create a
poem for multiple voices. This process led to new methods
of experimentation including a physical approach to
choreographing language and a willingness to grant words
the dignity of sound without demanding rationality.
I slowed down, fell for the sake of falling, and improvised to
The Beach Boys. I spent a lot of time turning my head and
finding secret fullnesses hidden within birch trees, fear, and
all the empty spaces.

Silence Awareness Existence program / FEBRUARY 2019
Carter Scott Horton
USA
www.carterscotthorton.com
About
Carter Scott Horton received his Bachelor of Fine Arts in
Theatre from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. In
2018 alone he originated three characters in New York world
premieres of professional onstage productions, as well as
performed in several classic works.
Carter draws inspiration for his writing from a wide range of
work, and dedicates his free time to exploring the boundaries
of his taste through new theatre and contemporary film,
especially by Lucas Hnath and Yorgos Lanthimos. He holds
Shakespeare in a particularly high regard, and guides the
integrity of the work into the 21st century by applying a
poetic style to his own contemporary ideas. He illuminates
the current landscape of American aristocracy in his new
play “Auction” ,through the use of iambic pentameter and a
streamlined five-act structure.
Carter’s intention for his time at Atreles is to challenge the
given nature with which we approach reality, up-end that
which is needlessly inherited, and pursue the answers
for life in a day so concerned with tomorrow. He seeks to
acknowledge and embrace the strangeness of our time in
new, poetic ways.
Auction
As my first residency, and the first acknowledgement of my
writing by an establishment, I entered Arteles with caution
and doubt in my worth. Perhaps there had been a mistake, I
submitted half of a play I had started writing two years prior
and nearly dropped entirely. The experience and wisdom
of my fellow residents quickly turned from intimidating to
inspiring and I found that the poetry of my script flowed freely.
In the silence and the snow, a dysfunctional cast of characters
screamed their lines to me, and my work transformed from
playwright to scribe. Within three weeks, my first draft of my
first full-length play was completed; in iambic pentameter,
no less.

Silence Awareness Existence program / FEBRUARY 2019
Leanne Olivier
South Africa
www.art.co.za/leanneolivier/
About
My art is about documenting performance art (ritualistic
dancing): captured in oil paintings. I am interested in the
Shamanistic traditions around the world and use clay, mud,
ash and bones as a way of exploring and connecting to a
primal source which is found in these shamanistic cultures.
The line between human and animal (consciousness)
becomes destabilized in my work. The clay slip (clay &
water mixture) painted on the bodies and faces is used as a
medium (mask) to unmask deeper realities. It goes beyond
race, gender and the narrow instructions of what makes us
human. It is the recognition or embodiment of the OTHER. I
aim to extract the negative connotations which surround the
‘animalistic’ and use art as a liberation to open a platform for
a more embracing and enlightened relation to the complexity
of all life.
Un-becoming
During my residency at Arteles my aim was to give myself
wholeheartedly to SILENCE, AWARENESS, EXISTENCE.
I took a step back from my own processes and ideas.
Being in a space of un-knowing and un-becoming, as well
allowing space for new ways of thinking and engaging with
my fellow artists in residence. This was all done with a
sense of playfulness and curiosity. Silence and awareness
may often imply seriousness, yet can also be a space of
lightheartedness and sincerity. I believe creativity flourishes
in this state of being. I received many insights into my own art
and new ways of exploration going forward. Unexpectedly, I
found a passion for words previously unacknowledged...the
irony of a silence residency.

Silence Awareness Existence program / FEBRUARY 2019
Imogen Davis
UK
www.imogendavisphotography.co.uk
About
I focus my practise mainly working with alternative
photographic mediums using the environment around me
to influence my work. My interests lie in playing with light
in different ways to manipulate my images and the objects
I have chosen to work with, to create unique photographs.
Whilst creating images, I have in mind the big question of
what is it to be conscious and what does that mean. On the
face of it, this seems like an easy question. We all know what it
is like to be conscious. It allows for our individual experience
of the world, making possible the magic and mystery of
our everyday life as well as our interaction with an external
reality. “This consciousness that is myself of selves, that is
everything, and yet nothing at all – what is it? And where did
it come from? And why?” We, in human nature, are always
trying to explain and understand the world, the longing for
certainty within our own specific interests and beliefs and
selves. There must be more to life than survival and chance,
something must be added from outside of this closed system
to account for something as different as the unconscious.
I mostly print in the darkness, the red light of the darkroom
enveloping me whilst I navigate in the shadows finding my
papers and playing with the light. I have grown to love the
inconsistent and originality of each piece I make, encouraging
the new and loving the accidents.
Ears Are Not Alone in Listening
Whilst in Finland my work focused on the idea of process
within film photography, I set up a darkroom and worked
primarily with a homemade pinhole camera creating
interesting, naturalistic photographs of the environment in
which I was living.
I also brought the outside into the studio, working with
ice trying to capture my inner silence. My silence was
deafening, it pulled on my inner thoughts and feelings and
the deep emotions I had pushed down and tried to forget.
It is something that our modern lifestyles tend to suppress;
having grown up in the constant bustle of London pure
silence is always elusive, just out of grasp even in the most
peaceful of moments.
In the Aesthetics of Silence Susan Sontag wrote about the
difference between a look and a stare, a look being voluntary
whilst a stare is a compulsion. I followed my compulsions
fuelled by silence and stared into myself as well as being
absorbed by my environment.

Silence Awareness Existence program / JANUARY 2019
Henning Gärtner
Norway
henninggartner.wordpress.com
About
I am a writer and theatre maker.
I come from Tromsø in the North of Norway. I have spent my
life looking for a home, a community, a place to belong. Does
such a place exist? I think it does; and the place is art. As I
never seem to settle down, I have come to accept that my
home is the art and the artists I love, and the art I make.
Currently I live in Berlin. The book I am working on, is a
memoir in which I explore shame, loneliness, and longing.
Trollvinter
At Arteles I was like the Moonmintroll who wakes up in
Midwinter. I had been in hibernation for a long time, and now
woke up to a strange world of snow and darkness.
I sat by my window for hours. There were frozen trees
everywhere. I saw stones, birds, a cat sneaking by. All this
WHITE, I thought. I rarely read poetry but now I saw it: Poetry
appears in silence.
Strange new friends would walk by. I asked Tuu-tikki to take
a portrait of me. “Above your head is an empty space”, she
sang as she took my picture through the window. “That’s
where your ideas come from.”
Thank you for the silence!

Photo: Ioana Vrabie

Silence Awareness Existence program / JANUARY 2019
Ioana Vrabie
Italy
www.ioanavrabie.com
About
Ioana was born in Communist Romania, was raised in
Tuscany, Italy and studied photography at University of the
Arts London. Her artistic production is the intuitive response
to her own sensibilities and her multilayered identity.
A part from living in different countries, as a former flight
attendant, she has travelled all around the world, experiencing
a reality that has always been extremely changeable and
dynamic. Therefore, in her images, she aims to see beyond
the palpable and to dissolve the concrete and substantial
of conventional reality to explore the quantic possibilities
somehow contained within them.
Each photograph is triggered by a state of profound
emotional connection with her surroundings and it contains
an extraordinary layering, where even dissonant slivers of
existence merge to create what Ioana calls, a New Reality.
The eye is inescapably drawn deeper and deeper into images
that appear almost as oneiric sculptures, a mesmeric shaping
of the visibly predictable into fresh, intensely vibrant forms
and concepts merged in an unexpected unity.
In an age that thrives on technological advancement, Ioana
shuns the digital, because she really enjoys the state of
profound presence that only shooting analogue allows. She is
fascinated by the fact that everything happens in the camera
and it remains a mystery until the film gets developed.
Far from being digitally contrived, her pictures are conceived
through a multiple exposure technique that allows the
essential grace and elegance of her subjects to merge and
melt together to radiate from within each photograph.
“Ioana Vrabie’s analogue photography represents what I call
Romantic Conceptualism. Personal yet Universal concepts
wrapped in exquisite beauty.”
- Lorenzo Belenguer, Art Critic for the Huffington Post based
in London.
Two projects
1. White solid space
The apparent whiteness of the snow surprised me: the deeper
I looked into it, the more I noticed that the same landscape
looked different every day.
It was mainly for the effect of the sky: whatever the colour,
the shape, and the light coming from above, it was painting
the white canvas below.
On the other hand, the snow reacted to the sky differently,
depending on how fresh or how frozen it was, creating
extremely interesting and new to my eyes phenomena.
The reflections of the sky on the snow (solid water) were
totally different though from the ones on the sea (liquid water)
that I am used to see in Ibiza where I live.
In “As Above So Below” analogue double exposure
photograph I have playfully created on the frozen and
covered in snow lake a reflection that would have been
natural on water.
2. Postcards from a future past, printed digital photographs
and writing
Residing in Arteles’s ancient buildings, so imbued with
history, in the rural surroundings of Haukijärvi, brought
me back to an analogue past, so dear to my heart, where
communication was slow, handwritten and tridimensional.
I have started to send digital printed photographs belonging
to my diary as unexpected postcards to friends and
collectors, to explore both the relativity of what we consider
future, past and present and the almost lost surprise and
sensual pleasure inherent in receiving, opening and reading a
letter. I thank Arteles for this new inspiration and I am looking
forward to develop and expand this project in the near future.

Silence Awareness Existence program / JANUARY 2019
Pauline Batista
Brazil
www.paulinebatista.com
About
I was born and raised in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) and have
since lived in the US, Germany and the UK. I recently finished
my MFA at Goldsmiths University in 2017, and continue to
live and work in London. For myself, research and exchange
with other artists form the base of my practice. Last year I
collaborated with artist Madeleine Stack on a film and an
exhibition Fatal Softness- which was subsequently reviewed
MAP Magazine and featured on AQNB. This year I exhibited
as part of She Performs, a platform for “female artists to
show work and discuss current social issues surrounding the
questions of feminism and gender relations”.
About my practice:
My practice questions the impulse to render information,
bodies and the ‘quantified self’ transparent. I examine the
implications of the blurred lines between artificial and
organic, virtual and physical, inert and animate and highlight
our society’s misguided aim at human perfection and cyborg
immortality.
My work gives access via an oscillation between body and
machine, connecting different nodes of research and medium
from photography to sculpture, video and prose in order to
create a larger network that the viewer is invited to decode. I
explore the ways in which technological advancements allow
unprecedented access to the inner workings of the flesh,
and the ensuing trans-humanist hopes of the convergence
between technology and the body.
As sci-fi dreams and nightmares become a reality, I question
whether those who are granted access will determine the
social, economic and genetic casts of the future.
Frequency for Futures
I used this period there to read about time and to connect
with the missing aspect of my research. I often deal with, and
explore the latest in technological innovations and its impact
on our lives and psyche. While I do touch upon the natural
world, I had never truly explored its heavy role in the network
of interconnectedness that involves all aspects and beings in
the world around us. I continued my investigation into modes
of thinking through, with and about our future on earth. But
this time with a less futuristic approach, as I was immersed
in a very non-technological environment.
I became fascinated with an electrical tower inside of the
nature reserve. In the middle of the deepest silence I have
ever experienced we came upon this tower and a very distinct
buzzing sound coming from it. The way the tower infringed
upon this reserve was overwhelming- the sound penetrating
the silence as we approached its base.
I am now in the process of working on a larger film project
where the tower and its frequency, alongside pink noise
frequency captured both in nature as well as from traffic
nearby entering the forest via sound waves, have a role to
play. The project will deal with the invisible links between
corporeal and technological organisms and speculations
on future forms of communication between all the diverse
players in our current, deeply interconnected networks of
existence.

Silence Awareness Existence program / JANUARY 2019
Asako Shimizu
Japan
www.shimizuasako.com
About
I am a Tokyo-based professional photographer. The camera
for me is a magic tool which could reveal some tiny messages.
I carefully try to feel the aesthetic message itself through
nature. “Taking things as they come” is very important for
my awareness. We have a word “Sinrabansyou” in Japan. In
English it might refer to the whole of creation, the universe,
or all nature beyond human concept.There is also a word
“Hokou” which suggests a faint light which glows gently
inside from the bottom. This is a unique word about the truth
and wisdom in a figurative sense as expressed by Chinese
philosopher Zhuangzi. I believe that the particles I captured
with my camera could be the one of pale lights. It dawns
on me that I could be a connector “myself” just as a USB
connects between subjects and lens. So I scoop up the little
“Hokou” particles and lights, and unleash them on my image
works.
Capturing Awareness
A country in vague lights.
You see a quiet smile in the painfully cold air.
The weak sun and the dazzling moon resonate.
The smile layers the flow of time in numbness.
You stand at sage land.
Hearing sounds like groaning in the depths of the lake,
and echoing birds song in the coldest skies.
You came from the far end of world,
pondering their happiness and suffering.
Is that an illusion?
When the forest overlaps the lake at dawn,
beautiful wisdom eggs spring forth.

Silence Awareness Existence program / JANUARY 2019
Ji Yoon Lee
South Korea
www.lee-jiyoon.com
About
Ji Yoon Lee is an artist exploring materiality. She use form
and letter to reflect the human condition in the modern
world. The concept of embracing our solitude, a concept
surrounding much of Herman Hesse’s work, is an idea she
aligns herself with strongly. Ji Yoon is seeking the individuality
in relationship between existence and space through the
repetition of gravity forces and creation-destruction.
Ji Yoon Lee studied sculpture in Dongguk University in Seoul,
South Korea. Currently she is based in South Korea.
Solitude, Stillness and Independence
During my time in Arteles, I really enjoyed the time of stillness
and detachment that from urban vibe. I was focused on
materials and movements in my artwork and also it was the
best time that I could have a deep thoughts about the myself
in my life.
I used the magnetic stirring machine, pigments and plaster to
create 3D forms made by its core-energy. And with using the
idea of the detachment of two different dimensions, I put the
3Dform on the paper to express the solitude I felt in society.
At the same time, through the observation of movements in
the stirring machine, I did paintings with oil-pastels.

Silence Awareness Existence program / JANUARY 2019
Charlotte Watson
New Zealand
www.charlottewatson.org
About
Since practising in Melbourne, Watson’s primary method of
working has been drawing, particularly as a means of relaying
the internal and unspeakable. Monochromatic materials,
chosen for their sublime but historical qualities, draw the
viewer into a space that is seductive but psychologically
charged; where distorted geographies and obscured figures
stand in for the unconscious and its volatile role in informing
narratives of the self. Graduating from the University of
Canterbury (Christchurch, New Zealand) in 2011 with a BFA
in Sculpture, Watson is now based in Melbourne, Australia.
Reassess my practice
Arteles was a welcome break from the world. Far from
the familiar, I experienced a roller coaster of thoughts and
realisations that, without the distance from my usual setting,
simply would not have had the space to emerge.
My intention for my residency was to write and draw, and the
solitude and quiet in the snow lent itself nicely to that. More
so, the silent days and distance from everyday distractions
allowed me to think about my artistic practice in the big
picture; the ways that it needed simplifying, the ways that it
needed expanding and how I value my time. Arteles’ Silence
Awareness program was also extremely valuable in the way
it provided the necessary conditions for deep thinking. In
particular, the isolation and disconnection showed me that
the digital/technological norm we assume in everyday life
actually does my brain a disservice.
Being in an environment with other residents encouraged me
to view my art practice more laterally. Shared conversations,
along with the luxury of time, enabled me to reassess my
creative values, which in turn have made me more confident
to pursue avenues that I have long desired for my practice.
The challenge now is to take these learnings into the real
world and, in the words of Jane Kenyon, ‘be a good steward
of my gifts’.

Silence Awareness Existence program / JANUARY 2019
Michael West
USA
www.greatbiguniverse.com
About
Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors for you
where there were only walls,” wrote Joseph Campbell, the
American mythologist.
I’ve been a professional astronomer for three decades and
feel blessed to be able to explore the universe for a living.
I got my PhD in astronomy from Yale University in 1987
and have held research, teaching and leadership positions
around the world since then.
One of the things I’m proudest of is my willingness to take
risks and to follow my bliss wherever it leads. I’ve lived on
four continents, learned several languages, and given up
tenured professorships at two universities, all in pursuit of
my dreams.
I love writing and sharing the wonders of the universe
through words and images. I’m particularly fascinated by
the interplay between science and culture. As Maria Mitchell,
America’s first woman astronomer, said, “We especially need
imagination in science. It is not all mathematics nor all logic,
but it is somewhat beauty and poetry.”
My essays have been published by The Wall Street Journal,
Washington Post, USA Today, Scientific American, Discover
magazine and more. I’ve also written two books, most
recently A Sky Wonderful with Stars, published by University
of Hawaii Press.
Life is short, and in the end we’re the sum of our experiences.
Carpe diem!
Silence, Awareness, Writing
It was a wonderful month at the Arteles Creative Center, a
life-changing experience. I made great progress towards
completing a creative nonfiction book I’ve been working
on for years, a collection of astronomy-themed essays that
explore what it means to be human in a vast and seemingly
impersonal cosmos.
The Silence Awareness Existence residency program and
the breathtaking Finnish countryside provided a unique
environment to tune out distractions and to focus on my
writing for an extended period of time. I gained new insights
into my writing style. I came to appreciate the beauty of
silence. I learned that a month-long block of creative time
with no other responsibilities is a treasure. As a newbie to
meditation, I looked forward to the inner calm it brought
daily. And this visit – my fifth to Finland – kindled within me a
desire to move to this enchanting country someday.

Silence Awareness Existence program / JANUARY 2019
Kenneth Lambert
Australia
www.kclart.com
About
Lambert is a conceptually driven artist whose practice
investigates the human psyche through the lens of
technology. His practice extends across digital media and
installation. Lambert approaches his experimental art
practice with the deliberation of a scientist and philosopher
combined. His intention is to entice the viewer into a state
that is self-reflective.
Lambert’s work has been recently recognized with his
inclusion in 2018 the Churchie Emerging Artist Prize, Lismore
Portrait Prize, Hidden Sculpture Walk and the Alice Prize. He
is also this year’s recipient of the Newington Armory Award:
Artist in Residency and has been invited to take part in 2019
Arteles Artist residency program in Finland.
Active Experimentation
My time at Arteles was defined by 3 objectives. (1) Respond
to the environment, (2) Experiment and develop new skills
and (3) Make meaningful connections.
Project 01. Acceleration (a = Δv ÷ Δt)
The intention with this installation was to reflect on the
growing anxiety around climate change. Utilizing the theory
of acceleration to convey that even 1º variation in the earth’s
temperature is problematic. Haukijärvi itself experienced
unusual variables for the 2019 winter, creating uncertainty
around whether the lake, Parilanjärvi would actually freeze for
project. As we began installation the ice beneath us started
to crack and felt unstable so the project was abandoned for
safety reasons.
Project 02. Forms (a = Δv ÷ Δt)
The forms grew out of failure. With the Mylar material left
over from project 01, I decided to see if I could translate the
original concept into an alternate execution. But first I needed
to learn how to sew, which eventually happened after some
perseverance. The end result was 12 forms which where
installed in around the forest area of Arteles. The winter snow
would eventually engulf the forms making them part of the
landscape despite their sharp metallic juxtaposition.
Project 03. Forest Meditation
In response to the “Silence and Existence” theme I embarked
on a meditative practice of wrapping trees with hazard tape.
Through some research I discovered that although Finland is
75% forest and it’s environmental credentials are the best in
the world, the forests are under threat because of the lack of
biodiversity after centuries of cultivation.

Silence Awareness Existence program / JANUARY 2019
Louise Pagé
Canada
www.bornonthe263.com
About
I was born and raised in northern Saskatchewan, where the
prairies and the boreal forest meet. The light and the infinite
sense of space peculiar to that landscape influences my
work, you could even say that they are the source of it.
My work is grounded within the framework of inquiry
and exploration - spiritual, psychological, metaphysical,
conceptual and visual curiosity.
My process is intuitive. I’m drawn to the transient nature of
the world, the fluidity of perception, visual impressions that
are both fleeting and lasting, universally shared experiences,
privately felt.
My tendencies lean towards making large-scale work that
transcends the everyday, creating visual experiences in
alternate environments, inviting the viewer into a natural
correspondence with beauty, encouraging pause and
reflection.
Bringing an idea to life is like an ongoing conversation
between me the receiver, me the messenger, me the maker
and me the witness.
For the last couple of years I have been working exclusively
with my ‘hai’ lights project, rice paper collages and piano
wire - travelling throughout western Canada creating
distinctly unique visual expressions, using the environment
as canvas, mark making in space, weaving light throughout
the countryside - much like a spider weaving its’ web through
the landscape -
both seen and unseen - visible and invisible -
The transient nature of this work lends itself to cycles and
ceremonies, comings and goings - reminding us of the
temporary nature of everything - of everything!
Naked with strangers (soon to be friends)
Yes it’s true, we all got naked with people we had only just met -
the Finnish sauna - remarkable really - words elude the
experience -
But naked bodies were just the beginning -
it wasn’t long before we exposed not just our physical flesh,
but also laid bare our creative vulnerabilities, as our artistic
processes revealed themselves in the naked light of the
Finnish winter.
I came to regenerate, to reflect, to research, to reside in
peaceful detachment from the mundane of the everyday - to
strip down, to lay bare, to open up, to see what the naked eye
could not -
to find whatever showed up -
The heart piece took its time, the vision blurred, its visibility
felt rather than seen - the pulse faint, but not dead - it
remained in the background of making, but in the foreground
of feeling, incubating in a timeless space and place -
‘hai’ lights happened - two installations in spite of a cold so
deep even the bones questioned the reason for it.
One in a birch forest - Koivu - amongst the long shadows of
the winter sun, up for a week in varying light.
One on a Kokku - a pile of fallen branches collected in autumn
in communities throughout Finland - gathered to be burnt in
celebration of light during the summer solstice -
‘hai’ lights - planting light in the darkest season -
a tribute, a visual reminder of the light within.
Naked with strangers
in the coldest, darkest season -
in Silence, with the Awareness of the vulnerability of our
Existence -
Grateful for its gifts

Residents 2018
Silence Awareness Existence - Theme program
January, February, March, December
Argentina
Verónica Meyer // Sculpture, painting, textile
Mer Miró // Drawing, installation, music
Australia
Prudence Holloway // Performer, composer, sound designer
Iona Massey // Poetry & fiction
Isobel Markus-Dunworth // Photography, videography, sculpture
Darryl Rogers // Video, virtual reality, augmented reality installation
Catherine Davies // Actor, theatremaker, general disruptor
Lux Eterna // Video, performance, photography
Vivienne Robertson // Mysticism, photography, philosophy
Gabrielle Paananen // Puppetry, illustration, natural History
Alanna Lorenzon // Drawing, writing, sculpture
Warren Ward // Writing, nonfiction, cultural history
Mel Dare // Painting, drawing
Belgium
Conrad Willems // Chinese painting, installation
Camille De Gend // Visual arts, writing, sculpting
Brazil
Tomás Franco // Sound, music, video
Carol Rodrigues // Literature
Canada
Hannah Gross // Performance, writing, video
Matthis Grunsky // Painting, sculpture
Ella Morton // Experimental analogue photography, film, land art
Yannick De Serre // Drawing, installation, printmaking
Drew Sparks // Photography, video
China
Ruhan Feng // Drawing, printmaking, installation
Denmark
Esther Flytkjær // Photography, text
Hong Kong
Julvian Ho // Drawing, painting, installation
Papaya Fung // Chinese painting, installation
Ireland
Agnieszka ‘Uisce’ Jakubczyk // fibre art, paper art
Jennifer Ahern // Collage, ceramics, installation
Tomas Penc // Sculpture, installation, sound
Netherlands
Simone Engelen // Photography, video & performance
Portugal
Ana Marchand // Painting, photo, writing
South Africa
Toni Stuart // Poetry, performance
Kathy Robins // Mixed media, sculpture, collaborations
South Africa
Ja Min Yie // Painting, drawing
Switzerland
Wanda Wieser // Sculpture, collage, alchemy
Spain
Pilar García de Leániz // Illustration
UK
Ross McCleary // Writing, poetry, performance
Sarah Duncan // Drawing, printmaking
USA
Tim Moran // Painting, ink drawing
Angela Ellsworth // Interdisciplinary
Kelley P Donahue // Drawing, installation, ceramic sculpture design
Robert Dowling // Performance, writing, photography
Paul Sunday // Painting, photography, collage
Paula Jeanine Bennett // Music, installation, words
Simon Klein // Media art, photography, performance
Jonah Groeneboer // Sculpture, installation
Lenna Minion // Lighting, show production, writing
CV Peterson // Performance, bioart, installation
Amanda Robles // Audio, video, installation
Lenna Minion // Lighting, show production, writing
Serena Gelb // Painting, writing, photography
Venezuela
Elena Victoria Pastor // Photography, mix media
Comic Blast! - Theme program
April, March
Australia
Grace Lee // Illustration
Jonathan McBurnie // Drawing
Canada
Jacqueline Huskisson // Drawing, comics, printmaking
Stanley Wany // Comics, Writing, Mixed Media
Emilie St.Hilaire // Comics, writing, drawing
Iran
Fatemeh Mohamadi // Painter and illustrator
Maysam Barza // Comics, illustration, concept art, painting
Norway
Anders Kvammen // Comics, illustrations, silk print
South Africa
Audrey Anderson // Mark making, ink, narrative
Jessica Bosworth Smith // Contemporary Art & Illustration
Audrey Anderson // Mark making, ink, narrative
Nas Hoosen // Comics, drawing, graphic novels
South Korea
Monica Lee // Illustration, painting, surface design
Taiwan
Huang Yu Chia // Chinese brush painting, illustration
UK
Amy Gallagher // Illustration, comics, design
Joshua Brent // Illustration, animation, comics
Alice Dansey-Wright // Art, Design & Illustration
Neil Slorance // Comics, illustration
Kate Anderson // Drawing, animation
USA
Jessica Hayworth // Illustration, comics, drawing
Philip King // Comics, illustration, painting
Christopher Sperandio // Comics
David Ross // Technology, comics
Emily Schulert // Comics, textiles, print
Susannah Lohr // Drawing, painting, sculpture

Back to Basics - Theme program
June, July, August, September
Enter text - Theme program
October, November
Argentina
Pompi Caputo // Art photography
Australia
Jayne Fenton Keane // Poetry
Naomi Taylor Royds // Multi-disciplinary, sculpture
Linda Loh // Visual Art, new media, video, painting
Tamara Lazaroff // Fiction & Creative Non-Fiction
Jacky Cheng // Sculpture, fibre, printmaking
Britt Salt // Installation, architecture, sculpture
Dierdre Pearce // Sculpture, installation
Michele Sierra // Sculpture, photomedia
Gabrielle Hall-Lomax // Photography
Belgium
Nel Bonte // Visual art
Stella Teunissen // Visual Arts, textile design
Canada
Sydney Southam // Film, performance, ceramics
Zackery Hobler // Photography
Denmark
Eva mm Engelhardt // Textile installations, sculpture, embroidery
Germany
Katharina Lökenhoff // Picture installation, artistic research
Hong Kong
Blythe Cheung // Visual Arts
Iran
Pedram Sadegh-Beyki // Generative Art, new media, animation
Mexico
Ilián González // video, photography, installation
Netherlands
Stijn Pommée // Visual arts, writing
Singapore
Isabelle Desjeux // ArtScience, photography
June Cheong // Film, photography, writing
South Africa
Simon Taylor // Video, photography, documentary
Stefan Blom // Psychologist, writer, illustrator
South Korea
Dana Y’Sol // Photography, sound, video
Argentina
Majo Moirón // Writing
Australia
Joanne Anderton // Writing
Chloe Maree Higgins // Creative non-fiction, memoir, essay
Aurora Scott // Writing, audio
Canada
Leah MacLean-Evans // Writing
Cypros
Aliye Ummanel // Poetry, drama, theatre director
Denmark
Lotte Pia Stenfors // Writing, bodywork, music
Hong Kong
Cally Yu (Yeuk Mu, Yu) // Literary, theatre, dance
Ireland
Mark Leahy // Writing, performance, art
Mexico
Ximena Perez-Grobet // Book art
New Zealand
Jane Tolerton
// Non-fiction
Norway
Lisette Frimannslund // Photopainting, drawing, writing
Serbia
Anja Savic
// Calligraphy, typographic design
Singapore
Michelle Tan // Text, performance
USA
Teresa Cervantes // Performance, poetry, sculpture
Daniel Zentmeyer // Performance, poetry, sculpture
Nathan Bell // Painting, drawing, sculpture
J. Sayuri // Illustration, video art
Aaron Sandnes // Sculpture, drawing, painting
Anna Carlson // Textiles, text, printmaking
Freddie Dessau // Art, writing, flaneuring
Daniel J. Cecil // Fiction, non-fiction
Hannah Kezema // Hybrid poetry, drawing, music
Spain
Laura Feliu
// Photography
UK
Ross Whyte // Music, sound art, composition
Anna Rhodes // Landscape architecture
Zoë Ranson // Fiction, creative non-fiction, text-based performance
Za Othman // Painting
Daniel Pasteiner // Painting, objects
USA
Lauren Ruth // Sculpture, Performance, installation
Enrica Ferrero // Textiles, painting, photography
Mia Cinelli // Design, sculpture, installation
Sima Schloss // Drawing, painting, collage
Anja Schütz // Photography
Evan James // Fiction, Nonfiction
Ken Steen // Music Composition, Sound Art & Video
Nora Sørena Casey // Playwright
Kendall Schauder // Fibers, art &tech, performance
Gail Baar // Visual art, fiber art
Luther Bangert // Juggling, movement, performance
Helen Lee // Performance, Video, Installation
Ben Davis // Photography, bookbinding
Catherine Taylor // Writing, video

Silence Awareness Existence program / DECEMBER 2018
Ruhan Feng
China
www.ruhanfeng.com
About
Ruhan Feng is a visual artist. She works with drawing,
printmaking, installations, and photographing.
Born and raised as the only child in a Chinese family and later
living alone in the United States for 6 years, she consider
herself as a family-raised but self-trained person.
Influenced by Buddhism and Daoism, she pursues the
teaching that man is an integral part of the nature. Her work
involves time, space, and materiality and investigates her
relationships to this world through multi-layered and multidimensional
perspectives. In her recent work, she looked into
her personal experience, memories, and struggles to explore
and reconstruct her identities as Chinese, an expatriate, and
woman, which ulteriorly challenges the normative and biased
definitions of family, marriage, gender, and social character
rooted in Chinese traditions.
Ruhan received her MFA in Printmaking at Rhode Island
School of Design in 2017, and a BA with honors at Stony
Brook University in 2014. In 2018, she was a residence
artist at Mass MoCa in US. Also, she is selected for Artist-in
Residence program at Anderson Ranch, US in 2019 spring.
Reflections in Blandness
I accidentally lost all the data in my phone. Photos, messages
and histories were all gone. Look forward, don’t look back—
the first thing I learnt at Arteles.
Then I started to pay attention to whatever was presented
to me: the air, the coldness, the wind, the snow, the grey,
the whites, the lack of light, the lake, the red chair facing the
emptiness, the disco ball in the kitchen, the fire, the sauna,
the sun and colors it brought, the animals foot prints, the
trails, the trees, the Christmas, the peacefulness, and the
blandness.
One day I was writing my journal and suddenly I smiled: I’m
doing an extravagant thing. I left everything behind and spent
all my savings traveling to a far-off land to read, to write, to
make art and just to rest. But I felt truly contented. It’s the
pure joy of life.
If reflection is the threshold of the visible world, I’m stilling
trying to peek into the truth of life from the phenomenal world.

Silence Awareness Existence program / DECEMBER 2018
Agnieszka ’Uisce’
Jakubczyk
Ireland
www.behance.net/uisceartef3b
About
I am a textile artist originally from Poland, living in Ireland. My
primary interest in my artistic practice is weaving. Recently I
started experimenting with paper making techniques.
I aim to use my creations as narratives, I want to communicate
through my art about issues touching a human as an individual
and as a part of society. For this reason, I am searching for
common symbols as well as developing my own language
of symbols. Symbolism is a subtle tool – many symbols can
reach and be understood by people in an emotional as well
as intellectual way. I believe such symbols have much more
potential for conveying subtle messages than our spoken/
written language.
I am inclined to use natural materials and also to include
up-cycled materials, which normally are not considered
valuable. I have used paper packaging, old unravelled
knitwear, birch bark, plastic, black rubbish bags… These
things, usually disregarded, have a lot of artistic value as
a material, if used in a well planned and thought-through
way. Saying it more simply: I am interested in the process
and results of transforming something unimportant, even
ugly, into beautiful, harmonious and evocative pieces. In
my practice using particular materials is significant part of
communication through my art.
Finnish December Diary
I am a textile artist of Polish origin, living in Ireland for many
years. In my art practise I use up-cycled materials; I am
particularly fond of using paper packages as a medium for
my woven pieces.
At my Silence Awareness Existence residency I wanted to
be a quiet observer, to look into my inner self and silently
watch my surroundings in a very focused way. It was time of
experimenting with very new to me paper making techniques,
working from pulp. I wanted to concentrate on, and express
through art, my personal reaction to darkness, quietness,
stillness in nature, on how my mind would respond to such
an unusual environment. I also wanted to explore non-verbal
ways of communicating with others.
My creative plan for the residency was to make a textile/fibre
diary of my psychological/physical experience. I was creating
a new piece of art every day, combining what I brought with
me (some materials and fibre-making techniques) and what I
find there (materials, experiences, experiments)… The diary
consist of 30 works altogether (including two triptychs and
a diptych). I also made over 20 other experimental pieces,
including two works which I ‘planted’ outdoors to let nature
transform them.
The program enabled me to switch off outside interfering
factors and focus on exploration, what is in me and around
me. There were some very challenging aspects, hidden fears,
sensitivities and anxiety… But despite, and also because of
them, new ways of expression were opened to me.
Thank you Arteles…

Silence Awareness Existence program / DECEMBER 2018
Tim Moran
USA
www.timmoranart.com
About
I set out to write a description of my work, but as I jotted
down notes and fragments of ideas, I ran a bit off course. I
began writing more to myself than to you. What unfolded was
a sort of credo, a set of directions for my own method of art
making.
At first, I thought to call this my “manifesto,” but that was
too severe. Then “manual” was too technical. Eventually,
I stumbled onto a Latin term that was both accurate and
ludicrous, so I present to you the first three chapters of...
The Enchiridion of Semi-Automatic Art
1.
No plans.
No studies.
No sketch.
These things are contrary to the work.
2.
Lay the foundation now. Go as far as you can without
stopping.
Curse, regret and obliterate, but leave behind the ghosts of
your hesitant marks.
Attack the canvas. Put pride in your feet and your spine and
move.
Let symbols be symbols. Let faces be faces.
Lean in to mischief. Keep pulling the thread of curiosity.
Experiment. Learn.
Never say no to impulse.
Refine and embellish. Take the collar off your imagination.
Make rules and break them.
Get far away and listen. Listen to your instincts. Listen to
what others have to say.
3.
Take a break when you start to go crazy.
Take a break when your feet hurt.
Take a break when you’re tired, or you’re sad. When you just
can’t today.
You won’t force good art if you have to force it.
Don’t Think
Painting. Drawing. Gesture and removal. Experiments with
sound and silence.
Waking to the late sun. Sauna team. Vegetables.
Anxiety. Planting seeds for pulling weeds.
Finding creatures.
Driving the blue car.

Silence Awareness Existence program / DECEMBER 2018
Iona Massey
Australia
About
A poet and writer of fiction, Iona loves how words can so
lightly depict both the wild and the domestic, the sacred and
the everyday, revealing them afresh. Sometimes playfully and
sometimes with solemnity, words form the matrix Iona has
woven into her multifarious portfolio, informed by the many
layers of her experience: as a teacher, nurse, daughter, sister,
friend, wife, mother, explorer, pilgrim and mystic. Winner of
the Commonwealth Short Story Competition, Special Award
for a Children’s Story 2010, and now with a full-length Young
Adult novel completed, Iona looks forward to discovering
what creative pearls silence and the Finnish landscape
produce.
Still; ness in Haukijärvi
From the beginning I wanted to be open and surrender to
what ‘is’ and those daily early mornings of traipsing through
the snow, from my room in the yellow house to the meditation
room, stay with me. Still; ness in Haukijärvi, a poem, was
inspired from my first walk of many to the nearby frozen lake,
which was the view from my desk. The ice and snow, the
birch and spruce of Finland in December were captivating
and a very different landscape for me. The hushed stillness
of it resonated within me an echoing silence so full of an
intuitive wisdom. I came to Arteles with an old idea for a
fictional text and though at first it felt like I was pulling teeth I
set the goal and wrote 500-700 words most days. (I continue
to write at least 1500 words per week of this new novel.) But
my true transformation came from understanding there’s a
Wild Woman in the Forest, a poem, who needs nurturing and
support to produce her art. As a writer being around artists
of different media, more than anything I was reminded how
art is a practice which needs time to experiment and develop.
Arteles gave me that.

Silence Awareness Existence program / DECEMBER 2018
Kelley Donahue
USA
www.kelleydonahue.com
About
Kelley Donahue is an artist and ceramics teacher from
Brooklyn, NY. The majority of her work is ceramic sculpture
(large and small) with layered patterns painted on the surface
with underglaze. She also makes experimental pop songs
and soundscapes, ink drawings on paper, dresses and
costumes inspired by the music and 2 and 3D work. Although
ceramics takes up most of her time for making work, she likes
to experiment with new materials regularly. She received her
MFA from Alfred University in 2014 and has has shown at
galleries in Boston, Beijing, and Manhattan.
Drawing and sewing
I spent my time at Arteles doing things that were relatively
new to me. I brought an array of fabrics that I previously had
printed with my drawings, and used them to sew clothes that I
designed spontaneously and intuitively without any planning.
It had been 15 years since I spent time sewing and had never
been very successful at executing my vision since I couldn’t
get the hang of using a pattern. This was an interesting way
to see how my progress in understanding fabric and how it
can take shape around the body has been nurtured by other
creative practices over the last decade and a half. I also
brought a style of ink pens I’d never worked with before and
made drawings that I had envisioned myself making for quite
some time but this was the first attempt at creating them.
The aesthetic inspiration that seemed to guide my work over
the month came from the surrounding forest, particularly
the birch trees. I also spent time doing kundalini yoga and
exploring internal worlds which impacted the imagery and
styles that came through in the clothes and drawings.

Silence Awareness Existence program / DECEMBER 2018
Prudence Holloway
Australia
www.prudenceholloway.com
About
Prudence is a performer, musician and composer based in
Sydney, she has trained at the Victorian College of the Arts,
The Conservatorium of Music and more specifically in the
Meisner technique and the Estill Method.
Prudence has composed and sound designed for a number
of Sydney-based productions including Brecht’s Caucasian
Chalk Circle (STS), Flame Trees (Tunks Productions), She is
the resident music director of SheShakespeare an all-female
Shakespeare company and composed/designed for two sellout
seasons of As you like it & Macbeth.
Prudence is driven by the subtle and nuanced ability of sound
composition to support and shape the narrative of stage and
screen. She is looking forward to working collaboratively to
create soundscapes for works on screen.
Ambience and Space
My time at Arteles allowed me to disconnect from the
expectation of having to “create” and rather play and
discover. Using meditation and mindfulness as a starting
point my aim was to listen and see, responding to what the
landscape wanted to give me on any particular day. The dark
and silent days allowed for more acute listening free from
the distraction of everyday interference and noise. I found
myself chasing the quietest of sounds in the distance, trying
to capture the wind blowing through the trees, the snow
falling in an attempt to keep myself present in the meditative
calmness I felt in the Finnish landscape. Working with the
ambient sounds of Arteles I layered that with vocals and
instrumentation before putting it with drone footage, an
attempt to transport the viewer giving them a sense of space.

Silence Awareness Existence program / DECEMBER 2018
Isobel Markus-Dunworth
Australia
www.isobelmarkusdunworth.com
About
I am a Sydney-based visual artist who works across
photography, videography and sculpture. My practice
considers the physical and performative connotations of
the photographic medium and how we can expand our
modes of working to consider the medium sculpturally. The
photographic lighting studio is utilised in my practice as the
site or stage for experimentation and ideation. Most recently
I’ve been working on producing large format positive
photographic slides that catalogue a specific series of
archetypal objects or scenes as well as creating slow moving
video works that reference specific photographic tropes.
Time, Space & Stillness
My time at Arteles could be summed up in 3 words; time,
space and stillness. The intense cultural and geographic
quiet that the Finnish landscape and time at Arteles offered
me allowed me the time and space to quietly ruminate on
my practice and motivations and allowed me the stillness
to reflect critically but compassionately on my modes of
working. I found the embedded quietness of the Finnish
people one of the most enduring sources of fascination
and admiration, I became acutely aware of my own internal
white noise and need to fill space with sound. Meditation
and quiet were guiding instruments that allowed me to settle
more lightly into a quieter, slower, more reflective method
of working. I became acutely aware of the way the Finnish
landscapes piques our senses; the dense, limited sounds of
ice cracking and trees waving, the ever so gentle presence
of limited light with the drawn out, forever-dusk days and the
fresh chill of the icy air, which doesn’t even seem to defrost
at midday. I was drawn to capturing artefacts of this space,
sounds, visuals, images of people and places, working
across mediums to play freely in the wonderful time, space
and stillness that my month at Arteles offered me.

Silence Awareness Existence program / DECEMBER 2018
Esther Flytkjær
Denmark
www.estherf.dk
About
I have combined the act of walking and wandering alone
with my curiosity for photographing and discovering light
in the darkness. I enjoy seeing how light speaks to us and
influences our perception of space and the ordinary. My
camera is used as a way to connect to my surroundings and
nature - and becoming aware of my own existence.
In addition to my artistic practice, I occasionally contribute
writing and photography to news publications.
I live and work in Copenhagen, and hold an MA in Media
Studies from University of Copenhagen. In 2017, I joined
a masterclass at Fatamorgana (The Danish School of Art
Photography) and in 2018, I graduated from International
Center of Photography (ICP) in New York.
Nocturnal roaming
I was pleased to have the time to do different things and
working with different cameras during my stay at Arteles. Not
all came out as I expected, but I embraced the mistakes and
integrated them into my work. The images came to reflect my
process of wandering in a specific location with a constant
change of light and weather conditions, and chance became
an important element in my work.
The series of photographs, which I call “”Nocturnal roaming””
is from the time around winter solstice, where days are short
and nights are long and the perfect time for exploring the
darkness and how changing of light sometimes makes the
familiar unfamiliar. The series also reflect psychological
states of mind and the experience of solitude, longing and
search.

Silence Awareness Existence program / DECEMBER 2018
Ana Marchand
Portugal
www.anamarchand.com
About
I see my life in all the fields as an artwork on progress.
the main interest is the experiment the way
I’m very concerned with oriental philosophies.
for long time I was a traveler of the world
Now I’m an inside traveler.
and my interest is:
- art as a constant renewable source of energy.
-art has a meditative object
Place and experience
The purpose of my residence in Arteles was to experience a
new and total unknown natural environment.
The work that came out of my hands would certainly also be
different,
Day time my time was mostly busy on the hikes abroad.
Upon returning to the studio, the work developed slowly,
Liquid sediment lay on small boards or sheets of paper, and
which, as snow or ice slowly formed.
The surrounding light was a faint light.
The blue tone of the dawn and the end of the day began to
appear with various modalities
At the end of the stay there was a body of work coherent in
its different expressions:
painting
photography
writing

Silence Awareness Existence program / DECEMBER 2018
Darryl Rogers
Australia
www.instagram.com/darrylbrogers
About
My practice endeavours to alter the constituent variables of
space and time attempting to poke holes in the seemingly
impervious materiality of the world around us. This
exploration is often resolved in representing the natural
elements in time based mediums as a type of durational
painting or “timescape”. My work whilst originally being
video based is continually expanding with new technologies
which help question and interpret these ideas in new and
exciting ways. I am interested in the what lies beyond the
edge of everything and it tends to conjure characteristics of
illusion, miracle, quantum mischief and the metaphysical.
Re-Framed
The starkness and contrasts of winter in Finland prompted
a rethinking of my work process and subject matter. The
discovery of an old wooden frame in the painting cupboard
and Arteles carpentry workshop prompted some radical
camera mounting ideas. All of this lead to Re-Framed, a series
of videos that looks at landscape, time and the interaction
between. https://vimeo.com/310218854

Enter Text program / NOVEMBER 2018
Leah MacLean-Evans
Canada
www.macleanevans.ca
About
Leah MacLean-Evans is an Ottawa-based writer of fiction and
poetry. She loves the places where the magical, the natural,
and the urban collide, and is particularly interested in hybrids
of the fantasy and literary genres. She was the 2017 winner of
the Blodwyn Memorial Prize for Fiction and the 2018 winner of
the League of Canadian Poets’ National Broadsheet Contest.
Her work has appeared in Canthius, Qwerty, untethered, On
Spec Magazine, and other journals across Canada. She has
an MFA in Writing from the University of Saskatchewan, is the
proofreader of Grain Magazine, and is on Canthius’ editorial
board.
Routine and Ritual
During my month at Arteles, I worked on two projects I had
already begun. The first was a series of poems inspired
by the farming simulation genre of video games, which I
continued to draft new poems for. The second was a novel
that I had set aside a year prior and was on the verge of
abandoning. Arteles gave me the creative and emotional
freedom to reread it, and to my great surprise I still liked it.
In between writing new poems, I edited the novel, mapping
out the scenes with sticky notes on the studio wall. After
many walks among the forest of birch and pine trees, kitchen
chats with other residents, hours reading, and saunas when
the writing was slow or sticking, I had made decisions on
the novel’s final revisions and explored new ways of bringing
video game forms and content into poetry.
Being at Arteles was something like the moment of
emerging from the public sauna’s icy lake: routine and ritual,
peacemaking with frozen water, dazed and with a huge
lungful of fresh breath.

Enter Text program / NOVEMBER 2018
Lisette Frimannslund
Norway
www.lisettefrimannslund.com
About
I am a visual artist originally from Bergen, Norway, but now
living and working in The Hague, Netherlands. I hold an MSc
in Industrial Design Engineering and - more recently - a BFA
from The Royal Academy of Art in The Hague.
I like to work in a project-based way where I can zoom in,
investigate and research a place, an event or a memory,
and just see where that takes me. What I meet. What I
discover. My own perception, associations, memories and
interpretations of these chance meetings and discoveries
all get mixed together in the work. I combine elements of
photography, drawing, writing and painting; often in the form
of an itinerary; a part fact, part fiction travelogue through
time, space or mind.
Each project also comes with its own set of rules that I do
not neccessarily follow. I often like to let a book that I can
somehow link to the project dictate how the project will be
formed. Or even let the book set the rules.
At Arteles I will try to use my own writing as the starting point
for my project, and not the image; which is what I usually do.
Rule 16: See what is before you
I came to Arteles with a specific text/image project in mind
(working title Postcards from the Woods) and a.o. a set of
Rules for Life in the Woods (after Thoreau). “The plan” was to
use my month of focus to try out a new way of working; doing
a lot of the writing part of my project first, before moving
on to the images. After a week I abandoned that idea; it just
didn’t work. Or I don’t work like that. It’s funny how I always
forget, and then always remember. I need to walk, cycle or
simply move through a landscape to think; to let the ideas
come to me.
Being able to start each day with an hour of diary writing
gave me a morning routine. I slowed down, let go of my
original plan and just took my camera with me on long walks,
letting the things I would meet become the project, or a
whole new project all together. During my walks in the quiet I
photographed and collected colour memories, recorded the
sound of my footsteps on the frozen leaves, noticed all the
lines of the landscape and reawakened some long forgotten
memories.
I moved my stuff from my bedroom desk to the studios
and started printing, drawing and writing down what I had
collected on my walks. Taking my time and not rushing
anything.

Enter Text program / NOVEMBER 2018
Majo Moirón
Argentina
vimeo.com/user7476487
About
Majo Moirón was born in Buenos Aires in 1985. She is a
writer. She also explores the infinite possibilities of art videos
and documentary films inspired by poetry and literary works.
She has published her own book of short stories called Lobo
Rojo (Blatt & Ríos). Some of her short stories has also been
included in collections such as “El amor y otros cuentos”
(Reservoir Books, Argentina), “El tiempo fue hecho para
ser desperdiciado” (Libros del Perro Negro, Chile) and “The
Portable Museum - Issue 3” (Ox and Pigeon, US) . During her
time in Arteles, she will be working on her next book called
“El diario blanco”.
The white diary
The forest trees are finite and tall, they move from one side to
the other as if they were warming up a dance. They are white
with black spots, like exotic tigers. To get to the wooden
pier of the lake you have to cross the road. The silence is
hollow, it comes and goes according to the trucks passing
by. The same trucks that carry fuel and food in Argentina,
and in all parts of the world. I recognize the brand as a
sign of belonging. Massive monsters that travels on wet
and dry roads stretching over different types of geography.
Sometimes, their tires are stained with dust. Others, with red
soil. Here the forest keeps them wet. The water on the cement
seems to cut the road with a knife. I feel the force of the truck
at the edge of the road and imagine the friction drags me
and lift me to death. I walk on the edge and fall into the wet
shoulder instead. A mattress of grass, a city of microscopic
life. I return home and sit down to do what I came for: make
the language dance as soft birches. I turn on the computer
and open the files. Thousands of windows waiting with ideas
that do not become whole anywhere. I can’t stop writing as
if I did it again after years. I decide to stay in a room all day
to sort it out, but instead I keep writing. My body is burning.
I have a hard time understanding the grief inside my body
and try to believe that as long as I keep alert of what goes on
outside, I will find the reason. The proliferation of bacteria in
a liquid environment: it is clear that I am brewing something
new, other than pounds from the amount of chocolate.
The morning begins to fill with frost. Over the lake, a
uniformed layer of ice, still finite, was formed to protect itself
during the winter. I think of the fish that swim in it during the
summer. I imagine them frozen too, suspended in time. It
makes me envious. The landscape of the forest became my
brand-new organ. Nothing binds me to Buenos Aires. When
I try to remember myself there, it is a suffocating scene. The
particles in the air are heavier in hot weather and I can’t get
immerse into my own life.

Enter Text program / NOVEMBER 2018
Lotte Pia Stenfors
Denmark
tigerdrage.wordpress.com
About
Born 1971 in Copenhagen, grew up in Denmark, Africa and
Norway. Veterinarian , phD, microbiology scientist. Language,
belonging, coexistence and survival were subjects I circled
and explored, even when working in science. Gradually,
in poetry and movement, I approached the ways the body
experiences, writing my way through years of education
and growth; dance therapy courses, voice, songwriting,
dance and movement classes, and recently two therapeutic
bodywork educations, all the while heavily challenged by
illness and the changes that inflicted. Am I allowed to be
funny, sexy, intelligent, focused, while I am in recovery from
surgery? Can I be simultaneously joyful, interested, and in
strong pain?
Lately, learning about trauma, its expressions, subtleties and
its slow and organic healing, pushes me to address something
tense and rich. How does it feel, being autonomous in my
physical self? How does it feel when I am powerless? What
imprints in beliefs and stories do experiences of invasion and
overwhelm leave on my identity, presence and belonging?
Will that change when expressed (written, shouted,
whispered, sung)? Can all parts of my human experience
be allowed to be, simultaneously, even be expressed?
How does my scientific/biological knowledge understand,
embody, and speak about what I sense, believe, or deeply
feel? Can I find a language for that? Language in all forms;
my senses, words, voice, breath and eyes, everything they
say. Are they heard? Can I hear you, the language of the skin,
of the nervous system? Of myself?
Wildlife observation
Arteles gave me a gentle space to observe and document the
levels of my brain: sensory (instinctual), emotional, cognitive.
With no demands or time frames, I watched my outlay of
working, my why’s and resistances, needs and impulses. I
was overwhelmed. Also from the baggage I brought – so I
wrote “Baggage”. And “List of places I have cried”. I started
noticing the smaller, passing thoughts and sometimes they
led into poems or chapters of projects with working titles
such as “50 ways to be invaded”, “Catalogue of obedience”,
“Uncomfortable writing” and “Instinct and intimacy”. I
spent a lot of time not able to write: obsessing, doubting,
procrastinating, doing nice things like exploring the sauna,
nature and the kitchen, silence, company. I battled with futility
and deep instinctual fear. Kept writing from it, collecting the
observations, the data, and maybe finding letters for the
alphabet of “what the body says”. I drew shame, and made
collages with absurdities of different traumas: hospitals,
invaders, illness, love. My science background surfaced with
poetry about molecular chaperones. I found the reflex to catch
small movements in the outskirts of my attention; the almostnot-there-thoughts,
where instincts express and I can know
myself deeper. To watch silently, and suddenly something is
there: a moment, a twitch, a squirrel, flying geese, insight,
joy, longing. I watched all the sunrises, couldn’t sleep, talked,
cried in the field, and felt whole again in the watersplashingroom.
I found brave writing, truthful, and playful.

Enter Text program / NOVEMBER 2018
Hannah Kezema
USA
www.tatteredpress.org/hannah-kezema
About
Hannah Kezema is an artist who works across mediums.
She’s the author of the chapbook three (2017, Tea and Tattered
Pages), as well as several online and print publications that
can be found in Full Stop, Spiral Orb, Emergency Index,
Gesture, and other places. She holds an MFA in Writing &
Poetics from the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied
Poetics and a BA in Literature from The New School. Along
with Angel Dominguez, she co-founded the performance
art collaborative DREAM TIGERS. She continues to explore
failure, trauma, asemic writing, and the cross-overs of
text and image, while intermittently working on a project
which investigates ancestral memory, poem-as-ritual, and
divination.
A Diviner’s Notebook
While at Arteles, I was able to complete a draft of my
manuscript, A Diviner’s Notebook, that I have been
intermittently working on for the past four years. The text
centers around my great-great aunt, who was a rebellious
psychic medium, but it also explores other aspects/absences
in my ancestry, interweaving female occult figures and saints
and my own divinatory practice, along with photographs
and ephemera. During my four weeks, however, I did much
more than write. I wasn’t only granted the time to reignite
my near-dormant artistic practice but also to reconnect
with my intuition in a palpable way. What fueled the writing
was the cultivation of certain rituals, and most surprisingly,
self-care. I’d wake early and often begin the day with a tarot
reading for myself, which became a compass for the artmaking
as well as a vehicle for communing with the dead
who inhabit the text. I wandered through the quiet woods,
collecting birch twigs, which I made dolls out of by wrapping
them in colorful yarn. This was something I later realized
connected me with another part of my ancestry, specifically,
my great grandmother, who would make dolls out of various
materials. This is also a divinatory practice in itself. I worked
with the moon cycle adamantly and pestered relatives with
my incessant questioning. I wrote two songs and had many
stimulating conversations with residents and staff about
process and care. I fell in love with sauna and the lakes.
Every day, I chased the sun.

Enter Text program / NOVEMBER 2018
Daniel J. Cecil
USA
www.writerdanieljcecil.com
About
My name is Daniel J. Cecil, and I’m an American writer born in
Ohio and currently residing in Seattle, Washington. I studied
for a Bachelor of Arts in theatre at Baldwin-Wallace and the
University of Hull, England. As part of a collaborative theatre
group in London, I began writing plays, and soon ventured
into short stories and novel-writing. I moved to Amsterdam
in 2009, where I was an active member of the Amsterdam
writing scene, running several reading series and working
as the Managing Editor of Versal, the international arts and
literature journal. In 2015, I returned to the United States
to study for my Master of Fine Arts (MFA in Fiction) at the
University of Washington, Seattle. I received my Masters in
2017 with distinction.
My fiction work focuses on themes of identity and the ways in
which identity is shaped and manipulated in contemporary,
capitalist culture. I’m currently interested in how authority
between characters is established — within groups and
interpersonal relationships — taking the work of René
Girard’s mimetic theory as a jumping off point. My time at
Arteles will be spent working on finalising the draft of my first
novel “The Factory of Russian Dolls”, which explores these
themes in depth.
My work has appeared in The Rumpus, The Stranger, The
Plant, Bookslut, Rock and Sling, and the Heavy Feather
Review, among others notable publications.
Drafting ”that” novel
I set out to finish a draft of a novel in progress, The Factory of
Russian Dolls, while at the Arteles residency.
Here’s a synopsis of the book:
In 1989, a young documentary filmmaker from Ohio named
Alistair Selby wins his first art grant to document the fall of
the Berlin Wall. Green and inexperienced in Berlin, lost and
confused in the tumultuous upheaval created by the fall of
the Iron Curtain, Al gravitates to a squat in Kreuzberg called
the Hotel. There, he meets and falls in love with Eugene
Lowenstein, a painter whose mission statement is to change
his audience’s perception of reality using art and, in the
process, make them one with the universe.
Alistair and Eugene work together to create installations
inside the Kreuzberg Hotel — mysterious rooms that act as
portals into the infinite. With the help of strange rituals and
LSD word spreads and the cult around Eugene and his work
grows. When musician Diane Freeman is brought into the
fold, threatening Al and Eugene’s romantic entanglement,
Al’s jealousy unfurls into a surreal journey through time,
space, guilt, and revenge. Lyrical and thrilling, A Factory of
Russian is an exploration of the power struggles that make
us who we are, and those that rip us apart.
Big thanks to the Arteles staff for giving me the opportunity
to complete this work.

Enter Text program / NOVEMBER 2018
Freddie Dessau
USA
freddiedessau.weebly.com
About
As an artist and writer, I attempt to obscure the distinction
between art and literature. I endeavor to use text to express
with clarity a multitude of instances of my lived experience.
Through essays, short stories, and poetry as well as visual
art I explore the connection between words and self.
Creating mostly paper-based works, including vignettes,
comics and posters, through mediums ranging from collage,
photography, performance, installation, and drawing I
investigate my memories, my interests, and obsessions:
storytelling, travel, art and social criticism as well as with
humor. I consider my art practice both highly personal and
autobiographical, a direct record informed by representing
my experiences and choices, and the knowledge that I’ve
gained from these experiences and choices. Recent work
reduces the materiality to bond paper and inkjet prints still
mindful of the appearance of text as well as its meaning.
In creating each vignette, a logic is applied: a staccato of
short sentences avoiding compound phrases. Things may
not always be as they appear. My work then questions the
comforting dishonesty when appearances serve a convenient
necessity.
Nonets
Inspired by the nature around me and my recent experience
I composed nonets — short poems with lines descending
syllabically — to perform spoken word in the future. Often
these poems were combined with images and sometimes
posted on Instagram for dissemination and sharing.

Enter Text program / NOVEMBER 2018
Mark Leahy
Ireland
http://www.markleahy.net
About
I am a writer and artist operating among textual practices
and performance. Born in Ireland, I live in the South West of
England. Working with the body as sensing and as affected,
I use language, models of perception, and everyday objects.
Including spoken word, task-based actions, and song my
performances address the body as desired and as desiring,
and as a site of inscription and mediation. My textual practice
utilizes constraints, structuring rules, and operates to cross
or question category and genre divisions including around
identity and agency. Recent live work includes ‘threaded
insert’ (Plymouth Art Weekender, 2017; Cardiff, May 2018);
‘subject to gesture’ (Liverpool, Apr 2017); ‘his voice’
(Plymouth, Oct 2015; Manchester, Feb 2016), ’flat-head selftapping’
at Chelsea School of Art (May 2015) and ‘answering
machine’ for Experimentica14 at Chapter Cardiff (Nov 2014).
Other live works were presented in Bristol, London, Galway
and Liverpool.
I was commissioned to write texts to accompany work by
artists including Nathan Walker, Katy Connor, Steven Paige,
and LOW PROFILE. Critical publications include essays in
C21 Literature, Open Letter, Performance Research Journal
and Journal of Writing in Creative Practice.
I teach part-time at Plymouth University, have managed a
variety of exhibition, installation and performance projects,
and am a director of artdotearth.org and chair of the board
of TakeAPart.
Gestures and Bodies
Over the month at Arteles I worked on 2 main pieces of
writing, one a ‘translation’ of Bruno Munari’s ‘Supplement
to the Italian Dictionary’, and one a development of texts
generated from a series of performance works.
The Munari translation has now been developed to a second
draft stage, and requires some final editing before considering
publication options. Alongside this writing I made a series of
postcard sized collages that engaged with gestures, poses
and bodies. These used images of sportspeople, models,
politicians and others to comment on gender, ability, and
the social codes around bodies in public and private. These
collages led me to develop a series of very short animations,
gifs, using still images made in the photo studio. I dressed
in costumes that reference sports, branding, identity, and
gender and photographed myself against the green-screen
cloth. These image series echo the collages, and also pick
up on aspects of Munari’s book on gestures.
The textual material from the performance of ‘his voice’ was
a collection of saved tweets generated from live searches
of Twitter. At Arteles, I worked on analyzing, sorting and
categorizing this material. I have now developed a five-part
structure for the body of text and will further edit this material
for publication.
Overall it was a very productive time that allowed me to focus
on new projects free from distractions.

Enter Text program / OCTOBER 2018
Nathan Bell
USA
www.nathan-bell.com
About
Unfinnished Business
Nathan Bell is a Los Angeles based artist and designer. He
is strongly influenced by music, pop culture and vintage
graphics, blending his ideas with a hand done aesthetic.
Bell cleverly crafts words in his drawings and paintings to
describe life scenarios. Often combining his talents as artist
and designer. His works have been shown at Subliminal
Projects, The Hole NYC, HVW8, ForYourArt, See Line Gallery,
and Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery alongside artists
including Dave Muller, Johanna Jackson, Ed Fella, Sage
Vaughn, Ron English, and Shepard Fairey. Bell’s work has
been featured in Artslant’s Collector’s Catalogue as well as
books, catalogues and various music related materials.
Studies &
Sketches
Works in progress &
Works in regress
One offs &
Blow Offs
Knicks &
Knacks
Take it & or
Leave it
Kiitos &
Cheetos.

Enter Text program / OCTOBER 2018
Jane Tolerton
New Zealand
www.janetolerton.co.nz
About
I am a New Zealand non-fiction writer who has mainly written
about women and World War One. I did a history degree
and journalism diploma and worked for newspapers and
magazines before writing an award-winning biography of
Ettie Rout, a New Zealander who was probably first in the
world to run a safer sex campaign - during World War One. I
interviewed 85 veterans of that war and have done two books
from the interviews. My other oral history books are Convent
Girls and Sixties Chicks. My 2017 book was Make Her Praises
Heard Afar: NZ women overseas in WW1. I have just put out a
little book for the 125th anniversary of women’s suffrage: But
I Changed All That: ‘First’ New Zealand women. I am working
on a book about why New Zealand got the women’s vote so
early, 1893, but no woman MP until 1933 - a contrast with
Finland where women got the vote in 1906 and there were
women MPs the following year.
Kiwi Teens
I produced an e-book titled Kiwi Teens on the Western
Front. I had a very short deadline as it had to be ‘published’
- up on the website - by 11 November 2018, the centenary
of Armistice Day in 1918.I had to edit up interviews I did 30
years ago with three very young soldiers of World War I; they
went at 15, 17 and 19. Then I had to organise photographs
and edit and proofread the copy. Because I had one month
of undisturbed time, I was able to think this book out. I added
much more contextualising material than I had planned.
Being away from my own country, New Zealand, meant that I
had a good distance - and I saw a need for more context. The
e-book was up two days before Armistice Day - and that day
I went on national radio and television, and appeared on a
panel. I was so grateful to Arteles because without that time
and space, this could not have happened.

KIWI
TEENS
ON THE
WESTERN
FRONT
SYDNEY STANFIELD
LESLIE SARGEANT
THOMAS ELTRINGHAM
Edited by JANE TOLERTON
WORLD WAR I ORAL HISTORY ARCHIVE

Enter Text program / OCTOBER 2018
Aliye Ummanel
Cypros
About
Began with poetry and added drama. Studied American
Culture and Literature and then had an MA degree on Theatre
Theory, Criticism and Dramaturgy. Never thought of theatre
practice but became a theatre director. The Artistic Director
of Nicosia Turkish Municipal Theatre and dramaturge
(responsible for the repertoire) of Cyprus Theatre Festival
nowadays.
Have two poetry books published (Kuyu/The Well and Düş
Geceye Düşünce/When Dream Fall Upon The Night) and have
three plays staged (Passa Tempo, Kayıp/The Missing, Ev/The
House). Many poems published in several magazines, a play
(Passa Tempo) published in a French anthology. Three plays
translated into English and Greek. Directed eight plays. Both
in poetry and drama I am interested in simplicity, depth and
rhtym. I try to transfer my style in poetry to my dramatic work
both in writing and directing. In my poems you can hear an
existentialist’s voice and meet the motifs of the island I come
from: yellow fields, owls, the sea, the moon (Cyprus has one
of its own) etc. Love is also a very common theme. And in my
dramatic work I am deeply interested in what is happening
beyond what is seen. I try to deal with social and political
issues of my generation who was born and raised within a
political conflict and through my art I try to understand and
fight against this conflict. My plays several times brought
people of the divided island together to watch their common
stories.
Time of Birch
Prose. Pause. Poetry.
Three words to describe “before Arteles”, “arriving at Arteles”
and “at Arteles.”
Not that I say prose is bad but one needs a pause and stillness
to hear the voice of poems. The residency at Arteles was an
escape from routine of hectic everyday life and its sounds
that cover poetry -that’s why I name that period as prose. It
gave a chance for a rest to let the poems flow. Sooner with
the stillness and harmony of an amazing landscape life was
like poetry.
When I arrived at Arteles an evening last october without
my baggage -since it was lost during my trip- I had nothing
but a notebook, my pencil case and a book including
interviews with writers about writing in my back pack. All the
other things I needed were provided by Arteles: a room to
create, a window full of trees and new images to trigger new
poems. Next morning when I met the birch trees my poetry
encountered a new image and its sound. And then followed
the spruce, the mushrooms, the moss, etc. In the end of the
residency period I had a file of poems equal to the number of
days I had spent there. The title of the file is “time of the birch”
and I hope these poems will be included within my next book
which will have the same title. Beside that, early notes for a
new play was bonus and conversations with amazing artists
deepened my art and life.

Enter Text program / OCTOBER 2018
Ximena Pérez Grobet
Mexico
www.ximenaperezgrobet.com
About
Ximena Pérez-Grobet, founder and owner of Nowhereman
Press, has been creating her own artists books since 1994. Her
work has been shown in galleries, book fairs and museums
throughout Europe, USA, Mexico and Latin America.
She also collaborates with other artists and collectives,
producing artists books and special editions. She is the
director of Artists’ Books for Artists, receiving commissions
from other artists to turn their projects into books.
She has worked as an editorial designer and art book
producer in various publishing houses around the world. She
also collaborates in museums and public with artists books
workshops.
Awards: 2010 – Charnwood Book Prize, UK for her artist
book 24 hours, Nowhereman Press. 2011 / 2013 – Art Libris
& Banc de Sabadell, Barcelona for her Incis: Mar Arza and El
Laberinto de la soledad de Octavio Paz.
Knitting Finnegans Wake
When I arrived to Arteles I was already in the middle of a
project which is making an artist book out of a published
novel by James Joyce called Finnegans Wake. The idea of
the project is to knit printed text as James Joyce knitted
literature. I want to make visual the complexity of the novel.
I was able to finish knitting the whole book during my stay
in Arteles. I arrived with all the book threads which I hang in
my bed room wall as soon as I arrived to Arteles. During the
process of knitting I could easily see how I was going through
my knitting taking down each group of threads every two
days approximately in order to knit page by page. It took me
one day to knit a whole page and as I was moving along I was
getting faster in my knitting. At the end I knitted 24 pages;
during my forest walks I have taken a series of photographs
thinking to use them as artists books which I will be working
in a near future.

Enter Text program / OCTOBER 2018
Aaron Sandnes
USA
www.aaronsandnes.com
About
It is important for me to use the platform of art making to
address my political concerns. My artwork directs attention
towards social themes of power, violence and anarchism by
subverting minimalist tropes. As an artist, I make my work
from the position of the Anti-Hero. For me, the symbol of the
Anti-Hero (commonly understood to lack conventional heroic
attributes) represents the idea of overcoming alienation.
This theme allows me to explore my political interests
while simultaneously drawing from my life experiences. I
adopt certain languages from the Minimalist canon with a
distinct political slant. Ad Reinhart’s Black Painting(s) enact
a form of protest addressing social and artistic ideals. My
Death Marks the Spot series act in protest to governmental,
capitalist violence. Politically, I am focused on the spaces
in which commitment to any ideology obstructs humanity
from progressing. I reference anarchy as I see anarchistic
acts as attempts to reconcile these obstructions. Though
my artwork spans a range of disciplines I often employ
red herrings as a conceptual framework to contradict the
expectations of my gestures with political themes. Exploiting
seductive aesthetics is a methodology that enables me to
interject my political positions without being overtly didactic.
By producing accessible art objects, I am able to permeate
my position from the inside, rather than explicit display from
the outside.
Remembered, Explored, Connected
My time spent at Arteles was filled with feelings similar to
the sensation of shifting into neutral. While coasting, I had
time and space to catch up on sleep, perfected an amazing
burrito bowl, laughed and danced, remembered forgotten
ideas; completed new work that I had planned; explored new
ideas. But most of all, I connected with brilliant and generous
artists around dinner tables and bonfires.
Club Handcuffs Forever ( NB/AS)

Enter Text program / OCTOBER 2018
J. Sayuri
USA
www.jsayuri.com
About
I am a multimedia artist, born and raised in Los Angeles,
California and currently working and living in Portland,
Oregon. The mediums I work with depend entirely on the
project at hand, however, I am currently working in video art
and digital illustration. One of the more exciting projects that
I am working on is ASMR Crafting with Sayuri and Gabby
La La - a highly stylized ASMR crafting show that features
myself and my collaborator creating both mundane and
fantastical crafting projects.
Video, Collage, Illustration
During the Arteles residency, I edited my whispering ASMR
crafting videos and created a series of collages. The videos
are a continuation of my work before coming to Arteles and
my collages are a new project I started at Arteles. .
For the past year, I have been creating ASMR whisper-crafting
skits with my collaborator, Gabby La La and video editing
has been a struggle for us. However, I enjoy the technical
challenges of creating multimedia work to tell my stories
in different ways. During the residency, I taught myself the
basics of Adobe Premiere to finish editing these skits in a
more professional way.
Tired from video editing, I created my collages. These are
inspired by the Finnish landscape - mushrooms, blue skies,
ice, lakes. I cut out images from National Geographic and
Finnish nature books. All three collages integrate butterflies,
a symbol of transformation - important to document a shift in
my creative practice. Upon returning home, I created 3-color
risograph prints of each of these collages.
In my non-art making life at Arteles, I walked the birch tree
forests and visited the sheep down the road. I relaxed in the
silence. I hope to integrate this calm into the work I make.

Enter Text program / OCTOBER 2018
Joanne Anderton
Australia
www.joanneanderton.com/wordpress
About
My primary genres are science fiction, fantasy, and horror,
and I love to explore anything a little out of the ordinary. I
have published a trilogy of science fiction/fantasy novels,
‘Debris’, ‘Suited’ and ‘Guardian’. I’ve also published a
collection of short stories, ‘The Bone Chime Song and Other
Stories’. My speculative fiction has won two Aurealis Awards,
an Australian Shadows Award and a Ditmar.
I have recently started branching out into different genres and
forms. My children’s picture book ‘The Flying Optometrist’
was published in 2018 and is inspired by the work my father
does in remote and regional NSW. I have just completed a
Masters of Arts in Creative Writing, and discovered a love
of non-fiction and the personal essay. Speculative fiction
will always be my first love and I will never stop writing my
strange, creepy little tales. But there are different kinds of
stories, and I feel like I’m finally giving myself permission to
find the right way to tell them.
I’m excited for the space and dedicated writing time Arteles
will provide, and will use it to complete the projects I
began in my Masters. In particular, a novella about ghosts,
relationships, and old houses.
Walking, Writing, Synchronicity
I came to Arteles with the rough draft of a novella called ‘A
Scribble and a Nothing’ and a plan to undertake a structural
rewrite and edit. I was hoping I’d find the space (physical
space and head space), time, and motivation in the landscape
and the company of other artists, to dive deep into my work,
refine my processes, and rediscover my love of writing. I feel
like I did that, and then some.
From someone who struggles to get out of bed, I became a
writer who watched the dawn from her desk. There was no
need to impose discipline, my body and mind created their
own rhythm, alternating between forest walks and chapter
rewrites. Even on the days I struggled, being so immersed in
a world of writing and art helped me find new ways to look at
the work and expand my artistic practice.
Arteles gave me what I needed in a way that was almost
eerie. ‘A Scribble and a Nothing’ is a ghost story, set in an old
house, surrounded by the bush, with mushrooms and faerie
rings and a little lost girl. In one way or another, I found all
of these things in the grounds, the forests, even the work of
other residents. It was a strange and inspiring synchronicity.

Enter Text program / OCTOBER 2018
Cally Yu (Yeuk Mu, Yu)
Hong Kong
callyyu.wordpress.com
About
I am a Hong Kong based Chinese writer. I enjoy dancing
with words, playing with different textures of experiences,
Imagination is my medicine. Green is my music, I write
poems, short stories, theater text and art critics. I also formed
a community art project group, named grey and green ping
pong, to advocate creative aging.
Textual Snapshots
Text and the Nature
During my stay in Arteles, I walked, I listened, I lost in the
wood everyday and re-learn how to read, how to write from
the nature. The drifting clouds taught you the thickness
of the sky. The unexpected snow taught you the power of
quietness. The birch let you know what is gracefulness. Every
flower has a story to share. A toxic mushroom was a letter.
Falling leaves showed you the diversities of yellow.
Far away from the chaotic Hong Kong, I could re-taste the
details of nature and re-think how to catch all these small
movements and insights. I wanted to try new narrative
method, not the usual practices on poem, short stories or
pose, and finally, I used the traditional Japanese narrative
form: Haiku as my textual snapshots. Under the restrictions
of 17 (5-7-5) syllables, I still feel free from opening my ears
and heart to catch the tempo and sound. I enjoy so much in
playing between restriction and freedom, poetic imagination
and details, text and the nature.Thanks for everything.
“

Enter Text program / OCTOBER 2018
Anna Carlson
USA
www.annacarlson.com
About
Anna Carlson is a visual artist practicing in the ever-changing
climate of Minnesota, USA. She earned her MFA in Graphic
Design from the University of Minnesota in 2013, after a
long career in clothing design. Since 2013, her work has
been recognized in numerous exhibitions including the New
Bedford Art Museum (Massachusetts, USA) and Oregon
College of Art and Craft (USA).
Carlson creates patterned surfaces to illustrate how language
— spoken, written, and worn on the body — captures a
moment in time.
She builds layered surfaces with transcribed stories,
thread-traced words, and imprinted images that refer to the
intertwining of people and places that influence a kinetic
self-identity.
These altered texts and textiles reflect the changing nature
of words and meaning as well, and how we navigate these
shifts. Ambiguity plays an important role in this work,
connecting viewers with their own memories. Carlson aims
to create interventions — objects/texts that will prompt
recollections — that will alter the course she and fellow
wonderers/wanderers choose to take next.
What does a conversation look like?
Her voice pauses, hesitates, repeats.
Faster, slower, stronger, weaker.
Her life, her work, her parents,
her memories captured
and released on the paper.
The visible voice,
not a text, not a score, not a graph,
expressive gestures
with spaces between.
Textural transcription
During the month of October, I transcribed a series of
conversations with my mother and explored many intertextual
connections. I wanted to trace her shadowed recollections,
through the recorded sound, and into a visible space.
Translating her voice into words on a page legitimized
the ephemeral sound recording. However, mechanical
transcription and typography cannot capture the nuances of
spoken language. By drawing as I listened, I could express
the rhythm and tonality of her voice.
Alongside the transcribing, I also worked on a series of
stitching samples that were placed in the forest to become
entwined in a nest, or serve as a surface for moss to grow.

Enter Text program / OCTOBER 2018
Anja Savic
Serbia
www.theletterist.com
About
Anja Savic is an artist and designer with a B.A. in
Comparative Literature from Bard College (New York), an
M.Res. in Humanities and Cultural Studies from The London
Consortium/Birkbeck College (London) and further study in
Graphic Design at Parsons School of Art + Design (NY). In
her work experience in advertising she discovered a passion
for typography and letterforms, which she now marries with
her literary + cultural theory background to unpack and
reinterpret text and language through a form of visual poetry.
Her calligraphy is not the traditional calligraphy of perfectly
rehearsed line weights, curves and swashes, but rather an
intuitive, curious and even perhaps rebellious attempt to get
to the core - the spirit - of a particular word or phrase and
then reimagine and reconstruct it in a more visual, tactile
form.
Ripping it up.
As a print designer accustomed to relying rather heavily
on software and traditional formats, my goal for my time
at Arteles was to focus more on making art exclusively by
hand; to break free from the sometimes too product- or goalorientated
nature of my design work and dwell more in the
magic, torture and unknowns of process. Being surrounded
by writers made me think a lot about how essential editing
is to storytelling...how interesting stories (and memories) are
often neither linear, nor whole, and yet perhaps only in their
fragmentation do we really begin to approach their essence. I
discovered the visual expression of this idea in the medium of
collage...or as I called it with the artists in my studio: ripping
it up. As I now look up the Urban Dictionary definition of this
phrase, I realize it sums up my Arteles experience both in the
studio and beyond...surprisingly well.
rip it up (verb. rip)
1. A term which commands one to literally rip apart a piece
of material.
2. A command or suggestion to rip apart one’s material
(performance or practiced routine).
3. A command or suggestion to a person to perform
competitively to a much higher degree of skill above the
current competition.
4. A command to set a new standard of excellence.
5. A suggestion to introduce a newly profound and exciting
atmosphere in lieu of boring, dull or un-lively circumstances.

Back to Basics program / SEPTEMBER 2018
June Cheong
SIngapore
www.vimeo.com/junecheong
About
June is a writer and filmmaker. She weaves stories from
anecdotes, words, light and shadow. In her commercial
work, which spans ads, corporate videos and short films,
you will find a preoccupation with discovering the truth of a
person. This narrative impulse continues in her artistic work.
The structure of a good story – a beginning, a middle and
an end – and how we apply these formal parameters to the
unfettered chaos of our lives is endlessly fascinating to June.
Her method is documentary-esque and her aesthetic is a
poeticised reality - the interior made external.
In every film and photo she creates, June is interested in
exploring the form, the boundaries and the limits of narrative.
She firmly believes that people are made of the stories they
have heard and the stories they tell themselves. Trained as a
journalist, June’s starting point for her art is usually the reallife
events in the community around her. Then imagination
takes over, followed by weeks of research. These influences
percolate and then emerge as a new photo or a film.
What stories do we keep? What shadows do we dwell in? What
truths do we hide from ourselves? These are the questions
that June likes to ask. June also has a tendency towards these
particular themes: memory, identity, loneliness, obsession,
gender and social politics, and time.
At Arteles, June hopes to rediscover and hone her personal
aesthetic in writing, filmmaking and photography. She hopes
the light, space and greenery of the residency will re-ignite
her spark of artistry.
Finding My Voice
I began my residency with a question – who am I as an artist?
I arrived at Arteles, buzzing with ambition to remake my
life and brimming with grand plans to create new art. Then
I encountered the forest, the lake and the pastel houses
scattered across the countryside, all of which seemed to
exist beyond time. Well, almost… if you ignore the lights and
flat-screen TVs inside those silent houses. And I melted into
this dream-like space.
There was so much space I did not know where to place
myself. The long, empty days nudged me to unfold into
myself. Questions stirred within me: What do I want to say?
Is my art valid? What does art mean to me?
I had plenty of questions but no clear answers. I set about
finding answers by throwing myself into whatever felt right.
Every day, I wrote and I walked. When I wrote, I plunged into
a neo-noir world of low-income immigrants – a story that had
burrowed itself into my mind half a year ago but I never found
time to give voice to. When I walked, I took photographs of
the spaces I came across. In between, I talked and laughed
with my fellow residents as we swapped stories about life
and art.
I’d given myself over to the quiet rhythm of residency life
and it rewarded me with serendipitous magic. As September
drew to a close, the sun began setting earlier. That was when
I realized I am drawn to taking photographs in fading light.
I was still taking photographs at the same time every day
but dusk descended earlier with each passing day and the
hushed light gave my photographs a neo-noir cinematic
quality that I loved.
Outside in the autumnal chill, taking photos of warmly lit
windows, I felt like an outsider peeping in at a world that was
alien to me. I relooked the scripts I had written over the month
and they too were about foreigners in a strange cosmos that
they yearned to be part of. This was the first gasp of my
artistic voice. And for this start, I have to thank Arteles.

Back to Basics program / SEPTEMBER 2018
Catherine Taylor
USA
About
I am a writer and a founding editor of an independent press.
Most of my writing is nonfiction of one kind or another: long
essays, literary journalism, hybrid-genre writing, etc. My
most recent book, You, Me, and the Violence, is a meditation
on personal and political autonomy that moves from puppets
to military drones. I’ve also written a hybrid-genre book of
memoir and political history, Apart, that combines prose,
poetry, cultural theory, and found texts from South African
archives, and a book about contemporary midwives. I am
co-director of the Image Text Ithaca MFA which brings
together writers and photographers for creative and critical
study.
The intersection of our personal lives with public histories
interests me deeply. When do we insist on separating these
spheres and when are they fused?
Recently, I’ve been thinking about the tension between
freedom and responsibility—as a parent, as a member of a
community, as a part of a nation. What do we long for when
we long for “freedom”? What does it mean to be free in one’s
personal life? What does it mean to be free as a citizen? What
sacrifices do these freedoms require? What conditions might
allow us to go rogue or to recommit?
I’ve also been thinking a lot about a line from Rousseau
where he says that if you want to be useful, it is essential to
be read in the provinces. I wonder what would happen to my
work if I took this seriously.
Rowing, Riding, Reading, and Writing
The most important work I did at Arteles was relearning how
to read. Being offline gave me exactly what I had hoped for:
the ability to settle down and focus. Rowing on the lake and
riding a bike around the country roads also helped me shift
away from the busy task-oriented life I lead at home. I read
over twenty books while at Arteles; this alone was heavenly
and restorative. But I also began work on a complex, researchdriven
book that I have wanted to write for many years. Over
the long, uninterrupted days, I figured out some central
elements of the book, compiled the scattered research I’d
done in the past, and wrote over 150 pages of notes. I also
spent joyful time with the other residents around the bonfire
and in the sauna. I am so grateful for the revitalization of this
month. Thank you.

Back to Basics program / SEPTEMBER 2018
Michele Sierra
Australia
www.cargocollective.com/michelesierra
About
I am an Australian artist and cultural psychologist whose art
practice is expressed through an interdisciplinary practice
combining photo-media, sculpture and drawing.
It is informed largely by a professional background in Jungian
psychology, extensive travel and an enduring interest in the
study of consciousness and Eastern philosophy.
My current sculptural works arose through a quiet, intuitive,
receptive process. Working primarily with wax and wood,
the works I have created are either cast or photographed.
Photography has offered the best medium for capturing
the critical moments of interaction of light with the objects’
essence. The process of positioning the artefacts for
the camera exposed their idiosyncratic, performative
characteristics. Transitional afternoon light, when the
boundaries between worlds are most attenuated, revealed
the forms as a living impulses. What results from this
conjunction is often unexpected.
In-Between
Saturated by an image dominated culture and an increasingly
noisy world, what influence do silence and seclusion have on
the artist? What effect does a work of art create in the viewer,
when it arises from this silence? My art practice explores the
phenomena of interstitial space, indistinctness and silence
in relation to the creative process and space for alternative
ways of seeing.
I am curious about in-between spaces, the almost
imperceptible intervals between form and formlessness,
where time is ambiguous and thresholds of contrast collapse
into ephemera. There are dynamic forces at play in ‘between’
spaces, in the fecundity of silence and the magnetic pull of
seemingly inert objects. The physical and metaphorical
dimensions of materials intrigue me too: Could it be that
apparently inanimate objects have their own vitality? I often
wonder how we choose to define the boundaries of what is
‘living’.
The Arteles residency was an opportunity to go off-line,
immerse myself in a landscape that contrasts vividly with my
native Australia, and experiment with my creative practice.
Arriving without a predetermined project plan and no art
materials moved me to source organic materials on site and
discover juxtapositions of silence and sound, fire and water,
connection and isolation, inspiration and emptiness, known
and unknown. All artwork was returned to ground, to atomise
once more into the interstice.

Back to Basics program / SEPTEMBER 2018
Pompi Caputo
Argentina
www.pompicaputo.com.ar
About
Pompi Caputo was born in the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina.
She studied biology at the University of Buenos Aires where
she obtained a degree in biology.
As a biologist, she worked on the link and interaction
between nature and the human being, where nature and
society interrelate in complex systems.
Slowly she was immersed in the world of arts and
photography. She studied photography and art in Imaginary
Project -platform of image study-; the Argentine School of
Photography; and did workshops with Adriana Lestido,
Margarita García Faure, Fabiana Barreda, Vero Somlo among
others.
She was selected in the Festival of Light 2014 and 2016. She
was a winner in 2016 visual Arts French Alliance call. She was
selected in the 105n edition of the National Salon of Visual
Arts in the photography discipline, in 2016.
Pompi’s work is the mystical force of nature. Life, its flow, its
love. Each landscape is born from the power of connection
and meditation with the environment. Ecology, awakening
universes within its powerful force invokes the inner being
and its poetic unfolding in nature.
Her creative development is crossed over the search for
images that allow reflection on nature - human relationship.
Nature as a metaphor, is the element that she chooses to
tell another thing. Time goes through everything and every
instant is one among infinite possibilities that can occur.
In the different projects she is intertwining this gaze. Her
work is completed, merges, transcends, transmutes into the
other.
A dialogue between matter, existence
and different space and time
During my residency in Arteles I could experience the use of
other senses. I used photography as a vehicle to reproduce
my sensations and perceptions in nature. The drawing and
the performance helped me in this process.
Some of the questions that guided me during this month
were, ¿What happens if I light my shadows?, ¿ What happens
if I allow myself to see from another place?, ¿What happens
if I change the times or I perceive them differently?, the time
of the rock is a second and the time of a drop in a waterfall is
eternal. ¿What is the reason for our existence?
With these questions I entered the forest daily to walk and
feel. The view was just one more sense. And the forest
guided me to the place where I stayed, I drew, I wrote, I
photographed, I meditated. I tried to be the forest, and to
feel me part of it. It’s not easy, I’m always there. Like a tree,
like a rock, like the sun but always like me.
But something happened during those moments, something
difficult to explain with words. I hope I can do it with my
images.

Back to Basics program / SEPTEMBER 2018
Eva mm Engelhardt
Denmark
www.etc-andthemadness.dk
About
Eva mm Engelhardt is a textile artist, with a Bachelor in
textile crafts and hand embroidery. She works from her thirdfloor
studio in Copenhagen, but also in public places where
a needle might slip unseen through the every day fabrics we
surround ourselves with.
Her artistic style emerged from street art and the cartoon
universe, giving a rebellious and rough edge to the fabric
genre. The theme of her work often revolves around human
nature. The oddness, darkness and peculiarity of people, their
choices and inner emotions. At the moment she is focusing
on sewing full size humanoid sculptures, an embodiment
of the theme at hand. At the same time experimenting with
combining sewing techniques and hand embroidery. Fabric
and thread joining forces.
Parallel to the purely artistic work, Eva has a mission to keep
the old hand embroidery techniques alive and relevant. She
is currently working on developing embroidery courses and
kits where techniques and materials are combined in new
ways with the stitchers own picture universe, in order to
bring new life to an ancient craft.
Entering The Shadowlands
The human figure has a way of pulling my focus and
consuming my attention when I interact with people. Words
have a way of merging into a long stream of sound, becoming
unintelligible. Words can be manipulative, misunderstood,
come out wrong. Body language on the other hand, is
involuntarily, brutally and delicately honest. That these
shapes we live in, can express so much with just the slightest
of movements and gestures, is inspiring.
As I work with my figures, I sit with a feeling I want to
communicate through the textiles, the foam, the threads…
This is my starting point. From there I choose the colours and
texture, the length and the width. When they are stuffed, they
lie there, motionless and neutral, newborn and unknown.
During the process I prop them up in the position I wish them
to take before I leave my work area. I treat them as if they
have life, with grace and dignity, thereby giving them life and
making it easier to pull them out of the materials.
The creatures that came to life at Arteles, were unexpectedly
inspired by the surrounding nature and its fairytale feel.
At home, in Copenhagen, they come out as humans, with
their clothes and their gadgets, stretched and pulled by too
many expectations. The Arteles beings stretch to reach the
treetops, the farthest roots of mushrooms and the hidden
layers of the world, and I follow them willingly through the
wild and wonderful greens of the forest.

Back to Basics program / SEPTEMBER 2018
Ben Davis
USA
www.benjamindavis.space
About
I am a visual artist working in the medium of photography,
and if the projects lend themselves to it, creating handbound
books after sequencing the images. Growing up in a small
town, I learned to view simple, minimal scenes as a more
complex setting. By delving into everyday life and finding
unique details I am able to show people how I view our
commonplace surroundings. I seek to create images that
look further into what is typically considered mundane and
shedding a new light on it.
My current focus is still life images, whether they are found
or constructed. The work seeks to show objects from an
alternative perspective, giving a new meaning or life to the
items. The photographs give a personality to the objects and
act as a portrait. I look forward to the change of scenery from
where I currently live in an over commercialized environment
to the peaceful area surrounding Arteles.
Home
My time at Arteles was the first time I was able to focus on my
photographs and myself in a few years. The quiet of the area
mixed with the bubble created from limited internet access
and no phone was a blessing that allowed me to translate
how I was feeling through the lens, while spending time
marinating on my images. Walking for hours each day in the
countryside while shooting let me ruminate on what I was
photographing in a way that a sprawling city does not.
The following selection of images are from a larger series
investigating the small towns and houses surrounding the
residency. Around two weeks into the month I started to feel
a bond with these simple domestic spaces. The clean lines,
small touches of home, and soft color palettes reminded
me of the area that I grew up in. There was something
infectiously tranquil to me about how organized the towns
were. The calm of these houses was something I sought to
capture and share. I have been continuing this project and
the idea of warmth in these small, quiet villages at my current
residency in Iceland.

Back to Basics program / SEPTEMBER 2018
Katharina Lökenhoff
Germany
www.katharina-loekenhoff.de
About
“Crossing”
The starting point of my work is the experience, that many
problems caused by “globalization” can be dued to an
experience of separation. Not feeling the connection causes
fear, the main reason (and not only the effect) of most
catastrophes that are happening in the world right now.
How can we develop the intense experience where we are
not separate from our so-called ‘environment’? In my artistic
research project I am looking forward to make interviews with
other artist at Arteles to learn about their working methods
and to get hints to new ways of crossing the borders and
thereby find new life strategies to heel the rift between us.
Comming from a residency in Iceland (NES, Skagaströnd), I
will also go to other places for the interviews: South Africa
(Gratmore Art, Cape Town from December until March),
Argentina (ACE, Buenos Aires in April), Italy (Numerovernti,
Florenz in Mai) and Thailand (Sam Rit Residency in summer
́19). I am also invited to the Off Biennale “Something Else“ in
Cairo in November where I hope to have an exchange about
“Crossing“ as well.
The results of finding new methods will be presented in an
exhibition, a blog and a catalog in summer 2019. My own
approach to the subject of crossing the threshold is through
a colour experience. Working with an intense reference to the
body with large coloured fabrics, I focus on the qualities of
colour as the equivalent of what constitutes life around and
in us. Adequate to this topic I ́m working with the material of
a waxed skin, silk material dipped in beeswax. Its haptic and
visual appearance mirrors the theme of crossing borders in
the phenomenon of the skin as a membrane: It is the aim
of “Crossing“ to show that cultural life/ - survive can be
redefined and made possible through exchange rather than
demarcation.
”Crossing”, interviews/images
I focused on the parallel-process between creating huge
waxskin-images and to interview the other artists about
future enabling methods in times of Digital Reality. Both
“Crossing”- activities are dedicated to find new and
sustainable life strategies by crossing borders. Here is the
QUESTINAIRE for the interviews:
-What comes to mind when you hear the expression “crossing
the threshold”?
-Do you share the opinion, that many people today are
insecure due to strong cultural, social and environmental
changes in the world?
-Do you make an inner correlation between fear and not
feeling connected to others or the world?
-Please describe your artistic creative process.
-Is there any experience in your life which opens you to this
art practice?
-How do you prepare yourself for your artistic process?
-What kind of relation exists between your inner world (soul)
and the so-called “Virtual Reality”?
-Do you have the longing to heel a kind of rift between and in
us and that you do it not only for yourself?
-Can a creative art practice help to create methods for a
healthy and positive life?
-Does an artist have a certain responsibility for the world
because of his possibilities and special abilities?
See the interviews and other pictures on my website:
www.Katharina-Loekenhoff.de

Back to Basics program / SEPTEMBER 2018
Stefan Blom
South Africa
www.blom.studio
About
I am a practicing psychologist specializing in relationships
with a Masters degree in clinical psychology. The
interconnection of relationships with self, others, spaces and
objects interest me. I share relationship messages on the
web, is the author of the book, The Truth about Relationships
(available in three languages) and an artist with a comfortable
identity crisis. I project my observations of relationships onto
videos, objects, photographs, spaces and illustrations. The
projections as words are personal reflections, observations
from relationships and through simply experiencing life.
At the moment I am interested in work that reflects human
nature in all its interesting and authentic contrasts and
dimensions. Topics of interest at the moment are intuition,
intimacy, energy, presence, vulnerability, being and
relaxation.
My time at Arteles is a big gift. I don’t want to miss a second,
because I see it as a rare opportunity to grow and expand.
At the moment, I am not so much interested in definitions,
but rather open to experiences. Less theory, more intuition
is how I aim to live.
My intentions are to be as present and open as possible; and
to absorb this experience with awareness and gratitude.
Lost & found
The interconnection with self, others, spaces and objects
interest me. I project my observations of relationships onto
videos, objects, photographs and spaces. The projections
(often as words) are collected through intuitive reflection,
observations of relationships and living my life fully.
At Arteles, I created very personal work that reflects my
emotional journey during the month. I worked with themes
like feeling safe, getting lost, sitting with silence and being
found. It is not often that I feel lost in a safe space or that
my life is not mapped out in advance. To be able to wander
in safe spaces, initially made me feel lost, but in time I felt
deeply presence. I realised that getting lost and longing are
at the root of being found...of presence and gratitude.

Back to Basics program / AUGUST 2018
Zackery Hobler
Canada
www.zackeryhobler.ca
About
Zackery Hobler made his most recent pictures while
following a prescribed burn team through Southern Ontario.
In early spring, the team develops prescriptions for tracts
of land owned by conservation authorities for the purposes
of restoration and propagation of native species. While
these fires have their own specific environmental goals,
the dramatic beauty of the human-led interventions in the
invasion of foreign flora are the linchpin of systemic and
ongoing benefits.
The images depict boundaries of space between the viewer
and the landscape, and the boundaries of time, of heat
and fuel. Flames rising up in seconds, soon disappearing,
and the ashes are left on the land for what comes. While
recognizing the attempts of conservation, these pictures
also recognize the attempts of pictures to convey a cautious
optimism about the future of colonialism and the relationship
of creating a visual history of the new landscape returning to
some resemblance of the old, change opening the landscape
for repair, to accompany the voices reconciling land where
barriers have been built for centuries.
While at Arteles, Hobler plans on reflecting on this recently
made work and taking advantage of the technological
solitude to read and get in touch with the poetic aspects of
his photographic exploration: to glean openly and sort later,
uncovering the flurry of thoughts that accompany the mental
scattering of the technology-soaked first world. Hobler
wonders about a photograph’s longevity in a society headed
toward post-capitalism, wandering about to make poetry of
it if he can.
Untitled
While disconnected from the Internet at Arteles, the question
of values presented itself. What are my values? How could I
maintain them in my practice and in my daily life?
Throughout the residency, there was a lot of time to work
through these questions and I made hundreds of pictures
while at Arteles. One day, though, the oat fields across the
road were being harvested. The combine started cutting the
field to the east. Unsure of whether there was something to be
made of it, I just watched. The day ended and the machines
went away. That evening I resolved that I would go see the
harvester up close the following day.
The tractor drove up and down the long aisles of oat. The
process was obviously mechanical: a hungry, complex
device carved and collected florets and atomized the chaff
and stem. The whole thing rode along lines laid in the spring
by a different machine. There were human variations in the
lines. The farmer was still in control.

Back to Basics program / AUGUST 2018
Luther Bangert
USA
www.lutherbangert.com
About
I am a juggler and a mover, seeking and exploring the
dialogue and potentiality between objects and body, through
contemplative play. My performances and practices draw
upon traditional circus technique, contemporary circus,
yoga, martial arts, butoh, and contemporary dance. These
are synthesized into a field where the inherent spectacle of
juggling can be as deep as its contemplative and expressive
ability.
In my juggling, I look for new pathways through space, how
to let an object can carry the body, how to leave the body
behind, how to affect form and the space within it, how to find
the stillness in between the movements. How to tell a story
with abstract and unclaimed movement and play.
In these days, I live in New York City, street and stage
performing, collaborating, practicing, learning.
Soft, Sway
My time at Arteles inspired and allowed me to step back
from my normal way of working and being, and to do
things without rushing to an end. I focused on my juggling
and movement practices, and stepped back from being a
performer for other people, and spent most of my practice
time in the forest. I sought to find what is there in my practice
and performance when it is as close as possible to being the
thing that is happening, only - bringing my own expectations
to the process as little as possible, and without an outside
human eye and mind.
In this way, I adopted the forest environment as my
inspiration, and, audience. Experimenting with how the forest
environment can influence movement, in spatial terms, and in
energetic terms. Working with wood and form as an impetus
for juggling patterns and choreography. Working with sound
as a way to influence touch and feel of the pieces. Juggling
and moving softly, with a keen awareness of surroundings,
and without exhibition in mind.
This project ended up being pleasantly as much, or more,
about the practice and the laying out and examination
of ideas, as it was about a final performance. I performed
an improvisatory piece in the area of the forest I had been
practicing in, on the final day, called “”Tread Softly,”” as a
sharing of the things I had discovered.

Back to Basics program / AUGUST 2018
Zoë Ranson
UK
www.zoeranson.com
About
I’m a fiction writer and performer, from Hackney, via Waltonon-the-Naze.
I make stories, from the very short, to the
epically long, sometimes for the stage.
Naturally drawn to the off-kilter, my work concerns identity,
with a focus on the magical space between adolescence and
adulthood, where the boundaries of possibility and inception
blur.
Pop Music has been my lodestar since childhood, and plays
a dynamic role in my practice. I’m interested in frictions
between sexual politics and popular culture, and the lasting
impact of founding cultural experiences on the artistic mind.
Lately I find myself pre-occupied with the idea of ‘home’ -
what that is, and how the notion of it changes. During my
residency I’m interested in the effects of exchanging the
noise and grime of my city for the stillness and space of the
Finnish countryside. How will that shift in tone, temperature
and mood impact on what I make and how I think.
Timidity is Laughable
I came with a project to edit, but that wasn’t what the
Arteles environment had in store. Instead, bolstered by my
meditation practice, I embarked on something new. The
words came with crisp lucidity, forming a story which grew
each day with the stubborn brilliance of the sunflowers in the
cornfield. I photographed them to measure time; watched,
as with each dawn, a solitary bloom became a congregation.
And I felt myself alter with it. As my thoughts gracefully
revealed themselves, I felt in control, able to express myself
with an exactness that often eludes me.
Music remains as vital as ever to my practice. I had two
anthems that I returned to: Midnight Radio from Hedwig and
the Angry Inch Soundtrack and Roadrunner by Jonathan
Richman, because even in the wild, I believe in rock and roll!
I danced in the berry bushes, along the gravel road that lead
to the lake, on the wooden raft which jutted out a jetty where
I spent my mornings watching the sunrise. And I wrote. Filled
five notebooks, ran dry two pens.
Meditation and yoga require no equipment, only commitment.
The routine and structure of these pillars freed me creatively
to explore without judgement; to work unconcerned of
the outcome, trusting there will be something valuable, or
beautiful, or transient. The residency taught me affirmation:
I am enough. I found new clarity, expanding from the
parameters of the ordinary to the extraordinary to produce
the most honest thing I have ever distilled.

Back to Basics program / AUGUST 2018
Dierdre Pearce
Australia
www.dierdrepearce.com
About
I am a sculpture and installation artist fascinated by
relationships between people and technologies. I make
‘objects for thinking with’ that operate as tools, costumes
and toys, and present the works in interactive installations,
or interventions in non-gallery spaces.
My current focus is the relationship between a physical,
embodied self and a digital ‘presence’. How is this experienced
and reconciled? What are the implications for managing an
integrity of self, relationships with others, and functions such
as memory, daydreaming, analytical thought and prayer?
While its possible to imagine digital presence as a copy of
an individual, I think it is one that is unavoidably altered by
the manner in which it is created - attributes established in
response to corporate drivers, histories aggregated with
those of multitudes of other individuals, and faculties defined
by algorithms created by data technologists. I am exploring
this idea in a new research project which spans digital
constructs and wearable objects over the next few years.
I am completing a PhD in visual arts at the School of Art
and Design, Australian National University, Canberra,
Australia and have previously been an academic in biological
chemistry. In both disciplines I make and test objects as a
way of understanding the world, and work at the interface
between people and the technologies they create.
Measured
My residency program had three components: to register my
response to being off-line for a month, to read some key texts
related to my research on the relationship between a body
and its developing digital ‘presence’, and to explore these
ideas and experiences through art practices.
My reading focused on French philosopher Bernard Stiegler’s
Technics and Time, Donna Harraway’s ‘Simians, Cyborgs
and Women’ (including the classic ‘Cyborg Manifesto’) and
recent essays by N Katherine Hayles, in which she positions
human consciousness within an environment increasingly
dominated by the ‘cognitive non consciousness’ of machines.
Engaging with these ideas while experiencing my body’s
response to withdrawing from the net was fascinating: the
sickening sense of deceleration and disorientation, the
hunger for distraction and ‘productivity’ of the first few days
gradually replaced by a feeling of being enclosed by my skin
and of welcoming the extra time and effort involved in being
offline.
Responding to these two flows of information, I explored ways
of perceiving changes in time and space, such as converting
time I would usually spent online to stitches in a crocheted
blanket. measuring time through the changing plant life
around me or through rising bread dough, and constructing
an archive of details in the landscape that allowed me to
navigate my environment in the absence of Google maps. At
the end of the residency I made an installation - measured -
related to my changing perception of time.
I thank fellow residents and the Arteles team for the
experience!

Measured, 2018 (work in progress, detail) installation view, Arteles Creative Center. Dimensions variable.
Rise and fall, 2018, mp4 file, 7 second loop.
Twenty nine days in Finland without the internet, 2018 (details), yarn. 1.2 m diameter.

Back to Basics program / AUGUST 2018
Kendall Schauder
USA
www.kendallschauder.com
About
Kendall schauder is an artist who is comfortable working
with a variety of mediums. Her pieces explore her experience
of living with dyslexia and she draws inspiration from textiles
and how they are created. For kendall textiles have become
a language to be read; a language that comes to her more
naturally than reading & writing the English language. By
learning about materials, techniques & machinery kendall
has come to understand this way of reading, and her
performances & sculptures capture these moments of
comprehension. Through her work, kendall questions her
own capabilities of learning & activates her curiosity.
Creating a grid
My process throughout the residency released old thoughts
that had grown stale overtime and allowed them to take the
form of something new. I came to Finland with a suitcase full
of old sketchbooks, notes, tickets, maps & letters, ready to let
them go and create a space for new ideas. Spending hours
grinding up old sheets of paper with two rocks I found sitting
near the shed, to create a pulp that I could use to make new
blank sheets of paper. These new not so blank papers were
embed with old ideas though reorganized to a state where all
context is completely illegible. Each paper also embed with
thin threads organized to create a grid that encompasses the
complexities of the material itself.

Back to Basics program / AUGUST 2018
Za Othman
UK
www.corduroyark.com
About
I like painting through the night and into the small hours.
There’s a unique feeling that comes from working all night
whilst the rest of the world sleeps, with only my paints and
Leonard Cohen for company.
I look forward to meeting the characters that appear on the
canvas, and enjoy seeing the different responses they get
from others. It amuses me that people can find them silly and
humorous, but also dark and sinister at the same time – like
the Muppets directed by David Lynch.
My dream is to let these characters tell old stories in new
ways, and maybe one day give them life in a travelling puppet
show that ventures to the Western Isles off Ireland and
Scotland.
Painting and drowning
I had no plans for this residency but I did harbour a fantasy
that all the meditation, non-distraction and communing
with nature would take me to a place of stillness, clarity and
unfettered creativity.
In reality, I quickly got stuck deep in the mud, both literally and
otherwise. Drowning in a sea of self-doubt and insecurities
resurrected from what seemed like a distant past, I tried to
stay afloat for a while, but finally gave in and let myself sink.
I sank past my hazy ways and self-defeating tendencies,
engulfed by a constant cacophony of voices telling me that
whatever I may be, I am certainly not an artist.
And suddenly there I was, a wreck at the bottom of the
ocean. But there I noticed how silent and still the water was
all around me, inhabited by sublimely strange creatures,
mysterious and incomparable to the more familiar beasts we
see nearer the surface. And then, this plain discovery:
I love painting and that is the start and the end of this very
simple story.

Back to Basics program / AUGUST 2018
Stella Teunissen
Netherlands
www.stellatextile.cargocollective.com
About
I am a visual artist and textile designer from The Netherlands,
currently based in Ghent. After receiving my Bachelor’s
degree in Product Design at the Utrecht School of Arts, I
graduated for my Master’s in Textile Design at LUCA School
of Arts in Ghent.
During my master studies, I developed working methods
in which I constructed, deconstructed and reconstructed
materials. I unravelled my own dyed knits and knitted them
again. Furthermore, I had cut screen-printed sheets of
wood into strips, and wove them back into a surface again.
Within this play of shape, colour and material, the final
outcome of the design originates partly by chance, creating
a ‘controlled accident’, which sometimes even surprises me
as the experiments’ instigator. This constant loss of control
runs like a red thread through my work. Recently I started to
experiment with natural dyeing of yarn and fabric, using plant
materials found in my own garden. Many factors in the dyeing
process influence the result. In this way of experimenting
with colouring and printing on textiles, I discovered again an
exciting unpredictability in the process.
I consider my time at Arteles as a time to experiment.
I am eager to learn new techniques and I am curious and
open-minded about the ways in which a natural setting can
influence my work. Being in surroundings without outside
pressure I hope to find a mindful daily rhythm, that allows me
to re-discover the joy of making.
Feuillemort adj. Having the
colour of a faded, dying leaf
During my time at Arteles I researched natural textile dyeing
and eco printing – creating patterns on fabric with all sorts of
plant leaves. In the forests and fields I found raw materials:
birch tree bark and leaves, blueberries, wild rosemary,
dandelion roots, oak leaves and geranium. I discovered a lot
while experimenting hands on without the use of the internet.
Instead of looking up things when I had questions or doubts
regarding technique, I just continued by trial and error. This
gave me a lot of insight in the process of natural dyeing and
offered me tools and new skills.
Besides my creative practice there was a lot of time to...
Contemplate – I thought a lot about what ‘home’ means to
me, but also about the concept of ‘play’ – being curious
as a child. Alongside that, the exploration of nature and
connecting to all the beautiful people I’ve met at Arteles were
important to me. I really enjoyed the cooking together, sauna,
4 o’clock tea, nature trips, bike rides and sharing stories. In
order to structure my workdays I found my mindful rhythm
through writing morning pages, yoga or wandering around
in the forest in the morning and group meditation by night.
I can truly say this was the most amazing and refreshing
month in a long time. During this time of being isolated from
the ‘outside world’ I gained a lot of new ideas and input
regarding my creative practice as well what’s important to
me in life to build my happy home.

Back to Basics program / AUGUST 2018
Stijn Pommée
Netherlands
www.stijnpommee.com
About
Amsterdam based artist Stijn Pommee (1994) graduated in
2016 from the Gerrit Rietveld Academy (NL) and has been
working at the Academy as a tutor since then.
He often works with simple gestures, using different means
such as texts, images and interventions in public space.
Getting Distracted
In my application to Arteles, I put: “I want a period of time,
free from all distractions, so I can be free to be distracted”.
It’s a quote from Mary Ruefle and It’s also exactly what I got
during my stay in Finland! A time to get away from it all and get
distracted again by new things I loved doing. Without having
a plan beforehand, having the time to do just —whatever!
And I did. On my table: A sculpture made out of three twigs,
delicately balancing on top of each other. A loom made by
hand. A pocket woven out of white cotton to organize my
notes and texts I wrote during my stay. A useless comb — I
cut off my hair the day before coming there. Three of many
drawings. A note carefully folded. A piece of wood from the
building — that I send as a letter to a friend. A photograph of
one of the different sculptures made out of twigs.
Not on my table but still equally relevant: Picking blueberries
in the morning for breakfast. Waiting in front of the window
for the hare that visits the garden at night. A three-hour walk
to the local bar— and walking back again. Looking at the
clouds pass by. Reading a lot of books from other people—
the ones I had brought myself bored me to death. Watching
the countless dragonflies hovering around.

Back to Basics program / AUGUST 2018
Helen Lee
USA
www.instagram.com/momentumsensorium
About
My passions and curiosities have always leaned towards
the sensorial, the tactile, the internal workings; how these
components can bring us closer to truth, self discovery and
evolution in ourselves, to other people and our environment.
As part of my process, I utilize silence, mindfulness,
exploratory pursuits in sensory stimulation and deprivation
and various movement formats including Yoga and Butoh.
Stillness, pause, slowing down can present itself to be quite
a challenge as our world evolves technologically. In a culture
of massive sensory overload, we often have some place to
be, something to do. It is easy to numb ourselves, to hide, run
away or find a new distraction. I am curious of the fears that
consume us when we try to move out of our comfort zones.
What I find quite wonderful and fascinating is the continuous
ebbs and flows of this practice. I believe there is a never a
final destination in anything that we do.
Studying Dance and Theatre at University of Hawaii at Manoa
was a transformative time in where I made discoveries
about self acceptance and courage. Currently, I am a MFA
candidate at the School of Art Institute Chicago in the
Performance Department with an interest in Film, Video,
New Media and Animation. In my new work, “”a glimpse of
me, my mom”” I am unpacking family history, investigating
home, identity, memory, travel, migration, immigration,
displacement, belonging, guilt, shame and what it means
to be Korean American through performance, storytelling,
video, animation and installation.
I Don’t Even Know If That Was Real
Most days at Arteles, I was in deep investigation of myself,
grappling with time, anxiety, hopes, fears... often obsessing
and trying to reconcile the past. I shifted between being
very productive and feeling restless and aimless. The
abundance of time and light was both disconcerting and
magical. Time seemed expansive and went on and on...
I felt as if I travelled to a far distant land, in a completely
other universe. Previously having participated in silent
meditations with no allowance to create work, it was truly
satisfying to make work with no set schedule, no phone and
barely any internet. A truly incredible journey of discoveries
made about home, spirit, ancestry, nature and friendships.
things i did:
slept a lot / stayed up late / laughed till my belly ached
cried / read 3 books / collected my hair / cut my hair
sewed hair into my skin / bled on paper
looked at old family photos / wrote 엄마 repeatedly
made an interactive frame / made an interactive room
spent a lot of time in the kitchen / made kimchi
wrote letters / taught yoga / meditated
”Try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked
rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t
search for the answers, which could not be given to you now.
Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the
future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your
way into the answer.” -Rainer Maria Rilke

Back to Basics program / AUGUST 2018
Britt Salt
Australia
www.brittsalt.com.
About
My practice is an ongoing spatial experiment where
fundamental elements such as line, form and space
intertwine. Employing repetition and materials that have an
inherent ability to create movement, my research centres
on the symbiosis of art and architectural practice and
questions how these genres influence the notion of place
and impermanence in contemporary urban environments.
Materiality and methodical process are a constant
foundation for my conceptual enquiries. Using industrial
materials such as metal mesh has led to my engagement
specifically with the urban environment and how inhabitants
relate and are influenced by their built surroundings. In my
sculptural work and site-specific installations materials such
as vinyl and aluminium mesh are drawn, folded and woven
into unexpected shapes and patterns, creating spaces that
gently shift with the viewers’ movement and interaction.
When viewed from different angles, manifold patterns and
forms emerge; objects can be viewed through other objects,
interiors conflate into exteriors, and forms appear then
disperse.
My career has increasingly spanned both art and architectural
practices, attracting awards such as the prestigious Art &
Australia/ Credit Suisse Private Banking Emerging Artist
Award in 2013. Significant achievements also include receipt
of the Freedman Foundation Travelling Scholarship for
Emerging Artists, supporting residencies at ACME studios
(London), Draw International (France) and Red Gate Gallery
(Beijing). In 2015 I was curated into Sala del Portal, Venice,
which coincided with the 56th Venice Biennale; I also
undertook a residency at Youkobo Art Space Residency,
Tokyo. In 2018, I will travel to Finland and Iceland to develop
new work.
Suspended Space
During my time at Arteles I explored tapestry weaving
techniques as a method for drawing. Working intuitively,
I unearthed vibrant patterns from a foundation of
monochromatic lines. Each shift of direction these horizontal
wefts take culminates in an optical pattern, disrupting
the linear surface of the drawing. As these patterns pulse
ephemerally atop the solid black and white surface, they
allow an in-between space to come forth and be perceived
as an entity.

Back to Basics program / AUGUST 2018
Gail Baar
USA
www.gailbaar.com
About
I am a musician and visual artist. For the past 12 years I have
been using fabric to explore simplicity and minimalism. By
using simple shapes I play with interaction and relationships.
These shapes can suggest human forms or become a visual
landscape and interpret our interaction with what we see.
I am using a pared down palette of white, black and grays
to lose the distraction of color, leaving space for silence.
Sometimes the simple shapes contrast with stitched lines,
or fabric that has been painted or marked in some way. I
often use paper and make collages to jumpstart the creative
process. As I find a place to store artwork, I think about the
differences between musicians and artists - one works with
sound, the other visually, and how in the end what we are
trying to accomplish is the same.
Finland in Abstract
I was curious to find out how a change in environment would
affect me, and I was looking forward to trying new ideas while
I was at Arteles. I spent my time taking walks as I usually did
at home, but here the quiet surroundings of lake, trees and
the occasional sheep set the tone for the month. I came back
to the beautiful view out my window of the lake and the everchanging
clouds that gave stability and silence to my days.
I found I could take time to really look at what I was working
on, and then if I decided I didn’t like it there was time to find
another direction. I hung up each piece as it was finished
and could see the progression of my idea. By the end of the
month I had finished a group of pieces I was excited about,
and now I can see the influence of my surroundings: stacked
stones, rooflines, doors and the variety of window shapes,
and silence all became a part of my new work.I could see
the rhythm of my days, and that I needed both time for
creativity as well as time away, doing something different,
giving me time to think about my process. Some days I took
a break from fabric and drew ideas in a sketchbook and used
watercolors, or made collages. I spent time in the evenings
writing in a journal about each day, both what I was doing
and thinking.

Back to Basics program / JULY-AUGUST 2018
Linda Loh
USA
www.lindaloh.com
About
Linda captures incidents of fleeting colour, light or reflection,
then submits them to an iterative process of translation, using
a fusion of digital, photographic and painterly procedures.
She also makes minimal installations with shiny objects, and
paintings with electronic devices or liquid pigments. These in
turn could be source material for further pieces. Works may
include digital files to be shared and viewed online, digital
pigment prints - small or huge, on paper or fabric - screen
based moving image works and projection installations.
Deploying abstraction, she plays with perceptual experience,
and ponders the aesthetic dichotomies of works arising from
quiet, light-based phenomena, alternating with those that
embrace vivid colour and strong forms. Increasingly, she
is interested in methods and opportunities to present her
work in the intangible online space, beyond the boundaries
imposed by the physical, political, and commercial world.
Such an approach, as yet undeveloped and experimental,
aligns with her interest in the ephemeral elusive nature of
experience and perception, and indeed mind itself.
Ephemeral technological sublime
At Arteles I embraced the open sense of time and lack of
interruption by getting into an expanded studio flow. One of
my goals was to extend my digital technical skills by reviewing
software packages I already use, and teaching myself new
ones; a challenge without the internet, but I was prepared.
In parallel, I made photographs and videos of everyday
moments, usually in response to light-based phenomena.
I also put ink and watercolour paint onto sheets of paper,
large and small, indoors and outdoors. All these activities fed
into each other, incorporating the unique features of the rural
Finnish setting: lakes, forests, rocks, skylines, reflections, air
and water movements, the never-ending daylight, eventually
the moonlight, the calm, the silence. All were transformed
beyond their source. Super-coloured projections filled the
idiosyncratic studio space, and found their way onto grass
and rocks outside. Silent, slow-moving videos of unknown
forms morphed across dark spaces and into the landscape.
A huge painting was hung in the forest, draped over a boulder
or flown behind a bicycle. It was ultimately fed to a bonfire,
in a spectacular, fleeting farewell. Digital evidence is all that
remains.

Back to Basics program / JULY 2018
Ilián González
Mexico
www.iliangonzalez.com
About
Through my career I have used and produced different
media; film and theater in the beginning, and later video,
photography and installation. These tools have given me
a space to convey questions about the individual and his
environment. I consider the acts of mixing, cutting and pasting
as a mode to create meshes that re arrange and vitalize
habits of perceiving and reflecting upon our paradigms.
My work questions how the subject and its relations can be
looked at from within its social context. Through connections
that come from absolute concepts such as nature, time and
geometry, I try to encourage contemplation; a personal one
arising from within an individual´s psyche, as well as one
that links with the sensible world outside, considering that
knowledge and imagination both feed from a source which
is, at the same time, both near and hard to approach.
Crossbreeding, the filectum lichenoides
& petasites hibridus series
To live and work in Arteles not only nourishes a close
relationship with the surroundings, the Back to Basics
theme also persuades us to simplify and reduce the stimulus
from the outside world, quietly inducing to reflection and
silence. Probably this was supplying an essential attribute to
everyday life and affinities with the other amazing artists in
the residence.
The vegetation in Hämeenkyrö arouse a natural game on
links and associations. The abundance of a certain plant
(petasites hibridus or devil’s hat) that looked like an invader
for its tropical aspect and big lush leaves, awoke my interest
in hybridization within nature. I proposed myself to work with
the materials found at hand, keeping an intention to do a
personal open process, to maintain a weightless laboratory
with an ephemeral outcome. I started to play with the idea
of rudimentary crossbreeding, mixing different species
and observing the counterpoints in the result. Somehow, I
think the complexities involved in current discussions over
migrating issues can also be found in the ever-present search
for equilibrium in ecosystems.
Dress photo credit: Anja Schutz

Back to Basics program / JULY 2018
Sydney Southam
Canada
www.sydneysouthamart.com
About
Sydney Southam is a visual artist, filmmaker, performance
artist, and professional pole dancer. She often works with
archival 16mm film, exploring themes of nostalgia, death,
memory, and identity. Her current work explores the
backstage and domestic lives of exotic dancers and how
their private and professional lives are defined through
ideas of feminism, objectification, power, and love. Sydney
is one of the founding members of Vancouver-based Iris Film
Collective, and the curator of the potluck dinner and artist
talk series Special Sunday Supper. Her films and artwork
have shown across Canada, Europe and Asia, at venues such
as MOCA Taipei, Gabriel Rolt Galerie (Amsterdam), Athens
International Film and Video Festival, Antimatter Media Art
Festival, Aesthetica Short Film Festival, Access Gallery,
Emmedia Gallery, Yinka Shonibare Guest Projects, Vivo
Media Arts Centre, Western Front, and the Haida Heritage
Centre. She graduated from Central Saint Martins with a BA
Fine Art First Class Honours in 2011 and from the University
of Toronto with a BA in English, Philosophy and Cinema
Studies in 2007.
Glory, A Meditation
While at Arteles, I began to develop a performance that
has lived in my psyche for some time. The work arose out
of my experiences working as a stripper and the aftermath
of sustaining an injury and being forced to leave the
industry. I began to study Qi Gong and delve more deeply
into my meditation practice in attempt to heal the physical
and emotional trauma I had experienced in relation to my
dominant movement practice. I began to draw parallels
between the circular and microcosmic orbit movements of
Qi Gong and many similar movements I had performed as an
exotic dancer; in fact, many spiritual healers move their hips in
a circular or figure eight pattern as they work on clients. This
immediately brought to mind the idea of “stripper as healer”,
as well as notions of public versus private performance. On
my last day at Arteles, I asked the other artists to join me in
the meditation room and respond to a performance through
drawing, writing or photos. As the music progressed, my
body gradually began to oscillate between the grounded,
meditative movements of qi gong, and the more recognizable,
sensual exotic dance movements. There is a natural flow
between them, and each movement I performed came from
a grounded place. This grounded, meditative dance will last
the duration of the song, roughly 7-10 minutes, and by the
end I remained still, the rhythm of my breath audible, until my
breathing finally slowed. I plan to develop this work further,
and am so grateful to the other artists for supporting me.
(Photos by Anja Schutz)

Back to Basics program / JULY 2018
Ken Steen
USA
www.vimeo.com/kensteen
About
Ken Steen’s music sound and video art is recognized
internationally for its authentic vitality, remarkable range
and distinctive personal vision. Whether acoustic, electronic
or some multimedia combination, his work has often been
characterized as seductively gorgeous, featuring sumptuous
textures of gradual yet unpredictable evolution. Since
2010 his work in various forms has enjoyed more than 150
performances or installations on 5 continents: from Mumbai
to Tripoli, Stockholm, Buenos Aires, Ljubljana, Reykjavík,
and New York City.
Steen is Professor of Composition and Music Theory, and
director of Studio D (the electronic sound/noise/music
studio) at the University of Hartford’s Hartt School, in West
Hartford, Connecticut USA.
Sound & Walking
There were 2 primary threads that I followed during my time
at Arteles:
Thread 1):
organizing, editing, copying, inventing new sonic notations
and choreographies, alongside preparing scores and
dreaming about upcoming performances of 2 new works
that I had composed while at EMS in Stockholm during June
2018. In this time, and in this place for 12 violins, a cello and
quadrophonic field recordings (premiered on August 19th
at Promisek in Connecticut USA, by violinist extraordinaire
Katie Lansdale along with an ensemble students and
colleagues); and Suspensions for Oboe, English Horn and
electronic audio soundtrack, to be premiered by Duo Agosto
on September 1, 2018, in Granada, Spain.
Thread 2):
collecting a variety of field recordings using a quadrophonic
binaural (8 channel) microphone to be used in future sonically
immersive compositional and installation projects.
Both threads were fundamentally supported by being
grounded within a dynamic and passionate community of
artists, and an intense focus on walking as an intentional
form of meditation. Walking enabled me to be more clearly
present in each moment of the day, in each interaction and
nourishing conversation. This in turn encouraged broad
thinking, deep consideration and sonic/artistic risk-taking as
these two new works were wrought into final form and source
materials for future works were collected.

Back to Basics program / JULY 2018
Simon Ker-fox Taylor
South Africa
www.periphery.co.za
About
Simon’s approach to art moves playfully between what is
real and constructed without letting go of authenticity. Story
and character narratives, whether true or imaginary, are at
the centre of his work. His style is raw, close and real, often
drawing on encounters with natural elements. He has licensed
a creative documentary feature film to the BBC and has been
engaged by a range of clients including Al Jazeera, The Daily
Show with Jon Stewart and Fox among other international
broadcasters as well as a range of non broadcast clients
such as London Business School, The University of Cape
Town and the Heinrich Boll Foundation to create media. A
member of Berlinale talent campus his work his work has
shown in festivals and exhibitions internationally, recently a
solo exhibition with the Association for Visual Arts Gallery
followed by a video art instillation. Interested in the creative
processes that collaborations provide he has been drawn to
Arteles and to find artists, spaces and institutions to create
new work with.
Migratory Brids
Conceptual art considering the complexity of migration
patterns in humans and the effect of movement on notions of
home and ideas around personal security.
Photographic collage, lithography, photography.

Back to Basics program / JULY 2018
Nora Sørena Casey
USA
www.norasorenacasey.com
About
Nora Sørena Casey loves to create vivid theatrical worlds
that break free of reality. This emphasis on imagination takes
many forms, including site-specific works, musicals, and
plays that seamlessly move across time and space. From
plays like “False Stars,” a collaboratively-created reclaiming
of the family drama, to experimental new musicals like
“Waiting,” Nora blends humor and lyrical language to explore
sex, love, identity and power in contemporary America.
Nora plays include “Take the Car” (Williamstown Theatre
Festival, Brooklyn College), “Resistance Training” (Women-
In-Theatre Festival), “Waiting” (Columbia Stages), “Dreams
of Malinche” (Everyday Inferno), and “Not Afraid” (PowerOut).
Her play “False Stars,” premiered at the Corkscrew Festival
in a “fast-paced, heartfelt and precise” (Stagebuddy)
production that was “packed with young talent” (New York
Times).
Holding Up the World
I spent the month working on two writing projects: the first
draft of a fantasy novel and a short, site-specific play for a
garden called “Holding Up the World.” Inspired by the artistic
engagement of other residents with the landscape, the
play includes an aspiring performance artist trying to bring
together body, word, and nature to change the world. It’s a
funny play.
The space, both outside and in the studio, was a wonderful
opportunity to create a mess of outlines, drafts, and story
maps. Hopefully out of chaos came something new and
interesting.

Back to Basics program / JULY 2018
Anja Schütz
USA
www.anjaschütz.com
About
For the past several years I’ve been fascinated by the human
search for meaning. Not actively participating in any religion
myself, I explore connecting points in a shared humanity and
the line that exists between us and other, unseen worlds.
Various portrait projects seek to discover a common thread
among groups of people by inviting subjects to pose for
situations which evoke within them tenderness, defiance,
revisiting of traumas, celebrating joy, and so on–-in short,
experiences which define us individually and collectively
within each person’s experience of the same event. In each
of these experiences, whether they are light-hearted or more
difficult, I seek a stillness that distills all of us to the same
point of being.
This same stillness is something I seek in my landscape and
still-life work. Is it possible to create a body of work that
invites us all to a similar contemplation?
Nukkua / To Sleep
A dream revealed my project to me a few weeks before I
came to Arteles. Recent years have involved loss of loved
ones, loved places, as well as the ongoing, gradual loss of
someone I love dearly. Coming here, I knew I’d spend my time
at the residency thinking and working around the meaning of
grief and death, both literal and symbolic. My dream felt very
connected to this, though I’m still exploring its message even
after this month.
The process of shooting the project initially yielded a bit of
frustration until Jacky Chen (a fellow resident), introduced me
to ink-transfers. This took my imagery from being too crisp
and clear into the dreamy, surreal realm I was looking for. This
month was such a wonderful example of what happens when
one steps outside of familiarity to embrace a new place, new
friends and new techniques!

Back to Basics program / JULY 2018
Jacky Cheng
Australia
www.jackycheng.com.au
About
Jacky Cheng was born in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. In 2003,
she received her Bachelor of Architecture (Hons 1) from
University of New South Wales, Sydney and has since put
architecture on hold and pursued her love for ‘creating and
making’ in smaller scales. Jacky is a practicing artist, an
educator as well as a leader in the Vocational Education and
Training sector in Australia.
Jacky works across several mediums incorporating her
philosophy of ‘slow art’ - a visual participatory, most notably
in bas-relief paper sculpture. Her introduction into paper
manipulation is an amalgamation of cultural practices as a
child as well as her curiosity in paper architecture during
her tertiary education years. Her recent experimentation in
fibre, stitching and weaving opened an array of processes for
future body of works.
Her multiple award winning manual hand-cut paper
enchantment has since been featured in ABC Kimberley
Projects - ‘The Paper Cutter’, ABC Arts - ‘How art changed
my life’ as well as participated in numerous curated art
exhibitions, art awards, collaborative works, art feeds and
articles locally and internationally.
Her teaching accolades includes both state and national
awards in Best Trainer/Teacher of the Year in Vocational
Education and Training (VET) sector bestowed by the
prestigious Australia Training Awards as well as a finalist for
the Curtin University Teaching Excellence Award.
Today, Jacky continues to practice and teach in Northwest
of Western Australia where she has lived and worked since
2006.
In-between
I rarely get the opportunity to indulge in simple pleasures
such as ‘play’ in my practice. One month of switching off from
my bureaucratic world – acknowledging and sifting through
whatever idea comes to mind was not an easy task. But I soon
gave in to time, be present and fiercely ‘play’. I embarked
on a journey of making, doing, observing, practicing and
enthusiastically embraced the unknown - a journey that
led to inquisitiveness within my given space. I began to
revisit and explore my first love - architecture and its spatial
qualities from a few standpoints – sociological, physiological,
psychological and perceptive space. Threading or rather
stringing two adjacent walls and corners with the intention
of drawing the eye outdoors; cutting and dissecting a book
and investigating its relationship through the act of ‘intuitive
doing’ intrinsically opened up multiple ideas and concepts
for future projects and assisted me in investigating multi
faceted projects. Back to Basics is a crucial element in any
practitioner’s journey. I am embracing the ‘in-between’ state
of my being - neither here nor there. Nevertheless, I am
excited with possibilities.

Back to Basics program / JULY 2018
Blythe Cheung
Hong Kong
www.blythecheung.com
About
Collect remnants of the ever-changing world, distil
overlooked mystery and wonder among seemingly mundane
and repetitive happenings into carries of their own kind.
These debris, magic that radiates beauty, define the finest
moments and so makes them worthy.
My multi-disciplinary practice mainly consists of drawings/
writing/ installation/ performance/ sound. Each component
works together like notes of a chord, and contributes a unique
tone to the composition. Through different passageways, I
find the delicate balance to enrich and amplify meanings,
bridges new points of entry to a collective experience that
resonates within and beyond. In a place where we see the
extraordinary in ordinary, we perhaps catch a glimpse of
eternity.
夏 渺 橋 綠
The pronunciation of Hämeenkyrö, the municipality where
Arteles is, rings a bell to me in Cantonese - 夏 Haa6 渺 Miu5 橋
Kiu4 綠 Luk6. These Chinese characters translates into - vast
summer, emerald bridge - and from there onwards, words,
pictures, sounds, and textures eventually fold themselves
into this piece of work - a performative, sculptural reading
material - I first started making in Arteles, July 2018.

Back to Basics program / JULY 2018
Tamara Lazaroff
Australia
www.tamaralazaroff.com
About
I’m an emerging writer of fiction & creative non-fiction
based in Brisbane, Australia. Over 25 of my short stories
and personal essays have been published, broadcast and
performed in Australia, the UK and New Zealand. Some have
won, been highly commended or been longlisted for awards,
including the Biennial Literary Award, the Elizabeth Jolley
Short Story Prize and the Fish Short Story Prize. Recently,
I completed my first short story collection, ‘In My Father’s
Village & Other Stories’, and am actively seeking to find the
right home for them. At Arteles, I am interested in exploring
what I can do with the lyric essay form.
Essays & novella draft
I spent a week exploring a new personal essay and that didn’t
work out.
After that I began exploring a novella idea and that did work -
I wrote a mosaic-style first half of a draft and felt that I found
the voice and tone I was happy with. I spent about a week
on that.
At the end of the second week I had a conversation with
another resident - the writer Evan James - that really sparked
some new ideas for a structure that would fit some of the
material I had been trying to give shape to for years. I wrote
furiously and rode the wave of inspiration producing 26 new
personal essays. I would never have been able to do this
in my normal everyday life - with all of its distractions and
necessities. So I am very grateful to Arteles for providing me
with the space and time to create new, inspired connections
and work.

Back to Basics program / JUNE-AUGUST 2018
Lauren Guymer
Australia
www.laurenguymer.com
About
Lauren Guymer is an emerging visual artist based in
Melbourne, Australia.
Working across drawing, illustration, and sometimes painting,
Lauren creates highly detailed and intricate works inspired
by the natural world. Predominantly drawing with pen and
ink on paper, she uses a variety of techniques including dot
stippling, cross hatching, and line work.
From the Australian wilderness to faraway places, Lauren is
constantly observing, exploring, and sourcing new inspiration.
She is inspired by nature and landforms, from mountains
and rivers, to rocks and plants. She is also interested in
exploring ideas related to travel, homes, dreams, surrealism,
symbolism, space, alternative dimensions, and more. Lauren
uses drawing as a tool to document the places she has
visited, and also as a way to explore her vivid imagination.
Delving into dream-like landscapes and otherworldly places,
her drawings meet somewhere between make-believe and
reality.
Currently, Lauren works from her home studio located on the
Mornington Peninsula in Victoria, Australia. She is working
towards her second solo exhibition at Outré Gallery in 2019
as part of the Small Wall Project, and various other exciting
things! She is currently accepting commissions, exhibitions,
and all other opportunities.
In the forest
I was in Arteles for three months, wondering through the
woods and observing all the details. It has become a second
home to me. I’ve watched the light pass through the Birch
trees, sweep across the golden fields, and seep into every
place possible. The endless summer days have provided
me with so many opportunities, connections, and mosquito
bites. I have created many pen and ink drawings of nature
studies, landscapes, and the little things that catch my eye.
I have focused on improving my technique and learning to
observe and understand the land better. All these snippets
and studies will form my own forest, that I can take home and
remember forever.

Back to Basics program / JUNE 2018
Enrica Ferrero
Italy / USA
www.ferreroenrica.com
About
My work is about the state of flatness. Flatness as both a way
of being in and understanding the world. I think increasing
digital mediation has heightened this state. Body/object,
landscape/architecture are collapsing as we re-make the
world in our own image, changing the relationship between
“natural” and “unnatural”. Instead of resisting flatness, I
am embracing it as a way to try and break it’s spell. I make
textiles, and also patterns with paintings and digital imagery,
as well as hypothetical objects for a flat world.
Weaving the Woods
For practical reasons I had self-imposed restrictions when
planning my stay at Arteles: to come and leave with as little
as possible. Working within these confines proved very good
for the creative process. Lacking my usual tools, I built a
free-standing rigid heddle loom out of found wood. I then
wove with materials that I scavenged every day from the
woods, as well as communal art materials left behind by
previous residents and fibers found at the local flea market.
Since most of the woven pieces were created with natural,
biodegradable materials, they will eventually disintegrate. I
left my work in the woods, and scattered throughout Arteles
where it will dry and change as time passes, before falling
apart. The loom, however, remains standing. A new tool I
hope future residents will use to explore.

Back to Basics program / JUNE 2018
Lauren Ruth
USA
www.lauren-ruth.com
About
Lauren Ruth is a sculptor and performance artist exploring
critical issues related to the social ritual, communication,
and the body. Ruth’s work employs grand gestures and
manipulations of scale and context to allow bodies to take
on new agency and authority. She revels in the awkward and
absurd and often implicates the viewer as part of the work.
Ruth holds an MFA in Sculpture from Cranbrook Academy
of Art and a BA in Studio Art from Dartmouth College. She
has exhibited widely throughout the United States and is
Assistant Professor of Sculpture at the California State
University, Chico.
Interventions in Nature
At Arteles, I created a series of sculptures and performative
gestures that explore the relationship between humans
and nature. I investigated the ways that humans project our
needs onto nature and ascribe agency to natural systems
and forms.
My sculptural interventions and gestures included: a lone
floating eyeball gazing out on the lake like a lost animal or
misplaced explorer; a set of unblinking eyes embedded in the
hillside; a stop sign that disrupts and redirects lines of sight;
a giant eye mask to help the rocks sleep better when the sun
doesn’t go down; and attempts to determine the color of the
sky by matching it to a set of paint chips from a Finnish paint
company. I also matched the same paint chips to a collection
of human-made objects found in nature, effectively creating
a palette of colors “naturally” derived from the Finnish
landscape.
Most important, I began to approach artmaking as a collective
event of indeterminate length with a focus on process – in
other words, an “art outing”.

Back to Basics program / JUNE 2018
Pedram Sadegh-Beyki
Iran
www.pitheorem.net
About
I am a generative artist who is generally interested in studying
and exploring the subjects of Sacred Geometry and Religious
arts. Other than Nature, I get my inspirations from different
fields of Humanities such as Philosophy, Psychology,
Theology, Mythology and Symbology. Pitheorem [pi:theorem]
is the title for the collection of my ongoing algorithmic art
projects, where I delve into the infinite possibilities within the
circle and transcendental number “”Pi”” and try to depict
the boundaries between chaos and order by drawing the
balance in between.
Living Landscape
Before coming to Arteles, I was becoming more interested in
landscape art and started thinking about the idea of creating
living landscapes where its elements are in motion.
As an algorithmic artist, I spend a lot of time studying
mathematical algorithms. but for the purpose of this living
landscape project that I had in mind, this scientific approach
left not enough space for the creation of artistic work. In
order to make a more fruitful progress, I thought I had to
spend more time on observing and contemplating nature
within the nature itself.
Arteles provided me with all that I needed to step away from
the digital world into the chaotic nature. In the first days of
my residence, I was blown away by the mixture of beauty
and silence in the natures of Finland. So I started taking
photos from already existing landscapes and afterwards I
merged various elements from different photos into a single
composition.
I was lucky to find my fellow resident artist and composer
Ross Whyte to be interested in collaboration and did
a fantastic job of creating a track that translated the
combination of harmony and peace within nature into the
language of melodies and sounds.
The still images that you see here are the results of a real-time
generative program that I developed as the first sketches
of my alive landscape project. I also implemented some
algorithms to mimic the motion of wind within the elements
to make it look alive.

Back to Basics program / JUNE 2018
Mia Cinelli
USA
www.miacinelli.com
About
With projects ranging from experimental products to
large-scale typographic installations, Mia Cinelli’s work
investigates the scope of art and design influenced by
personal inquiry or cultural events. Her research and creative
practice focuses on the conceptualization of frameworks
for experiences which engender meaningful physical and
visual interactions. Hailing from Michigan, Mia completed
her BFA in Graphic Communication from Northern Michigan
University before earning her MFA in Art and Design at the
University of Michigan’s Penny W. Stamps School of Art &
Design. Presently, she is an Assistant Professor of Art Studio
& Digital Design in the School of Art and Visual Studies at the
University of Kentucky.
She has exhibited internationally during Salone Satellite at
the Milan International Furniture Fair as a part of Milan Design
Week, The Works International Arts Festival in Edmonton,
Alberta, Typoday 2018 in Mumbai, India, as well as at the Port
Moody Art Center in conjunction with the 2010 Vancouver
Winter Olympics. In 2016, she was selected to present a
TED talk titled ‘A New Type of Superpower’ on typography
at TEDxUofM; Subject to Change. Her work in typography
is included in the collection of the Griffiss International
Sculpture Garden, in Rome, NY, and her digital typeface
Fayette is a 2018 Graphis Silver Award winner. Mia’s creative
works have been featured through Design Milk, Core77, Fast
Company, Dezeen, Daily Mail, and People Magazine, to name
a few. With an inquiry-driven practice, she is passionate
about, and continually excited by, the possibilities of visual
communication and human-centered design.
With/Without
This residency was the furthest I had traveled from home
by myself, and marked the first time I had been without
my phone for over a decade. I became acutely aware of
my phone’s absence in relation to my body; I missed it in
my hand and back pocket. Aching for the comfort of the
familiar and working largely from memory, I hand-carved a
wooden replica as a replacement, which shockingly provided
immediate comfort. Though it had no technical abilities, its
presence filled the space of my real phone and accompanied
me everywhere. This revealing exploration led to a series of
stand-in phones, each with a different function: for handwriting
texts, logging un-Google-able questions, framing
moments for remembrance, and snuggling for security.
With a month spent away, I tried to grapple with my distance
from home. How do we imagine spaces separated from us
by time or distance? Nostalgia and homesickness are similar
as intangible and insatiable desires. Skyping my family and
imagining fellow residents’ homes sprinkled around the
globe, I designed sculptures to discuss these distances.
Hundreds and Thousands [of miles from home] are tiny
hand-carved faux-confections, the sweet thought of home.
And Away speaks to the mental image of home as completed
through reflection— something visible, but untouchable.
Arteles gifted me the freedom to play, explore, and create in
the most beautiful & supportive environment. I am grateful to
the Arteles staff, my fellow residents, and the University of
Kentucky, who made this trip possible.

Back to Basics program / JUNE 2018
Dana Ysol
South Korea
www.danaysol.com
About
Dana Y’Sol has been focusing on capturing the presence of
consciousness through sites, her experience of inner silence,
void/emptiness, subliminal qualities of different spaces, and
stillness within movements.
In 2007, after a year of recovery from unidentifiable pain that
had put her in a wheelchair, Dana became deeply immersed in
Eastern Philosophy. Since then, she has traveled extensively;
not to be involved in the world but to search within herself.
She went on pilgrimages, visited cathedrals, monasteries,
and temples, took classes in different disciplines, and went
on silent retreats. These experiences opened her awareness
to one’s own inner silence, a presence of both material and
immaterial light, and subtle qualities of space. The path to
becoming an artist naturally unfolded after these periods of
intense inner inquiry.
Dana Y’Sol is currently studying at the Royal College of Art
in London (MA Photography). She holds a BFA from the
School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). She works
primarily in photography, video, sound, and drawings. Dana
has participated in numerous group exhibitions in the USA.
Her recent two-person show was held at St. Mary’s College
in Notre Dame, Indiana, and she received the Nippon Steel
Sumitomo Metal USA Presidential Award in 2014.
Breathing Beyond Surface
A presence of consciousness, known and unknown, visible
and invisible, tangible and intangible, is often experienced
as I enter into a space. What I attempt to capture is the
invisible and the intangible, the qualities that I find to be most
intriguing and powerful. Moving beyond optical experiences,
there lies infinite emptiness, which is capable of containing
and revealing the essence of space. It evokes something that
is beyond surface.

Back to Basics program / JUNE 2018
Isabelle Desjeux
Singapore / France
www.isabellecreates.wordpress.com
About
A French artist living in Singapore, Isabelle Desjeux has a
PhD in Molecular Biology and a MA in Fine Arts. She has
collaborated with scientists from various countries and
exhibited her work internationally (Singapore, Japan, USA).
She is also the recipient of the 2017 Lasalle Fieldwork
Research grant for her work on “The Lost Malay Scientist”.
Desjeux is interested in understanding how science is
made and knowledge is acquired, by scientists, students or
children and by extension the public at large. Her installations
and video installations often recreate laboratories and place
the viewer in the position of the scientist conducting the
experiment. Often the work is also participatory or interactive.
Desjeux has also been working with children since 2000,
teaching drawing through observation, and scientific
methods. Her artistic, scientific and educational practice
have merged through a teaching studio of art and science
(l’Observatoire) in 2012. Many subsequent artworks have been
collaborative and participative. She helped set up Playeum’s
Children’s Centre for Creativity (as Creative Director). She
currently runs a residency studio at Blue House (pre-school),
inviting artists and other creators to share and co-create in a
space serving as inspiration to the school community.
Trust in Serendipity
Visiting Arteles in June was part of a larger plan where
I collect experiences and understanding of a variety of
climates and environments (The collection now comprises
the countrysides of France, Malaysia, Indonesia, Japan,
and Finland). Experiencing the midnight sun was to be a
large part of this discovery. Finding that the extra hours of
sunlight provide as many more daily hours of energy was the
unexpected benefit.
While I wanted to experience nature, landscape, flora, light,
and colours, I also wanted to make sure there was space
for serendipity and unexpected projects to appear and grow.
As such, my days were divided in hours of study and writing
early in the day (completing a written research project),
taking a walk, a cycle ride or a boat ride (taking photographs
and sketching), and plenty of empty time in between.
I also pursued an ongoing pinhole photography project,
consisting of building cameras and dark rooms in new
locations, using locally sourced material.
Serendipity:
Finding a book of Fables translated from French to Finnish in
the flee market;
Reading a book by Jacques Rancière about self-learning a
language, suggesting to me the above mentioned book could
be the support for learning Finnish in a month.
Having among the current Artelesian a sound artist with
all the equipment and much interest in recording various
languages
Finding in Arteles 7 distinct languages, each to record a fable
in their own language.
Not learning Finnish but observing the project take a new
direction in the hands of fellow Artelesians.

Back to Basics program / JUNE 2018
Nel Bonte
Belgium
www.nelbonte.com
About
L.O.S.T.I.N.H.E.L.S.I.N.K.I.
As a visual artist Nel usually works with the medium sculpture
and installation. If necessary / or applicable to the concept,
Nel often uses photography. . Drawings are the most direct
representations of her mental images. They are not just
preliminary studies but autonomous pieces of work ( many of
which are never turned into three-dimensional work.)
The most important step in the creation of Nel’s visual art is
the conception of every sculpture or installation. The process
usually starts from a trivial, insignificant and unnoticed
object in our daily, urban surroundings. Why does Nel decide
to give exactly that shape a new gestalt? Nel wants to give
meaning to the meaningless. Through a language of images,
Nel attempts to tell a layered story.
For each work, Nel attentively studies the realistic scale
ratio and the factor of diminution or magnification. In this
study, she always looks for a dialogue and/or confrontation
between the object and the spectator in the work’s specific
location. In addition to the scale ratio, Nel also gives great
importance to her choice of materials. The materials form the
‘skin’ of the sculpture and, in their own way, aid in translating
its contents (ref. tactilism).
She strongly prefers to work in situ, with the space functioning
as a mould for her sculptures and installations. The location
isn’t just a source of inspiration, but the raison d’être of her
work.
When Nel move’s an installation into a new place, such as
the clean white cubes of an art gallery, it always results in a
search for a way to present her work the right way without
losing track of the original intentions.
The work is
all that is
happening
in the day
it is a
process
not a thing

Back to Basics program / JUNE 2018
Naomi Taylor Royds
Australia
www.naomitaylorroyds.com
About
A recent graduate from The School of Art and Design, ANU,
Canberra, Australia, I have followed my artistic passion
later in life and feel privileged to be able to now have the
opportunity to immerse myself in creativity. I take a playful,
experimental approach to my work and enjoy investigating
unfamiliar techniques. Human behaviour has always been
a subject of interest to me. I am interested in those visual
prompts that bring to the surface and elicit forgotten
memories, connecting us to our past and the personal
relationships and experiences linked to these objects and
environments.
My work deals with the concept that we place personal
and emotional value upon humble objects in our homes
and intimate environments. I am fascinated by the notion
that objects are imbedded with memory by their current
owner, that these memories will change, be added to or
may be completely forgotten dependant on future owners
and situations. Our environments also have the ability to
evoke long held memory and it is the universal triggers that
fascinate and influence my projects.
A variety of sculptural techniques are generally used to
illustrate these connections however I have also begun
experimenting with drawing, collage and photography.
My work prompts the viewer to question and investigate
their personal understanding of the importance of their
own environments and domestic objects, considering that
perhaps it is only through a personal connection that we find
true value in the ordinary and the familiar.
Presence, Absence, Object
Reflection, contemplation, experimentation and friendship.
These are the words I would use to describe my time at
Arteles.
My creative process was inspired by the surrounding
environment and the connections formed with my fellow
creatives.
I arrived with no plans and open to whatever developed and
inspired me – this freedom was liberating!
The journeys we take became a focal point in my
experimentation – we had all travelled to Finland from various
parts of the world and many of us would continue these
travels on our way back home. The comings and goings of
various participants during my time at Arteles encouraged
the idea of examining the spaces remaining in the absence of
those around me. The use of red slippers- reflecting those we
slid upon on our feet when entering our dwellings – was used
as a representation indicating where we had once been and
where we had marked our presence in the landscape.
The relationships we create with one another and with our
personal objects became another central theme for me. I was
able to form a deeper connection with my resident artists
upon speaking with them about a selected object they had
specifically chosen to bring with them on their journey. This
project is in its early stages and will continue for some time –
I am excited to see where it leads!
Arteles became a sanctuary to begin new works, to
experiment with art forms and most importantly to create
new friendships with a group of inspirational creatives!

Back to Basics program / JUNE 2018
Sima Schloss
USA
www.simaschloss.com
About
I’m a mixed media artist who is based out of New York City.
My work is about the human experience. My process involves
creating blind contour drawings and disseminating them. I
assemble them back together in different ways. The tearing
and putting together the ripped pieces is similar to how
human beings process emotions. I look to tell the stories
that every person holds within themselves.
Intro to 3D
I have been curious about working in 3-D for a while. My
process originally was to layer images on top of another,
which in many ways gives my work almost ( but not quite ) a
three dimensional effect. Being around so many gifted multi
disciplinary artists at Arteles gave me the confidence to try
out different ideas and use different tools to make my work
more 3- dimensional. It was a great start to my journey into
three dimensional design.

Back to Basics program / JUNE 2018
Ross Whyte
UK
www.rosswhyte.com
About
I am a composer, sound artist and arranger. In 2012 I
graduated from the University of Aberdeen with a PhD
in Musical Composition where my field of research was
concerned with impermanence in audio-visual intermedia
and headphone-specific composition.
Since early 2016 I have worked as one half of the Gaelic
ambient electronica duo, WHYTE with singer-songwriter
Alasdair Whyte. WHYTE perform new arrangements of
rarely-heard traditional Gaelic songs, original instrumental
pieces and original Gaelic songs. Our debut album, Fairich,
was released in 2016 and has received positive reviews
(fRoots, The Scotsman, Songlines) and regular national and
international radio airplay.
Continuing my interest in contemporary approaches to folk
music, I was commissioned by the choir Bùrach to create
an arrangement of the Gaelic song ‘Leis A’ Bhàta Dhubh
Dharaich’. The choir performed the arrangement at the Royal
National Mòd in October 2017 and were awarded the Sheriff
MacMaster Campbell Memorial Quaich.
I’m particularly interested in the musicality of language – its
rhythms, melodies and timbres, rather than the meaning of
words, and I’ve recently been focusing on cant and antilanguages
of different cultures.
I love to collaborate and am particularly passionate about
composing for dance.
I am currently working on new solo sound works and the
WHYTE follow-up album.
Speaking in Tongues
During my time at Arteles I developed a methodology
for collecting spoken word recordings and analysing the
musicality of language. I was particularly interested in
studying any language that wasn’t English (my language),
and wanted to identify the melodies, rhythms, and timbres
of various spoken word recordings in order to explore their
compositional potential. Over the course of the month, I
made recordings of other residency members speaking in
their native languages, including Finnish, Persian, Dutch,
Italian, French, and Korean.
I worked closely with fellow resident and visual artist Pedram
Sadegh-Beyki in exploring potential ways of creating visual
realisations of isolated portions of speech with the goal of
later creating an audio-visual installation work.
I am particularly inspired by the ephemeral nature of the
spoken word – all sound dies as soon as it’s spoken, and
recorded sound is merely a copy, a representation rather
than a preservation. It struck me that there was something
analogous in my process with that of an insect collector: a
butterfly, for example, cannot be pinned to a board without it
dying, and what is preserved is a shell, an echo of something
else. My project, therefore, has become as much about the
strange process of archiving and analysing as it has about
the subsequent potential creative outcomes.

Comic Blast! program / MAY 2018
Susannah Lohr
USA
www.antimatter.zone
About
My primary media is drawing with pencil, charcoal, pastel,
and digital media. My work ranges from abstract to narrative
and is about the comfort of solitude, the blanket of night, and
the horrors which can lurk within us all. I like to intertwine
nature and manmade structures in my work. I also love to
express myself through all sorts of media beyond drawings,
including metal & paper, resin & concrete, and light. Some
day I hope to work on a film set or do storyboarding. I love
learning new techniques and experimenting!
I Don’t Even Know If That Was Real
This comic is about the specter of PTSD and anxiety and
how it can torment and alter one’s perception in horrifying
ways. The monster in this story is the residual physiological
and emotional response from a threat that has now passed,
which continually haunts the protagonist. This piece is
semi-autobiographical. My experience with this is that it
can be difficult to trust yourself and your own perceptions
and to know where the line between reality and your brain’s
response to trauma is. I used images from my dreams, my
past, as well as scenery from the area around Arteles to give
me inspiration. I came to the residency with a loose plan for
the plot and found that the energy and advice from other
residents helped me to solidify the comic.

Comic Blast! program / MAY 2018
Jacqueline Huskisson
Canada
www.jacquelinehuskisson.com
About
I like to emphasize the importance of absurdity, how it defines
and dictates our lives as it allows for myself to acknowledge
the importance of the everyday action. The acceptance to
pursue my goals and live freely by ignoring the constraints of
societal placed rules. For example, savouring small everyday
actions like eating certain foods, enjoying the moment of
drawing a line to huge actions like rebelling against societal
norms, like not wanting children; too live selfishly. For me,
to create art is a selfish act of self-care and preservation,
and possibly an act towards assimilation of others, for them
to follow along and reach the similar conclusion to rebel
towards happiness.
I consider myself an artist who draws, but works in any
medium that suits my fancy. Recently, I was the inaugural
recipient of the Scott Leroux Media Arts Exploration
fund granted by Video Pool in Winnipeg where I explored
projection-mapping and I just wrapped up my first solo
exhibition “”Absurd Walls”” at Alberta Printmakers. I am
currently working on new bodies of work, which consist
of drawings, comics, animation and video. I was born and
raised in Calgary, Alberta Canada. I received a B.F.A from the
Alberta College of Art and Design in 2011. My major was Print
Media. In 2017 I graduated from the M.F.A program at the
Belfast School of Art located in Northern Ireland. I currently
live in Calgary working out of Burnt Toast Studios
Diagnosis Werewolf & Phantasmorgia
I completed the first part of my comic project while in Arteles,
titled ”Diagnosis Werewolf”. It is an exploration of my chronic
illness, a narrative of a life long affliction. A story minus text to
illustrate indescribable emotions and to capture the essence
of the state-of-being during times of suffering. The comic is
an on-going project that started during my residency with
the Dandy Brewery in Calgary Alberta.
While I was here I wanted to create a comic inspired by the
atmosphere of Finland and an exploration of the uncanny. I
am so far calling this project ”Phantasmorgia” which means,
”a sequence of real or imaginary images like those seen in
a dream.” This comic is an experiment to explore abstract
formalism in comics and too see the results of a mind without
limits, with Finnish aesthetic influence. I have only started the
project, my process consists of continuous experimentation
and research. The pages I start with can drastically change
over time, I allow my medium to guide the final creation. Im
not sure how long this comic will be.

Comic Blast! program / MAY 2018
Emilie St.Hilaire
Canada
www.emiliest.com
About
No matter what other artistic or academic projects I have
going on I always draw comics too. My first self-published
book featured 50 single-panel comics produced from 2013
to 2014. I hope to launch the next collection at Arteles’
Comic Blast residency. My comics are inspired primarily by
words, but also from personal, political, or social realities.
On average they’re funny 33.95% of the time and could be
described as “redundant wisdom.” I love stories yet only tell
one-liners.
Born in Northern Manitoba, Emilie St.Hilaire grew up in
Winnipeg - the geographical heart of North America. There
she did a BFA (University of Manitoba) followed by an MFA in
Edmonton (University of Alberta). Emilie is an interdisciplinary
artist currently pursuing doctoral studies at Concordia
University in Montreal, Quebec. All aforementioned locations
are in Canada. One time she moved to the Cayman Islands to
be a picture framer. Emilie has exhibited her work at galleries
and festivals nationally and internationally, and has received
grants and awards from organizations including the Canada
Council for the Arts, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts,
and the Edmonton Arts Council. In 2015 Emilie was one of
two artists from North America selected to participate in the
WARP Contemporary Art Platform International Artist Village
at the Brugge Triennale. In 2016 an exhibition of her work
entitled RE:VISION toured Western Canada with stops in
Winnipeg, Saskatoon, and Edmonton.
Redundant Wisdom (Finland Chapter)
I brought fifty phrases with me and ten days into the residency
the ants gave me the idea that I should illustrate my phrases
with forest critters. I wrote a couple new phrases and made
thirty drawings. Time is gold.

Comic Blast! program / MAY 2018
Jonathan McBurnie
Australia
www.jonathanmcburnie.com
About
Jonathan McBurnie is an artist and writer from Australia.
McBurnie graduated with a PhD from the University of
Sydney in 2015, and has put his prolific artistic output to
good use, producing thirteen solo and 97 group exhibitions,
as well as dozens of comics and zines, since 2003, nationally
and internationally. His work is at once reverent, satirical and
critical of the art world and popular culture, treading the fine
line between autobiography and farce. In 2017, McBurnie
was subject to his first survey exhibition, Dread Sovereign, at
Pinnacles Gallery, Townsville. McBurnie is also the Director
of Umbrella Studio Contemporary Arts, one of Australia’s
longest-running regional visual arts organisations.
Doom Patrol
This project had its beginnings in the murky area between
comics and what we typically refer to as the fine arts. My
work suggests that the boundaries between high and
low were not destabilized in the 20th century as generally
believed, but rather have enjoyed an amorphous and
tempestuous relationship since invention of reproducible
media. I think of my work in terms of a collision of high and
low forms, with a seductive narrative propulsion that lies in
the tension between forms. Originally, I set out to break the
rules that usually keep these two disciplines at arms’ length,
playing with sequences, movement and text, and trying to
find ways around both traditions. Some of the initial results
were predictable, a kind of visual comfort zone, but I soon
found my way out of that using new configurations of text,
and careful selection of raw image matter, resulting in work
that is as comfortable on a wall as in a book.

Comic Blast! program / MAY 2018
David Ross
USA
www.d-ross.com
About
I am an artist/educator working out of Washington DC. After
obtaining my MFA, I began running workshops in STEAM for
the Smithsonian, where I taught youth advanced technologies
through art . The easily accessible nature of comics opened
these technologies for my audience to explore making comic
related media. This is informed by my own artistic pursuits,
where I make a comic and use it as a jumping off point for 3D
design, animation, video games, and more to explore these
stories.
Preparing TWUMBLY and TwindeX as toys
I came to Arteles with five toe figures that I created using
my immature imagination and 3D magic. I prepared my two
favorites (TWUMB & TwindeX) to be reproduced using resin
casting. I contacted a local Finnish 3D printing company
who helped me print six and eight inch models of these
characters before testing out different finishing, casting, and
image transferring techniques. While doing this, I also had
the time to design the painted features of my toes as well
as their packaging. I now have a comic, 3D models, and
many more resources to finally mass produce these offbeat
characters. When I wasn’t doing the toe thing, I spent my
time throwing darts, sweating in a sauna, and singing (bad)
Karaoke with all my new international friends.
Long Live Arteles!

Comic Blast! program / MAY 2018
Emily Schulert
USA
www.emilyschulert.wordpress.com
About
A very cute sculpture, it sparkels and disguises itself as
a decorative curtain then glints in the light of a mirror’s
reflection to reveal a phrase. Codes make it so only the ones
who know the message within can decipher it. Obscuring
can be protective because you can get things done without
being noticed. What does the coat of childish girlhood look
like?Why isn’t everyone getting in touch with their inner
child? She is a voice sweetly whispering very big problems to
you over and over and over like a rhythm, a song, a repetitive
pattern of care. She says the same things over again and they
are simple and plain. This voice is the voice that narrates my
comics, she says “all truths come from a child’s mouth. The
figures and relics in my comics and installations exist within
a funny, girly, emotional world that resists shape shifting
forces of evil and don’t care about fear and the constraints
of money or time.
Emily has been making comics, freelance design, sculpture
and more in Chicago since 2011. She organizes monthly
low-cost art workshops through the founding of Chicago
Skillshare Network and teaches part-time through chicago
public schools and in her community.
Comics, illustration, fiber, sculpture
Arteles was an opening for me. I realized that I needed time
I hadn’t been getting to realize what I was missing. These
realizations came from a completely new environment filled
with other artists and free from daily stresses, filled with hard
work, introspective walks and solitude. What resulted was an
outpouring of work. I increased the free, gestural quality of
my drawing and worked on building up past narrative content
to make longer stories than I had ever done before. I made
a mini-comic titled “How A Star Is Made” about Hollywood
dark magic and a comic suite based on 3 poems I wrote
about money, sexuality, surveillance and mind control. I
will self-publish the suite in screen printed form to debut at
Detroit Art Book Fair in the Fall and submit to other festivals.
This residency also gave me a kick in the butt to apply to
more art opportunities going forward since I learned what a
necessity this environment is to keep developing and sharing
my work and create connections to others through it.
It’s hard for me to pursue success in a system that I am
against, to imagine I deserve wonderful things when the world
seems to be collapsing around us is a wonderful dream. But,
if the alternative is being alone in an apartment making work
and waiting, what can one lose from trying to spread their
work and perspectives outwards while they still can?

Comic Blast! program / MAY 2018
Jessica Bosworth Smith
South Africa
www.jessbosworthsmith.com
About
Jessica Bosworth Smith is a visual artist based in Cape
Town, South Africa. She is interested in the exploration of the
multidimensional field of illustration; from the development of
narrative works to research-driven contemporary art pieces.
Jessica has an experimental approach to her work and
process plays a large role in her creative development. Her
work often uses alternative psychology and magical realist
theory as a starting point for her explorations of themes of
the uncanny, memory, and liminality.
Paracosms
During my residency I worked on a number of projects. My
main focus was the development of my first comic. I wished
to experiment with traditional comic book formats and create
a comic without panels; allowing for an organic development
of narrative which complements my intuitive approach to my
work. The main medium was pencil executed in high detail
with the use of my wet-in-wet ink technique, which dominates
my usual style, as a narrative device. I also spent time working
on a series of paintings ink indigo and gold; experimenting
further with my wet-in-wet technique and focusing on ways
in which further develop my creative process. Lastly, I spent
some time researching the concept of world-play in relation
to the illustrator’s role as both a creator and cartographer
of imagined worlds. I did a number of exploratory sketches,
paintings and drawings; these preliminary works and initial
research conducted during my time at Arteles will form the
basis of my research proposal for a Master degree which I
intend to undertake in the near future.

Comic Blast! program / MAY 2018
Christopher Sperandio
USA
www.pinkojoe.com
About
Christopher Sperandio’s collaborative artwork maps the
numerous margins between mass and museum cultures.
His works take a variety of forms including comics and
books, games, temporary sculptures, painted installations,
television, billboards and digital media, all usually featuring
a public involvement component, in the form of open calls,
canvassing, or workshops.
Sperandio produces new collaborative and communitybased
projects in conjunction with museums and art
centers in the United States, Germany, Northern Ireland,
Denmark, England, Scotland, Wales, Spain, and France.
Commissioning institutions include: MoMA/PS1, the Public
Art Fund, Creative Time, London’s Institute of Contemporary
Art, Project Row Houses, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
in San Francisco, and DC Comics. He had two solo shows
at American Fine Arts, a landmark 90s New York art gallery.
Sperandio was also the Creator and Executive Producer
of ARTSTAR, an internationally syndicated documentary
television series about emerging contemporary artists shot
in New York, Chicago, Toronto and Miami.
His work appears in numerous survey books especially
concerning relational, social and collaborative art. For
example, one chapter of Arthur Danto’s book After the End
of Art is dedicated primarily to Sperandio’s collaborative
chocolate factory-worker project entitled “We Got it!”
Sperandio’s works have also been written about in the New
York Times, Art In America, Artforum, Frieze, Flash Art,
Sculpture Magazine, The New Yorker, ArtReview, Art Papers,
Soap Opera Weekly and others. From 2000 to 2004 he was a
contributing artist at Wired Magazine, drawing the cover of
the May 2001 issue.
Lil Trumpy
My time at Arteles was spent working on a large, on-going
graphic novel entitled ”Pinko Joe.” I’d characterize the work
as an anti-neoliberal love story. Pinko Joe is a crusading
Democratic Socialist who fights fascist capitalists and
oligarchs. For this project, I’ve deployed the Situationist
strategy of Détournement, hijacking numerous public
domain comics from numerous genres to make a new series
of connected stories. While at Arteles, I mainly worked on
coloring previously scripted, lettered and inked pages.
The time and space to work on this project, without being
required to produce a finished result was essential to the
completion of the overall project.
Also during my time here, I produced a few finished shorter
pieces, ones that can be incorporated into the larger book,
but can also function as stand-alone works. Again, these
pages are hijacked from public domain comics that have
been re-scripted, re-drawn and colored. One of these shorts
is ”Lil Trumpy,” a one-page story where the title character, a
rascally, orange-faced scamp, speaks in direct quotes (some
from tweets, but also transcripts from taped interviews)
originally made by the current occupant of the Whitehouse.
Finally, while at Arteles, I developed a modest exhibition
of sketches made by my fellow artists-in-residence. I plan
to mount this show at the Comic Art Teaching and Study
Workshop at Rice University in Houston Texas (online at cats.
rice.edu) in the fall of 2018.

Comic Blast! program / APRIL 2018
Jessica Hayworth
USA
www.jessica-hayworth.com
About
Jessica Hayworth is a Detroit-based illustrator, cartoonist
and fine artist who specializes in psychological horror
stories. She received her BFA from Sierra Nevada College
and her MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art. She has selfpublished
two graphic novels, Monster and I Will Kill You With
My Bare Hands, and has worked as the main illustrator for
the Welcome To Night Vale franchise for the past six years,
designing posters, book covers, chapter comics, and interior
illustrations.
Hayworth’s work focuses on episodes of insomnia, intrusive
thoughts, unreliable memories, and shifting architecture. She
is interested in the sense of tension and movement underlying
everyday scenes and places. Her storytelling forms worlds
dictated by the logic of sleeplessness and isolation. She
strives to develop a sense of tonal unease through repetitive
imagery, rapid shifts in perspective, and physical space as
character, capable of emotion and intention. In these stories,
spaces influence and are influenced by their inhabitants until
the two are indistinguishable. The characters in Hayworth’s
stories are often lost, even in their own homes; inside a house
is the most dangerous place to be within these narratives.
The occupants of these spaces begin to see into a world that
is normally inaccessible: always close, but hidden by a thin
white veil.
Grutch
I spent my time at Arteles developing the tone and narrative
of my next graphic novel, “Grutch.” I’d been thinking about
this project for some time, but hadn’t begun the process of
scripting until I arrived. Being at Arteles gave me time and
freedom to experiment with the pacing, visual tone, and
internal rules of the story. The script follows a young woman
who has recurring seizures and visions of another woman
lurking inside her house. It expands on themes I’ve been
working with for some time: flooding, loneliness, and the idea
of a house as a living thing, shifting to reflect the emotional
state of its inhabitants.

Comic Blast! program / APRIL 2018
Kate Anderson
UK
/www.kateanderson.co.uk
About
I use drawing and animation to convey personal narratives,
especially where an individual’s experience is shaped by the
environment they occupy. I work with digital and analogue
media, with drawing and an inquisitive narrative approach
at the root of my practice. I’m intrigued by interplay between
image and text, gesture, and mutation of language. Following
my MA in animation at the Royal College of Art, London, I
initially focused on commercial animation, music video and
short film. More recently I have been creating animations for
education projects, and collaborations with artist filmmakers
and musicians, including for live performance. I have kept up
a studio drawing practice throughout this time and I am now
concentrating on developing this side of my work to include
multi-media and experimental collaborations for gallery
presentation.
While at Arteles I will create drawings on paper, documenting
and responding to the natural environment and inhabitants I
encounter. I am interested in the lives of those who continue
to craft by hand or to cultivate manually - their lives entwined
with the land, living in relative isolation with numbers
dwindling, desisting change and becoming custodians of
tradition.
Lives rooted in the landscape
I came to Arteles with a project in mind, that I would embed
myself in the rural landscape to meet local people at home
and at work, learning about their lives while making drawings
on location. In an age dominated by technology and urbanity
I am interested in those who craft by hand or cultivate
manually - their lives entwined with the land, desisting
change and becoming custodians of tradition. Somehow
this line of interest correlates with my own return to tactile
analogue media.
I set out with my portable drawing kit, on foot and later on
bicycle. There were stumbling blocks –snow, language,
shyness on both sides, the usual self-doubt, a tussle against
time as trust nudged its way quietly between myself and my
subjects. Winter retreated day by day and only by the end of
the month did I finally feel I had got somewhere, dug just a
little into the moss.
Other residents allowed me to evaluate from different angles,
and I’ll continue to reflect on our conversations. I thought I
would create finished pieces but the work I have produced is
research. This disappointed me for a while, but I switched my
perspective. Which could be my biggest outcome, switching
perspectives.

Comic Blast! program / APRIL 2018
Joshua Brent
UK
www.joshuabrent.com
About
Joshua Brent is a UK based illustrator. With over five years
experience in the design industry he takes pride in his
versatlity, working for a diverse mix of design studios and
independent clients in advertising, marketing and education
across the country.
When Joshua isn’t working on commissioned projects he’s
reading comics and graphic novels. A lot of his commercial
work involves storyboarding and animation design, so this
passion for sequential images naturally developed. He
adores the travelogues of Guy Delisle, and the “reimagining
of Megg Mogg & Owl by Simon Hanselmann.
Joshua continues to balance his client projects with selfinitiated
work, endevouring to mix the two and debut a comic
of his own.
Sectioning Mum:
A mental illness memoir
During my stay at Arteles I worked on a comic about my
Mum and how she came to be sectioned in a mental ward
and eventually diagnosed with psychosis. The comic is
autobiographical and deals with themes of parental mental
health, the challenges of getting someone sectioned, and
how it impacts the family long term.
I came to the residency with a script and character sheets, so
I had the style of the comic established beforehand. I roughed
page layout and thumbnails on paper in sketchbooks, and
worked them up from scratch digitally in Photoshop. I also
developed my own hand drawn font at the residency using
Calligraphr, which really helped add to the personal tone of
the comic.
Working at Arteles and being surrounded by like minded
illustrators has been an enriching experience. It’s made me
reasses the balance of working on commercial work and
personal projects, and how I should be devoting my time to
both more equally. I really enjoyed the creative atmosphere,
and it’s encouraged me to not only continue working on my
comic but to try and meet more illustrators locally in the UK.
I wont forget this experience.

Comic Blast! program / APRIL 2018
Amy Gallagher
UK
www.amiluu.com
About
Amy Gallagher (also known as Amiluu) is a British illustrator,
comic artist, greeting card designer and part-time baker. She
is the writer and illustrator of children’s educational book,
“Microbes”, and comic artist for “Lost and Found” project
(www.lostandfoundnature.com). Amy enjoys observing
mundane life and uses it as inspiration for her whimsical,
playful, contemporary illustration and design. Her major
influences are artist Tove Jansson, 2D animation, and
comics focused on every day life such as the Johnny Wander
collection, Guy Delisle’s travelogues and Phillipa Rice’s
comic strips.
Latchkey Kid
After my first week and a half at Arteles, I had a little meltdown.
I wasn’t satisfied with the quality of work I was producing.
I had so far created two pages of a short comic about my
Mum’s childhood. I came to realise that drawing digitally was
restrictive in terms of my style. This little meltdown was a
small blessing in disguise. I spent the next couple of days
solidly drawing, pencil to paper, and I noticed a superior
improvement in the quality of my work. In the end, I drew
and inked the first seven pages to my comic, which I then
scanned and coloured in digitally.
Arteles allowed me to dedicate a month free from other
commitments to this personal project. I thoroughly enjoyed
working in Finland with a genuinely friendly, supportive and
talented close-knit community. The location is wonderful
- so many trees, bird life, open countryside and you can
actually SEE the night sky clear from light pollution. (I
easily spotted shooting stars!) After four weeks, I was sad
to leave, but I realised the amount of happiness I drew from
creating meaningful work alongside fellow creatives. I am
since striving to set aside time to continue with my project.
In addition, I’m going to organise a social meet-up with likeminded
creative people; with the hopes to stay inspired and
motivated, as well as the social gains!

Comic Blast! program / APRIL 2018
Neil Slorance
UK
www.neilslorance.com
About
Neil Slorance is a Scottish comic artist and illustrator. Neil
is best known for his work in all ages comics, winning two
SICBA awards for his work on ‘Dungeon Fun’ with Colin
Bell. Neil has also worked on Doctor Who comics and with
publishers such as DC Thomson and Hachette. Slorance
also has a great interest in creating diary and travelogues,
something which he hopes to expand on during his time at
Arteles.
Modern Slorance - The Finland Issue
During my time at Arteles I focused on making a travelogue/
diary comic about my time there. I wanted to make work
about Finland and it’s culture but also a more inward
looking narrative around being an artist in a residency, how I
experienced that and how it changed my outlook.

Comic Blast! program / APRIL 2018
Audrey Anderson
South Africa
www.audreyanderson.co.za
About
The unique narrative language of sequential art has inspired
my works as fine artists for many years. My artwork is almost
always about the conversation each image has within and
with the others works in an exhibiting space. When I work on
and exhibition I will consider a sequential narrative and grow
a story working form one image to the next. I share a love for
comic styles and techniques with graphic novel artist. I aim
to create, walk-in Graphic Novels, but sometimes my stories
develop into openbook windows or a sequential series or a
single panel story.
The simplicity of the everyday can be a great source for
imaginative adventure. I enjoy understanding what it means
to be honestly, present. Stories unfold around me in the
everyday and I use this in my work.
My other interests are:
• Taking what seems boring and and changing it into something
interesting.
• Imagination, experimentation and play. - Honesty of
thought being transfer through drawing and mark making.
• Unique personalities and moods found in lines and colour
choices.
• Sketchbooking and idea mining.
• Inventing games.
• Sharing ideas.
• Discovering different methods of storytelling.
• Readers imagination space between sequential images.
Adapting Gestures
It was the first time I had every experienced snow. This blank
white was hiding something new from me. I watched slowly
each day as the snow melted to see what the landscape
looked like. I saw small clues pushing holes through the
white-blanketed landscape, like branches and parts of rock.
I had no idea what anything looked like under the white. My
imagination started to wonder and my curiosity afforded
exploration. I walk through the snow, sometimes falling in to
a ditch, sometimes crunching over branches. Each new day
was a new story with more character being revealed from the
previous day’s plot.
Anxiety for my approach to drawing and narrative methods
had been fogging up in my brain in the past year. After
experiencing dramatic season changes in the nature at
Arteles, I likened it to how I thought about my practice and
approach to drawing. Drawing can be gestures peeking
through the snowy white paper and overwhelming network
of marks. Metaphorically the landscape change reflected my
approach to drawing and narrative work.
I should allow drawing to adapt based on the intent. I need to
remember to allow for change in my practice and not hold so
tight onto what I know. I have dropped the desperate anxiety,
to conform. I know now that nothing ‘must be’; it can just
be allowed and accepted. ‘All is as it is’ meant to be in the
context that it is in. Being present in drawing, composition
and colour, affords interchangeable intentions. This is how
it all clicked together for me. I just hope I keep aware of it in
the years to come.

Comic Blast! program / APRIL 2018
Huang Yu Chia
Taiwan
www.imjessicahuang.wixsite.com/huangyuchia
About
I believe that what makes art so fascinating is not in the
technique or the social issues they tackle, but the ability to
touch people’s hearts, and form a connection to their life in
reality.
In my journey, I sought out the common experiences that
everybody has gone through. The things that people care
about and love, and also the things they fear and can’t get
away from.
Then I arrived at a conclusion: “Relationships”. So I started
reaching out to all kinds of people, and in the process, with
myself as well.
I started with my Family, my Friends, and my Beloved partner.
I found it interesting to observe my own feelings when I
connect with people, opening myself to the moment and
emotions no matter how delightful or unpleasant. I began to
see that the relationships between human beings will be the
main ingredient of my works.
As long as we are alive, the relationships between us shall
never end. I hope I can encapsulate their stories and show
those relationships using this medium, and touch people’s
hearts.
Weakness seeds
During the residency in Arteles, I tried to inspire myself with
unconscious creations, hoping to capture some ideas from
my subconscious.
I started with paper cutting works, and I found myself
interested in playing with human postures. When I tried
misplacing the features, I found it weird but in a good way.
After creating more works in the series, I realized I might have
hidden some self-weakness and personality in my works
accidentally.
I named this series “weakness seeds”, facing my weakness
through the creation process. It will be a new direction for my
future work.

Comic Blast! program / APRIL 2018
Monica Lee
South Korea
www.monicaillust.com
About
I’m an illustrator and visual artist from Seoul, South Korea.
I graduated from Rhode Island School of Design in 2016,
majored in illustration. Right after the graduation I started
to work as a children’s book illustrator, expanding my field
of work little by little. It is satisfying to work as a children’s
book illustrator, however why would I want to limit my work
toward the certain age? I’m interested in developing creative
narratives and characters that would be attractive to the
viewers of different ages and diversity.
Most of the time I use traditional material such as watercolor,
pen, marker and color pencil. As the number of materials I use,
my works have a few different faces. My artistic subjects are
mostly nature, animals, delightful people and fairies. These
days I’m focused on the depiction of fairies and their history.
Fairies are totally fictional beings from human imagination,
often representing the human desire toward understanding
the nature. I would like to study these consistent, yet diverse
fictional creatures and bring them into my own narratives.
Finland and it’s nature couldn’t be more perfect with my
interest.
Invitation to the surrounding nature
As an artist, it’s fascinating to see when other creators carry
repeating themes or topics to use as the inspiration. Often
the theme is closely related to the daily life of the artist,
because that’s how interest and affection grow. Recently I
found interests in the nature and imaginary creatures who
were living within and associated close to the nature, like
fairies. Living in the metropolis like Seoul provides very small
chances to visit and encounter the nature. It was very ironical
for me to draw and paint nature while I get very low contact
of them in real life. The trees, lake and field animals that I
describe in my illustration lacks the true experiences, and
my favorite themes seem to have farthest distance from me.
The experience in Arteles AIR changed this notion entirely.
I spent my time not only to observe the nature, but also
understand and sympathize it. Instead of developing my preplaned
project, I invested my time to draw something that
I encounter from the environment. The small animals I see
from my window every morning including the pair of black
bird that I didn’t bother to identify the name, and their tree
house, after the snow melt how the forest ground changes,
the patterns on the rocks made by mosses, the first flowers
of the spring, and stories of elves; I found various themes
that I fancy to invite to my illustrative world, I’m sure they will
be my guest for a while.

Comic Blast! program / APRIL 2018
Anders N. Kvammen
USA
www.anderskvammen.com
About
My name is Anders, and I am born and raised in Oslo, Norway.
I started doing comics for real about six years ago, but I have
been drawing daily since I was about 16 years old. I started
doing self published comics online in a period of my life when
I had a job I really didn’t like and really wanted to be doing
creative stuff instead. The comics snowballed into something
more, and eventually I was doing stories for anthologies and
later doing books of my own.
Today I still like to draw every day, but I tend to focus most
on comics. I mostly do self biographical stuff. I never write
or plan ahead, I just draw one page at the time and make
up the dialogue as I go. Eventually it becomes something
substantial. Right now I am working on my second book
about all the jobs I have had in my life.
In 2016 my graphic novel «Ungdomsskolen» (directly
translates to High School) came out on the renown Norwegian
publisher No Comprendo Press. It got a lot of attention, and
won a prize for best young adult fiction book of the year in
2016. It was also nominated for the Nordic council literary
price in the same category in 2017.
Inking my new graphic novel
During my stay here, I managed to ink 20 + pages for my next
graphic novel. It will be published in Norway in October on No
Comprendo Press.
Every day in Arteles, I worked in my room while I listened
to audio books. I might have been a bit anti social, but I
managed to do so much work.
I worked on my new graphic novel, which is called Job. Every
chapter is a new job I have had in my life, and I have had
about 12 different ones.
My favourite thing about the hole stay was to go on biking
trips with the residency bicycles.

Comic Blast! program / APRIL 2018
Philip Edward King
USA
www.philipedwardking.com
About
Philip King lives with his partner, cat, and two plants in
Portland, Oregon. His work deals with questions surrounding
the loosely defined “human nature,” particularly in the ways
this term is used as a scapegoat, and juxtaposed with themes
of postmodern crisis. His writing and art has been featured
in Pathos Literary Magazine, Oregon’s Best Emerging Poets,
the Portland State University Vanguard, The Golden Key,
Fools Journey, Annex Zine, and Literary Brushstrokes. He
has shown work at the Saatchi Gallery in London, England,
the Todd Art Gallery in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and in
Portland at UNA Gallery, Erickson Gallery, Rose City Comic
Con, Littman Gallery, Holocene, AB Gallery, MK Gallery,
Sugar Cube, St. Johns Racquet Center, Synesthesia Festival,
NextNorthwest, and Splendorporium. He received a Bachelor
of Fine Arts in Art Practices from Portland State University in
2016.
Conceptual development & research
My process is largely intuitive, research-based,
interdisciplinary, and conceptually driven. I studied a number
of texts and articles to understand the mechanisms of
gentrification.
In my practice, asking questions comes first. The premise
of ”Boston, Oregon” began with the question, What if the
coin toss that granted Portland, Oregon its current name
had landed on the other face? In order to form a deeper
understanding of the city’s current moment in time, I
decided to construct a narrative within the fantastical
framework of speculative fiction, in order to remove it from
a rational, empirical context and allow for more imaginative
interpretations of concrete circumstances.
Other questions that arose during this exploration include:
how is development wielded by the wealthy and the privileged
as a weapon against the working class and sexual and racial
minorities? what is the historical relationship between the
”gentry” class and the etymology of ”gentri-fi-ca-tion”? in
what ways do the Abstract and Theoretical detriments of
gentrification manifest in the Real World? how do utopia &
fantasy factor into gentrification? under what influence(s)
does this postmodern offshoot of capitalist colonialism
operate?
Rather than provide definitive answers, I’m interested in
exploring the intersectional, human impact of class warfare.
I’m interested in the power of myth to compel empathy,
interrogate beliefs, and derive social meaning. I’m interested
in propelling my radical queer voice into a pop-cultural
discussion that consistently positions my multi-racial
community as either subjects to, or victims of, an inevitable
and unchallengeable hegemony.

Silence Awareness Existence program / MARCH 2018
Sarah Duncan
UK
print.sarahduncan.net
About
I am influenced by forms and light invisible to the naked eye. I
seek beauty in the realms of science, astronomy, microscopy.
Optical technology allows us to glimpse the unseeable. My
work reflect on these technological revelations, and try to
grasp what would be unknowable without them.
My printmaking revels in time and speed, abstracted by
telescopes peering into the deep past or microscopes
delving into hidden worlds. Throughout history the night sky
has been a screen for our projected dreams. My work seeks
to reflect this screen, and to find others to illuminate.
In between the Shadows and the Light
Recent scientific studies have centered less on the possibility
and more on the certainty and speed with which climate
change will take place.
My practice is not obviously engaged with worldly issues,
working directly to transform the global scale of climate
change into a human narrative. But more to have it subtly
resonate within my work.
Subject matters are introduced as key elements that make up
the natural world – water, stars, ice and snow. But underlying
are the activities that affect the planet’s fragile equilibrium.
Which is what I want to capture within my drawings.
While the grandeur of the subject matter is apparent, so too
is its vulnerability
I am interested in how the element of water can absorb and
reflect light in a variety of forms. The starting point for my
work in Finland was wondering how I could capture the
“dark” within so much whiteness. By using small amounts
of dark, I want it to be apparent that I am focusing on the
positive rather than the negative.
While working on small sections at a time I don’t perceive
what I am drawing as water, the cosmos or a tree. Instead
the image is stripped down to its most basic form of colour
and shape. It is only when the piece is complete can I finally
experience the drawing as a whole.
I continue to explore moments of transition and turbulence in
the landscape. I choose to show the beauty rather than the
devastation, a celebration of what we stand to lose.

Silence Awareness Existence program / MARCH 2018
Ross McCleary
UK
About
Ross McCleary is a fiction writer, poet, and spoken word
performer from Edinburgh, Scotland. His fiction explores
perception and interiority. His poetry is sarcastic and selfaware.
His spoken word performance is somewhere between
the two. In 2016, his novella Portrait of the Artist as a Viable
Alternative to Death was published by Maudlin House and
subsequently shortlisted for a Saboteur Award. He also
turned it into a spoken word show in which he crowd-sourced
a path through the text and then printed it live on stage.
His short stories have been widely published. Some of his
more recent credits include Structo, 404 Ink, Constellations,
and Pushing Out The Boat. As part of the Poetry As F**k
collective, he has co-hosted and co-written a spoken word
murder mystery night based on a late-90s chocolate advert,
and hosted a poetry slam in which poets performed sections
of Wikipedia as poetry.
Restarting a novel
The month was spent reconciling the successes of my
manuscript with its deficits. While certainly not a zero sum
game, the time at Arteles contemplating how the text’s failures
could be rectified, diminkshed, or flipped into something
more successful. My process during the month could be
simmised as Go Big or Go Home. During the offline days I
took the thinking from the days beforehand and lost myself
within the purity of writing without thinking, accumulating
words and thoughts and ideas that I have taken home with
me.
When working, when struggling, I also dipped into the
writing of poems and found myself taking great pleasure
in constructing new ideas which I will incorporate into my
performance work. Also, the cold, the stillness, the neareternity
of it all inspired me to cast one such work, bottled
up, into the lake by the site. If you find it, let me know.

Silence Awareness Existence program / MARCH 2018
Mel Dare
Australia
www.meldare.com
About
Mel Dare is a research-led, process-based visual artist.
Through painting and drawing her work explores how
meaning is created in regards to individual subjectivity. This
has led her to investigate different but interrelated subjects
including psychology, identity, neurology, biology, time,
physics and perspective.
The artist has an interest in how an individual is constructed,
drawn together by divergent strands of culture contained
within the moments of time and place we exist. Gentle strands
and crude stitches forming the pattern of conditioning
imposed by external and internal influences. Our need to
survive and equally strong desire for comfort. These contexts
form us, inform us, give us meaning. Meaning which is built,
sustained and discarded moment by moment. Meaning we
don’t always abide by, contexts we don’t always agree with
or even understand.
The critic Laetitia Wilson (The West Australian Newspaper,
2016) describes Dare’s work from Lines that Define: “Such
spatial and linear fields and patterns appear to be about the
cosmos, the growth of lichen, cellular clusters, the movement
of reeds under water, or the play of light, yet they are equally
about internal worlds of thought, memory, emotion and
identity.
Since graduating with a Bachelor of Arts (Arts) Honours from
Curtin University in 1999 the artist has produced 9 solos, 3
duo. Her work has been selected for numerous exhibitions
nationally and internationally. Dare has taught art at many
institutions including Curtin University of Technology as well
as Bandyup and Nyandi Prisons. She is currently a Sessional
Lecturer at North Metropolitan Tafe.
Exploring personal narrative
Transplanted from my home in a sunburnt city into a snowladened
countryside with twelve other artists from different
geo-cultural areas around the world I became intrigued by
context and it’s impact.
I began to see the individual as a series of behaviours rather
than a fixed personality. The importance of context and the
process of acclimatisation. I wondered how an individual
obtains a sense of belonging and ownership. I also wondered
what is under all that snow?
In many different ways I explored these ideas. Including
weaving chaotic patterns out of string; damaging then
repairing different substrates; painting small colour swatches
of the same landscape over and over again; drawing my
reactions to others and to myself; writing; and photographing
the landscape in an attempt to understand more. This is the
starting point for a new body of work.
I loved my time at Arteles. The landscape was beautiful and
profound. The people: wonderful, inspiring and dedicated.
The space was perfect for contemplation, reflection and
research.
There is a gentleness and understanding which comes from
working and living with people during periods of silence.
Every time I finished the 2 days of silence I felt I had very little
to say just more to explore – it was wonderful. It was also at
times very challenging. I not only deepened my art practice;
I also gained a greater understanding of myself.

Silence Awareness Existence program / MARCH 2018
Camille De Gend
Belgium
www.camilledegend.com
About
To be honest, writing about what I do is a bit of a challenge
for me at this point in my life. I’ve always been attracted to
creation. Using my hands to create has always felt like an
instinctive, easy and pleasing gesture. I therefore consider
this the best I can do as a human being on this planet: to
create.
Yet I wasn’t raised to believe that being an artist is a serious,
valuable profession. I only recently came to understand this
internal paradox and started to face the difficulties I had to
fully (and peacefully) identify myself as an artist.
So here I am, ready to break through the blocks.
I’ve been experimenting with painting, photography,
videography, sculpting, writing, jewellery and clothes
design. But today, it seems to me that all of it was a little bit
superficial.
It’s time for me to have a look deep down inside of myself and
find my focus.
Disconnected from my usual environment and the distractions
that come with it, I’ll take advantage of the Arteles Residency
to set up a series of rituals (including meditation, yoga,
breathing exercise, dance, ...) that will allow me to connect
with my inner self. And hopefully, this experiment will help me
find the best I have to offer, as an artist.
BLANK PAGE
The quiet space provided by Arteles served me as a blank
page. Far from the day-to-day life and the usual distractions,
my plan was to empty my head in order to give birth to
something new. To help me in this hazardous task, I settled
a series of rituals to punctuate my days - since I had just
learnt how a ritual can trigger some sort of unknown energy
and bring the intention behind it forward. My daily schedule
was made up of meditation, yoga, dancing, writing, praying,
creating, walking into the woods, … each of which influenced
by the book I had decided to bring with me : Women who
run with the wolves (written by Clarissa Pinkola Estés). This
framework brought me to a deep introspective journey and -
as I wished - gave birth to a brand new project.
I am now working on the creation of performances which
combine dance, VJing and a storytelling which would bring
to the table some topics such as the individuation process
(widely influenced by Mr Carl Jung’s philosophy).
I felt supported by my fellow residents. Their rich body of
work and thoughtful feedback have been highly inspiring and
brought me far more confidence. Without a doubt, I may say
my experience at Arteles has been a major turning point in
my artistic and personal growth.

Silence Awareness Existence program / MARCH 2018
Serena Gelb
USA
www.serenagelb.com
About
I am a painter, writer, photographer... I use the above mediums
to take in the world around me and process it, look deeper,
search, and observe. I love to create something beautiful
from all the chaos that is mundane reality. And create chaos
within that beauty.
In college I focused on oil paints. Oils are slow and sensual.
You can’t force them- have to work with them to create, and
there is a lot of surprise and discovery in the process: the
careful selection of pigments, the mixing, the long dry-time.
My favorite subjects to paint are people, especially people
that I know. I like to- not so much capture what exactly is,
on the surface, but- find a tangible feeling and riff off that.
I want to make paintings that are emotive landscapes. That
cause the viewer to feel things, see their world even slightly
differently, look a little harder, think a little more, and delight
in the beauty that is around us each second.
Words, drawings, and photographs can do this, too, of
course. And I’m excited to spend my time in Finland exploring
a variety of mediums, blending them, weaving them together,
finding harmony within the dissonance.
Pears & Pink
At Arteles I re-learned how to create and re-discovered my
own rhythm. Although I am most practiced in painting in oils
I chose to focus on acrylics (and “stretching” the canvases
directly on the wall) to discover more portable, faster ways of
painting. I always like having many projects going at once so
in addition to painting I made 5-10 drawings per day of first
pears then strawberries. Some were very quick sketches,
some slightly more concentrated studies. I primarily used
graphite and marker. It was a basic practice in observation, at
the same time an investigation into the process of decay. With
both fruits I used my nails to dig out a small hole on day one
so that each day I was able to observe them decomposing.
This kept my practice fluid and changing and fun. I am very
thankful to Arteles for giving me this opportunity to dance
with my creativity.

Silence Awareness Existence program / MARCH 2018
Amanda Robles
USA
www.amandarobles.com
About
Amanda Robles is an emerging conceptual artist whose work
thematically addresses existential philosophy, romanticized
perceptions (in regards to gender, sexuality, and social
relationships), and the deconstruction of formative years.
With a background in drawing and painting, her recent work
branches out into the realms of sculpture, audio/video, and
digital fabrication. In December of 2016, Robles received
her B.F.A. in Studio Art from the University of North Texas
with a minor in Leadership of Community and Nonprofit
Organizations. She not only focuses on her own artistic
endeavors, but is also concerned about accessibility of art
throughout the community. Before recently relocating back
to her home state of Oklahoma, Amanda has been active
in the development of Dallas/Fort Worth underground art
scene for the past 5 years, been a teaching assistant at
the Chickasaw Summer Arts Academy in Ada, Oklahoma,
and has volunteered with various arts organizations in her
community. Nowadays, she mostly travels around the world
while working on her current body of interactive installations
known as Intimacy in The Physical World. This body of work
poses philosophical questions and simultaneously creates
an intimate space in which the view can ponder.
L’appel du Vide
I wanted to spend my time at Arteles to polish off my current
body of work but mostly to find some resolve. Most days
were spent gathering audio and video footage and then
splicing and collaging what I already had. Not only did the
environment provide me with the space to explore and
experiment, but I also was able to lay down a clear foundation
for the direction I wanted my work to move towards. Aside
from this, I was able to write, ponder life’s big questions, and
to fail. The noted synchronicities and the ideas discussed
during this time were indispensable to me.
By the end of the month, I presented L’Appel du Vide (The
Call of the Void), an installation in the room where I stayed
for the month of March 2018. The French idiom refers to the
human impulse to self-sabotage or to self-annihilate. Viewers
were invited to have an intimate experience by lying on the
bed and watching a short four minute video by themselves.
The continuous video went over themes of death, shame,
and disconnect.

Silence Awareness Existence program / MARCH 2018
Drew Sparks
Canada
www.drewsparks.com
About
Drew Sparks is a Canadian visual artist focusing in
photography and video. He was born in Vancouver, British
Columbia in 1986. In 2010, he earned an honours diploma
in Professional Photography from Focal Point: Visual Arts
Centre, and in 2017, he earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in
Photography from Ryerson University. His work has been
exhibited across Canada, including the Capture Photography
Festival in Vancouver, and the CONTACT Photography
Festival in Toronto. He currently lives and works in Toronto,
Canada.
His artistic practice began within the field of documentary
photography, inspired by such photographers as Walker
Evans and Stephen Shore. Sparks leverages the mechanical
properties of photography, which associate the medium
with the representation of objective truth, as a means to
dissect and interpret the socio-political values inherent
within our constructed environments. Often of ordinary
and unremarkable scenes, his photographs emphasize
the cultural significance of elements that recede into the
periphery of the North American existence.
Sparks’ recent work ventures beyond traditional documentary
photography into conceptualism. Issues surrounding
objective truth, and whether photographs can remain entirely
unbiased, led him to begin deconstructing the medium’s role
within the dissemination of information. His focus is further
expanding to include an examination of our media culture,
and how its methods can be subverted in order to reinterpret
the underlying values of society. At present, his practice has
transitioned from photography-based to image-based, and
is broadening to include moving images, appropriation, and
other disciplines.
Luonnonsuojelualue/Memorial for a tree
During my time at Arteles I focused on the relationship
between the natural landscape and the infrastructure
required to experience it. In particular, I examined our
reliance on the personal automobile for transportation into
natural environments and how the necessary infrastructure
is in opposition with nature. Themes of preservation and
sustainability were especially important due to the rising
concerns of climate change.
Prior to the residency the idea of a nature deficit disorder,
and the possible negative effects on the human psyche from
a lack of exposure to nature, had also occupied my thoughts.
I used the nature reserves and parkland surrounding
Arteles as a means to examine my spiritual and emotional
connection to the natural landscape. The result was two
projects: “Luonnonsuojelualue”, a multi-channel video piece,
and “Memorial for a Tree”, a site specific installation.
The footage for “Luonnonsuojelualue” was captured during
my exploration of the Finnish natural landscape, including
the periods of car travel required to reach these places. The
video will use multiple screens to juxtapose scenes of natural
beauty with scenes of automotive infrastructure as a means
to illustrate our (current) reliance on unsustainable modes of
transportation.
“Memorial for a Tree”, a small wooden cross embedded into
a tree stump, was produced as a monument for the spiritual
connection humans have to the landscape. Leviticus 25:23-
24, a bible verse advocating for the preservation of the land,
is inscribed on the cross as a reminder of the importance of
the natural landscape within Judaeo-Christian belief.

Silence Awareness Existence program / MARCH 2018
Wanda Wieser
Switzerland
www.wandawieser.com
About
Wanda Wieser is an artist predominantly working with
objects, print, collage and video. Recent works have included
aluminous cement, copper, wax, Himalayan rock salt and
fabric.
Research into philosophies of alchemy or geological
processes stimulate the work. She is interested in how ideas
and principles from alchemy and the natural world resonate
with what it means to be human and to be conscious. Her
work is a constant oscillation between geological histories,
the human mind and body, alchemical, spiritual belief and
meaning. These elements act as tools for the artist to reflect
on and nurture sense of calm.
Blank page
The snow-covered, peaceful und magical time and space at
Arteles inspired and helped me to try out new and different
ways of working for me. With drawing and watercolour, I let
myself and the work be guided by a feeling of joy and a kind
of meditative state of mind. I became intrigued by making
one-line drawings. These would be done in one flow and with
a certain urgency to them, and show all the different versions
of the drawn subject, as well as the dissonance between
them. Celebrating and honouring this in-between space and
failures with colour.

Silence Awareness Existence program / MARCH 2018
Simone Engelen
The Netherlands
www.simone-engelen.com
About
Simone Engelen [1988] is a visual artist from The Netherlands.
She studied photography at the Royal Academy of Art, The
Hague in 2012 and received a master degree in photography
from the St. Joost Academy, Breda in 2016. Within her work
she experiments with ways of regaining control over body and
mind, using a range of techniques, including photography,
installation, performance and meditation, to provoke the
viewer to question and share the very stories that define us.
During her time at Arteles she will experiment with ways to
combine yoga with art by setting up a set of rituals. While
trying to embody a new daily rhythm Simone started off with
‘A Painting A Day Keeps The Doctor Away’. In this continuing
video of repetitive movement, she invites the viewer to turn
inwards to find their own centered self.
The Writer’s Lab
During my time at Arteles I experimented with ways to
combine yoga with art by setting up a set of rituals. While
trying to embody a new daily rhythm, I started off with ‘A
Painting A Day Keeps The Doctor Away’. The continuing
movement helped me to clear my mind and to start writing
on an outline for my first novel.
The Writer’s Lab is an installation I build inside my room where
I created the three main characters and their development to
visualize my inner proces.

Silence Awareness Existence program / MARCH 2018
Ella Morton
Canada
www.ellamorton.com
About
Ella Morton’s expedition-based practice has brought her
to residencies and projects across Canada as well as
in Iceland, Denmark and Norway and the United States,
exploring the relationship between landscape and mystery.
She uses antiquated photographic technologies as a means
of commenting on contemporary subject matter. Her work
aims to provide insight into how human beings perceive a
tension of the opposites – living in a quantifying, informationbased
culture and reflecting on the unquantifiable unknown.
Originally from Vancouver, she earned a BFA from Parsons
The New School for Design in New York in 2008, and an
MFA from York University in Toronto in 2015. Her work has
been shown internationally, including shows at Galérie AVE
(Montréal), Walnut Contemporary (Toronto), Foley Gallery
(New York), Idea Exchange (Cambridge), Gallery 1313
(Toronto), Viewpoint Gallery (Halifax), Photo Center Northwest
(Seattle) and the Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art
(Kelowna). She has also completed public art projects with
Nocturne: Art at Night (Halifax), The Crying Room Projects
(Vancouver) and Land-Shape (North Jutland, Denmark). She
currently lives and works in Toronto.
The Dissolving Landscape
I used my time at Arteles to continue my ongoing project,
The Dissolving Landscape, an experimental analogue
photographic project featuring northern landscapes
across the Nordic countries and Canada. I photographed
the Finnish landscape during winter and plan to alter the
images using the antiquated process of Mordançage. The
Mordançage technique degrades the shadow areas of silver
gelatin prints, creating eerie textures and folds of emulsion.
The manipulation of the images emphasizes the complex
relationship humans have with natural landscapes, which
involves awe, admiration and exploitation. The final images
will aim to convey both the sublime qualities of northern
landscapes and their uncertain future with respect to climate
change. I also captured Super 8mm film footage to be edited
into a future video project.

Silence Awareness Existence program / MARCH 2018
Warren Ward
Australia
www.warrenkward.com
About
I am a writer, psychiatrist and psychotherapist with
longstanding interests in philosophy, literature and European
history.
Above all else, I’m interested in culture, how it is shaped, how
it in turn shapes our world.
My essays have been published in New Philosopher, Great
Walks, Softcopy and Writing Queensland. I’m still seeking a
home for my lo nger works, but am fortunate to have an agent
in New York helping me with this.
My first book-length manuscript — Lovers of Philosophy —
explores the love lives of seven continental philosophers:
Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre, Foucault and
Derrida.
My second longer work — which I’ll be focussing on at
Arteles — investigates the lives of seven women who hosted
literary salons. Three of these — George Sand, Gertrude
Stein and Virginia Woolf — are modernist icons well known
to many. The others — Isabella d’Este of the Renaissance,
Catherine de Vivonne of the Ancien Régime, Marie Geoffrin of
the French Enlightenment and Henriette Herz of the Jewish
Emancipation — are lesser known but no less important. I
look forward to bringing them into the light.
I’ve always been obsessed with Europe — its people,
its history, its art, its culture. My love affair started as a a
teen reading Sartre, Beauvoir and Camus. In my twenties I
encountered Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky and there was no
turning back.
Salonnières
I had twenty-one days to work on my book about seven
women who hosted literary salons, so I decided to spend
three days with each of them. I spent the first day dreaming,
the second day plotting and the third day writing. Skeleton.
Structure. Clothes. Repeated this process seven times,
then presented to my fellow Artelesians who decided to
start holding evening salons at the centre where we drank
tea, shared creative projects, and asked unanswerable
philosophical questions such as What is Art? and What is
Beauty?
I also wrote haikus, watched snow fall, and took walks in
forest.

Silence Awareness Existence program / MARCH 2018
Yannick De Serre
Canada
www.yandesse.wixsite.com/yannickdeserre
About
I’m a Canadian artist, based in Montreal. I graduated from Fine
Arts 18 years ago. Since the beginning of my art adventure,
i got interested into the concept of «emptiness ». What lies
between the lines holds a lot of informations. The death, the
introspection and the loneliness became the under subjects
of my main interest. In general; drawing, printmaking,
installations and writing are my way to elaborate in art.
I am obsessed with black and white. When I draw, the
background becomes the form, vice versa... Everything
becomes a question of presence and absence.
My work is developing slowly. By observing it, we finally
understand the subtleties. Someone said: « Your work is a
soft violence because of its heavy subject which develops in
a minimal way.
For me, art is a way to question our beliefs.
L’amour sous un ciel d’hiver
My art process always include objects or writings. For this
current project, I asked my boyfriend to write me a love letter
on which, for the all month, I reflected, wrote back, projected,
etc...
Those reflections became drawings, installation, photos
and sculptures. Their themes: our communication and
our physical respectives and common spaces. I made
sculptures/clothes from wool to represent the themes. The
wool also refers to winter. They are build to accommodate
two persons (him and i). In a certain way, they are visual
representation of the “”communicating vessels””.
I also worked on “”Our Maps of Love””. They are drawings that
exist only for a short period of time (because of the technics
used: soaked in water or oil, wet ink, layers of Japanese
papers, etc. ). I immortalized them by photographing them,
on the spot. The theme of those drawing: the night sky. The
only common space we have, while I am away of him...
Being at Arteles residency allowed me to research and active
creation. I met artists and art workers who fed me through
my process.

The map of our love #1 (with his artefact)

Silence Awareness Existence program / FEBRUARY 2018
Pilar Garcia de Leaniz
Spain / UK
www.pilargarciadeleaniz.com
About
Pilar is a Spanish artist based in Edinburgh where she
completed an MA in illustration at the University of
Edinburgh (Edinburgh College of Art). She is currently an
artist in residence at the same university and enjoys life as a
businesswoman, freelance graphic designer and illustrator.
Her work focuses on imperfections and retains an interest in
everything relating to human behaviour i.e. the relationship
we have with the world and especially with ourselves.
Pilar utilises the idea of femininity of women and mindfulness
to study and reflect upon imperfections in order to capture
the delicate beauty of said imperfections/situations. She
emphasizes that mindfulness helps us accept our defects,
slow down and reconnect with nature and love.
Through her illustrations, Pilar inspires women who see her
art to make contact again with their inner self and find their
unique beauty.
Her work is based on mixed media, combining traditional
materials, such as ink, gouache, watercolour and liner pen
with digital.
Pilar is currently working on her first book which is being
published by the publisher Anaya in Spain. Photography,
video and teaching are also areas of interest to Pilar.
Drawing exploration and book
I went to Arteles with the aim of working on my book which
will be launched in September 2018. I did a lot of research,
writing and sketches about calm, hygge, meditation and
happiness. At the same time, I wanted to explore my drawing
techniques inspired by the surround and Tove Jansson,
Moomin’s author. As well, I participated in few competitions
and I awarded one of them.

Silence Awareness Existence program / FEBRUARY 2018
Kathy Robins
South Africa
www.kathyrobins.com
About
Kathy Robins has an MFA and PG Diploma in Fine Art from
the University of Cape Town (2016, 2012), a B.Soc.Sci degree
from UCT (1983) and a textile and product design degree
from Parsons School of Design in New York (1989). Kathy
has worked in community development, art, design and
social activism throughout her working life. She founded and
developed a Corporate Social Responsibility Programme
in 1999 and continues to work in creative and educational
development initiatives.
She has exhibited her work in local and international group
shows, most recently The Space Between (South African
Jewish Museum, 2016), Displacement (AVA Gallery, 2016),
The Christmas Show (ISArt, 2016), Muse Montage (Ecclectica
Gallery, 2016), Fog Catcher Installation (Design Indaba, Cape
Town, 2017), Master’s Showcase (Michaelis Galleries, 2017),
Dream Rift (Eclectica Gallery, 2017) and Mixed Methaphors
(Kalk Bay Modern, 2017). Upcoming projects include a solo
show at ISArt (2018) and the Arteles Residency (Finland,
2018).
Through her work, Robins aims to engage with issues
of displacement and home in the context of entangled
contemporary ecological and socio-political issues. The
artist uses natural materials and forms to consider processes
of human connection and interaction with the natural
world. In the context of the current, international physical
displacement and social disconnection of people from the
land, Robins engages with materials and processes that echo
issues of displacement and longing for a lost connection with
place.
Fire and Ice
In keeping with Robins’ interest in land and natural resources
in the context of the ecological crisis, the Four Buckets
Project and Fire and Ice work that she completed as part
of the Arteles Residency is a reflection on water as a scarce
natural resource. Harking from Cape Town, where there is
currently (2018) a severe drought, Robins engaged with water
in its many states, using alchemical process that investigated
how humans interact with our surrounding resources and
how stories and histories are tied up in natural materials. By
subjecting water to different processes of freezing, melting,
and saving, questions of displacement and transient yet
meaningful human connection to place through natural
materials arose. The project is part of Robins’ continual
investigation of the interconnectedness of personal,
collective, and natural histories that seeks to challenge the
environmental and social crises of the current moment.

Silence Awareness Existence program / FEBRUARY 2018
Toni Stuart
South Africa
www.tonistuart.com
About
“The poet doesn’t invent, he listens.” - Jean Cocteau
I am a poet & performer, who uses poetry as a tool for listening.
As a South African woman, of mixed ancestry (classified as
Coloured under the apartheid state), I am listening for the
buried, forgotten and silenced stories of the black, brown
and indigenous women in my ancestral lineages. I am also
listening for the stories of the land, specifically, the land in
Cape Town, where I was born, raised and still live, and the
land of South Africa. The first nations people of South Africa,
the Khoe and San, believed the land was a living being & lived
in right relation with it. The trauma of colonialism, genderbased
violence, slavery, apartheid were all enacted upon our
land. Our relationship to the land is distorted, and abusive. I
am listening for the stories wanting to be told, so they may be
released and we may start our process of healing.
My work is ultimately about listening. At a time in the world
where globalisation and technology offers us more and more
opportunities to speak, the world has become very loud, and
often noisy. We are very good at speaking. But words are
only as powerful as the quality of the silence that holds them.
Without the silence of true listening, how can we ever hope
to hear each other, to understand each other, to know each
other, or, ourselves?
somnambulism | stepping into silence
i undertook two processes during the residency.
somnambulism is my first poetry collection. i completed a
draft of the manuscript by editing, re-writing and revising the
40-43 poems i had chosen for it. i worked with a series of
questions to determine the various “”voices”” or “”narrators””
of the poems, and, to find the overall arc of the collection. i
also learnt where the gaps are, and left with a clear set of
questions and ideas for how next to further develop the
work. listening at every point was the key tool: listening to
each poem and listening for the overall story trying to break
through.
stepping into silence was a more personal learning process.
i chose to be silent, (not speak) for the entire month of the
residency. i established a clear daily rhythm/schedule
(including meditation, tai chi, “being” time). i read two key
books which fundamentally changed my understanding of
myself and my creative practice: The Highly Sensitive Person
by Dr Elaine N. Aron & Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. i saw
new parts of myself (good and not-so-good) that i otherwise
wouldn’t have. i developed a new understanding of what
listening is and the role it can play in the world.
finally, i collaborated with fellow south african artist, kathy
robbins, on her outdoor installation piece, and created new
music with tomás penc & mer míro.
my time at arteles has profoundly changed my approach to
my creative practice and my life.

Silence Awareness Existence program / JANUARY - FEBRUARY 2018
Robert Dowling
USA
About
Robert Dowling is an artist, comedian, and performer
currently living in New York. Originally from San Diego,
California, he is interested in the combination of photography,
video, installation, and social media and how they can alter
live performance. His experimentation in self portraits began
as a vehicle to combat his embarrassment of coping with
mental illness: to imitate confidence and power as a form of
healing. Robert graduated from Northwestern University’s
School of Communication in Chicago with a degree in
Theatre and a certificate in Music Theatre. He loves making
jokes on his Instagram accounts: @robertdowling, @slut4art,
and @footageofmeleavingtheclub.
Self-Portrait Study
While at Arteles, I used the thematic focus of silence and
solitude to deepen my study of self-portraiture as a form of
healing, as an exercise of taking up space and demonstrating
power while neither feels possible and neither feels true. I
connected with great joy, great sadness, and great artists,
and I crafted a lot. Lessons and experimentations during
my time at the residency quickly found their way into my
photographs, which brought out some new, confusing, and
exciting tonal qualities. I performed a couple short pieces
and PowerPoint presentations as well, which helped me
experiment with infusing this tonal quality into my live
performance.

Silence Awareness Existence program / FEBRUARY 2018
Hannah Gross
Canada
About
I am an actor, writer, and theatre artist now based in New
York.
Recently I’ve become obsessed by the question of how
much of our lived experience is devised and dictated
by preconceptions. And its follow-up question: is a
de-conceptualization possible. I’m specifically interested
in exploring this through film, a medium now so deeply
intertwined with consumptive capitalism; seeking to find if
a reconfiguration, however small, however brief, is possible
through a stretching and expanding of film’s (specifically
narrative film’s) relationship to time and space.
”You do not need to leave your room.
Remain sitting at your table and listen.
Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet
still and solitary. The world will freely offer
itself to you to be unmasked, it has no
choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.”
Franz Kafka
A dear friend of mine wrote this on a piece of paper for my
birthday and it has been following me for nearly a decade
since, periodically surfacing in the form of a direct quote,
an epigraph, or someone else’s words describing the same
core. It had been a few years since I’d seen it, perhaps the
longest stretch of time since it was first given to me, but I
found it again at Arteles. On a walk at 6pm, a time I found
myself outside almost every day, after the sun had set and
the light had almost left and the world was a blue only winter
knows.
I knew I needed the encouragement of time and space that
Arteles gives, but I was surprised by how much. I finished a
script, began tiny movements toward a book on perception
and capitalism and the cinematic image, worked on a poems
for a book of poetry I am collaborating on with my friend and
Canadian artist Zoe Koke, and took apart to begin again a
film I have been making of my grandmother. But underneath
all these small tasks was a realization, however fleeting, of a
knowing of the ineffable; a sensing of time for the first time.
And finding that stillness is synonymous with possibility.

Silence Awareness Existence program / FEBRUARY 2018
Jonah Groeneboer
USA
www.jonahgroeneboer.com
About
Jonah Jan Groeneboer is a conceptual interdisciplinary
transgender artist working in abstraction to address the
politics of representation. This strategy developed to
examine the expectation that the transexual body be readily
available for representation. The work offers a slowed-down
experience where minute shifts over time replace binary
understandings. He creates aesthetically paired down forms
that respond to or are dependent on the architecture and light
conditions of the exhibition space, activating the context of
the position of viewership and the environment. Forces such
as tension, gravity, light, time, and sound are both structural
and material in his work. In these works, motion, stillness,
material presence and absence co-occur to address
viability of visual perception as synonymous with knowing.
An impossibility of seeing in totality is an integral concept
in his work, providing a counterpoint to Minimalism by its
insistence on a political position within these contingencies.
His work has shown at the Boston University Galleries (2017),
as part of PopRally at MoMA (2016), Art in General (2016),
the Queens Museum (2016), CCS Bard Hessel Museum of
Art (2016), MoMA PS1(2015), Contemporary Art Museum
Houston (2015), Platform Centre for Photographic and Digital
Arts in Winnipeg(2015), Andrew Edlin Gallery, NY (2013),
Shoshawna Wayne Gallery, CA (2010), and Exile, Berlin(2010)
Among others. Reviews have appeared in the New York
Times, the New Yorker, Art 21.com, Mute Magazine, Artforum.
com, Art Journal, and Essays in Pink Labour on Golden
Streets“Appearing Differently: Abstraction’s Transgender
and Queer Capacities.” and onTemporary Art Review, “Seeing
Commitments: Jonah Groeneboer’s Ethics of Discernment,””
both by David Getsy. Residencies include Ox-Bow School of
Art, the Fire Island Artist Residency, and Recess.
Slient Sound Works
At Arteles I developed a new body of sculptural and
photographic cyanotype prints. These works furthered my
previous exploration of representing subvocalization, the
internal voice one hears when reading. Working with sound in
my practice developed from my work with light. I am interested
in wave behavior in physics, sometimes I do this by working
directly with light and spacialized sound and sometimes I
do this by working with the formal patterns that waves make
when interacting. Light and sound waves behave similarly.
The representations of sound and light wave interaction that
the sculptures and cyanotype prints visualize create internal
sonic associations resulting in silent sound.
The quiet concentrated working environment that this
themed residency provides allowed me to “hear” these works
better and listen internally to “sounds” that are created when
one encounters these sculptures and images that represent
the physics of waves and are meant to activate our internal
soundscapes. I’m interested in working with subvocalization
as a way to explore processes of inscription, incorporation,
and assimilation. How do our encounters with outside
influences manifest internally and become part of our inner
dialogue?
We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the
Arts, which last year invested $153 million to bring the arts to
Canadians throughout the country.
Nous remercions le Conseil des arts du Canada de son
soutien. L’an dernier, le Conseil a investi 153 millions de
dollars pour mettre de l’art dans la vie des Canadiennes et
des Canadiens de tout le pays.

Silence Awareness Existence program / FEBRUARY 2018
CV Peterson
USA
www.cvpeterson.com
About
CV Peterson is an multidisciplinary artist residing in Eau
Claire, WI. Their work combines scientific exploration and
art as a way to examine environmental devastation. They
received their MFA (’16) and BFA (‘14) from the School of
the Art Institute of Chicago, and a BA (‘10) from Gustavus
Adolphus College in Japanese studies and studio art. They
studied sumi-e painting at Kansai Gaidai University in
Hirakata-shi, Japan; followed by an apprenticeship at Moeller
Bronze, Ltd. in bronze foundry work. They are the Founder of
Envisage Art Retreat in Chippewa Falls, WI.
CV is an active member in national and international art
community. They have shown at the Chicago Architecture
Biennale 2015 and 2017, 6018 N Gallery in Chicago, the
Shanghai Zhu Qizhan Art Museum in China and the
CICA Museum in South Korea. They have performed in
the international performance festivals Forward Fringe
Performance Festival, Detroit, MI; Out of Site Chicago,
Chicago, IL; The Performance Arcade, Wellington, New
Zealand.
While their work centers on life on Earth after humanity is
extinct and plastic is humanity’s legacy they are actually a
pretty friendly person. Just-- beware the plastic.
Reflection, Experimentation,
Action, Rediscovery
During my time at Arteles “”Silence Existence Awareness””
Residency I read a lot, slept a lot, walked a lot, painted a lot,
sketched a lot, sauna’d a lot, and thought a lot-- probably
more than I wanted too.
I read spell books, created Scandinavian Protection Amulets
-- which the others in my little house joined, I returned to
meditation through creation and painted out thoughts via
landscapes. It was a time to dive into what I knew I wanted to
do, and discover new and forgotten elements in my practice.
I made magic.
I created images.
I dreamt.
I connected.
I explored -- my surroundings, my mind, my materials.
I learned.
I developed.
I am so very thankful.

Silence Awareness Existence program / FEBRUARY 2018
Gabrielle Paananen
Australia
www.gabriellepaananen.com
About
Gab is a designer, maker and puppetry artist based in
Sydney. Her work engages communities through immersive
theatre, installation and interactive story telling. Gab has
studied production art, natural history, animal behaviour and
mycology. She has illustrated several scientific papers as well
as a book about Permaculture which was published in 2013.
She is currently touring as a performer and maker with Erth’s
Visual and Physical’s ‘Prehistoric Aquarium’ production. The
movement, behaviour and anatomy of birds of prey as well as
patterns in nature are key influences on her developing work.
A Study of Patterns
During my time at Arteles I have been exploring ways to
create a large scale puppetry instillation that will investigate
patterns and connections in nature, focusing on intelligence
and resilience within networks. I would like to see if we
could learn from these connections, perhaps the secret to
understanding the universe is to first understand things on
a much smaller scale? I have been developing the concept
further, spending time in the silent northern winter and limited
connection with the outside world gave me the opportunity
to focus on anatomical drawings and designs.
I am particularly fascinated by birds - they are well known,
widespread across the globe and encounter all kinds on
environments and weather. Their view of our changing world
gives them the potential to be powerful storytellers.

Silence Awareness Existence program / FEBRUARY 2018
Alanna Lorenzon
Australia
www.alannalorenzon.com
About
I’m a multi-disciplinary artist based in Melbourne, Australia.
My diverse artistic output has spanned the modalities of
drawing, installation, sculpture, text, music and relational art
practice.
During my stay at Arteles my intention is to focus on a
drawing and journalling practice in the service of observing
and exploring the interplay between internal experiences,
natural environments and creative output.
My work draws heavily on eco-psychology by exploring the
relationship between the human psyche and the natural
world. I consider both the effect natural places have on
human bodies and minds, and in turn, the ways in which
humans conceive of, define and idealise these spaces.
Underscoring this interest is an awe of nature co-existing
with a deep melancholy concerning the ongoing devastation
of these environments. My drawing works use detailed
iterations of texture to absorb the viewer creating images
that sit somewhere between landscape and mindscape.
My artwork has been exhibited widely in commercial
galleries, artist-run spaces and festivals both in Australia and
overseas and my writing has been published in Un Magazine,
Dissect Journal, Runway Magazine and in numerous Artist
Catalogues. Previous artist residencies have included
the Testing Grounds studio residency in Melbourne, 2017
and the SÍM Artist Residency in Reykjavik, Iceland, 2013.
I graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts, Honours from
Monash University, Melbourne in 2009 and a Master of Art
Therapy at Latrobe University, Melbourne in 2016.
Soft Fascination
My month at Arteles was a time where I had the freedom to
devote all my focus to my art practice and internal dialogue.
The scheduled silent days allowed me to follow threads of
thought for as long as they took me and the location allowed
me to seamlessly combine my creative output with the
healing experience of being in nature.
I spent many pleasurable days bent over the desk in my room
working steadily, hour after hour on drawing. My window
overlooked a snowy field and when I looked up from my work
I could watch as the sky changed from soft pink and icy blue,
to golden and then at the end of the day to the rich, deep
blue of dusk. The drawing work I created during this month is
entitled “”Soft Fascination”” and is an imaginary landscape,
that conflates the natural world with the world of the mind.
During my time wandering around the forests I was also
inspired to create a book for the other residents. The resulting
book is called “”Rock, Self, Others””. It combines my research
into rock sentience, eco-psychology, anthropomorphism
with my personal thoughts and scribblings. In order to
promote a connection between humans and the ecology we
make part of, I designed it to be read as the reader follows a
trail I created within the Arteles forest.

Silence Awareness Existence program / FEBRUARY 2018
Mer Miró
Argentina
www.mermiro.com
About
Mer Miró is an Argentinian artist and illustrator working at
a small town south of Córdoba Province, Argentina. She
studied Fine Arts and worked for Art Museums Education
Departments during some years. She`s currently studying for
a postgraduate degree on Cultural Management.
Interested in meditation and existence, she did two Vipassana
Meditation retreats into silence as well as Yoga, Contact
Improvisation, Essential Singing and Aura Reading. Currently
she is developing a body of works exploring the possibility of
acknowledging her free hand improvised drawing, firstly as
a liberation of vital energy and secondly as a possibility of
diving into her own inner world as much as into the outer
world, which in turns allow her to investigate the Kybalion
maximum “as above so below, as within outside”
A memory, a sentence, a situation, an encounter, a secret,
a meditation, a melody, all of this experiences converge on
the visual artwork to create a body of images that speak
of themselves as well as of the accumulation of all the
experiences we are. This is why, thanks to the scholarship
granted by Fondo Nacional de las Artes - Argentina, she is
able to make this residency and focus on how the surrounding
unknown environment, the stillness of winter and the silence
of the dark days can enable and modify her way of perceiving
the world and, in consequence, her artwork. If we could see
it, how would the image of all our past, present and future
experiences be?
My work during one month
Arteles Residency - February 2018
I came to Arteles with a project in mind that got modified
during my stay. The silent walks through the woods and
around town, the conversations with fellow residents and the
overall experience, including diving in the freeing river after
sauna, made way into my works.
There´s a presence in Nature, however we would like to call
it: the presence of life growing, the spirit of the forest, the
history and timelessness of the soil and rocks, that conveys
to me a force bigger than me, a powerful yet scary force.
In my works during Arteles I decided to engage with this
force (is it an outside force or does it resides within?). And
silence was a catalyst for many of the ideas that I will be
exploring from now on.

Silence Awareness Existence program / JANUARY 2018
Paula Jeanine Bennett
USA
www.paulajeaninebennett.com
About
I am a creative working in several media. Part sonic alchemist
and part manipulator of texture and light, my current work is
informed by my search for meaning in the natural world. As
an ear-minded as well as eye-minded artist, I often create
all-enveloping environments that aim to evoke a tranquil yet
funky world. In the Arteles residency, I plan to create a piece
called “Slowtime”. Originally inspired by the legato step
of New Yorkers as they check their phones on the street, I
am curious to see what will happen while searching for the
inner tempo of winter in the Finnish woods. I will be working
with natural theories developed by the American landscape
architect Frederick Law Olmsted as well as creating sound
tapestries backlit by my knowledge of Indian raga voice and
the shimmering but fleeting beauty of the Javanese gamelan.
Previously I have worked a lot internationally, developing
several projects including my folk opera, “A Village Of One”
which was performed with rural communities in Indonesia and
Morocco. I have also composed music for dance including
“Moss” for the Buglisi Dance Theater. I am on the staff of the
Juilliard School. I joyfully live on the Brooklyn waterfront and
can see the Statue of Liberty from my rooftop.
SLOWTIME, a model for a large
nature-based installation
For me it was always about the sunrise. In my January
2018 residency I would get up while it was still dark, make
coffee, and sit at my studio desk waiting to see the transition
to daylight. This never failed to inspire me for the day
ahead. As an artist I am multidisciplinary (visual arts, lyrics,
composition) and I found all of my disciplines were activated
at Arteles. However, because of the silent and screen-free
days my visual arts practice came to the fore.
I created a model for an installation piece called “Slowtime”.
The model includes several images I took in the Arteles forest.
I was striving to develop mystery, lushness and peace in
“Slowtime” and was guided by nature at every turn. I also did
some “”play”” projects. In my woods wanderings I collected
botanical samples and combined these with things I found in
the house or Hameenkyro as well as talismanic bits of paper
and cloth I had brought from home. I photographed the
groupings, which became my “Winter Collection (Kaamos)”.
Lastly, I collaborated with five different people from the
group, in music, brush painting, weaving and snow shibori
cloth dying. Shibori ended up involving the whole residency
community, and allowed us to bring nature into our interior
world while working together.

Photo: Tomás Franco

Silence Awareness Existence program / JANUARY 2018
Jennifer Ahern
Ireland
www.jenniferritaahern.com
About
Jennifer is an artist and designer from Ireland. She has
a multi-disciplinary practice, often combining different
mediums such as collage, ceramics, sculpture, painting,
photography and installation. Her work explores the multidimensionality
of the psyche and how reality is perceived
and experienced. Her own personal healing psychoanalytic
process often informs her work by revealing the ways that
our past influences the present, how we form our identity
around our stories and the underlying depth of being. Using
a symbolic language, playing with light and dark, pattern and
material her 2d and 3d works are an invitation into these inner
mindscapes.
Jennifer was born in 1985 in Ireland. She received her BA
Honors degree in Fine Art form the Crawford college of Art
and Design in 2015. Prior to that she lived in the west of
Ireland studying painting and ceramics in between raising
her twin daughters. She is the co-founder and director of
Over The Line Studio and Gallery in Cork, Ireland where she
currently resides.
I know it now
My time at Arteles was about connection. Connection to
place, land, self, story, community, history, lineage and
silence. I did not know this before I went but not having the
pressure of a set outcome, combined with the space and time
to just be, revealed the deeper threads through my work.
Through conversations around oppression, colonization,
disconnection from culture, language and the land, I saw a
connection between my own story and that of our collective
human story.
I played with clay, paper, wood, paint, light and ice in an effort
to re-contextualize and give form to old ideas and put them
in a new light.

Silence Awareness Existence program / JANUARY 2018
Verònica Meyer
Argentina
www.veronica-meyer.com
About
I´m interested in exploring the different perceptions of passing
of time. Through the pursue of a methodical way to translate
the inner and outer realms, I wish to explore the dualities and
tension between presence and absence, violence/empathy/
erasure, memory and sublimation, and the cycles of nature
and human aura in art.
Arrival/Departure, temporary installation
While in Arteles during the quiet, white month of January, I
worked with the concepts of time, arrival, departure. I learnt
a lot from my long walks in the woods, standing still, looking
up, as a tall beautiful birch tree... every movement was a
mark in the silence of the snow, a symbol.
I placed an installation there, in the middle of the trees,
those ancient souls. These bodies that I hung in their gentle
branches are the memories and moments , the old and new
beliefs and the people and places I am always arriving and
departing from.
A form of ritual, an offering. A reflection.

Silence Awareness Existence program / JANUARY 2018
Elena Victoria Pastor
Venezuela / Spain
www.elenavictoriapastor.com
About
Elena Victoria was born in Caracas, Venezuela 1982.
She develops her artistic work among multiplicity of media,
photography, video, performance and poetry. She uses
them to question language and as a narrative resource to
conceptualize her pieces. Her personal universe is shaped
by memory, identity, family, society. All weaving through a
visceral and intimate imprint, layers of contents that invite us
to discover them.
Master in Development of Photographic Projects in Blank
Paper, Madrid 2015 and Documentary Filmmaking in Buenos
Aires 2008. She has exhibited collectively in Iberoamerican
Art Fair 2008, PhotoEspaña 2014, Museo Jesus Soto 2014,
and Velada Remix Hamburg 2017, Rizoma Gallery 2017. She
participated in an Auction honoring Annie Leibovitz, New
York VAEA 2015, and as a guest artist at VorwerkStift art
residence Hamburg 2016.
Elena Victoria is part of the collective group mujeresdebronce
and photography school La ONG Madrid.
She currently lives and works in Madrid.
Giving life to flowers
Through the mediums of performance, illustration and
photography, I interrogated various elements of personal
identity. Explorations around queerness ie the performance
of masculinity through the gaze of sport and homoerotica, as
well as my own relationship with ethnic and cultural identity
and the inherent displacement that can come from being
“”other””. My time at Arteles was a launching pad for more
long term projects; an opportunity to simply exist and see
what that existence inspires and/or challenges. In fact, what
I had to leave behind at the residency feels just as vital as
what I came seeking to discover. Displacement was not what
I experienced. With a collection of extensive journaling and
photographic collaborations that are not yet complete, I have
just a couple of snippets (for now).
I hope to take the process of openness, discovery and
vulnerability harnessed at Arteles with me into all work I
create for myself and for others. My heart is very full. I still
endeavour to create a theatrical work connecting the themes
discussed earlier and am also deeply inspired to create
stories around identity, displacement and our connection to
the environment and the cosmos for young children.

Silence Awareness Existence program / JANUARY 2018
Catherine Davies
Australia
About
Raised during my early childhood in Indonesia and schooling
years in Brisbane, Australia, I moved to Sydney post-degree
to begin my performance career. I’ve been an active member
of Sydney and Melbourne’s theatre scene since 2007,
dedicating my focus to a body of work that predominately
consists of political and queer re-imaginings, as well as new
Australian work. My approach to creating new work is most
often through the means of devising and is facilitated through
both short and long term collaborations. I feel passionately
about diverse and inclusive representation throughout the
arts on all aspects of the creation process and dream of a
future where marginalised voices will be appreciated and
acknowledge throughout the Australian canon.
As for my work here, I hope to unpack and create work
inspired by my ever present feeling of displacement. What
does it mean to be bi-racial – daughter of a refugee, whose
mother carries her own complex relationships towards home
and existence. I want to make work that explores these
concepts on a personal, visceral and universally identifiable
level. Within my work, I want to pull it away from its most
didactic and somewhat literal form and get right into the
essence of existing – and existing inside unidentifiable
territory.
Exploring the intersections of identity
Through the mediums of performance, illustration and
photography, I interrogated various elements of personal
identity. Explorations around queerness ie the performance
of masculinity through the gaze of sport and homoerotica, as
well as my own relationship with ethnic and cultural identity
and the inherent displacement that can come from being
“”other””. My time at Arteles was a launching pad for more
long term projects; an opportunity to simply exist and see
what that existence inspires and/or challenges. In fact, what
I had to leave behind at the residency feels just as vital as
what I came seeking to discover. Displacement was not what
I experienced. With a collection of extensive journaling and
photographic collaborations that are not yet complete, I have
just a couple of snippets (for now).
I hope to take the process of openness, discovery and
vulnerability harnessed at Arteles with me into all work I
create for myself and for others. My heart is very full. I still
endeavour to create a theatrical work connecting the themes
discussed earlier and am also deeply inspired to create
stories around identity, displacement and our connection to
the environment and the cosmos for young children.

Silence Awareness Existence program / JANUARY 2018
Carol Rodrigues
Brazil
About
Carol Rodrigues was born in Rio de Janeiro in 1985, and
has lived in different cities in Brazil and abroad. She studied
sound and image at Universidade Federal de São Carlos and
did a master’s degree in international performance studies
at the Universities of Amsterdam and Warwick, through the
scholarship study program Erasmus Mundus.
She currently lives in São Paulo, where she writes fiction.
Her first book, Sem vista para o mar (Edith, 2014), won
the Jabuti and Clarice Lispector awards (National Library
Foundation of Brazil) in the short story category. Her second
book, Os maus modos, was written with the support of Proac
(Ministry of Culture of the State of São Paolo) and will be
released soon.
In June and July of 2016, she did an artist residency at
Instituto Sacatar (Itaparica- Bahía), where she began her
third book and first novel.
Museum: novel, work in progress
During January 2018 I worked on a novel that I have started
a couple of years ago. It is about a man who gets sentenced
to live in an island where people don’t speak. In this island he
accesses a construction with writings on the walls that tell
the strange history behind the silence. It is my first novel and
there is still a lot of work to be done. For now I can say I am
exploring ideas around awareness and deviation of guilt, the
instances between judgement and violence, the possibility of
a silent society and how bodies would interact in this setting.
During the month I spent in Arteles I also wrote some poetry,
which I am not used to doing but the Finnish winter turned
out to be absolutely inspiring for me.

Silence Awareness Existence program / JANUARY 2018
Tomás Franco
Brazil
About
Tomás Franco is a sound designer/recordist based in São
Paulo, Brazil, graduated in Film Studies at the University of
São Paulo. He currently works with sound for cinema and
television.
Tomás does experiments with musical sound recording and
promoting jam sessions with musicians, specially interested
in the language of noise, electroacustics, soundscapes and
the lo-fi aesthetics. One of the sound interactions he explores
is the duality noise-silence and the disrupting of stillness.
“Not one sound fears the silence that extinguishes it. And
no silence that is not pregnant with sound.” John Cage in
Lecture on Something - Silence.
The back of the sky (video)
During the residency in Arteles, I could spend hours watching
the subtle changes in light at the horizon. Silence and the
pulsating enviroment have brought me more of a visual/
tactile experience to my work. After some readings about
quantum physics and the Yanomami shamanism that is
preventing our current sky from falling, I started developing
a video project currently titled “”The back of the sky””. It is
an immersive research upon the creation of a sky, a possible
look at its back, the ghosts that remain on earth and a postapocalyptic
Amazon forest covered in snow. The massive
strenght of the Sun is captured in low-fi camera devices,
glitches are welcomed, and cassette tape music is combined
with enviromental field recordings for the soundtrack.
The simple observation of natural phaenomena can in fact
alter the physicallity of a object, as demonstrated by quantum
physics. Taking the impossibility of existing such thing as a
“”thing-in-itself””, I like the idea of creating new landscapes
or possible skies using other natural elements, such as snow
or liquids, and image manipulation with different purposes.
The project is now being edited and new footage will take
place in Brazil before finishing the film.

Silence Awareness Existence program / JANUARY 2018
Lux Eterna
Australia
www.luxeterna.tv
About
Presently, dialogue pertaining to post-human futures posits
transcendence of materiality by subordinating to technology.
Seeking to challenge these revered technological contexts,
Lux examines how the somatic body operates in hyper aware
states and how physical sensitivity can be further refined.
Lux’s body of work serves as a quiet sentinel for expanding
spaciousness, extending stillness and deep silence, allowing
for the existential contemplations concerning our own
mortality and our relationship to the velocity of accelerating
time, to gently convene. In this slowing down, gateways for
attunement to the sensibilities of our bodies incite new neural
networks for hyperawareness. Through somatic activation,
we reconnect with our humanness in rediscovering our
bodies’ inherent yet forgotten wisdom and our bodies as
portals for materialising transcendence.
Working at the intersections of dance/performance and
camera (moving and still image), all these somatic practices
and theorem are underpinned by developments of new and
exploratory types of image creation. Challenging tropes
projected by the ocular-centric male gaze, by instead, driving
it from our haptic and intuitive psyches, to focus an embodied
gaze. Investigating how the camera’s prosthetic attachment
to the body, enables us a deeper and acute understanding
of our physicality, senses and movement patterns, initialises
new coordinates for re-learning how technology may serve
us and in authoring sensitivity and awareness augmented
trans and posthuman futures.
Lullabies for Deep Rest.
Taking from meditations done while lying in the snow
covered forest, walks among the birch trees and collecting
moss and lichens, the investigations into the landscape
manifested in 2D drawings using ink and foil, video footage
of the woods and the creation of a new soundscape that
was layered with ambient drone compositions and very low
frequencies, one of which is the resonance of Earth itself.
Inaudible, yet sensorial. All these convene as process and
output to a new and growing body of work focused around
post human futures seeking to challenge existing current
cyber-techno subordination in trans-humanist discourse,
but instead offering that we yield to sensitivity and somatic
based modalities to refine our humanity.

Silence Awareness Existence program / JANUARY 2018
Nicholas Vreeland
Paul Sunday
USA
www.paulsunday.com
About
Paul Sunday is a painter and photographer working in
New York City and Jersey City. His newer lens based work
examines the photograph as an object, combining the
practices of photography, installation, and collage. He makes
reductive paintings concerned with light and perception.
Sunday teaches photography at Pratt Institute and New York
Film Academy. He recently exhibited in solo shows at Pratt
Manhattan and the New York Public Library.
”Insert Image”
While at Arteles, I worked on many projects including several
collaborations. In the beginning, the beauty of the area
was a bit overwhelming. Eventually, I realized that in order
to make work that would have a connection to my previous
output, it was necessary to intervene in the landscape. In
these images, I began inserting my photographs or elements
of my reductive collages into the scene.

Residents 2017
Silence Awareness Existence - Theme program
January, February, March & December
Back to Basics - Theme program
April, May, June
Argentina
Francisco Rigozzi // Visual arts, Photography, Music
María Laura Verdinelli // Visual arts, philosophy, research
Australia
Jacky Cheng // Paper, fibre
Jem Selig Freeman // Industrial design, photography
Laura Woodward // Kinetic sculpture, installation, moving image
Timothy Green // Writing, Performance
Canada
M.E. Sparks // Painting, drawing
Matthis Grunsky // Painting, sculpture
Kailey Bryan // Performance, Installation, Video
Leena Niemela // Poetry
Kristin Bjornerud // Painting, drawing
Evelyn Wong // Writer
Chile
Adrian Gouet // Painting, drawing
Germany
Keturah Cummings // Painting, video, installation
Annika Hillmann // Graphic design, book art, photography
Iceland
Karen Briem // Costumes, Sculpture, Textile
Mexico
Marisol Cal y Mayor // Dance, performance, cabaret
New Zealand
Mary MacGregor-Reid // Video, object, installation
Sandy Son // Visual Arts, photography, drawing
South Africa
Givan Lötz // Music, visual Art
South Korea
Goyo Kwon // Illustration, Comics, Drawing
Spain
Toni Amengual // Photography
Florencia Aguilera // Visual Arts, Performance, Sound
Magdalena Lanas // Visual Arts, Performance, Sound
Switzerland
Barbara Curti // Painting, installation
UK
Ari King // Photography, video, sculpture
Ian Waugh // Film, writing, sound
Carrie Foulkes // Poetvry, visual art
Marissa Stoffer // Painting
Alasdair Bayne Film // Writing
Rowan Lear Writing // Photography, Research
USA
Jonathan Russ // Music composition
Erin Purcell // Mixed Media
Jean Davis // Painting, Drawing
Britta Albrecht // Painting, Drawing
Amber Harmon // Creative writing
Amy Bernstein // Painting, writing
Ariel Ruvinsky // Costumes, Knitting, Textile design
Marisa Finos // Sculpture, Performance
Ellery Royston // Sound, installation, new media
Williamson Brasfield // Photography, Painting, Installation
Tanya Long // Visual art
Elizabeth // Liang Video
Zoey Hart // Painting, drawing
Jessie Wright // Film/video, performance, radio broadcast
Stefan Forrester // Philosophy, poetry
Australia
Carlin McLellan // Composition, Poetry
Kelly Lee Hickey // Writing, performance, community
Louise Bennett // Video, site-specific exp., field recording
Pip Newling // Writing, nonfiction
Margi Brown // Ash Writing, performance, research
Stuart McMillan // Photography, drawing, music
Belgium
Noëmie Vermoesen // Academia, journalism, DJing
Brazil
Sabrina Barrios // Painting, Video, Installation
Paula Faraco // Photography
Felipe Enger // Photography
France
Jean-François Krebs // Performance art, poetry, video
India
Kripi Malviya // Mental Health, Psychotherapy, Creative Arts
Italy
Carolyn Angus // Mixed media, sculpture, installation
Japan
Kayo Ishikawa // Performance arts, installation
Mexico
Claudio Sodi // Film, photography
Norway
Anki King // Painting, sculpture
Peru
Gabriela Concha Valcarcel // Photography, video
Singapore
Simon Ng // Painting
South Africa
Jes Hunter // Photography, make-up artistry
Antoni Schonken // Art music composition
Sweden
Carola Björk // Mixed media
Olof Svenblad // Painting, printmaking, graphic design
Taiwan
Hsiao-Ai Wang // Fine art, mixed media, metal art
UK
Mhairi Killin // Drawing, installation, sculpture
Alex Levene // Theatre, poetry, performance
Jen Cunningham // Jewellery, designer, maker
USA
Susan Murrell // Painting, installation
Molly V. Dierks // Sculpture, Installation, Digital Media
Ben Richter // Music, writing
Lei Han // New Media
Priscilla Becker // Witing, fiction, non-fiction, poetry
Benjamin Wills // Painting, drawing and writing
Amy Casey // Painting
Cecile Dyer Painting, video, animation

Arteles Creative Residency Program
July, August, September, October
Enter Text - Theme program
November
Australia
Sophie Morrow // Multimedia, performance, conceptual
Peter Walsh // Fiction/Drama
Steve Salo // Visual arts, painting
Coby Baker // Photography, visual arts
Nerine Martini // Scupture, installation, drawing
Brazil
Brisa Noronha // Sculpture, painting, video
Canada
Asta Kovanen // Textiles, drawing, assemblage
Vikki Wiercinski // Drawing, visual art, design
Sam Pedicelli // Textiles, ceramics, painting
Katherine Side // Writing, photography
Denmark
Stefan Bakmand // Drawing, writing, performance
Yinon Avior // Installation
Germany
Andrea Frahn // Singer, songwriter
Hong Kong
Kin Choi Lam // Drawing, video, installation
Jess Lau Ching-wa // Video/Animation installation, zine
Ireland
Agnieszka Jakubczyk // Weaving, mixed textile arts, paper art
Australia
Bella Li // Poetry, collage, photography
Eleanor McCooey // Writing, visual art
Harriet McInerney // Prose, poetics, text art
Canada
Ryan Josey // Visual Art
China
Yixuan Pan // Glass, video, performance
Jue Yang // Text, images, digital installation
Colombia
Laura Steiner // Writing, performance, improv
Germany
Marie-Pascale Hardy // Poetry, painting, music
Japan
Takashi Hara // Painting, sculpture, installation
South Korea
Su Jung // Fine Art
UK
Thomas Stewart // Fiction, poetry
USA
Dominick Talvacchio // Visual Art, poetry
Japan
Yumi Arai // Art, installation, textile
Netherlands
Yolenth van den Hoogen // Photography, video, crafts
New Zealand
Helen Ip // Installation, graphic design, performance
Carolyn Gillum // Writing
Jan Oliver Lucks // Film, Writing
Philippines
Ka Yeo // Painting
South Africa
Peter Claassens // Visual fine art, textile, pattern making
Nico Athene // Performance, dance, multimedia
Spain
Lucía Cristóbal Marín // Painting
Sweden
Melanie Wiksell // Sculpture, installation, objects
Matteo Rosa // Visual arts
Tina Sejbjerg // Photography
Taiwan
Chunghsuan Lan // Fine Art
Turkey
Mirel Torun // Photography, drawing
UK
Fiona Hunter // Visual art, design, photography
Emma Dove // Moving image & sound
USA
Sam Reese // Fine Arts, photography, design
Rose Marasco // Photography
Rebecca Joy // Painting, mixed Media, illustration
Laura C. Wright // Fiber, digital art, pedagogic practices
Sophie Tusler Byerley // Photography
Matt Carlson // Video, film, sound
Michael Heyman // Performance poetry, nonsense poetry
Sayward Schoonmaker // Writing, drawing
Catherine Rush // Writing, performance, clothing design
Liz Wierzbicki // Video, performance, printmaking
David Dominique // Music Composition, Performance, Theory
Gabriel Gould // Music composition
Justin Greene // Fiction

Silence Awareness Existence program / DECEMBER 2017
Laura Woodward
Australia
www.laurawoodward.com.au
About
Based in Melbourne, Australia, artist Laura Woodward has
been creating sculptural, kinetic installations for ten years.
Her current artistic trajectory involves the creation of looped
systems embodied in these sculptural installations. These
systems develop through the relationships between materials,
movement, time and the artist’s hand, where each system’s
inherent logic drives its formal and systematic emergences.
Recently, video, animation and drawing works have emerged
in the studio, often generated through those same processes
that she uses to create her kinetic sculptures.
In collaboration with artist/designer Jem Freeman, Laura’s
practice also increasingly involves the creation of largescale
sculptural works for the public realm. This includes
their recently completed “Murmur” in Docklands, Melbourne.
This 75 metre long sculptural installation weaves through the
architectural space, its 20,000 individually lit strands of optic
fibre creating an undulating, flickering activity within the site.
Laura also lectures in the Victorian College of the Arts, the
University of Melbourne, and has an active research profile
through which she develops artworks, written papers and
conference presentations focused on practice-led research,
kinetic sculptural systems and the potentials of kinetic
systems to elicit empathic responses.
The Arteles residency will provide time for Laura to develop
new video and drawing based works, as well as the
opportunity to experiment with water-based kinetic systems
in sub-zero temperatures.
Reconnecting with drawing
My month-long residency at Arteles panned out quite
differently to what I had envisaged. I had arrived with some
sculptural projects in mind (and the tools to create these),
however once at Arteles I ended up focusing almost entirely
on drawing. I have not drawn seriously in many years so this
was both enjoyable and a little nerve-racking.
I developed two bodies of drawing work during the residency.
The first is a series of watercolour drawings showing most
the tools that I brought with me but did not end up using.
The second body of work is a series of graphite drawings
where I attempted to put pencil to paper each day and draw
whatever came to mind. I now intend to use these works as
the basis for a series of video works using the sculptural
forms that developed within these drawings.

Silence Awareness Existence program / DECEMBER 2017
Jem Selig Freeman
Australia
www.likebutter.com.au
About
Jem Selig Freeman is an industrial designer and furniture
maker. Self-diagnosed as a thasophobic polymath in training,
his primary areas of engagement are CNC machining and
manufacturing, 3D computer modelling and animation, digital
and analog photography. Artistically, his investigations look
at producing analog effects that read as computer generated
and the blurred mistakes that the mind makes in the form of
visual mondergreens.
Residency aims: Produce photographic works with an
experimental light-painting robot. Produce work with no
commercial intent or client based agenda.
Just Make Stuff
Prior to commencing the residency I was struck by the
imagery of the tall birch trees around Arteles as well as the
long nights that I would experience there in December. In
order to engage with these two aspects of the site, I built a
small robot that was able to translate computerised drawings
into expansive three-dimensional drawings. The robot would
sit on the ground in the middle of the photographic frame.
Three individually controlled strings ran up from the robot
through small eyelets attached to the surrounding trees, and
then joined each other at a point in space above the robot.
A small bright light hung from this point, which became the
robot’s drawing tool. In the long periods of darkness I took
long exposure photographs of the robot “drawing” with this
light amongst the trees.

Silence Awareness Existence program / DECEMBER 2017
Jessie Wright
USA
www.jessiewright.format.com
About
Contextual artist, writer and filmmaker. Based in Boise,
Idaho and Los Angeles, California. Works with 35mm slide
projections, radio broadcast, 16mm motion picture film,
multi-channel video installation, performance, sound, and
Arduino programmed interactive objects. Jessie’s work
dissects curiosities in how one takes on a form of materiality
in a set of conditions, the science fictive, the state of the
‘other’ in a mediated space of simultaneity, dark matter, the
non-binary and other in-betweens.
She is a MFA Photography and Media, Film and Video
candidate at California Institute of the Arts.
Body(ies) in darkness.
Dissected being a body in darkness. Wrote on the absence
of body[s]. Reconfigured my process of writing poetic fiction,
its transition into movement, and its notative articulation.
Investigated space and (outer)space relations through
sound. Examined my practice/research/curiosities through
a listing of terminology–––science fictive, unknowns, blurs
of human and object, vital materialisms, penetrations of
forms, linguistic indefinability, peripheral otherness, spatial
and sensory simultaneity, overlapping realities, self records,
cyborgs, absence/presence, ghostliness, micro-narratives,
in-betweens. Developed a routine process of somatic
movements. Shooting in 16mm film, initiated a dissection
into the double negative absence of a non-binary body, in a
societal structural that negates its existence.

Silence Awareness Existence program / DECEMBER 2017
Stefan Forrester
USA
About
When I am working, I am either a philosophizing poet or a
poetic philosopher. I am never able to fully segregate these
two distinct interests, not that they necessarily need to
be kept apart. Many of my poems have very philosophical
subjects at their heart, and my philosophical prose tends
to focus on the nature of language and artistic practice. My
philosophical research is primarily historical. I am currently
working on two essays. The first is on German biologist/
philosopher/artist Ernst Haeckel and the ways in which his
views on visually representing nature (animals and plants)
are connected to Immanuel Kant’s theory of artistic ‘genius’.
The second essay is also on Kant, but this one explores his
views on the aesthetic imagination and how those views
inspired British Romantic poet Samuel Coleridge to produce
his own account of imaginative artisitic ‘genius’. I am also
working on a collection of poems tentatively entitled “The
Punishments of Reason”. I hope to make progress on all
three of these projects during my stay at Arteles. I also
wish to experiment with a ‘blended’ form of philosophy and
poetry that Kierkegaard referred to as “dialectical poetry”,
a combination of poetic narrative, literary analysis, and
philosophical analysis.
Philosophy and Poetry
While at Arteles, I was able to complete a philosophy article
entitled “Should Ernst Haeckel Have Reconsidered Kant?”
and submit it to a journal. I was also able to draft eight new
poems, including six sections of a new long poem entitled
“Endymion Dreams His Fifty Daughters”. The philosophy
article and two of the eight poems were ones that had been
incubating in my mind and various notebooks and sketches
for several years. The fact that I was able to finally get them
into a concrete form is a testament to the focus and positive
working environment that Arteles provided me. I am very
grateful for my time there, and for the inspiration and artistic/
intellectual stimulation from my fellow residents. Cheers to
you all!

Silence Awareness Existence program / DECEMBER 2017
Keturah Cummings
Germany
www.keturahcummings.com
About
Multi-disciplinary in approach, I explore relationships
between New Age spiritualism and the utopian promise
of new – or newly “rediscovered”” – technologies. I’m
particularly interested in the ways in which self-optimization
has contributed to the commodification of personal wellness,
especially as it relates to the feminized body and the labor
that body performs.
As various self improvement services enter the marketplace,
I seek to embody, critically engage and holistically control
my Authentic Self, Shadow Self, Quantified Self, Higher Self,
Best Self. The manifestation of these Selves relates directly
to the body, either as a performed persona, regular ritual or
physical practice.
Venus Correspondence
Taking the hollyhock plant and its correspondence with
the planet Venus as a starting point, I began a new series
of paintings while at Arteles. Tentatively titled Venus
Correspondence, the paintings employ pigments I developed
from hollyhock blossoms and two closely related flowers,
marshmallow and hibiscus, to depict the orbit of Venus over
time.

Silence Awareness Existence program / DECEMBER 2017
Evelyn Wong
Canada
www.evelynstorytelling.com
About
A reformed corporate marketer, Evelyn spent the past year
exploring what it means to be a full-time storyteller. In her
travels, she’s come across a lot of fascinating and intriguing
characters (she has been on the road since May 2017, hopping
from one residency to another), and plans to use them in her
upcoming stories. Her favourite part of a residency is how it
provides artists with another layer of reality, removed from
society, giving them the room to breathe or experiment with
different types of mediums.
Evelyn writes science fiction, thrillers, and suspense short
stories and novels — she’s currently working on three short
stories and two novels. Though writing can be an isolated
medium, she enjoys being around other artists or heading to
a café to see how people interact in their daily lives.
In September 2017, Evelyn published a short story in Fireside
Fiction magazine, inspired by her mother’s journey: www.
firesidefiction.com/reaching-beyond.
Exploring Loneliness and
Making Friends
In the beginning, I thought I had a really clear idea of what
I wanted to do at Arteles — on the offline and silent days, I
would work hard on my project of exploring loneliness and
how to deal with it. I never expected to bond so closely with
the people in Timber Haus as well as I did! In taking the time
to explore what it meant to be lonely, it turned out the bonds
I created alleviated the loneliness I was expecting! Going
to sauna, jumping in the freezing cold lake, speaking with
other Finnish people at the public sauna, bonfires, roasting
marshmallows under a starry sky, playing Uno & Wizard on
silent days, baking apple desserts, discovering new recipes
— all of these experiences I hold close to my heart and will
always remember them. Everyone I met inspired me and will
likely end up in one of my stories.

Silence Awareness Existence program / DECEMBER 2017
Toni Amengual
Spain
www.toniamengual.com
About
Born in Mallorca in 1980. After graduating in Biology at
Barcelona University (2003) and finished my photo studies
at IEFC (2000-2002) and a masters in photojournalism
(Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona 2003) I decided to
devote my life to the study of the most complex specie on
the planet and to which I belong to: Homo sapiens sapiens.
Photography became the perfect tool for my investigations.
Since then I have worked as an independent photographer
and conceptual artists focused on human beings and
their interactions with the world trying to understand the
complexity of being human.
My main activity has focused on developing photographic
projects with a documentary approach and a personal point
of view. Teaching photography has also been a very important
activity in my career. As I currently teach photography in
some of the most prestigious universities in Barcelona,
where I am based.
Androids in the woods.
(Ainoastaan hulluille)
During my time in Arteles I set up a paradox using myself as
a study subject. I worked on the idea of being in the middle
of nowhere and try to get to meet and know people throw the
most internationally popular dating app (tinder). I gathered
information on how do we communicate and play the text
game through tinder. I got some dates and document the
meeting through portraits of the persons I met.

Silence Awareness Existence program / DECEMBER 2017
Barbara Curti
Switzerland
About
With a background in design and social anthropology I follow
my artistic work which is mainly performative and processoriented.
Handling with color or other materials, acting in
different roles and allowing as well coincidence to take part
in interests me. I work thematically variant but time and again
about cultural issues like nature/culture/technique or culture
of solidarity. To think about artistic strategies to go on the
field of aesthetics of nonviolence is, aside meditation and
readings, a planned focus for my time at Arteles.
O.T.
During this month at Arteles I have been able to collect
diverse experiences. The possibility to mould a fireplace
in Finnish wintertime gave me the chance to bring other
aspects in my long term project that treats subject areas
like energy, community, democracy as well as myths about
freedom, wildness, adventure, living in touch with nature
or authenticity and the included romanticization. Alike I
could start exploring other fields for future work in a more
theoretical way.

Silence Awareness Existence program / DECEMBER 2017
Timothy Green
Australia
www.timothygreen.com.au
About
Timothy Green is an interdisciplinary artist and performer
from Perth, Western Australia.
Working across acting, improvising, physical theatre, ritual
and dance, Tim seeks to make works that express internal
experiences existing at the crossroads of experimental and
accessible, with narratives linked to myth and place.
Since graduating from WAAPA in 2015 receiving a Bachelor
of Performing Arts, Tim has continued training all over the
world including improvisation training with Andrew Morrish
and Humphrey Bower, traditional Japanese Nō theatre during
exchange at the Intercultural Theatre Institute, Singapore,
physical theatre and live art training at Leimay Ludus Labs,
NYC.
At Arteles Tim will be completing a first stage development
of a new work: ‘Throw water in the sink and yell’, exploring
his own experience of masculinity and the power of silence.
Throw water in the sink and yell.
At Arteles, I was able to sink into myself, my creative
process, and the environment in a way I had not previously
experienced. It was a luxury to be disconnected from so
many other parts of my life, through the offline and silent
periods, as well as the relative isolation we experienced at
the Creative Center.
During my time at Arteles, the project was slippery in
my hands, continuing to shift and change at every point.
Having this experience forced me to engage and disengage
with the work in various ways, allowing it to be whatever it
needed to be. I explored masculinity, narcissism, vanity,
and self-awareness through photography, film, writing and
digital media, discarding and acquiring skills as required by
the work at any given time. The creative support from the
other residents was invaluable, and continually enriched my
experience and the work I was pursuing. ‘Throw water in the
sink and yell’ is not yet concluded as a project or body of
work or series (whichever final form it chooses to take), and I
am invigorated, changed, sensitised, activated and listening
in new ways.

Silence Awareness Existence program / DECEMBER 2017
Annika Hillmann
Germany
www.annihilldesign.com
About
Recently graduated from university in Hannover, Germany, I
took a gap year between my bachelor and masters program
to focus more on free projects, to travel more and to focus
on myself as a designer, artist and photographer. During
my studies in Visual Communication I worked on various
projects, worked in different jobs in Germany and Ireland
and studied one semester in Scotland. I see myself as openminded,
tolerant and curious about the world and getting
to know new people, ideas and cultures. Those aspects
influence and inspire my projects and work a lot.
Generally being educated as a graphic designer, my other
main interests are photography and book art. I like to
experiment within my practice to explore as much as I can to
find combinations of the three fields in which I feel I get the
most outcome for each project. As a graphic designer I also
work a lot on interactive projects, websites and applications.
Binding books is the perfect balance to digital and web based
projects and is always giving me a lot of positive energy.
After spending some time in Iceland earlier this year to
focus more on photography and traveling through some
parts of Europe during the summer, I chose Arteles Silence
Awareness Residency during winter time in Finland because
I believe that the influence of this period of the year and the
residency’s surroundings will be important for my further
development in general and on the project I will work on.
Under the Surface
Anxiety and Depression are topics that are coming up more
and more in our society nowadays and that have accompanied
me at least for the past few years with the people I have met
and friends I have made during that time. Having people in
my life who are able to talk about their feelings is great and
makes it easier to see what they are going through even
though you might think they are fine. However there are still
many people out there who feel alone with their mental illness
and are not so confident in talking about it.
My photo project is an idea of capturing the different stages
and feelings of people going through depression and anxiety
in a very abstract way. The simplicty of the Finnish landscapes
in combination with a naked body and a broken mirror shows
how transparent feelings can be and how vulnerable this topic
actually is. The photographic series is open for interpretation
since mental illness is something very personal and can look
different for each individual. The series shows photos that
are open and accessible for everyone and gives the observer
time and space to keep thinking about the topic.

Enter Text program / NOVEMBER 2017
Takashi Hara
Japan
www.takashihara.com/index.html
About
Takashi Hara is an international artist from Tokyo, Japan.
Hara’s work has been exhibited across the United States,
Canada, and Japan. His appreciation of art started when
he was 6 years old while studying Japanese calligraphy. He
continued mastering his skills and professional development
as an artist, and at the age of 21, moved to Canada where
he earned a Bachelors Degree in Fine Arts. Hara later
moved to the United States and received a Masters of Fine
Arts degree from Arizona State University. Hara uses his
international experience to explore and comment on various
societal constructs through paintings, ceramics, calligraphy,
and poetry. He has served as president of a collective
contemporary art gallery, Eye-Lounge, in Phoenix, Arizona,
established a contemporary art company TokyoTAM Ltd.
(Trans-Pacific Art Movement) in Japan, and he has organised
and engaged in cultural artistic events across Canada and
the United States.
Series paintings, ”Missing”
At Arteles residency, I have felt back in my boarding school
where I had simple life style away from a city and family. That
inspired me to work on this painting series “Missing.”
I use pigs and texts as a narrative in my allegorical artwork.
All the paintings are based on a word, MISSING, and I kept
reminding myself to think simple. Also, all the materials are
recycle from houses to create domestic atmosphere.

Enter Text program / NOVEMBER 2017
Yixuan Pan
China
www.panyixuanpan.com
About
The land of fish and rice ~ the moon.
Adventure.
Alien air. Pool. “Who am I? ” Interlocutor, eater, an inside
foreigner, Thomas Edison, self…. the otherness*
Limitation of language - poetry in an expanded field,
polyphonic broken music
g l a s s
rai n bow &
found objects!
Cleaning a window in the woods.
Due to the cold, all the windows here are double-layered. This
secondary segregation of space promises our temperature,
and mutes the sound from the outside. I work, yet spend
most of my time spacing out. I drink some tea, recall dreams,
and spectate throughout the windows. Based on the ways of
leftover leaves turning themselves, I assess some attitudes
from the wind. Mild, intense, or mediocre, all in silence.
Speaking of windows, it is the windows that opened up the
glass industry in Finland. During the Industrial Revolution,
various factories were being built, and glass windows were
highly needed. Under Swedish rule, Finland’s large forests
meant a great amount of fuel for heating up the glass furnaces.
Therefore, it became an ideal place for making glass. When
human immersed themselves in those fanatical machinery
productions, what did glass mean for them? Light? Nature?
Fantasy? Security?
I recognized glass’s inherent linguistic properties. It is
transparent yet fuzzy, delivers information while setting up
segregation. On glass, there is snow, dirt, fog, reflection, and
one’s contemplation on glass. Through the window, I see a
landscape—a translated landscape from the other side—
rearranged in a two-dimensional platform. At the same time,
I am on this side, being blocked by the window. Glass is not
a symbol for translation. Glass is translation.
In a snowing forest, I followed my fellow resident Thomas’s
instructions, cleaned a window. There were 5 steps total,
with a Wales accent.

Enter Text program / NOVEMBER 2017
Dominick Talvacchio
USA
www.dominicktalvacchio.net
About
I’m an artist, writer, teacher, and word puzzle writer based in
New York. At Arteles I will be continuing a series of poems
which I render in video format, so as to have more freedom
with the visual arrangement of text as it unfolds in time.
Interests, generally: Eros (broadly, as life force, as stirring,
as pure movement, as love, as infinite feeling in the finite
world); eroticism (as sensuality, in our relation to the natural
and sensory world); possibilities of language, languages of
possibility, truly new imaginative possibilities, individually
and socially; the meaning of vulnerability and intimacy in our
difficult time; art work whose starting point is the moment in
which losing yourself and finding yourself are identical; the
power of quiet surprise & sharp intensities, of distilling into
an essence, a minimal structure that flirts with its own ability
to contain its subject. I find aesthetic power in patterns
(visual, verbal) that exceed the expectations they set up for
themselves.
Experiments in Writing Eros
I came to Arteles in continued search of new possibilities
of language, and new languages of possibility—here
with particular regard to Eros and the erotics of sensory
experience. At the residency I experimented along the lines
of both syntax and visual rendering, developing or getting
underway a number of poems, text-based works on paper,
and text-based video animations. These pieces were in many
ways inspired and shaped by the Finnish landscape, its flora
and fauna, its sounds and silences.

Enter Text program / NOVEMBER 2017
Su Jung
South Korea
www.sujungwork.com
About
My practice explores unknowability, uncertainty and
absence. I attempt to investigate the discrepant relationship
of text and visual elements through various media.
I am fascinated by unique features of language, be they
poetic, fictional, humorous or skeptic. Textual aspects or
narratives in my work often deal with a middle realm between
fiction and reality. I mainly employ my second language to
deliberately evoke more confusions and misunderstandings
which distinctly reveal failure of language and ambiguity.
Products of the Winter
Pleasure of Nonsense
Awkwardness of Darkness
Remains of Fire
Repetition of Jokes and Laughters in the Wood
Impossibility of Perfect Pronunciation
Diversity of Types of Berries
Silliness of Endless Nights
Disappointment of Northern Light Catchers
Leftovers of Unfinished Parties
Transcendence of Storytelling
Goodbyes of Last Night’s Stage
Time and Labour of Everyday Poets

Enter Text program / NOVEMBER 2017
Laura Steiner
Colombia
youcancallmelouder.tumblr.com
About
Laura Steiner is a writer, performer and improviser, positioning
herself at the the intersection of these three disciplines. It is
at the crossroads of these different creative process where
she garners her inspiration. Being on stage and performing
without a script has undeniably changed her writing voice.
What was once a more journalistic and objective approach,
has transformed into a creative non fiction voice that leans
towards the realm of the personal and subjective. Originally
from Colombia, Laura has previously lived in New York, is
currently based in London and has spent a significant time in
South Africa. Much of her writing if focused on this constant
movement and the continual search for home. It is with that
theme in mind and the intersection of writing and performing,
what Laura is aiming to explore and create in her time at
Arteles.
Home here, Home there,
Home everywhere
I came to Finland with the idea of writing about home from afar,
of focusing on Colombia as the plot line and having Arteles
simply be the space where I could do that. A few days in, it
became apparent that writing about home would happen in
juxtaposition to the environment I was in - the green tropics
vs, the grey November skies; the fast paced bustling city vs.
the quiet and silent woods; the strong Arabica coffee vs. the
mild Colombian beans. Finland became a character in my
story with it’s starkly contrast to the Home I wrote about.

Enter Text program / NOVEMBER 2017
Graham Hains
Marie-Pascale Hardy
Germany
www.mphardy.com/UmTXZ
About
My practice is an exploration of the many facets of the self,
an act of uncovering and consolidation.
I work across different mediums—poetry, painting, the voice,
video, performance—with the holistic conviction that every
gesture or sound, chosen or accidental, expose our current
state of mind and thereby reveal our personal as well as
global history. Nothing is ever arbitrary.
Adopting an approach based greatly on improvisation and
intuitive experimentation, I let the image or melody unfold
naturally, like ink spreads in water. I feel drawn towards
abstraction, ambiguity, non-word, and seek to transmit the
emotion or energy in the most unaffected way.
En longeant les murs
Within this small constellation of art-anchorites, I set about
working on a collection of poems. I spent the first phase of
the month in complete silence, seclusion and meditation
to reach this fragile, receptive state where words, images,
melodies emerge magically.
In the second phase I pursued my (intellectual and
experiential) research on eremitism, domesticity, chastity,
and by miracle came across Roland Barthes’ lectures from
1977 on the ‘living-together’. These lectures became the
soundtrack on my days and fed my fantasies of idiorrhythmy
which Roland describes as ‘a way of living in which everyone
should be able to find, impose and preserve their own rhythm
of life.’
The last phase was a slow, mindful resurfacing where I
became a little more porous to my confreres and let their
words and auras influence me. The resulting poems act as
a kind of journal of this process, an amalgam of inner and
outer epiphanies. Creative by-products include: several
watercolour and ink paintings, photographs and short videos.

Enter Text program / NOVEMBER 2017
Jue Yang
China
www.lemony.space
About
I am an interdisciplinary artist and writer. With text and
images, I create archives and installations, on the web
and expanding to the physical. I have produced work as a
playwright, technologist, designer and found my artistic
practice an apt space for synthesizing methods I have
learned and valued - from poems to Arduino programming.
The provocation of empathy lies at the heart of my work. How
do we understand each other: as friends, foes, family, lovers,
strangers? How do we connect despite our differences in
culture, history, politics, language?
Born in China (a place I no longer consider I am from) and
having lived in the US for nine years, I started practicing
through traveling in 2017. I have attended residencies in
Mexico, Northern Norway and now Finland. Will I find a
sedentary base, or will I remain a nomad? I hope to encounter
an answer one day.
Darkness, a Sight and other texts
I conceived several ideas during my residency and three
came into fruition.
Darkness, a Sight is a video installation of segmented poems
inspired by the November darkness. After different iterations,
I finished one of the three planned pieces. To preview, see
https://vimeo.com/244724075 (password: container)
Travel Hunger (working title) is a visual-literary collection
that explores the parallelism between the movements of the
mind and the change of geography. So far I have drafted two
essays, two auto-fictions, and one poem. To read one of the
essays, visit https://goo.gl/BBiv3h
I also organized three potlucks to formalize cooking as a
research method for my artistic practice. I made particular
dishes — mustikkakukko, korvapustti, lihapyorykoita, and
muikku — to learn about local ecology, culture and language
and documented the meals extensively as a way to observe
and direct performances.

Enter Text program / NOVEMBER 2017
Bella Li
Australia
www.vagabondpress.net/products/bella-li-debut-collection
About
Bella Li is the author of Maps, Cargo (Vagabond Press,
2013) and Argosy (Vagabond Press, 2017)—a book of poetry,
photography and collage. Her work has been published in
a range of journals and anthologies, including The Kenyon
Review, Archives of American Art Journal, and Best
Australian Poems, and will be exhibited at the National
Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, in 2017–2018.
She is interested in the boundaries between forms, genres
and disciplines, and in collage as a principle of composition.
Her work draws on a variety of sources—archives and atlases,
films and photobooks, expedition journals, meteorological
data and musical scores.
Lost Lake / Solitude Trilogy
Arteles in November was the low sun drifting lower every
day, muddy duck-like walks, persistent jetlag, the large desk
and the big window and the precious hours of light. Dark
mornings and afternoons, frost in the field and forest, and
the still, quiet surface of the lake. I had long conversations
and saunas and pot-luck meals with eleven generous and
inspiring writers and artists. I finished a book project, Lost
Lake, and began another, Solitude Trilogy—though not in that
order. I travelled from Australia to Finland to think about, and
to feel—at the tips of my fingers and beneath my feet—what
it means to be ‘north’: I read Shackleton’s account of his last
expedition across Antarctica, and outside the blue house the
snow fell.

Enter Text program / NOVEMBER 2017
Harriet McInerney
Australia
About
Harriet McInerney is a writer living in Sydney, Australia. She
is interested in the uses/disuses of language, ecological
systems and surreal situations. She studied Honours in
Writing Studies at the University of Technology, Sydney (2014)
where she received the University Medal. She has published
in places like Mascara Literary Review, Cordite, and
Voiceworks as well as taken part in readings/ performative
works at the National Young Writers Festival, Volume:
Another Art Book Fair and subbed in. Current explorations
include ecofeminist discourses, climatic events, domesticity,
and a recent fascination with the banality/extremities of the
weather.
Bad Weather etc.
I explored conceptually and literally, from the Finnish forest
to the nearby second-hand store, from past works to future
plans, the viscosity of theory and local honey, the crunchiness
of texts and snowfall, the possibilities of experiments and a
snow-woman with underarm hair.
I began a longer series of experimental texts called Bad
Weather, playing with the concept of the weather, forecasting
and predictability. No longer a banal and polite conversation
topic, the weather is more political and personal than ever.
The text began as an outward questioning of changing
weather patterns, an objective and critical project, and
became a more personal questioning of predictability,
love and lust, and our engagement with surroundings.
Considerations include cyclone naming systems, trembling
aspen disappearances, popular emojis, cloudy days and the
exact temperature that friendship melts.
I also extended a text called Houseplant, placing the word
and images of houseplants in unexpected places as part of a
larger meditation on the contemporary experience of nature
and domesticity. As well as this I worked on some standalone
short texts, read Karen Barad, and didn’t read any of the
copy of Finnegan’s Wake I brought with me.

Enter Text program / NOVEMBER 2017
Thomas Stewart
UK
www.linkedin.com/in/thomas-stewart-6b969986
About
Thomas Stewart is a writer of short stories, poetry and
personal essays and is based in Edinburgh. His work has
been featured at Litro Magazine, The Cadaverine, The
Stockholm Review of Literature and Rockland, among others.
His debut poetry pamphlet will be published by Red Squirrel
Press in 2018. He is interested in literary fiction and exploring
character’s as people, with the good and the bad.
Neverwonderland.
I’d come to Arteles to work on a novel that had been brewing
in the back of my mind for years, a novel where it is illegal to
use your imagination and create art and read literature. In
this world you should, as Dickens’ put it, ‘Never Wonder!’ I’d
come here to treat the novel seriously, to absorb myself in the
books I admired as a child and to project that admiration onto
the page. I knew I wouldn’t complete the novel in a month but
I made a big dent in it. At Arteles I made sure to hit my 1000
words a day target and to walk through the snowy fields,
constantly thinking about my characters and their journeys.
I finally had that freedom. As I stood in the fields, as I looked
out at the lake, I thought of the age we live in - an age of
‘alternative facts’, of oppression, war and injustice - and I
realised what I was writing about and fighting against - that
to never wonder would not only mean that places like Arteles
would not exist but art would disappear, our imaginations
would erode, we’d stop believing in magic. So the message,
always ingrained into the project, became clearer. And that
is to forever wonder.

Arteles Creative Residency program / OCTOBER 2017
Melanie Wiksell
Sweden
www.melaniewiksell.com
About
By adapting the subject of death in different forms and
levels, Melanie Wiksell’s practice embodies the link between
the seen and the unseen; the inner and the outer, through
sculptures and installations. She dwells in the history of
mourning and with a nostalgic glance emphasizes how we
decorate an absence. Melanie Wiksell describes her work as
organic romanticism and restraint mysticism with flirtation on
the mythological, the uncanny and the subject’s dissolution.
Her personal experiences and memories are distorted to
accentuate the subject’s ambiguity in purpose to strain the
boundaries between art, reality and the narrative.
In The White
The body of works that I made during my time at Arteles had
a clear, subjective and intermutual separation. I focused on,
while keeping stringency within my work, the temperatures
and rhythm of the different pieces. Where the internal cycle
of each piece could be divided amongst “hot” and “cold”.
The “hot” could be defined as something I feel comfortable
making by either the chosen materials or deepened
understanding of the chosen subject. The “cold” could be
defined as something new, untamed, basically works that
makes me feel slightly uncertain of its existence. A bit of fear
is good for my practice.

Arteles Creative Residency program / OCTOBER 2017
Kinchoi Lam
Hong Kong
www.lamkinchoi.com
About
Born in 1988, Lam is a media artist and painter based in Hong
Kong. He graduated in 2012 from the School of Creative
Media, the City University of Hong Kong, a major at the
Critical Intermedia Laboratory. His art mainly focuses on
the intimate aspects of our daily life, while seeking elements
of mystery. His artworks are collected by private collectors
from Hong Kong, Italy, the USA and Lithuania.
A map of woods
During my stay at Arteles, I have made a map about my
imagination and experience from my daily walking here. The
season changed from autumn to winter in this month, I saw
trees in yellow at the beginning and turned to white at the end
of my stay. I walked around the community, into the filed and
woods and I met a hare, sheep, horses and other little animals.
Every day I walked around the area during the day time and
drew the map by memory at night. The map recorded some
of my memories but most of them are vanished. I drew both
the things I saw and I imagined. The result of the drawing is
not so important to me since I am satisfied with the process
a lot.
The is the first drawing of my new project of map. I will
continue the project in Hong Kong and the outcome might
look completely different.

Arteles Creative Residency program / OCTOBER 2017
Margarita Rozenberg
Sophie Morrow
Australia
www.sophiemorrow.com
About
My work explores selfhood’s instabilities with a focus on
secrecy, desire and sensuality. I work to investigate the
hidden self, the performed self and the fictional self through
video, sound and performance.
I often work with a character/alter-ego called Carmyn. She
is an externalised facet of myself, used to interrogate my
fictions and hidden desires. I’ve found Carmyn both exposes
and protects me; my vulnerabilities have become a premise
for making. As an exploration of the relentlessly reforming
self, I see Carmyn as an endless work in progress.
Carmyn Erotica
What would it mean to be in a sexual relationship with my
alter ego? What would that look like?
My time at Arteles was spent writing an erotic fiction piece
using myself and my alter ego (Sophie and Carmyn). The
use of erotica tropes highlight the concept’s absurdity. This
exploration into the relationship with the sensual self unfolds
in Finland in October for both me and my fiction. My work from
this residency will be apart of a larger writing piece in which I
approach the same concept from Carmyn’s perspective.

Arteles Creative Residency program / OCTOBER 2017
Rose Marasco
USA
www.rosemarasco.com
About
My photographic images work on many levels —from the
cognitive reading of the subject matter to a more visceral
and felt experience in the body and heart. To this end I might
make or alter something to be photographed, or juxtapose
two unlikely images together, or project an image into a
scene, use color and back and white together, employ text,
or other combinations inspired by how the project unfolds.
My major projects honor home, daily rituals, women’s labor,
and the places, spaces, and objects that create meaning in
our everyday lives.
Notations in Photography
My creative process was enhanced by being able to work
daily and, by experimenting and taking risks.
I worked in both color and black and white medium format film
and with my iPhone 8.The multiple projects I made occurred
either in my room or in the common residency spaces.
They are events that I created, notations – made to be
photographed.

Arteles Creative Residency program / OCTOBER 2017
Rebecca Joy Baldwin
USA
www.rebeccajoy.space
About
Rebecca Joy is a multimedia artist currently exploring and
making in Bozeman, Montana, who uses different materials
to address her spirituality and femininity.
Angelic minds, they say, by simple intelligence Behold the
Forms of nature. They discern Unerringly the Archtypes, all
the verities Which mortals lack or indirectly learn.
Transparent in primordial truth, unvarying, Pure Earthness
and right Stonehood from their clear, High eminence are
seen; unveiled, the seminal Huge Principles appear.
The Tree-ness of the tree they know-the meaning of Arboreal
life, how from earth’s salty lap The solar beam uplifts it; all
the holiness Enacted by leaves’ fall and rising sap;
But never an angel knows the knife-edged severance Of sun
from shadow where the trees begin, The blessed cool at
every pore caressing us -An angel has no skin.
They see the Form of Air; but mortals breathing it Drink the
whole summer down into the breast.
The lavish pinks, the field new-mown, the ravishing Seasmells,
the wood-fire smoke that whispers Rest.
The tremor on the rippled pool of memory That from each
smell in widening circles goes, The pleasure and the pang
--can angels measure it? An angel has no nose.
The nourishing of life, and how it flourishes On death, and
why, they utterly know; but not The hill-born, earthy spring,
the dark cold bilberries.
The ripe peach from the southern wall still hot Full-bellied
tankards foamy-topped, the delicate Half-lyric lamb, a new
loaf’s billowy curves, Nor porridge, nor the tingling taste of
oranges.
—An angel has no nerves.
Far richer they! I know the senses’ witchery Guards us like
air, from heavens too big to see; Imminent death to man that
barb’d sublimity And dazzling edge of beauty unsheathed
would be.
Yet here, within this tiny, charmed interior, This parlour of the
brain, their Maker shares With living men some secrets in a
privacy Forever ours, not theirs.
On Being Human : A Poem By American Author C.S. Lewis
On Being Human
During my time at Arteles I was able to explore my relationship
to my work and my environment in a new way. While doing
a variety of projects inspired by my Finnish surroundings, I
discovered a lens of portraiture that I want to further develop
in my time after Arteles. Not speaking the dominant language
translated directly into my work. I began to focus more on
the figures relationship to pattern and color; abstracting
a narrative background to bring attention to the different
shapes and form that come together to describe a figure.

Arteles Creative Residency program / OCTOBER 2017
Asta Kovanen
Canada
www.astakovanen.com
About
I am a materials-based artist working with fibres, film
and drawing. Primarily interested in exploring natural or
re-used materials and interacting with new environments
(“geography is destiny”); the process of creating inspires
creating. I completed the Textile Arts Diploma program at
Capilano University in 2013 and continue to work with textile
processes such as weaving, embroidery as well as line
drawing, short film and soft sculpture. Basically anything
that captures my interest. The connecting line between
these expressions is curiosity around what it means to grow
as an intentionally conscious human in our increasinglyconsumeristic,
contemporary society.
61.5629° N, 23.0926° E
My time at Arteles became time spent near the forest floor;
walking, observing, making photos and filming the specificity
of season and location.

Arteles Creative Residency program / OCTOBER 2017
Helen Ip
New Zealand
www.herrendegener.es
About
Helen Ip is a multidisciplinary artist and designer. She is
interested in exploring contemporary notions of relational
aesthetics, embracing our networked society through
collaboration, and researching speculative futures.
Her relationship to growing up in a multicultural, multigenerational
environment informs her references to
otherness as a phenomenon.
Helen holds a BFA in Graphic Design from California College
of the Arts, and an MFA in 2D-Design from Cranbrook
Academy of Art.
Helen was awarded GDUSA Student to Watch in January
2017, and recently completed SIM Residency (Reykjavik,
Iceland) in September 2017.
Decompression Paintings / Tongue Slap
While at Arteles, I channelled a practice that I perform
during high periods of anxiety into a series of paintings, the
process of which also evolved to incorporate a sculptural
methodology, The materials used in these paintings and
sculptures come of a history of collected materials from
several years ago, to the present moment (heavily featuring
materials sourced from the local flea market).

Arteles Creative Residency program / OCTOBER 2017
Jess Lau Ching Wa
Hong Kong
www.jess-lau.com
About
Jess Lau Ching-wa is a media artist, who was born in Hong
Kong in 1991. Lau’s works often contemplate the relationship
between animation and contemporary arts with a focus
on time and motion via visual texture. Such a combination
endows a delightful touch of poetry in her art.
She graduated in 2014 from the School of Creative Media,
City University of Hong Kong. In the same year, she received
the Silver Award and the Best Local Work award at the
20th ifva Festival (Interactive Media Category). Her works
have been exhibited worldwide, including in Zurich, Vienna,
Japan, Taiwan and Hong Kong. Lau currently lives and works
in Hong Kong.
A song written by a hare
I created a series of photography and installation during my
stay in Arteles. Here and autumn, you see and hear silence.
It is very calm, with the sight of only a few sheep and hares
occasionally. Every evening I lean against the window and
watch the sky transform to black from midnightblue. As
darkness creeps in, i am taken to the mysterious world of
dreams, oscillating between the states of lucidity and trance.

Arteles Creative Residency program / OCTOBER 2017
Peter Walsh
Australia
About
Peter Walsh is twenty-five year old writer and theatremaker
from Sydney, Australia. His writing (fiction, non-fiction, satire)
has featured in TAR, ARNA, 4:3, Honi Soit, and The Chaser,
among others. In theatre, he has directed two shows,
2014’s Black/Hound (with Bennett Sheldon) and 2016’s The
Merchant of Venice (with Clare Cavanagh) both through
the Sydney University Dramatic Society. At Arteles he is
balancing two projects: one longer piece of fiction that has
been in development since late 2015, and one theatre project
to debut in Australia in 2018/19. He is particularly interested
in the opportunity to engage with artists and writers further
along in their careers for the sake of their mentorship and
differing points of view. He would like to thank the Ian Potter
Cultural Trust and the Bright Ideas program at the University
of Sydney Union for their support.
New and Adapted Writing
I was lucky enough to find myself surrounded by talented,
experienced artists during a month of dramatic seasonal
change which ushered in also a number of changes within
my work. Within the Mustard House, I divided my workdays
into mornings (new writing), afternoons (research/editing/
reading), and evenings (impromptu film screenings, mass
meals, sauna) and managed to develop a rigorous schedule
without having to worry about work or anything. During the
month, I did preliminary research and two rounds of edits
in an adaptation of a classic work, while also continuing
work on an extended piece of prose. The work begun as
fiction, became a short play, became a longer play, and now
continues to develop since leaving. For photographs, I include
one taken of me in a field just before the snow came (taken
by Jess Lau) and a number of others I took showcasing my
surroundings and the members of the Mustard Art Collective,
October 2017.

Photo: Rose Marasco

Arteles Creative Residency program / SEPTEMBER 2017
Vikki Wiercinski
Canada
www.cargocollective.com/veekee
About
Vikki is a visual artist and graphic designer who hails from
the northern outpost of Edmonton, Canada. In late 2015 she
started Neon Prairie, a series of drawings which feeds directly
from her experiences in nature. Her restrained pieces reflect
the landscapes she inhabits as well as the topographies, flora
and natural patterns that surround her and she approaches
them with combinations of vibrant colour and pattern that
cannot be ignored. The Neon Prairie series is the basis for
her second public art commission that installs in the city of
Edmonton in the spring of 2018. Her interests include the
psychology of colour and drawing as meditation.
The Neon Seasons
Expanding on my Neon Prairie series, I started a new set of
drawings at Arteles in the same vein but at a much larger and
more complex scale. The four completed drawings represent
the mood, colour and sensation of each season. Each took 5
days of intensive drawings to complete.

Arteles Creative Residency program / SEPTEMBER 2017
Fiona Hunter
UK
www.fehunter.com
About
I am a Glasgow based visual artist and designer, recently
graduated from Glasgow School of Art with 1st Class degree
in Communication Design.
Mostly, I work conceptually, situating somewhere between
the realms of art and design. However, I am keen to become
more in touch with my instinctual making. I regard my time at
Arteles as a time to experiment, develop hand skills and make
intrinsically, without being overwhelmed with heavy subject
matter, which can often dominate my creative process.
First Impressions
For me, Arteles was a place to experiment. To learn about
myself, my practice and to rediscover some of the confidence
and joy in making I had lost since graduating. I wanted to
develop my drawing skills, become more comfortable in my
photography and try new materials, in particular, clay.
Using, the Finnish forest floor as my starting point, I used
found rocks and plant materials as formers on which to slabbuild
ceramic vessels. This process removed my control
of the outcome, allowing these natural objects to create
organic and unusual shapes. I took my tools outside and
live built, applying the clay directly to decaying tree stumps
and slumping it over branches. Throughout the making I
was able to build on my ceramics skills, becoming more and
more familiar with the properties and potential of the clay,
something I will take forward into future projects.
I plan to finish and refine this project, producing a photobook
of my research, process documentation and final ceramic
forms. This was a therapeutic and ultimately rewarding
project. It presented challenges and limitations, but in the
end working in a completely new way allowed me to refocus,
appreciate a different mind-set, and realise new possibilities
in my work.

Arteles Creative Residency program / SEPTEMBER 2017
Emma Dove
UK
www.emmadove.net
About
I am an artist filmmaker based in rural Dumfries and Galloway,
Scotland. I make work for screening and installation,
incorporating long-take cinematography and immersive
sound design, layering voice, field recordings and music.
My work explores the narratives of life that often go unnoticed
day to day, from the banal to the private and the concealed.
My current research for work-in-progress examines the
taboos that surround the physicality of death in Western
culture and how death practices differ between cultures,
change over time and may change in the future.
Tending towards a state of
chemical equilibrium
I came to Arteles to research the taboos that surround
death in Western culture. I wanted to learn more about the
physical processes that surround death – processes that
tend to happen behind closed doors and, when discussed,
are often spoken about in hushed euphemisms rather than
open conversation. I also wanted to better understand
different cultural approaches to death and how our varying
relationships with death have changed historically.
During my time at Arteles I adopted a fluid approach to
my research, allowing my curiosity to wander. I became
particularly interested in the processes of preservation and
decomposition and began to develop ideas for future work
around these themes. I also hosted a ‘death café’ - bringing
my fellow residents together to eat cake, drink tea and talk
about death. This was a valuable chance to share questions,
perspectives and personal stories and to discuss different
cultural practices and traditions. It also led to further
conversations with individual residents - Arteles is a great
place for conversation.
However, I realised that I was feeling increasingly
overwhelmed by my research, and felt a bit lost in what
creative ideas to pursue. I began going out and taking photos
as an immediate antidote to this mind-mess, and found it very
therapeutic, liberating and addictive. I usually work in moving
image, so it felt like a treat to work with a different medium
to my norm. I became drawn to taking abstract photos that
expressed movement and transience, as though the photo
were a memory of itself.
My research at Arteles has kick-started a process that could
develop in many directions over the following years. I also
feel glad to have had the opportunity to experiment with
photography - it’s an outcome that I had not anticipated,
but one that I’d like to pursue further. Overall, I have realised
the importance and value in listening to others, following my
instinct and being kind to myself.

Arteles Creative Residency program / SEPTEMBER 2017
Steve Salo
Australia
www.stevesalo.com
About
Steve Salo is an Australian contemporary artist, best known
for his emotive portraiture and landscape paintings.
“We are complex of mind and spirit, my intent as a
contemporary portrait artist is to explore the human psyche
through painting these complexities. I am interested in
portraying this aspect rather than focussing on the surface
level alone. My landscape paintings also go beyond the
visual perception, I am more concerned with portraying the
feelings evoked by being in a place.”
Steve’s profile as a contemporary artist continues to grow,
with his paintings being shortlisted in prestigious prizes
across Australia and awarded a prize in Florence, Italy. His
works are in private collections in Australia, New Zealand,
Singapore, China, Hong Kong, USA, Canada, Europe and
the UK. The Arteles residency in Finland is Steve’s first artist
residency. Paintings from the residency will be shown at the
Embassy of Finland in Canberra, Australia, in late 2017 as
part of the event program for Suomi Finland 100 centenary
of independence.
Artist/Painter. Paintings.
Upon arriving I wanted to let the surroundings and
environment dictate what I was going to paint. I was impacted
by the forest and the lakes, also the general countryside.
Later I felt an urge to paint particular people in a landscape.
Working in acrylic, watercolour and oil I produced aprox
twenty paintings, some of which are smaller studies, others
I developed into larger paintings. These were executed on
both paper and canvas. Large canvases I have worked on
back at home from photographs.

Arteles Creative Residency program / SEPTEMBER 2017
Sophie Tusler Byerley
USA
About
My work is centered around cultural conceptions of
permanence, how these influence culture and history and
create the illusion of progress. I’m interested in the ways that
objects are ordered and prioritized to form material culture,
how meaning accumulates with age.
Using photographs and found material gathered from
exhibitions, archives, and digital sources, I seek to investigate
the materiality of the historical image and its ability to be
re-molded and re-used in a contemporary context – both as
representation and as object. These visual reconfigurations
invite the viewer to experience consuming historical material
as a performative act, and to consider his or her role in the
creation of value systems and dominant narratives.
My work examines the unique role that photographs play
in these systems of visual exchange and display, how
they create meaning, how narratives are constructed and
remolded over time. Images quickly replace the memory of
what has been seen.
The art of retrieval
At Arteles I began a series of ongoing works that explore two
ideas: First, that objects must first become images in order to
be offered up for public consideration. Secondly, that rather
than the notion that the past is always part of our present, it
is the present that is always part of our construction of the
past. Over the month, I gathered and photographed objects
from an artist’s unpublished estate in temporary storage at
Arteles to explore how the labor of preservation contributes to
our understanding of visual culture and how cultural workers
participate in a system of value performance, production and
reinforcement.
These photographs, layered with analog and digital
content, explore traditions of historic preservation, nature
conservation, and systems of classification to question,
if everything will eventually be digitized and thus removed
from physical and temporal contexts, might our experience
of digital visual cultural come to resemble something more
like an observational natural history?

Arteles Creative Residency program / SEPTEMBER 2017
Yumi Arai
Japan
www.yumi-arai.com
About
Installation,art direction,making objects mainly textile I
aim creating with storyline and having the theme about the
memories of childhood.
At arteles, I want to feel the nature especialy forest in Finland.
I heard that finish people have strong connection between
forest and human.They grow up together.
What is “forest” for us...
And according to the world of native people “Sami” in Finland
and “Ainu” in Japan have many common points.They think
“bear” is god of forest. For me, it’s same. When I was small, I
had teddy bear and we shared a lot of memories always. For
me it’s like friend or alter ego.. or god.
My theme is spirituality of forest combined with my memories.
metsästäjä / forest creator
spirituality of forest
cycle of rebirth
The biginning of my story was meeting the book which called
“”Tree people””. According to the book, Finnish people have
strong connection with human and forest.They have own tree
and grow up together. Since I’ve red this story, I’ve started
thinking that I want to feel forest by myself and make in
Finland.
There are Finnish northern people and Japanese northern
people called “”Sami”” and “”Ainu””.They have common
belief in the spirit in nature. “”Bear”” is symbol of forest and
they have similar ceremony of bear. They think bears come
to human world and give own bodies. They eat meat of bear
and appriciate. After eating, they hang skull on old pine tree
and send soul to heaven. Pine tree connect between human
world and god world. That’s cycle is never-ending.
For me, bear is special animal. When I was small, I had teddy
bear shared with our memories. We were like friends or alter
ego. Bear reminds me to old memories.
Memory is also cycle of rebirth. If I forget the memory, it
means death. If I remember the memory, it means new life.
For materials, I tried to take only nature things or old things
with someone’s memories.
We can bring the bear (forest creator) to anywhere and can
feel sense of forest anytime.
I believe everyone have own forest in mind.
I’ll develop this project more in Japan.

Arteles Creative Residency program / JULY - SEPTEMBER 2017
Nathan Ober
USA
www.nathanielober.com
About
Summer Assistance... and then some
Nathaniel Ober is a new media artist whose work crosses
disciplines from installation and performance, to video
and sound. His interdisciplinary works examine concepts
of human perception and natural phenomena. Nathaniel’s
current research is focused on astronomy and astrophysics,
which deal with techniques of sonification and processes that
attempt to expose our innate connection with the universe.
Nathaniel’s work has been exhibited nationally and
internationally with over 40 solo and group shows. In 2009
he moved to New Delhi, India to serve as Program Director
of Visual Communication and Interactive Media Design at
Raffles Millennium International, later transferring to the
Raffles Design Institute in Colombo, Sri Lanka. He is currently
working as a hybrid artist and educator in the Bay Area. He
earned a Master of Fine Arts from the Digital Arts and New
Media program at the University of California, Santa Cruz,
and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Columbus College of
Art and Design.

Arteles Creative Residency program / SEPTEMBER 2017
Laura C. Wright
USA
www.lauracwright.com
About
Laura C. Wright is an artist and educator exploring
communication through the intersections of fiber arts, digital
technology, visual media, and participatory practices in order
to amplify stories and histories that go unrecognized in our
landscape. This work manifests as site-specific installations,
interactive projects, and community-based programming,
responding to issues relative to the people and locations in
which she works. Her artistic practice is defined by a desire
to develop new pedagogical models for supporting creativity
and empowerment on a grassroots level, a focus that leads
her to work in informal arts education.
She was the creator and organizer of a six-year community
based filmmaking project in Seattle, called the Georgetown
Super 8 Film Festival and continues to develops site-specific
projects in Seattle, Washington to address the impacts
of the tech-boom on housing and quality-of-life in her
neighborhood.
Laura received her BFA from the Art Institute of Chicago
in 1996 and an MFA in Fiber Arts from the University of
Washington in 2004. In 2013 she completed a second MFA
from the UCSC Digital Arts and New Media program to
provide her with a greater understanding the of tools and
language of communication in the digital age.
Revontulet
Revontulet, the Finnish translation for “fox fires” used
to describe the Northern Lights, is a creative guide for
healing inspired by the North American Foxfire publications
produced by teacher Elliott Wiggins in the 70’s and the selfpublished
dye manuals by womxn from the 60’s to present.
Foraging mushrooms and plant material in the Finnish forest
that hold dual properties of healing and natural dye potential,
wool “shoes” were created, dyed with these plants, and worn
on the next foraging trip to be felted by the friction of walking
as a record of time and process. This method of “Felt and
Dye,” in addition to the experience of a month at Arteles, will
become the source material for the Revontulet publication,
which will tackle the need for time and creativity as a means
for processing trauma and creating a path toward healing,
actuation, and letting go.

Arteles Creative Residency program / SEPTEMBER 2017
Peter Claassens
South Africa
www.behance.net/PeterCLaassens
About
Peter’s work presents to the viewer a self-reflexive journey,
where composition has emerged through a process of
obsessive mark making whilst meditating on insignificant
moments in pursuit of no end. In essence the artwork
becomes a representation of advancing, meditating and
obsession.
The work encapsulates the liminal moments between the
start and the finish: a transitional point, a step back, a pause,
and tranquility. It serves as a reminder of the importance of
the journey, and that a journey is not simply about reaching
a destination: sometimes it is important to eb in the moment
and to forget the journey’s end. It signifies the consideration
of space occurring between two ponts. It conveys a state of
suspension, the weird and wonderful and sometimes bizarre,
self-awareness and reality.
For reasons unknown
During my residency time I desperately wanted to challenge
my creative process and how I previously created work, the
system in which I identified myself and the binary other. For
my own sanity one factor had to stay the same and that is just
to create without thinking too much of what you are doing
and why you are doing what you are doing. I started fixating
on particular shapes that eventually became clearer as the
process evolved. I started to make use of similar shapes
reinvented continuously, both with colour and monochromatic
shades. This process lead back to obsession, meditation
and advancement for reasons unknown.

Arteles Creative Residency program / SEPTEMBER 2017
Matt Carlson
USA
www.matthewcarlson.xyz
About
I’m a freelance videographer/filmmaker currently working
and living in Chicago, United States. My work ranges from
experimental to documentary, to promotional, to music
videos and more. A native of Minneapolis, Minnesota, I
graduated from Loyola University Chicago in 2015 earning a
degree in communication and film. Since then I have worked
on a multitude of professional and personal creative video
and audio projects.
I love to film the world around me, life and create meaning
out of the seemingly meaningless. I plan to use my time at
Arteles to create and produce an ambitious documentary
film with experimental blood. I am highly influenced by my
environment and am looking forward to being inspired by the
beautiful Finnish nature as well as collaborating with artists
of different disciplines and backgrounds. I’m excited to see
how Arteles’s unique environment influences and shapes my
work.
This residency is made possible by an extremely generous
group of friends, family, and strangers via crowdfunding on
Indiegogo. I plan to screen my completed film in Chicago and
online after the residency concludes this fall.
Experimental documentary
on poet Risto Rasa
At Arteles I began production on a short film based on a
few poems from Finnish nature poet Risto Rasa. I spent the
majority of the month shooting short visuals sequences to
represent the poems as well as spending the day with Risto
to pick his brain and record him reading his poetry. I also
collaborated with residents and created or started progress
on profile videos and a little side project video I made with
footage I shot l around the area.
It was also amazing to be able to meet wonderful creative
artist friends from all over the world and engage in the mind
expanding experience that is living at the Artles Creative
Center in rural Finland. The friendships formed and living in
the refreshing and beautiful Finnish nature also influenced my
work and will be apparent in the finished videos I do believe.
I will return to Chicago and spend my time in the post
production phase of my projects. I’m excited to see how all
the footage comes together and share with the world.

Arteles Creative Residency program / SEPTEMBER 2017
Yolenth van den Hoogen
The Netherlands
www.yolenth.com
About
Yolenth van den Hoogen is a visual artist based in Amsterdam.
She completed her study as a textile designer and worked as
a stylist for photography for many magazines, brands and
campains, as well as a costume designer for film.
Her fascination for structures and rhythms in patterns she
found back in photography of landscapes. She started to
work on polaroid to capture the origin of perception. She
travels to find parallel worlds: how do we perceive reality
and how we try to create order and disorder in an imaginary
mindscape.
‘As a child I was sensing, that there had to be a different
perspective within the reality we perceive. Something I
couldn’t put into words. I found out in a later stage of my
life that photography and moving images could give me the
possibility to capture this. The spaces as we know them,
to let them become new spaces, free from the references
we learned. An environment in which we are able to walk
around, to touch. It is a voyage into the unknown, anything
can happen.’
Her works have been selected and exposed in Italy for
Analogica and as part of the Verge of Ruin at the Milano Film
Festival and in Venice at Spazio Aereo, Acud Macht Neu in
Berlin and Art Rotterdam. In The Netherlands with Folkert de
Jong at the Eye Film Museum and Galery Fons Welters. Next
to that, she is a member of the YAE collective - their works
were part of the exhibition ‘Weird Science’ at the GEM in The
Hague.
Her video for ‘Doctrine of Salvation’ from Folkert de Jong is
recently added to the collection of the Gemeente Museum in
The Hague.
Tuonela Gate
Tuonela is the realm of the dead in the Finnish mythology, the
representation of the afterlife.
The people are there in their eternal sleep. There is no
separation between hell and paradise.
This serie explores an idea of the beyond, a relation between
spiritual, concrete matters and mythological tales through
staged photographs from another world.
Wandering spirits meet floating branches and a curious
mushroom leads to an occult skeleton, formed by a tree. A
realm of cycles, a gate to an enchanted underworld.

Arteles Creative Residency program / SEPTEMBER 2017
Coby Baker
Australia
www.cobybaker.com
About
I am a photographer and visual artist based in Melbourne,
Australia. I have recently graduated from the Photography
Studies College, where my work examined the ideas of
sexuality as well as belonging through the use of self
portraiture and still life photography. My work at Arteles is
a self exploration, multimedia project that will delve into my
family heritage which originates from Finland, and my pursuit
for a personal Arcadia.
I Would Rather Breathe Water
During my time at Arteles, I furthered a project which had a
lot of personal significance to me which explored my Finnish
ancestry and showed how my expectations were changed by
the reality of the situation.
I started this project with self portraits but the more time I
spent in this beautiful country I found myself continually
wandering through forests trying to make sense of my
surroundings and how I fit into them and how I am connected
so deeply to a place I have never been before.
Because of this I have learnt a lot about what family means
to me and how culture is inherently embedded into all of us
without any of us realising.

Arteles Creative Residency program / SEPTEMBER 2017
Chunghsuan Lan
Taiwan
www.lanchunghsuan.net
About
Chunghsuan Lan(b.1991) is an artist from Taipei, Taiwan. He
got his MFA in Fine Art from Pratt Institute, New York. From
his image-based art - photography, readymade images,
video, installation, and poetry, Chunghsuan Lan suspects
the process of socialization, the man-made restrictions, and
the self-limitation.
“Imagine there’s no heaven It’s easy if you try No hell below
us Above us only sky Imagine all the people Living for today
Imagine there’s no countries It isn’t hard to do Nothing to kill
or die for And no religion, too Imagine all the people Living
life in peace
You may say I’m a dreamer But I’m not the only one I hope
someday you’ll join us And the world will be as one
Imagine no possessions I wonder if you can No need for
greed or hunger A brotherhood of man Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world
You may say I’m a dreamer But I’m not the only one I hope
someday you’ll join us And the world will live as one” by a
human.
An Inner Ghost
An Inner Ghost is a video installation displays 8 videos of me
performing 8 selected taboos from Taiwanese Ghost Month,
which is coincidentally the period of my residency. In the
videos, I am intentionally violating the taboos with or without
completely satisfying the conditions. The work challenges
the status of the conventional man-made restrictions, and
the only ghost that my harmless gestures may bring up is the
ghost inside you.
Declaration of _ is an audio installation of me leading a group
of people declaring freedom in their own language. Multiple
speakers will be installed, and multiple soundtracks of
people reading the declaration, written by me, will be played.
A printed declaration and an microphone will be placed in the
middle of the speakers. The viewers are welcome to declare
freedom with the adherents.
Thank You For Coming is a video installation presents
400 photographs of my grandmother’s funeral. I made the
photographs into a one-minute long flashing video. The work
invites the viewers, or I would say the strangers, to join a
funeral of someone they do not know. The work is not only
stating the normality and the equality of death but also
suspecting the purpose of funeral... is it for the dead, or for
the living ones?

Arteles Creative Residency program / AUGUST 2017
Matteo Rosa
Sweden
issuu.com/matteo_rosa
About
At the core of Matteo Rosa’s work is an interest in the
subject of awareness. This brings him to a fascination for
the interconnectedness of things – the play between form
and formlessness, transience and stillness, imagination and
presence. His practice explores art’s potential to address
forgotten or neglected aspects of the self, such as the
primal feeling of being in one’s own body, at a time when we
are exposed to the largest amount of external information
in history. He employs various media, from drawing and
painting to photography, video and installation.
Born in Italy, Matteo Rosa currently lives and works in Malmö,
Sweden. He trained at Edinburgh College of Art and Malmö
Art Academy. Recent solo exhibitions include Galleri S:t
Gertrud, Malmö (SE), Sjöbo Konsthall, Sjöbo (SE), The Boiler
Room, Oslo (NO), Fondazione Galleria Civica, Trento (IT),
Galleri Arnstedt, Östra Karup (SE), Skånes Konstförening,
Malmö (SE) and E:ventGallery, London (GB). His work is held
in various public collections such as Malmö Art Museum (SE)
and the City of Lund Art Collection (SE).
This residency is supported by Iaspis, the Swedish Arts
Grants Committee’s International Programme for Visual
Artists.
Allowing
I was drawn to Arteles for its location in close contact with
nature, as well as for the centre’s own connection not only to
art but also to meditation and yoga. The residency offered me
the time and space to pause, reflect and delve into my own
creative process, responding to the surrounding landscape.
During my stay, my practice took the form of research and
experimentation, through drawing, painting, photography,
spatial interventions and text. In particular, I approached
an idea that I had long considered: allowing images to
form themselves through the action of rainwater. I am often
drawn to water: for its cleansing power – releasing, clearing
and letting go of the past; for the chance formations and
patterns it gives rise to; and finally for its relation to time
and impermanence, making it apparent how all life forms
eventually dissolve and return one with the whole. I operated
mostly on a small scale, testing different materials, both as
independent pieces and in situ – in relation to the nearby
forest as well as in the “public space” of a notice board on a
country road. With my final pieces I took a somewhat more
active role and investigated the use of running water.
The silence and stillness of the location was counterbalanced
by the company of the other fellow residents. The range of
different ages, cultures of origin and creative fields created
the conditions for an enriching and meaningful exchange,
opening up for fresh and playful approaches to art making.
This residency was made possible with support by Iaspis, the
Swedish Arts Grants Committee’s International Programme
for Visual Artists.

Arteles Creative Residency program AUGUST 2017
Germany
Andrea Frahn
Germany
soundcloud.com/andrea-frahn
About
I’m a singer and songwriter, currently living and working in
Hamburg, Germany. I started out as a singer and studied
jazz and pop vocals at the ArtEZ conservatory in Arnhem,
Netherlands. I love to play with my voice and experiment
with my sound. But soon it became clear to me that I want
to create my own songs, so that I`m able to tell stories that
mean something to me. During that time the Piano, beside my
voice, became the instrument I mostly work with. Right now,
I’m interested in finding the right sound that can transpose
the feelings of the stories I want to tell. So, I started arranging
the songs together with my band, in which I perform with a
drummer and a bass player. Trough that process I became
interested in music production. During my stay at Arteles
I plan on writing and arranging new songs and I also want
to take the time to learn new skills in the field of music
production. I also brought my painting supplies to let my
mind wander.
”Let the water wash over me
Let it wash away all my needs
Let it grind my heart of stone
Lift the weight from my bones”
Through writing, reading, painting, arranging, recording in
nature, singing, learning a new instrument, long walks with
wonderful artists, good conversations, dancing, playing and
laughing, new Songs came to life and old ones found there
home in a new soundscape.
My time at Arteles gave me freedom to explore and to try out
new ways on how I write my music. I immensely treasure my
experience at Arteles and the wonderful time with my fellow
residents. Not only did I come home with new songs that I
will use on my debut EP but also with a lot of inspiration and
good friends.

Arteles Creative Residency program / JULY - AUGUST 2017
Agnieszka Jakubczyk
Poland / Ireland
www.behance.net/uisceartef3b?
About
My primary interest and way of expressing myself is weaving.
I look for ways to combine weaving with other fibre arts.
Recently my approach to weaving has changed significantly:
from being focused on showing different, contrasting
structures borrowed from nature, I gradually moved to
being interested in the art of weaving as a language to
communicate with, using symbols and allusions. I am aiming
to communicate through my art about issues touching a
human as an individual and as a part of society. Firstly, I want
to speak through my art about environmental issues, which
have to be addressed and dealt with, and urgently. Secondly
I would like to contribute through my creations to spreading
awareness of mental issues.
Nature still remains a great inspiration for my woven creations
(the lines of landscape, macro and micro structures, ethereal
forms of water, mist, wind, rain, light...). I am also very fond
of minimal photography in general, I find it usually to be a
starting point for working on a new piece.
I am inclined to use natural materials (paper, animal and
plant fibres) and also to include up-cycled materials,
which normally are not considered valuable, i.e. paper
packaging, old unravelled knitwear etc. These things, usually
disregarded, have a lot of artistic value as a material, if
used in a thought-through and well planned way. Saying
it more simply: I am interested in the process and results
of transforming something unimportant, even ugly, into
beautiful, harmonious and evocative pieces.
Back in Connection
I came to Arteles with several projects in mind. I abandoned
them all, as the impulse to follow the feelings awakened at
the place was overwhelming.
While at the Center I focused on the here and now. My main
desire was to make connection: connection with nature
(which comes easily for me and is always very rewarding),
connection with others, and probably the most difficult
– connection with myself. This last requires peace, calm
observation and distancing myself from all anxieties. The
atmosphere at Arteles and its surroundings allowed me to do
this with ease, as there is an almost touchable tranquillity in
the landscape, woods, air, water...
I was working here with a strong connection with Nature,
always as an observer and a humble subject: I have chosen
Her to be my guide: She was dictating rules, medium and
boundaries in my art.
I focused on natural forms and objects, on lines and structures
found in the natural world. In my woven pieces I used grass,
birch bark found in the woods, I followed textures of trees, I
wove reflections of water...
A big step was creating my first outdoor installation “The
LightCatcher”, with knitted metallic threads, set on a tree near
my study. The inspiration came from everyday observation
of how the sun lights the tree in its daily journey. The other
factors in the dynamics of this installation are wind and rain.
I wonder how it will respond to the light and background
changing in winter.

Arteles Creative Residency program / AUGUST 2017
Nico Athene
South Africa
www.callmenico.com
About
I’m interested in relational aesthetics and whether we can
find intimacy through art. Or love. Or reality. Or our own
survival. How do our experiences of performance, economy,
authenticity and the pastiche - of being in gendered and
fallible bodies - inform our understanding of the other?
How do our experiences of delight, disgust, eroticism, the
mundane enable those of connection or isolation, and help us
to gather or destroy power? I am obsessed with the challenge
of relaying non-linear narratives, of being fully inclusive of all
things sublime, banal and disgusting. I aim through my work
to transcend dualism, although I understand that is a divisive
statement.
I hope to use my time at Arteles to push some of these
boundaries and continue on my current project exploring
the intersections between sex, art and body work, and in
preparation for the artists residency I am holding in my bed
in Cape Town in October.
Selling An Art Romance
My project at Arteles was to explore ‘relational aesthetics’
through an Art Romance. The work consisted of an
exploration of feelings, true will, desire, time and attention as
art materials; an attempt to live without expectation; an Art
Title Card cum essay of 7630 words descriptive but in no way
definitive; an internet quiz titled 36 Questions How To Fall
In Love; a reading list that included Patti Smith’s Just Kids,
Love Far From Home by Italo Calvino (also available on the
New Yorker Fiction Podcast as read by Salman Rushdie), the
first two chapters of Norwegian Wood by Huruki Marukami,
and In Search of the Magical Other: A Jungian Perspective
on Relationship by James Hollis; reference to the terrible
Terrence Malik film Knight of Cups, multiple tarot readings,
two photography series, two audio recordings, two bobotie
dinners (one vegetarian), a submission to a time capsule, an
artistic conceit titled Serving Desire, and a pair of matching
tattoos.

Arteles Creative Residency program / AUGUST 2017
Sam Pedicelli
Canada
www.sampedicelli.com
About
I am a contemporary artist based in Toronto, working in
a variety of craft-based media. My work considers our
relationships with those around us, human, object, or
otherwise, employing the aesthetic of the diorama through
small-scale installation. The figures I create illustrate
strangely familiar scenes that view contemporary culture
through both a cynical and comical lens, exploring the
question of sameness amongst species through the display
of animalistic bodies donning recognizably human features.
I feel a great sense of connectedness with the world around
me, and am inspired by the quiet observation of the ebb
and flow of life in a variety of settings. I seek immersion in
metropolitan cities, suburban towns, and remote landscapes
in order to reflect upon the distinct environments in which
humans reside. The bizarre creatures that result from my
musings on day to day life, re-imagine the world around me
as enchanting and whimsical caricatures.
An observation of quietude
During my time at Arteles I came to observe life at a
slower pace. Being that my work acts as a reflection of my
environment, the quiet stillness of nature and time spent
alone in the fields and forests quickly became my inspiration.
This series of sculptures acts as an illustration of the
landscape played out on the bodies of animals that are native
to Finland. The long daylight hours and varied shades of blue
and grey skies, in combination with the rich greens, browns,
and yellows of the countryside played an important role in
both the colour palette as well as the imagery in the works.
My month at Arteles has left me with a new sense of mental
space to create, observe, and fully experience the world
around me. This work came from a place of serenity and
contentedness, rather than my regular feelings of anxiety
and over crowding. For the first time in a long time, my head
feels clear and my heart feels calm.

Arteles Creative Residency program / AUGUST 2017
Carolyn Gillum
New Zealand
www.facebook.com/CarolynJeanGillumAuthor
About
Kia ora,
My stories are navigations of how our cultural, spiritual and
natural worlds shape us, and how they, in turn, are shaped
by us.
What makes an outsider? Or an insider? What does it mean to
live in the in-between? What happens when we let a different
world guide our course?
I consider my writing a kind of cartography – a mapping of
the way ethnicities and genders (in particular) are policed
and reinforced: by our social structures, our language and
our rituals. I explore what it means to be silenced, and what it
means to speak. I’m fascinated by the influence of mythology
and fairy tales in these spaces.
At Arteles, I’m working on the third draft of my first novel,
which is set in a fictional Nordic country. In 2016, I was
awarded the Winston Churchill McNeish Writer’s fellowship
and spent the summer in Norway working on this manuscript,
undertaking research with the Sámi and Norwegian people
of Finnmark.
The opening chapters won the 2016 British Flash500 Novel
Competition, were longlisted for the 2017 Bath Novel Award
and Highly Commended for the 2016 Yeovil Literary Prize.
Other-worldly
In the fairytale forests surrounding Arteles I wrote the opening
of my second novel, and spent my residency pursuing this
project. The other-worldliness of the woods, our outsider
– becoming insider? – status, and the isolated bubble of
life at Arteles, resonated with my story. I felt increasingly
physically, spiritually and psychologically attuned to notions
of belonging, and what it means to be forgotten.
I was driven to creatively explore these thematic aspects
of my novel through drawing, making and performance. I
wrote scenes from moss cushions in spruce groves, created
poppets from birch twigs, and sketched images of ‘the
other’ as I researched Nordic folklore. I collaborated in a
performance with singer-songwriter, Andrea Frahn and artistpoet,
Sayward Schoonmaker, called ‘Tiki’s Universe: a world
where everyone is an insider. We took words from various
languages, ‘untranslatable’ into English, which described
feelings and images afforded named-status in other cultures
– and gifted them as fortunes to our fellow residents. We
shared laughter, food, music and performance, rituals central
to belonging and remembrance.

Arteles Creative Residency program / AUGUST 2017
Michael Heyman
USA
www.nonsenseliterature.com
About
Michael Heyman is a scholar and writer of literary nonsense
and children’s literature, and a Professor of Literature at
Berklee College of Music in Boston, where he teaches courses
on Children’s Literature and music, Poetry, Performance
Poetry, Nonsense Literature, and Arthropodiatry. He is
the head editor of The Tenth Rasa: An Anthology of Indian
Nonsense(Penguin 2007). His poems and stories for
children can be found in The Puffin Book of Bedtime Stories
(2005), The Moustache Maharishi and other unlikely stories
(Scholastic 2007), and This Book Makes No Sense: Nonsense
Poems and Worse (Scholastic 2012), the latter of which he
also edited. More recently, he was a guest editor for the
nonsense literature issue of IBBY’s Bookbird (2016). He plays
the saxophone, tablas, flute, and the diddlemaphone.
Clicks, Blorps, and Dirty words:
sound poetry and nonsense
I populated the tumultuous tops of transitory trees and
perpetrated radical indoor upside-down-hanging, in order to
develop a performative hybrid of sound poetry and literary
nonsense, for an adult and child audience. About half my
time was devoted to Kurt Schwitters’ iconic sound poem
“Ursonate,” with a focus on the improvised movement. My
other project was a new performance poem, more firmly in
the mode of this new hybrid, based on the Finnish national
epic, The Kalevela, using, among other elements, uvular
fricatives, a bucket of carpet tacks, alveolar lateral clicks,
and herring.

Arteles Creative Residency program / AUGUST 2017
Sayward Schoonmaker
USA
www.saywardschoonmaker.com/home.html
About
My art practice comprises many kinds of making,
predominantly writing, drawing, sewing, and installation.
Oftentimes, my work is text-based. Here is an artist statement:
Artist Statement: 7-17-2012
Suppose I told you it is about love. Suppose I told you it is
about rearranging, loosening words from what they point
to, letting them push up against a complaint, a dominant
narrative, the shape of things, in pursuit of a soft underbelly.
I’m currently writing a collection of poems titled Kindness
Artifacts.
Here is another artist statement:
Artist Statement 3-06-2017
What’s to come.
Many monuments to a small fierce feeling.
Kindness Artifact - ing
I came to Arteles with an unfinished collection of poetry titled
“”Kindness Artifacts.”” The poems aim to write through a
monument of pain and lay bare the golden veins of kindness
and care that run through it: I was a body in pain lovingly
handled by those around me.
While at Arteles, I had every intention to write more poems
for this collection. I wrote three poems, very few. Mostly, I
found myself in conversation with fellow residents making
fun and inventing spontaneous games. Like Tray Game. Or
Shall You? Coffee Tea Window. Eye Contact Music. Together
Yelling! And, Fashion Necklace. It was glorious, serious fun.
And I believe in fun, but writing poems?
Dear fellow resident Carolyn answered the question. She
said: you are performing your poems as kindness acts. With
gratitude, I now understand my month of poem performances
opened a new avenue for exploring my belief that language
provides momentary invitations for embodiment and
empathy. As we all played, I noticed how we adopted each
game’s actions and vocabularies, thus actively creating and
embodying the world of the game. To participate in play, to
affirm an invented world is a tremendous act of kindness,
generosity, and possibly a site for transformation.

Arteles Creative Residency program / AUGUST 2017
Brisa Noronha
Brazil
www.brisanoronha.com
About
Brisa Noronha graduated at Fine Arts at Faculdade Santa
Marcelina- FASM, SP, 2015 and at Social Comunication at
Pontifícia Universidade Católica- PUC, SP, 2015. Currently
resides and works in São Paulo, Brazil. By imposing rules,
standards and precepts to carry out her work, Brisa Noronha
focus on the empirical exercise of doing, which finds its
outcome in ordering and organizing the results of its efforts,
that ends up being varied in different modulations and
registers.
From tree, to wood, to matter
While at Arteles I was inspired by the presence of wood in this
landscape, in all diferent forms: from a stick on the floor to
the long birch trees, from the deforested fields to the wood
houses and barns next to the road. From that I worked with
different materials, according to what I´ve brought and what
I´ve found here. I spent time collecting little sticks of wood
and taking pictures, as building a database to work on later.
Then I organized them, as a starting point to work with paper
clay or to paint, thinking of how many possibilities I had just
exploring the wood cicle in the region.

Arteles Creative Residency program / JULY 2017
Jan Oliver Lucks
New Zealand
www.jollielucks.co.nz
About
Kia Ora! I am a New Zealand based documentary director.
My work often plays with genre conventions, challenging the
line between fact and fiction.
After completing my BA and MA in filmmaking (University
of Otago), I made two short films: THE CHARACTERISTICS
OF C-MINOR (for the BBC) and WILBUR FORCE. The former
screened at 20 international film festivals (including Teheran,
Colorado and Byron Bay) and the latter premiered at the 2015
New Zealand International Film Festival while raking up more
than a quarter of a million views online.
I just released my first feature WILBUR: THE KING IN THE
RING which got selected by the Stockholm Independent
Film Festival 2017. I am thrilled to be attending Arteles to
write my second feature film. A documentary (sort of) about
relationships and sex.
Writing and research readings for
upcoming feature film about
relationships, love and sex.
I spent most of my time at Arteles reading fiction and nonfiction,
developing ideas for the script of my next film. What
are the ingredients of a working relationship? Can we love
more than one person at the same time? Is love a feeling or
a commitment? The cleavage between emotion and reason.
Love by its very nature is not secure; we keep wanting to make
it so. What makes sustaining desire over time so difficult is
that it requires reconciling two opposing forces: freedom and
commitment. My readings looked at the novelisation of “fresh
love” in conjunction with scientific, optimistic perspectives
on relationships in our digital age—what Helen Fisher calls
“slow love.”
Based on personal experiences, combined with further
readings on ego and narcissism, I also looked at varying types
of relationships. Monogamy is the marker of our specialness:
I have been chosen and others renounced. When you turn
your back on other loves, you confirm my uniqueness; when
your hand or mind wanders, my importance is shattered.
Yet, whether we know it or not, acknowledge it or not: at the
boundary of every couple lives “the third”. The sweetheart
from teenage years whose hands you still remember, the
pretty cashier, the handsome fourth-grade teacher you flirt
with when you pick your child up at school. The smiling
stranger on the subway is the third. So, too, are the stripper,
the porn star, the sex worker.
The third is the manifestation of our desire for what lies
outside the fence. It is the forbidden. The couple is a
resistance to the intrusion of the third, but in order for it to
last it is indispensable to have enemies. When we are two we
are together. In order to form a couple, we need to be three.
In my one month at Arteles, I took my research and digested
it in conversation with my fellow residents. Personal
experiences and anecdotes from this one month have added
a crucial, human element to my writing, preventing it from
becoming too analytical and detached.

Arteles Creative Residency program / JULY 2017
Liz Wierzbicki
USA
www.lizwierzbicki.com/home.html
About
“Emotion, from the very start, has no solid ground. It is
unsupportable. Emotion is marked by impotence. It is
connected and disconnected to the body simultaneously. The
complicated immaterial landscape and language of a feeling
or thought, and its relationship to the body motivates my
work. I create moving and still images that begin to describe
the space between the physical and emotional self.”
Liz Wierzbicki is a multi media artist whose work touches
on notions of intimacy and the female identity. Through
investigating the interactions and disaffections of emotions
and the body, Wierzbicki’s work reveals some truth about our
awareness and attachment to ourself and others. Her work is
influenced by language, philosophy, and the contemporary
practices of romance and social communication.
intra,section
Horizon:
1. The line that forms the apparent boundary between earth
and sky.
2. The limit or range of perception, knowledge, or the like.
While at Arteles, I developed still and moving images based
solely on studying the perceived horizon line outside my
workspace window. Beginning with a meditative practice
of drawing blind contour lines of the horizon, I allowed the
interactions of repeated marks on paper to inform new visual
conclusions. Drawing in one continuous motion with my eyes
fixed on the landscape, not the paper meant that each time I
drew the same horizon line the mark would change slightly.
The repetition of these lines on paper became a record of the
expanding scope of my perception in relation to the place
and my experience at Arteles.

Arteles Creative Residency program / JULY 2017
Tina Sejbjerg
Sweden
tinasejbjerg.wixsite.com/tinasejbjerg
About
As having grown up in Scandinavia my relationship to nature
is a close and strong one, based on a mixture of deep
respect and fear. The sea, mountains and woods in the North
are wild, dark and seem unending. You can easily get lost.
Nature is the powerful one; human being must find a balance
and submit. Or is that a romantic Scandinavian approach?
Nature in the Netherlands, where I have been living the last
20 years, is extremely cultivated. The balance is turned
around. Here nature is made to submit to human being – land
reclaimed from the sea, trees planted in straight lines, the
sea controlled by sophisticated dyke systems and so on.
Human being is in control. Or so it seems at the first glimpse.
My photographic work evolves around the relationship
between humankind and nature, and our existence in it.
The longing towards a natural wilderness, which might have
disappeared in the human obsession with controlling and
cultivating all living around him. Nature has been turned into
a theater set, where plants and trees have become props,
and the human figure, the director of the stage.
It questions identity, the human condition and the cycle of
all living.
The final work is photographic, but it has as well reference to
portrait painting, performance and sculpture.
Nature’s being (Natuur-mens)
Magical surroundings to become as green as imaginable.
Photograph from the series
‘Nature’s being’.

Arteles Creative Residency program / JULY 2017
Mirel Torun
Turkey
www.mireltorun.com
About
I presume that both the object interacting with the body
and the body are naked. How do they interact? How do the
objects, one is living and the other is non-living, without
domination each other, associating with its environment,
yet wishing to disappear in it can exist? These are fragile
structures.
Almost all of the objects used in the photographs are
mislaid, unattached, used garbage pieces, appearing out
of nowhere... The body being open to the object and this
association being open to its environment and interactions.
And to be primitive as possible.
Connecting female body with unexpected and distinguished
objects and spaces. And building new visual structures.
Nakedness of the trio (Body, Object and Space) build new
experimental fields.
Branching Moments
Lie down and rest. Look at the trees. Trees are running.

Arteles Creative Residency program / JULY 2017
Nerine Martini
Australia
www.nerinemartini.com
About
Nerine Martini is a Sydney based visual artist working in
the fields of sculpture, installation, drawing and public art.
Martini’s practice involves a continual shift between a studio /
exhibition practice and working on community-based, public
art projects. She has an interest in working cross-culturally
and creating artworks that respond to stories of migration,
dislocation, cultural identity and home.
Martini is currently undertaking a PhD at Sydney College
of the Arts, University of Sydney. Her research explores the
potential for socially engaged art to empower immigrant
communities. Her previous public art projects that involved
processes of social engagement, often resulted in the final
artworks being located in the public spaces such as the town
square, a community center or a public library. Recently
Martini has been working on a large-scale sculptural
installation involving processes of creativity engagement
with diverse communities in Western Sydney. For the studio
residency Martini will be creating drawings that reflect on
shared stories of travel, migration, settlement, home and
belonging.
A process of healing and
accepting change
I came to Arteles after recovering from a serious illness. I was
seeking a month of healing. To be immersed in the beautiful
landscape, to breathe fresh air and to have so much free
time to walk, do yoga and to focus on my art practice. It has
indeed been a healing experience.
During my time at Arteles I have reflected on ideas of change
and belonging. I created a series of charcoal drawings
exploring the visual symbols and motives of the urban
environment that for me represented ideas around change,
growth, destruction and displacement: keys, cranes, ladders
and scaffolding.
Also, as a daily practice, I created a small series of ink
drawings of the plants that I saw on the side of the road.
These small observations helped me to consider the subtle
changes that are occurring all the time: seed pods opening,
leaves falling, birds migrating, clouds drifting across huge
skies, mist rolling in, the lake constantly changing.
The Finnish landscape finally crept into my drawing in the
form of the horizon of the trees. The scaffolding, cranes and
ladders are still there, superimposed over the landscape, a
threatening presence.

Arteles Creative Residency program / JULY 2017
Justin Greene
USA
About
Justin Greene is an MFA candidate concentrating in fiction at
Louisiana State University. A graduate of Wesleyan University
with degrees in English and anthropology, he’s interested
in the relationship between fiction and ethnography, how
cultural theory and anthropological methodologies can
be utilized to create fiction that troubles the perceived
discrepancy between the creative and the critical. More
recently, he’s been playing with ideas of abjection, body
horror and queerness. He was a student poet on the
Connecticut Poetry Circuit and currently serves as the editor
in chief of New Delta Review.
For now, THE CHILDREN’S MUSEUM.
I initially wrote THE CHILDREN’S MUSEUM as a short story
and planned on revisiting it during the upcoming semester.
However, after discovering the miscellaneous objects
and equipment at Arteles, in conjunction with reviewing
feedback I’d received previously, I realized this project has
so much room for expansion, to maximize its bizarreness
while further developing the narrative. I created exhibits
and activities based on museums I visited in Tampere,
along with encounters and conversations I had with fellow
residents. I tentatively determined the structure of the novel,
which I’m hoping will turn into my MFA thesis, through
writing a sequence of chapters from three points of view:
that of a precocious and potentially insidious ten-year-old,
a frustrated mother who unwittingly gets in touch with her
inner child and a museum staff/hive mind with a strangely
specific pedagogical philosophy. I also did research to
cultivate said pedagogical philosophy, drawing upon affect
theory, psychoanalysis, the anthropology and archaeology
of childhood and experiential/anti-curricular educational
philosophies.
Immersing myself in such a foreign space, both
geographically and atmospherically, forced me to adopt a
childlike perspective, naïve and curious. And, of course, I got
the chance to play.

Arteles Creative Residency program / JULY 2017
Gabriel Gould
USA
www.gabrielgould.com
About
I am a composer and a pianist, not necessarily in that order.
For most of my career, I have created “concert” music for
traditional orchestral instruments and voices. But I am
increasingly drawn to improvisation, and new (to me) ways
of making music. I am excited by the wealth of opportunities
afforded by working with found sound, computer manipulated
sound, ambient (for lack of a better word) sounds, and live
improvisation. I am especially interested in finding ways to
meld recorded soundscapes and human voices with live
and/or recorded performances on piano. Instead of writing
for the concert hall, much of my recent work has been for
other spaces, and I am interested in pushing against the
boundaries of genre and categorization that can be so stifling
in music (or indeed in art in general).
Because my training is not really in this area, the work I
am doing now is mysterious and sometimes profoundly
uncomfortable to me. However, that discomfort can be a
source of inspiration and a sign that I am challenging myself
with finding new solutions to old problems. I am at a very
transitional point in my arc as a musician, and I hope that my
time at Arteles helps provide a path through that process.
Originally from New York, I now live in the mountains of
Central Pennsylvania and teach english and music at Juniata
College (where my wife is also a professor), and am father to
a precocious and beautiful 8-year-old daughter.
Koivu
I felt an immediate connection to the birch trees surrounding
me when I started on my project at Arteles Creative Center.
The title of this work, Koivu, is the Finnish word for birch,
and the piece is constructed of several elements: 1. field
recordings made around Arteles and within a 10-minute
walk, including birdsong, wind in the trees, footsteps, cars
on the road, and other incidental sounds, 2. spoken excerpts
from an adaptation of an old English translation of the Finnish
national epic, the Kalevala, and 3. piano/rhodes solos plus
other added MIDI instruments. All of the references from the
Kalevala concern either birches specifically or trees more
generally, and the mood changes from sweetness and light
to darkness and hunger, ultimately to a sort of bittersweet
resolution. My previous work has largely been in a different
medium, so my time at Arteles was instrumental in helping
me build tools for working with found sound/soundscapes,
processing and combining those sounds with recorded
improvisations, as well as giving me important experience in
editing and mixing on a new software platform. The end result
is a work that is primarily a form of storytelling – not so much
of the Kalevala itself as of my time in Finland, my experience
of the landscape around Arteles, and my relationship with
the plants and animals of this place. You can hear the
unmastered final mix here: http://www.gabrielgould.com/
koivu.html

Arteles Creative Residency program / JULY 2017
Yinon Avior
Denmark
www.yinonavior.com
About
WORK HARD PLAY HARD
The process of creation is fundamental for me. I create from
a strong sense of idea and obligation. My aim is to reach a
certain visual accuracy by relaying on personal conceptual
and aesthetic principles. My work contains autobiographic
elements yet it is not what defines it. Conflicts and impossible
cooperation stand at the base of my work and characterize it.
I am driven by control, while the artistic process is uncertain.
In order to investigate the world, I do not confine myself
by choosing a certain technique or media; therefore my
work and action is interpreted across different disciplines.
Sometimes part of the result is the procedure itself and that,
apart from being the mediator between the viewer and me, is
an integral part of the body of the work.
~

Arteles Creative Residency program / JULY 2017
Lucía Cristóbal Marín
Spain
www.luciacristobal.com
About
Lucía Cristóbal Marín works with digital press images,
consumer products and the digital space where these are
consumed. Her language experiments with extreme fields:
image-objects, pictorial support-digital support and handtechnology.
Her work is based on the crisis of the digital model, its
volatility and painting as a means of reflection through
the distancing of the primitive image. She interprets and
manipulates the picture and seeks the boundary between
the descriptive limits of an image, the relationship with its
title and the critical capacity of the viewer.
The painting is based on two processes. Construction, is
the veneration of the image and of painting as a fact. And
distancing, is a conscious and unconscious world that
poses questions that the figurative image itself is not able to
provide. She creates work rules which move the image away
from its primitive fact until she turns the painting into a space
that can accept absolutely everything to question fact, image
and painting.
Images as consumer
products and art as cliché
EL PAÍS
33 / 1 „Investment fo the artistic method“, 2017
Oil, spray, felt-tip, cardboard, paper, magnet and Ralph
Lauren´s perfum on canvas, 170x170 cm
34 / 2 „The Picasso signed the Guernica“, 2017
Oil, spray, felt-tip, cardboard, paper, magnet and Ipad on
canvas, 170x170 cm
35 / 3 „The umbeatable brand“, 2017
Oil, spray, felt-tip, cardboard, paper, magnet and Marc
Jacobs´s perfum on canvas, 170x170 cm

Arteles Creative Residency program / JULY 2017
Catherine Rush
USA
www.catherinerush.com
About
In my work, themes of alienation, gender, motherhood, and
intimacy are mediated through processes related to industrial
production (neon bending, automotive painting, aluminum
casting, etc.), questioning how we navigate ideas of ‘function’
and ‘dysfunction’ through machine-body analogies.
My participation in Arteles is born of a recent evolution in
my working process. In looking at the odd and alienating
space between intimacy and anonymity created by mass
production, I am drawn to walking and collecting the refuse
of our activities- a weather-beaten piece of plastic bag
resembling skin in its durability and fragility, sun-soaked
discarded bits of textile (stuffed animals, rugs, clothing),
plastic flower pistils from a fake bouquet that gave instant
pleasure before it was forgotten. To me, these materials
symbolize a kind of fertility, the brief gasp of a material lover
– one doomed to a short affair before being re-woven into
larger cycles of consumption and decay/birth and rebirth.
With my collection of natural and artificial found objects
and materials, I work in installation: sculptural landscapes
that draw from a hybrid visual vocabulary created by Disney
cartoons, Japanese woodblock prints, video game interfaces,
computers, mass-produced toys, pharmaceuticals, and
baby products - forms infused with a kind of contemporary
techno-sensuality. Through open-ended experimentation
in the studio, the installations construct a narrative of the
future - fragile borderlands where nature and culture meet
and dance, landscapes mutated by a fascinating push and
pull between sensuous material bodies and controlled ones.
Blast Wave
57
Two priests decided to organize explosions across the US
and Canada. Two immigrant priests planted bombs. Two
men of God who decided politics was more important than
human life. Look, I’m used to horrifying acts perpetrated by
men of the cloth – I was raised a Catholic – but for me this
moment…I hadn’t expected…
I’m in my room. And I want to cry. Cry six-year-old girl tears.
“Why would they want to hurt me?” “Didn’t they know I was
there?” Was it really two priests?
Is the package in place?
Yes, Boris. And I blessed it.
Where did you leave it?
Under the six-year-old girl’s window.
How did they detonate it?
Were they on timers or was someone in a car nearby with one
of those Wiley Coyote plunger things? Or maybe there was a
fuse to light and then run.
So, Boris, how fast can you run?
Not as fast as Mila. She outran a train back home.
Anyone can run faster than a train back home, Boris. But I will
do it. It will be fun to watch.
Maybe it was on a timer? Maybe that’s what woke me up? A
little mechanical monkey that hit his cymbals which made a
spark that lit the fuse that burned to the dynamite that blew
up Cappy’s room who slept in the house that Jack built. A
Rube Goldberg machine of death.

Back to Basics program / JUNE 2017
Molly Valentine Dierks
USA
www.mollyvdierks.com
About
Molly Valentine Dierks received her BA in Behavioral
Psychology from Dartmouth College, a Post Baccalaureate
degree in Sculpture and Extended Media from Virginia
Commonwealth University, and her MFA in Art and Design
from University of Michigan. She has participated in
exhibitions nationally (including in New York City, Detroit,
and Los Angeles) and internationally (South Korea,
Russia). Her work has been included in exhibitions by such
prestigious institutions as the Museum of Contemporary
Art Detroit, University of Michigan Museum of Modern Art,
the Kunsthalle Detroit Museum of Contemporary Art, and
the Fort Worth Community Arts Center. Dierks’ sculptures
and installations have been featured in Southern Magazine,
the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit’s ‘Post Industrial
Complex’, the University of Michigan’s site on digital media
artists, the Czong Institute for Contemporary Art’s Art
Yellow Book, Designboom, Opumo Fashion Magazine, and
Peripheral Visions Arts. In her sculptures and installations,
she is inspired by the shapes, lines, and language in industrial
society that convey information about identity and desire.
Her process of manipulating and recombining her collection
of language, objects, and forms is part of an ongoing quest
to deconstruct and distill the formal and linguistic qualities of
desire, conformity, and love.
It Is Almost That
While in residence at Arteles during the Back to Basics
program, I was inspired both by nature and by my relationship
to technology. I questioned the boundaries I erect to both
insulate and connect. I watched the daily patterns of birds,
moose, and rabbits, and explored the undergrowth of lichen
and moss, lakes, and trees. From this work was born a
series of sculptures, branches made to look like trees from
collected man-made and natural materials gathered on walks
that mirrored my confusion between the constructed and the
natural, exploring intuitive and self-conscious artifice. It Is
Almost That is an installation that was built from moments of
tentative intimacy, balance and risk, invasion and mutation,
gestation and growth during my stay at Arteles.

Back to Basics program / JUNE 2017
Susan Murrell
USA
www.susanstudio.com
About
Susan Murrell is a mixed-media painter and installation artist
whose abstract work deals with how shifts in technology and
science have fundamentally changed our relationship to the
landscape. Her large-scale and site-specific installations,
paintings, and works on paper are exhibited nationally. She
has been awarded residencies at international programs such
as Yaddo and Ragdale and received numerous awards. Soloexhibitions
include, “Embedded” at the Pendleton Center for
the Arts, Oregon, “The Matter” at the International Gallery
of Art in Anchorage, Alaska, “Areal Density” at the Portland
International Airport, and “Shell” at Whitman College in Walla
Walla, Washington. She lives and works in the northeast
corner of Oregon where she is an Associate Professor of
Art at Eastern Oregon University. Her most recent exhibition
at PSU’s Augen gallery titled we are all cosmic dust was
created as a meditation on passageways, life transitions, and
the constancy of matter
Weighing space and substance
An overarching theme of my work is how our concept of
landscape has changed through technology. The horizon
traditionally defined our relationship to the world; now with
our expanding perspective, we feel a kinship with microscopic
images and aerial views of planets. This obfuscated scale
can be destabilizing, toppling a penchant for hierarchies.
Vestiges of built environments, architecture, or even graphic
design and remnants of popular culture have been added to
our visual language and create for us a sense of place. In this
context, I consider myself a landscape painter.
At Arteles I continued mixing my metaphors - creating
painting installations as a meditation on passageways,
transitions, and the constancy of matter. Specifically I
worked on three projects simultaneously: a series (40) of
small intuitive drawings both cellular and ocular in imagery
with shrinking and dissected glacial fields with the working
title “seed clouds”, a site-specific installation centered
around a boarded up door titled, “if water had its way”, and
a large unfinished painting comprised of multiple panels of
what seem to be an aerial view of an island surrounded by
water/sky/ or abyss titled “absence/presence”.
I expect my work will be continually inspired by my time at
Arteles - the physical and mental space, as well as the many
interesting and productive conversations with the other
artists-in-residence.

Back to Basics program / JUNE 2017
Claudio Sodi
Mexico
www.instagram.com/claudiosodi_
About
Walking and exploring have been key to my development as
an artist, long walks that draw a path and leave traces and
collected objects, this constant walking action makes me
think of my self as a landscape artist, I play around 16mm
film experimental projects, capturing the essence of nature,
long shot films that invite the observer to immerse into what
they are seeing.
A nice path back
The program allowed me to reconnect and find those lost
passions and goals that faded away with time, work and age.
A lot of walking through the magnificent landscapes of
Arteles surroundings allowed me to think and reflect on
the craftmanship of an artist, while doing a mapping of the
around, this constant discovering of new paths, nature, and
objects ended up as part of two series of pieces, a 9 Polaroid
photographs series of reorganized objects recollected during
this sans-terrer walks, and a series of 4 different works that
resemble the mapping of the area of the thousand lakes (or
more) that live in Finland.
Painting was also a very crucial task I took at Arteles, a
constant research on oil paint medium and its possibilities,
the layering of different colors, and it’s later rediscovering
ended up as a series of four white paintings that remind me
of this.
Back to basics helped me find that lost love for so many
things, the fragility that the basic things evoked became 7
poems to love, as small paintings that created a skyline.
Arteles became a far away home, a long path to which I will
have to come back in the memoire of it, to never forget the
importance of going back to basics.

Back to Basics program / JUNE 2017
Carlin McLellan
Australia
www.swirling.me
About
I work with sound and words to create space for quietude. My
practice is based on collaboration, field recordings, alaetoric
music, and documenting ephemeral states. I am interested in
connecting people through collaborative music, poetry, and
sharing skills. I support diverse groups of people to develop
creative autonomy through the co-creation of music and art.
My practice is shaped and supported by meditation, Taoist
philosophy, swimming in the ocean, and spending time with
friends. I am currently completing a Master of Music Therapy
at Western Sydney University in Australia.
Emotional Landscapes
All those days that just passed
Midnight midsummer swims in the lake
Waterflowers clinging to me
Standing close to the fire, a coldness diminishing unhurriedly
like the sun
Exploring little islands each day
Nothing has ever been this unceasingly simple
Slow sounds mingle with the forest
And we didn’t even realise it was life

Back to Basics program / JUNE 2017
Simon Ng Yong Heng
Singapore
www.simonng.sg
About
For many years, I have been producing paintings and
drawings that play with the notions of identity. I work in a
varied style of expressions, drawing influences mainly from
European existentialist artists like Francis Bacon and Frank
Auerbach. It is undeniably that these artists have shaped my
artistic practice since the beginning of my training. But my
works are all based on the same sensibility: an approach
which is akin to many moments in one’s life like quietude,
effusive, humorous, sadness, doubt and spiritual.
I spend a lot of time thinking deeply about what it means to be
a painter today. My practice aims to address that possibility
and to encompass big questions of contemporary human
experiences like how do we see ourselves in the world, but
also the mundane questions of life. I believe that paintings
only become complex when more questions are presented
than answered, and approached delicately in an oblique
manner.
I drifted off for a moment.
In Arteles Creative Center, the stunning rural landscape
and remoteness provide an ideal time and place for drifting
off. I took many walks and let myself get a little lost in the
woods. The solitude with nature heightens one’s senses and
releases the imaginations. I discovered that my approach in
my creative process needed to be just as spontaneous as
wandering without a purpose.
With no outcomes in mind, I made quick random marks on
canvas/paper and let the shapes reveal itself to me as I work.
The series of mix media drawings are based on the time I
spent rummaging through the communal art supplies in the
work studios. I used leftover ink, wool thread, and found
images from Finnish children’s learning book. In the process
of making the works, I was thinking about the connection
between learning and existence, the Descartes’ dictum
“Cogito ergo sum” (I think, therefore I am).
I also made a series of oil on canvas works by adopting a
loose style of brushwork that was different from how I
would normally work. The primacy of painting and drawing
freely invites more possibilities of representations. The final
outcomes are images which I think are akin to imaginary
portraits, I try to depict the character’s train of thoughts
simultaneously – like a mix of darkness, joy, loneliness, and
freedom.

Back to Basics program / JUNE 2017
Sabrina Barrios
Brazil / USA
www.sabrinabarrios.com
About
Sabrina Barrios’ work questions our ideas of reality. In a
mix of science, mythology and conspiracy theories, her
multidisciplinary practice uses symbolism to take us back to
the lost knowledge of ancient advanced civilizations. In her
research, Barrios focuses on what bonds and what controls
us; on the power of faith; the inner universe; the multiverse;
and how these things are connected, to create physical
illusions of parallel dimensions and co-existing realities.
Epic of Creation
The Epic of Creation is a 3 part site-specific immersive
experience that tells the story of the end of matriarchy
(and how the patriarchy took over). Through research on
ancient myths and neglected history, these pieces depict
cosmological events to question what we understand as
truth.
Along with the geometric installations built around the forest,
a map and an audio guide were created, so the viewer could
locate these pieces while listening to the ideas that motivated
the work.
Epic of Creation
1. Apsu 2. Mummu 3. Tiamat
2017: 3 site-specific installations: strings, fishing wire, UV
light; with audio guide and drawn map of sites and myths/
cosmology

Epic of Creation–3.Tiamat
Epic of Creation–1.Apsu

Back to Basics program / JUNE 2017
Alex Levene
UK
www.wordsetfree.co.uk
About
Alex is a poet, writer, spoken word performer and creative
producer. He runs a small theatrical company, focused on
theatre work with a poetic flavour: ‘Word Set Free’.
As an artist my personal practice focuses on two areas: ritual
theatre practices in ancient storytelling and stories of that
centre around the experiences of migrants and outsiders.
I am developing two pieces of theatre that look into these
aspects through the prism of poetry and performance.
I am drawn to the ideas of the European crafts guilds, and am
working on creating a piece of work that can be taken on a
Wanderjahre to travel as a poet and performer.
My theatre work revolves around crafting experiences for
audiences that encompass participation, music, singing
and ritual. Combining aspects of the shaman, the priest,
the storyteller and the actor in order to create a magical
and heightened form of performance that lends itself to the
magical, heightened language of poetry. The work ranges
in scale from small, intimate 1 on 1 work, to large scale
theatrical projects.
Alongside my performance work I am writing a series of
poems influenced heavily by my favourite poems. This
collection, title “with apologies to...” includes re-working and
re-imagining the works of English language poets such as
Coleridge, Betjeman and Ginsburg.
The Stories in the Stars: comparative
mythology meets performance poetry
Arteles was an opportunity to foreground my writing and to
think about what my practice may be and what it may become.
I wrote about 12000 words of epic verse poetry on the Stories
in the Stars project. Alongside this act of creation I engaged
in some serious in depth research and investigation in the
areas of comparative mythology, ancient rituals of Greek
and Roman theatre and studying the mythology of Egypt,
Babylon and Akkadia.
Arteles was an opportunity to learn and explore alongside
other artists much further along their creative paths. Shared
living and working practices were explored. We had many
dinners together and many saunas. I worked with Sabrina
Barrios to make a storyteller’s staff, and Sabrina helped me
to enchant it with some symbols from her language.
Finally, i started to examine the idea of my work a performance
art, as well as poetry. I worked on the idea of crafting small
rituals for performance by myself or others, thinking about
ancient ritual, pagan expressions of identity and time/place
based ritual. I see this area of my work as being a core part
of my development over the next few years.

Back to Basics program / MAY 2017
Gabriela Concha
Peru
www.gabrielaconcha.com
About
My recent work inquires space organization and its influence
on our optical boundaries. Using photography as a measuring
instrument, I question the limits of its representation and of
the human eye as its extension.
Recently I have been working on how the horizon, light and
color can trigger optical illusion and a non-accurate sense
of distance.
My projects don’t have a closed structure and are constantly
evolving. I enjoy the fact that I can use data-driven projects
that can later have multiple statements.
I also work on projects that are more intuitively driven and
personal: I’m currently developing a photo book and a movie
of the mining camp I grew up in, where I’m exploring new
narratives in subjective documentary and video performance.
A creation process is a very uneasy road to follow. Honestly,
I usually don’t know what I am doing, but the course of the
work itself triggers intuition. When a project begins to grip
sense, it deprograms certain beliefs and connects you to the
environment in a new way, as if the world was giving you a
gift.
Tracings
I walk through the nearby forests carrying a plexiglass and
a marker. When I encounter a natural object that catches my
eye I place the plexiglass against it and trace the figures I
see.
I allow myself to believe some of the images I find tell me
stories about the people that left their imprint when they
walked through. Or maybe it’s the same trees and stones
I find that leave messages for all living beings, giving them
clues of where it’s safe to go, or comfort their loneliness by
telling them these stories. Many messages found on these
stones and trees exist as a conversation.
In a cut down tree trunk I see a mother bird with the continents
traced on her head. She’s carrying food on her mouth for her
hatchling that is looking away with his growing feathers.
I can also see a Native American Indian
A small red fox from the Andes
A man with an elongated forehead and a long beard
An indifferent man, a beaten man, a tired man, a worried man
A big sea monster chasing a blue whale
A female lion walking towards an abyss to save a creature
that is falling in.
I once saw the silhouette of an amazon bird called ‘gallito
de las rocas’. I stopped the tracing and started drawing the
bird as I felt it was the core of the project. Suddenly the sight
didn’t matter as my drawing was forced into something that
was louder than what my eyes could see.
Trying to understand my decision I remembered a picture I
took years ago of the same bird in a zoo in Peru. He was
flying around his cage and hit himself against the glass wall,
trying to reach a piece of fruit a visitor was eating. I took the
picture and left, never did anything about it.
I now wonder what photography does with me as a difference
in what these tracings are doing to my awareness. I now
know that at the time I took the bird’s picture I was not fully
connecting with its tragic situation.
The viewfinder frame you look into sometimes makes it seem
as what you are photographing is happening in another
plane. And I ask myself: Was I really there?
And why am I seeking now for the uncomfortable?
I go into the forest and pry into the unconscious. As I seek for
answers, once again I fall into the conclusion I might just be
speaking to myself.
But I remember: many messages found on the stones and
trees exist as a conversation. And now I know I am not
speaking to myself: I am trying to connect.
The plexiglass, as a bigger scale of my cameras viewfinder,
reminds me both of a shield and of the bird’s glass cage. It’s
time to remove the glass.

Back to Basics program / MAY 2017
Olof Svenblad
Sweden
www.cargocollective.com/olofsvenblad
About
Visual artist and designer, born 1985. Based in Stockholm,
Sweden. Works with painting, printmaking, blurrings,
borderlands and in-betweens. Inspired by pop music,
escapism, physical sensations and special effects, Olof is
always interested in fusions and collisions; believing in the
importance of diverse perspectives.
I worked with a series of paintings.
I was inspired by symbolist ideas from the late 1800s
and explored how I could place them in a contemporary
context. In a way I was working on how I could create my
own mythological creatures and narratives. The result was
a series of paintings and drawings with vinyl paint and oil
pastels on boards and canvas.

Back to Basics program / MAY 2017
Louise Bennett
Australia
www.louisebennettart.com
About
My art practice aims to trigger experiences of shared intimacy
by offering ‘wakeful breaks’ to pose questions about how our
concepts of and engagements with nature and each other
are shifting in contemporary contexts dominated by screenbased
technology. I explore this through spatial video works,
synesthesia sound to drawing processes and site-specific
installations in both public spaces and art gallery museum
contexts.
My work investigates the mediated space that separates our
experience of reality from our perception: the in-betweeness,
that gaseous middle-ground floating between reality and
our experience of it. I approach video and sound in a haptic
physical sense to interrupt the viewing process in order to
evoke a self-reflexive, contemplative, multi-sensory viewing
experience. The practice aims to lightly diffuse our spatial
references and our sense of a fixed-position, to point inwards
– to the observer who is observing what is being observed.
It is this immense internal intimacy and the complex layers
of privacy that can exist in public spaces that I will continue
to explore, to open alternative ways of understanding, being
and connecting with ourselves and each other in our shared
spaces.
I am interested in making work that is both conceptually rich
but can also side-step intellect - to be felt and experienced
emotionally and physically too.
Earth Breathing
“Earth Breathing” – an audio installation of ambient local
sounds – birds, trees in the wind, cars passing on the road,
a buzzing bee etc. These noises layered with human breath
broadcasted and experienced back in the outdoors.
The piece came from my walks where I recorded myself
talking – it is here that the sounds of the environment silenced
me – to consider these noises as the earth’s breath. Author
Clarice Lispector’s words informed my experience: “The
worlds continual breathing is what we hear and call silence”
and “You do not understand music: you hear it. So hear me
with your whole body”.
“Earth Breathing” was collaborative in its recording and
outcome. I invited people to actively listen without instruction
– participants moved freely – meditating, crawling, running
around, breathing in unison laying on the ground while
confusing pre-recorded bird sounds with in-situ bird sounds
– conjuring up narratives of birds talking to their former selves.
I questioned, “what is nature in a landscape continually over
turned by humans?” and “how do we negotiate our complicity
with technology?”
Kayo Ishikawa, performed with “Earth Breathing” in her
Earth “tomsuma” hat. Kayo weaved Finnish mythology into
her tea ceremony, tai-chi movement, contemporary dance
performances, all in good humour.
Cnversations with writer Pip Newling on her work about place
and race in our Australian context significantly impacted my
thinking on the political nature of my site-specific public
work and my understanding on my position of privilege. This
triggered me to begin a personal ethics manifesto for my art
practice.

Back to Basics program / MAY 2017
Ben Richter
USA
www.benrichtermusic.com
About
Ben Richter is a composer and accordionist whose chamber
works explore the perceptual experience of music, combining
subtly shifting timbres and sliding microtonal harmonies
to create sound-worlds of constant transformation. As a
performer, he draws from experimental improvisation, Deep
Listening, and the klezmer tradition. Since 2012, he has led
the New York-based experimental chamber group Ghost
Ensemble, whose work critic George Grella has described
as “a look, perhaps, into a different dimension … the music
sounds like something incomprehensibly massive is passing
by, slowly.”
Ben’s original solo work often combines klezmer and
chamber music, and diverse recent collaborations include
appearances with The Dresden Dolls, Over A Cardboard
Sea, and Johnny Hobo and the Freight Trains along with
orchestral and chamber compositions for the American
Symphony Orchestra, Janacek Philharmonic, Ostravska
Banda, Nieuw Ensemble, and Wild Rumpus. In addition
to Ghost Ensemble, Ben is associated with the Indexical
collective, SEM Ensemble, and Ostrava Center for New
Music as a composer, performer, and artistic coordinator. He
studied accordion with Pauline Oliveros, creative writing with
Edie Meidav, and music composition at Bard College and
at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague, where his artistic
research focused on unconscious perception, hypnotic
phenomena, time distortion, and the healing potential of
experiential music.
This year, he especially loves paleogeography, the poetry
of Rosmarie Waldrop, and the nonhuman music of whales,
wolves, wind, and ocean.
Orrorin Keen
I composed an octet for wind instruments for the Ostrava
Days festival to premiere in August 2017, and collaborated
with Tomsuma alt. in performing an early live version of
“Panthalassa: Dream Music of the Once and Future Ocean”
for accordion and tape drones.

Back to Basics program / MAY 2017
Kayo Ishikawa (tomsuma alt.)
Japan
www.tomsuma.com
About
I pours my passion to create art pieces exploring a
combination of art therapy and sense of humor.
I constructed the “Tenoriyu”. It is influences from zen concept.
It aim participatory ceremonious art performance and
stimulating one’s senses.
Guest communicate with the host “Earth” through
unpredictable procedure.
Earth hat is formal ware. it called “tomsuma” hat. The word
“tomsuma” means a shining stone in Ainu language (NOTE:
Ainu indicates aboriginal people in north Japan,
Hokkaido) The Earth itself is also the shining stone illuminated
by the Sun.
My artistic interest is around the zen concept of nothingness.
In the ARTELES forest, I want to investigation of the boundary
between ceremonial initiation and put into practice in our
lives.
Sampo in Earth Breathing
Observing my own breath through daily meditation.This
simple exercise in the environment without any distractions
and time pressure enhanced my sense of tranquility and
mindful awareness. This renewed state of mind brought me
the consciousness beyond my own being, and made me
realized that the notion of boundary separating myself and
the outer world is ephemeral.
Universal awareness beyond the boundaries manifested in
rituals
While researching the motives of rituals, I became interested
in the holistic world view of Finnish mythologies represented
in the concept such as ‘Haltija’ (Invisible nature). I also found
remarkable similarities between Finish Sauna and Japanese
Chanoyu (Way of tea), which inspired my performance at
Arteles. I believe the underlying spirits manifested in those
rituals have a universal affinity which goes beyond the cultural
boundaries, and are adopted by the wider living being.
Artistic collaboration
Tenoriyu with Accordion Breath
Ben Richter played accordion as a breathing instrument.
His ‘Accordion Breath’ and my performance Tenoriyu
(choreographed rituals based on the traditional Japanese
practices of Chanoyu (Way of Tea) and Toji(Cleansing)) found
a common ground in breathing through accordion music and
the improvised ritualistic move.
SAMPO in EARTH BREATHING
Through my collaboration with Louise Bennett and
her installation ”Earth Breathing”, we celebrated the senses
and feelings beyond various boundaries. Finnish concept of
Sampo (a magical artifact) and Japanese concept of Walking
Zen (which can also called Sampo in Japanese) found an
unexpected connection in Louise’s majestic soundscaping.

Photo: Lei Han

Back to Basics program / MAY 2017
Lei Han
USA
leihandesign.com
About
Lei Han is an artist, educator and designer. Her work, often
inspired by nature and everyday life, explores notions of
perception, memory, transience and time. Fascinated by the
influences of eastern philosophy in western art, especially
in modern and contemporary art, her recent work aims for
creating the cohesion between spirituality and creativity, as
well as making new connections between the artist, viewer
and object/subject. Lei’s current work in experimental
video, animation, interactive art and installation, has been
exhibited at galleries, museums, and film festivals nationally
and internationally. Including Shenzhen & Hongkong Bi-City
Biennial, China, the State Museum of Contemporary
Art, Thessaloniki, Greece Biennale; D’CLINIC Studios,
Zalaegerszeg, Hungary, cinema Cal Marçal de Llorenç
del Penedès, Spain, Krannert Art Museum, Illinois, the
Arts Center, St. Petersburg, Florida, The {Re}HAPPENING
experimental art event, Black Mountain, NC, Asheville Fine
Arts Theater, Asheville Museum and the North Carolina
Visions program.
Lei received her BA from Shenzhen University in China and
her MFA from Memphis College of Art in Memphis, Tennessee.
She is currently an Associate Professor and Chair of the New
Media Department at the University of North Carolina at
Asheville.
”here” and ”now”
At Arteles I worked between projects I brought with me, and
those inspired by the surrounding. A month away from the real
world allowed me the time for meditation and self-reflection.
I enjoyed interacting with fellow artists and observing spring
quietly coming to the Finnish countryside.
The Buddhist concept of Impermanence and Nothingness
are at the center of my recent art practices. I have been
working on a series of abstract videos shot on a macro lens
prior to coming to Arteles. The process of filming and editing
elements that we normally won’t see with our natural eyes
taught me to follow the flow, trust my intuition and embrace
chance in the creative process.
The wheat field across from Arteles had been calling me
since the first week I arrived. It was wide open, silently
waiting for it’s time to be cultivated. In Vincent Van Gogh’s
Wheat Fields painting it serves as a metaphor for humanity’s
cycles of life, as both celebration of growth and realization
of the susceptibility of nature’s powerful forces. I decided to
explore the relationship between macrocosm and microcosm
through the observation of individual’s consciousness mind
in relation to time, memory and place. The wheat field
became the ideal location. The resulting project is a 360˚
interactive video documentation of the participatory event
named: “here” and “now”. In “here” and “now” fellow artists
were invited to walk alone to the center of the field where
they find fragmented memories (donated objects collected
from participants, scanned and printed on paper). Their
thoughts and feelings toward nature, memory or the moment
were written on a notecard and left in the field. The audience
may choose any view points from the 360˚ video as they
wish by navigating camera angle and distance to follow the
participants or simply enjoy nature and explore the scenes.

Back to Basics program / MAY 2017
Benjamin Wills
USA
www.willsbenjamin.com
About
A stoned, sticky and soft silly sweetheart stumbling across
spacetime and cosmos to tell you,
you are a beautiful something, you are your own expanse,
you are your own confirmation.
Be nameless as there is death in objectivity; as soon as
something is named it is destroyed, exiled from the becoming.
To name is to limit, a mechanism of control. A thing is self, or
it is other. Naming is a matter of proximity.
To be something that only refers to itself is the problem and
the solution. Ultimate presence ascends legibility.
Here’s to feeling good all the time

Back to Basics program / MAY 2017
Jes Hunter
South Africa
www.facebook.com/JesHunterPhotography
About
I’m a natural light photographer, and make-up artist. I use
makeup and light in order to tell stories, create characters, or
express emotions and various states of mind.
Music, poetry, dance and psychology are interests of mine I
often use to finalize or inspire my concepts.
I prefer to always be in nature, in the open and unpredictable
environment; whether it be wild untamed forests, or merely
an ivy adorned wall in the middle of the city. And working
with whatever weather or season I am faced with.
My ultimate goal is to merge the world of Fantasy with that
of reality.
Bare-ly Human
At Arteles, I decided to explore man’s connection to nature,
and themselves.
With our early Hunter-Gatherer roots so long abandoned
and forgotten. The constant battle within us, where instinct
battles reason and knowledge. We are 2 at once, creatures of
the Earth, and creators of our own modern Earth.
This is us bared, back to basics and honest and lost and full
of contradicting emotions.

Back to Basics program / MAY 2017
Priscilla Becker
USA
priscillabecker.wordpress.com
About
I’m an alien who suffers. My writing works through the horror
and lunacy of life, the fear and wish of death.
Yoga=Heroin
Birdland (aka Finland) directed my senses toward earth,
environment, animals, insects, wind, breath, which helped
launch me outta cars honking constantly, sirens screaming
persistently, humans scream-cursing continuously. There
was a wondrous-painful combination, as it drew me outta
my life, and yet the writing I accomplished at Arteles threw
me into my life :) :( My project in the month of May, and
eternally, is to enter the unconsciousness fully-- a locked,
low, & hidden body, mind, & heart space that violently pushes
the truth outta you. The forgotten, the unknown spring up &
out of unconsciousness, which I suspect is in my colon, and
can feel like giving birth, pooping.

Back to Basics program / APRIL 2017
Kripi Malviya
India
kripigrey.tumblr.com
About
Kripi Malviya is an Indian psychologist, experiential
psychotherapist and a social justice advocate; she is also a
poet, writer and an avid traveler based in Goa, India where she
runs her emotional awareness and wellness retreat; TATVA.
Her writing seizes vulnerability, terror, silence and islands.
She focuses on the subversive and the still and is always
looking for relational variance, intensity and discernment.
Her poems are an enduring blend of power and succinct
understanding. This aesthetic, a comprehension of the wild
and the intense in the world, thoroughly reaches into the
identity of the individual as it relates to the greater whole—
whole as substantial as well as ethereal. Reflecting Kripi’s
personal spiritual and psychological practices, interests, and
lifestyles, her poetry harnesses the significant erupting of a
contemporary existentialism. This quality alone allows for an
embrace of the intensely bright and intensely dark emotional
landscapes and boundaries of the truest every day, and as a
result, the poetry illustrates a courage to trudge through it.
Poet as archaeologist, as archivist, as
interoceptor.
In my time at Arteles, I merged the agency of my writing with
my urgency of experiences. I felt I internalised the physical and
emotional landscape of the residency and the residents I was
with. Phantasmagoria, the freedom packed within each day of
the residency, the bleak natural scape, solitude and the other
artists’ process were all inspirations to my writing. My poems
also incorporated Finnish folklore, inter-connectedness, the
elasticity of space, the changing forest and the fluctuating
spring. I experimented with visual representations of poetry
and I also collected data to write a future essay on the
experiences of the sauna and it’s connection to vulnerability.
The familiarity I felt with the Finnish countryside without ever
having been there before was mirrored in how I approached
my work: the poems written there are an embodiment of the
construction and destruction of desire. The slow deliberate
pace of work, my changing perception around technology
and the recognition that excessive use of internet hinders
my writing process and practice are my biggest takeaways
from the ‘back to basics’ experience. My stay at Arteles was
instrumental in bridging the relationship between Kripi the
therapist and Kripi the poet.

Back to Basics program / APRIL 2017
Felipe Enger
Brazil
www.felipeenger.com
About
As a visual artist working with photography, which is a
medium widely used to capture reality, I like to experiment
with its boundaries. I am constantly drawn to nature as the
basis of abstract concepts and I use photography to give
shape to them. Landscape is like a white canvas that allows
me to interpret and present it as I wish. It lets me play with
the notions of reality and imagination and, therefore, create
my own reality.
My previous projects tackled themes such as the construction
of memories and how they may not relate to the factual truth;
the unconscious mind and how it manifests itself through
dreams; and the idea of belonging, when one’s upbringing
has been strongly influenced by contrasting cultures.
The Exploration of Inner Landscapes
During my time at Arteles, my idea was to connect with myself
on a deeper level and try to express that through my pictures.
After experimenting with different ideas, I remembered the
metaphor of the forest as symbol for the unconscious, widely
used by Carl Jung. The forest, in all its stillness and silence
can be inviting and daunting at the same time, just as the
journey to self-knowledge.
I then started to experiment with long exposure and artificial
lights, in the forest at night. By shedding light on the unknown
I could not only reveal aspects of the darkened surroundings,
but also access hidden nooks of my inner landscapes.
I also got enough material to start working on a new project of
abstract micro landscapes, based on the relief and textures
of different rocks I found in Finland .
Finally, I started meditating, which was very enlightening; did
a lot of self-analysis; had invaluable conversations; learned
how to light up the wood fire sauna; changed some of my
eating habits; and made great friends.

Back to Basics program / APRIL 2017
Jen Cunningham
UK
www.jencunningham.co.uk
About
Jen is a jewellery designer and maker based in Edinburgh,
Scotland. She graduated with a BDes(Hons) in Jewellery and
Metalwork design in 2007 from the Duncan of Jordanstone
College of Art and Design (Dundee, Scotland) and has been
a full-time self employed jewellery designer and maker since
2013.
The landscapes and compelling pull to the mountains that
many people feel when in Scotland, greatly influences Jen’s
jewellery. She uses traditional jewellery making techniques
such as saw piercing to create accurate representations
of the landscapes; layering silver and gold while exploring
the play of light through contrasting textures her jewellery
becomes a representation of the landscapes in miniature.
Whilst at Arteles Jen will be focusing on a number of things.
The landscapes and their similarities and differences to
Scotland. Her own creative process in order to understand
what it is about landscapes that draws her in, and how best
to represent that in her work. Regaining focus and direction
in her work through meditation and the limitations of an offline
existance.
“It’s hard to read the label when you’re
stuck inside the jar”
I came to Arteles with an idea to journey into my own creative
process; to find my path from my inspiration to a finished
piece. I thought I’d lost my creativity at some point along my
way while undertaking work for clients.
I immersed myself into the Finnish spring and I enjoyed
disconnecting from my phone, the internet and started daily
meditation.
I spent my new found time learning new skills, creating
things, challenging myself (both physically and mentally!),
writing, doing Yoga, walking and cycling in the beautiful
Finnish landscape, and listening to myself and to every friend
I made there.
The time and space that my month at Arteles afforded me to
grow, and the generous and open conversations with artists
helped me to realise that I was so involved with my work that I
couldn’t see where my creativity lies in my everyday process
and I had also been unaware of other avenues of creativity
within myself. The month has been invaluable for me; it’s
given me a new perspective on many aspects of my life. I am
continuing this journey as I still process what I have learnt
and I am still learning from it every day.

Back to Basics program / APRIL 2017
Jean-François Krebs
France
www.jeanfrancoiskrebs.com
About
Jean-François Krebs hasn’t decided where to settle yet. Born
in France, he lived in China, Scotland and now Portugal, with
interludes in France. His nomadic way of life can be felt in his
artwork, crossing disciplines and media. A recurring theme,
the body as a place that cannot be escaped, a space we all
have in common, a probably naive quest for the universal.
He studied in Paris (Ecole du Breuil, ENSP Versailles) and
Edinburgh (Edinburgh College of Art). In Edinburgh, while
studying art and landscape architecture, his practice
became more conceptual and abstract. The theme of the
body inhabiting the landscape, the flesh nurturing it, became
central. Meanwhile, his practice of poetry and performative
transvestism led him to be part of the UNESCO European
Literature Night in the Fruitmarket Gallery in 2015, and
to co-organise and perform ‘The Library is Open’, a drag
queen poetry night, in the Scottish Poetry Library. The event
received the Creativity Award Edinburgh 2016. Jean-François
participates in the Maumaus program 2017 in Lisbon.
His current interests are the over-exposure and accessibility
of data and images, the genesis of the self as an exhibited
intimacy, revealed and hidden, through reflexions on
pornography and gestation.
UNTITLED (Action,video, photo)
Floating inside the abandoned cars hypersensual skin.
Going further in my research on going back.
Claustrophobia/ humour.

Back to Basics program / APRIL 2017
Cecile Dyer
USA
www.cecilemd.com
About
Cecile Dyer (b.1984) is a painter and multimedia artist, based
in Austin Texas. Her current body of work is a collection of
watercolor seascapes and short videos, each depicting a
sinking object. A personal response to the racially charged
police violence in the United States and the false political
narrative of a “simpler time” in U.S. History, this collection
of works is an exercise in identifying white privilege as a first
step toward person accountability within a racist system.
Nostalgic icons from the artist’s past are submerged in
historical context, with outlines of the object becoming
blurry, complex, and ominous under the surface of the water.
Through prompts viewers are encouraged to examine and
question the simple and clear nature of their own memories
and history. The final collection will include 100 works on
paper and several short videos.
Sinking
The arteles 2017 Back to Basics residency was an
opportunity to reflect and expand an ongoing project titled
Sinking: Submerging Narratives in Historical Context. The
project, inspired by the 2016-2017 political and social climate
in the United States and the need for a real understanding of
history, is intended to be exhibited as a large collection of
100 works on paper.
Arteles provided a quiet space for reflection on this project
away from the 24 hour news cycle and the pressure
to produce a high volume of work. I experimented with
distressed paper and surfaces- trying to match the level of
abstraction and tone of the work to the gravity of the subject
matter. I also focused on honing the language surrounding
the project in order to give the viewer a deeper understanding
of the works and to encourage the viewer to seek parallel
experiences from their own life. The quiet space and the
wealth of thoughtful feedback from fellow residents were
invaluable resources- compelling me to make the work more
emotive, more personal, and more clearly supported through
language via titles, audio, and wall text.
With these new anchors, I’ll continue the project and look
forward to it’s completion in 2017.

Back to Basics program / APRIL 2017
Amy Casey
USA
www.amycaseypainting.com
About
Drawing on my own immediate environments, the news
and anxiety dreams, I have been painting groundless
landscapes-cities of a sort for some time now. Arranging
and rearranging them, I think about community, balance,
vulnerabilities and growth with a curiosity about what holds
us together and how one thing can lead to another. The detail
in the work is partly my way of conveying a kind of specificity
and preciousness and partly about overcompensating for
my own myopia. The amount of detail often makes phases
of creating the paintings a kind of meditation or devotional
experience. I am fascinated by the resilience of life and our
ability to keep going in the face of sometimes horrendous
or ridiculous circumstances. My paintings celebrate this
fascination and my love of the urban landscape.
Wandering in the woods
While at Arteles, I tried to immerse myself in the landscape,
to be in the moment while there and find new elements or
structures that I might later bring to my urban landscapes
in some way. I loved the wood piles, the birch trees and the
thawing lakes but I especially became enchanted with all the
mossy rocks and stumps, microcosms of landscapes. It’s
been interesting to see how these natural forms move your
brush in new ways.

Back to Basics program / APRIL 2017
Stuart McMillan
Australia
www.stumcmillanart.com
About
I believe humans have an inherent connection to nature, the
environment and the universe, however in the modern day we
may have drifted from the importance of this relationship. My
creative practice is broad, and i’m always seeking new ways
of viewing and sharing my own experience of various natural
phenomena, furthermore the mystical and magical existence
of various energy systems in nature and the universe, from
the macro to the infinite.
The Art of Re-connection
The opportunity to re-connect to nature and other creatives
over the course of this residency was simply amazing. It
opened up a huge well of inspiration, artistically, intellectually
and spiritually. Having limited access to phones and internet,
along with daily meditation, allowed for full concentration
with little distraction, It enabled a clear space to truly
immerse yourself in the whole experience. My focus was to
re-connect to nature and humanity and for me I came away
with a new friends, a higher appreciation for the importance
of connection to nature, and down time from technology.

Back to Basics program / APRIL 2017
Noëmie Vermoesen
Belgium / France
noem-verm.tumblr.com
About
Noëmie Vermoesen is a PhD candidate currently writing
a thesis on Techno Criticism in the ’80-‘90. She writes
about people who wrote about music, be it in academia or
the press. In addition to her activities as a researcher and
freelance journalist, she also collaborates with a bookshop
specialized in music.
Noëmie likes to listen – to people, to radio and of course,
to music. Her preferred listening mode is active, whether
that means dancing or playing music from her ever-growing
record collection. Under the moniker Gigsta, she’s recently
been DJing in bars, clubs and festivals.
Her mixing started on the radio. As Gigsta she has hosted
several shows on three different stations in the past few
years. Currently, she hosts a monthly slot on the Berlinbased
Cashmere radio. « Fictions » is her way to combine
all the stuff that inspires her in a form that she is constantly
experimenting with.
When not busy with one of the aforementioned activities or
with the jobs she keeps to pay the rent, Noëmie does zines,
organizes exhibitions or cooks cool meals. Taking care of the
planet, making her friends happy and sharing with humans
are amongst her daily concerns.
Born in Belgium, brewed in Brittany (Fr) and currently based
in Berlin, Noëmie speaks five languages including English
and Italian. When she finishes her PhD and masters the art of
DJing perfectly, she would like to learn a language not using
the latin alphabet to broaden her capacity to understand and
listen to the world.
Listening between the lines
When I came to Arteles, I was planning to start writing the
PhD I had been working on for a few years. It had always
been very difficult for me to put my thoughts on paper.
I had always found it easier to listen and read than speak or
write. Listening to people, listening to music, listening to the
world … In fact, my PhD was about music (techno music) and
how hard it was to write about it. So there I was, having to
write about why it was hard to write about music.
During the residency, I found myself listening even deeper
(the silence – which actually isn’t – my breath, my noisy
thoughts … and the others, breathing, thinking, talking and
reading. Somehow, listening helped me to write : I just had
to listen to the words dancing in my mind and let them come
out hand in hand.
As I left, I had written dozens of pages for the PhD and almost
as much of personal writing.

Back to Basics program / APRIL 2017
Carolyn Angus
Italy
www.carolynangus.com
About
Carolyn Angus is a visual artist whose large-scale mixedmedia
installations are made in response to specific spaces.
Carolyn’s sculpture is created from the most ephemeral of
materials using the power of the repeated gesture to produce
temporary monuments in response to a site. Carolyn also
works in drawing and mixed media, often in monochrome
and with an emphasis on texture.
“Art is an essence, a center”. (Eva Hesse)
Carolyn Angus studied sculpture at the Glasgow School of
Art, UK then gained a Masters of Fine Art at Tyler School
of Art, Temple University, Philadelphia, USA. Since 2003
she has been based in Rome. Recent exhibitions include:
‘Resonance&Timbres’ with Finnish composer Ulf Långbacka,
Galleria Monty&Co (2014), Rome; The Tiny Biennale (2015),
Temple Gallery Rome; ‘Casa con Vista’ Casa Gregoretti,
Rome (2012); ‘The Experiment’ FLUDDE Festival, Assembly
Rooms, Faversham, Kent, UK (2011); ‘E le stelle stanno a
guardare,’Galleria 3B, Rome (2010); and ’Focus’ St Stephen’s
Cultural Centre Rome (2010).
Carolyn is a frequent visitor to Finland having spent twenty
summers on its’ southern coast.
Between the click of the light and
the start of the dream’
(Arcade Fire, ’No cars go’)
The profound sense of place and the freedom to focus so
fully on my art work enabled me to have fun experimenting
with media and materials. I enjoyed being liberated from
the pressure of a set outcome. This gave me the chance to
experience a deep quietude and full immersion in my work.
The month at ARTELES has impacted greatly on my drawing
techniques and installation ideas already, signalling new
directions. Towards the end of my residency I used projected
images on my constructed paper reliefs to express a sense of
‘hovering’-the powerful moment between staying and going,
the inbetween state. This is a quality I have been reaching
for in my drawings and ephemeral installation work and was
excited to see the results of remediating my images in new
ways.

Back to Basics program / APRIL 2017
Anki King
Norway / USA
www.ankiking.com
About
Anki King grew up in a small village in Norway. After completing
her arts education in Oslo, she moved to New York City in
1994 and studied at The Art Students League until 1998.
King exhibits frequently both in Europe and in the United
States. Her work is included in private and public collections
including the Appleton Museum of Art, in Ocala, FL. King has
also exhibited at the Katonah Museum of Art, NY, the Las
Cruces Museum of Art, NM, and the Metropolitan Museum of
Art in Tokyo. She teaches and lectures at institutions such as
The Art Students League of NY, Pelham Art Center and Rush
Philanthropic Arts Foundation. In 2010 she was the winner
of the Artist of the Year Award in the London International
Creative Competition (LICC).
Over the last twenty years King has made works in an
abstract-expressionist style, including figurative elements.
The still-standing full size figures that often appear in her
paintings are tall and slim, somewhat awkward, with large
hands. The human forms in King’s work are a vehicle of
expressing emotional memories and feelings.
Finding it in the Work
I arrived at Arteles after many months of not being able to
create any work. I am working organically in that I generally
for an image to appear to me before I set out to create it,
but lately the images were not coming – instead I would only
have anxiety and frustration. After unpacking I immediately
pinned a piece of canvas to one wall and a sheet of paper to
another and started adding paint to the canvas and began
making charcoal lines on the paper. I got started with no
preconceived idea and did not know what would happen. As
I kept going I found that some sort of image would slowly
become visible in the paint as well as in the drawing and I
would just work towards what I believed this might be and
new, yet unknown visuals would appear. It was a revelation
and immense relief to find that I was able to make work
by simply going ahead and working. This will give me a
completely new way of approaching my creative practice
and I am so thankful for this focused and undisturbed time
to discover this. In addition I was able to find materials in
the forest around Arteles to be inspired by and to create an
outdoor sculpture with. I feel like a new door has opened up
for me and I am tremendously excited to get back to my studio
in Brooklyn and take advantage of this new knowledge.

Photo: Stuart McMillan
Photo: Amy Casey

Back to Basics program / APRIL 2017
Margi Brown Ash
Australia
www.margibrownash.com
About
Margi Brown Ash a theatre maker, educator, therapist and
coach, with her own creative arts therapy studio in Brisbane
Australia, 4change coaching and counselling www.4change.
com.au. Margi has been an independent artist (stage
performer/devisor) for over 40 years in Australia and New
York City. She is co-founder/co-artistic director of the nest
and FORCE OF CIRCUMSTANCE, both collaborative theatre
companies based on social constructionist principles.
Margi’s most recent work is The Belonging Trilogy: HOME
is a postmodern exploration of re-storying our personal
and professional lives; EVE is a deconstruction of illness
and creativity and He Dreamed a Train is about family and
loss. When not writing and performing, Margi coaches
and counsels artists using a strengths-based and creative
framework. Margi is a member of M.E.A.A (Australia’s Actors
Equity); a Taos Associate and a member of National Artistic
Team at Queensland Theatre.
My Home of Belonging
My time at Arteles consisted of gently yet systematically
changing the way I not only see the world but also create.
The Back To Basic’s program provided a frame for meditation
twice a day which impacted on how I approached my creative
practice. The long walks in the cold where the ideas flew in,
the blue/grey lake that kept me company, the birch trees that
sang, the birds that showed up as the residency lengthened,
the snow that visited on a semi regular basis, the other
glorious artists who were experiencing a similar environment
and the caring facilitators of the program...all things opened
up new meaning as to what my work, “Home of Belonging”
meant to me.
Arteles is a soulful place and it cannot but impact on one’s
thinking and doing. Slower, more focused, deeper. If I had
one word to use I would say “life-changing”...an experience
to be treasured and revisited again and again.
The days were long and rich, beginning with a hot coffee
followed by these activities, each day in a different order:
mediation; yoga; walking; cycling; writing; reading; more
reading; conversations; more writing; art films; even more
writing; lots of reading; all of us sharing our work; all of us
eating together...all of us going on the occasional trip to
the supermarket and turning up at the only, yet wonderful,
vegetarian restaurant. And one thing I treasured, one simple
yet profound activity: sitting still next to my window watching
the snow or the lake or the sky...something I cannot do at
home.
I wrote two chapters during the four weeks, the work focusing
on the artist, her sense of belonging and her relationship to
consciousness. One mind, many brains.

Silence Awareness Existence program / FEB - MAR 2017
Kristin Bjornerud
Canada
www.kristinbjornerud.com
About
Kristin Bjornerud’s watercolour and gouache paintings
examine our relationship to the natural world, the importance
of community and the power of female relationships through
the lens of magical realism. Kristin received her MFA from
the University of Saskatchewan (2005) and her BFA from the
University of Lethbridge (2002). She has been awarded grants
from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Saskatchewan
Arts Board and the Ontario Arts Council. Her work has been
exhibited across Canada in galleries, museums, international
art fairs, and artist-run centres. Her work is represented in
the collections of the Saskatchewan Arts Board, the Bank of
Montreal, the City of Ottawa, as well as the Canada Council
Art Bank. In 2010 Kristin was recipient of the Brucebo Fine
Art Foundation’s residency scholarship in Gotland, Sweden.
The resulting body of work was exhibited at the Art Gallery
of Hamilton (2012). Kristin will be artist in residence at the
Klondike Institute of Arts and Culture in Dawson City, Yukon
in the summer of 2017.
Transforming Landscapes
During my time at Arteles I began the groundwork for
a narrative painting project inspired by Finnish folk
mythologies and the natural environment. I worked on
storyboarding and visual research, discovering unexpected
synchronicities across subjects. Embracing the theme
Silence Awareness Existence as a methodology over my two
months at the residency I slowed my process considerably
and reintroduced observational drawing into my practice.
Inspired by the textures and colours of the Finnish forest,
the skin of the birch trees and the predawn light, I made a
series of detailed watercolour studies in an effort capture the
specific experience of the local environment. I also painted
character portraits, preliminary studies for the figures in
the narrative tableau painting that I’ll complete in my home
studio using all of the material gathered at Arteles.

Silence Awareness Existence program / MARCH 2017
Ian Waugh
UK
www.ianwaugh.net
About
Ian Waugh is a British film director, writer and artist.
Raised in Tyneside, he studied photography and film at
Edinburgh Napier University, graduating with an MFA in
Advanced Film Practice from Screen Academy Scotland.
His graduation film Leaves was nominated for Best UK First
Feature at London’s East End Film Festival.
An alumnus of Berlinale Talents, Edinburgh International Film
Festival Talent Lab and Reykjavik International Film Festival
Transatlantic Talent Lab, his work has screened at festivals
in London, Stockholm, Berlin, Milano, Drama, Kyiv, Busan,
Mexico City, and many more worldwide.
His recent drama As He Lay Falling premiered in competition
at the 68th Edinburgh International Film Festival, received
Special Mentions at the 11th Reykjavik International Film
Festival and the International Short Film Festival of Cyprus,
and won the Directors Jury Award at the 16th International
Short Film Festival of Soria. Having screened at over 25
international festivals it was released online through the BFI
and is currently being developed into a feature film of the
same name by Homemade Films and Only Son. A UK/Greece
co-production, the feature development is supported by the
Scottish Film Talent Network with the assistance of Creative
Scotland and the BFI NET.WORK.
In 2016 he lived and worked in Reykjavík, Iceland during a
residency with SÍM, The Association of Icelandic Visual
Artists. Supported by Creative Scotland, he developed an
Icelandic set feature film while producing experimental video
works for the gallery. In 2017 he will return to Iceland to begin
production on a new film work.
Ajan sisällä (I drive inside / Within time)
I came to Arteles with no set plan for the work I would do.
I simply wanted to soak up the atmosphere of nature and
stillness that existed around me. I split my time between
writing, working on a draft of a narrative feature film script,
while simultaneously experimenting with video and sound,
fuelled by the creative benefit of bouncing two differing
practices off each other.
Inspired by the practice of the other resident artists, I started
to see the developing audio-visual work as a video painting
of the environment we shared together. Ajan sisällä is an
abstraction of movement through the tree-lined landscape
of Hämeenkyrö. Groves of trees, cast in darkness and light,
change form and flicker in a passing transience.
My experience of stillness seemed to produce a need to
make a piece all about motion and transition. Perhaps the
dual translations of the Finnish title to English describe it
best. A reflection of what was stirring inside of me in this
environment of exploration, within a quiet haven, where new
thoughts and emotions were able to spark and flourish.

Silence Awareness Existence program / MARCH 2017
M.E. Sparks
Canada
www.mesparks.com
About
In recent work M.E. Sparks investigates ideas of
representation and perception while merging historical
vocabularies of painting with personal narrative and found
forms. Often working from observation, M.E. searches for a
kind of newness and unfamiliarity within objects; the elusive
yet perpetual dark side of all things. Her paintings play with
absence, obfuscation, repetition and shifting pictorial space
in an attempt to disrupt habitual modes of representational
painting and ways of looking.
M.E. received a Master of Applied Arts from Emily Carr
University of Art + Design (2016) and holds a Bachelor of
Fine Arts from NSCAD University (2013). She was a finalist
for the 2016 RBC Painting Competition and the recipient of
the 2016 Nancy Petry Award. She has received funding from
Arts Nova Scotia and BC Arts Council and has exhibited her
work across Canada, including Access Gallery (Vancouver),
Franc Gallery (Vancouver), The Power Plant (Toronto), and Art
Mûr (Montréal). M.E. will be attending GlogauAIR residency
program in Berlin during the spring of 2017. She is based in
Vancouver, BC.
Night as Sheet
While at Arteles I began painting on canvas cutouts in
an effort to explore the behaviour of canvas as a hanging,
gravity-swayed material. These cutouts mark a distinct
transition away from stretched canvas in order to further
explore the falsity of a painted surface and the experience
of painting as both image and material object. A series of
eight rectangular cutouts depicts the shifting colours of
the night sky as observed through the same window every
evening. Painting from both observation and memory, I
worked with layers coloured glazes to approach the elusive
night colours. I consider this series of paintings inherently
related to the paradoxical experience of gazing out a dark
window; encountering both depth and flatness, the visible
and invisible, image and abstraction, sky and monochrome.

Silence Awareness Existence program / FEB - MAR 2017
Erin Purcell
USA
www.erinpurcell.com
About
I’m dealing with the uncertain and often intimidating vision
of life, the unfathomable nature of time and change and the
fleetingness and fragility of existence. Enigmatic yet familiar,
my work arouses a sense of the physical to provoke an inner,
unsettled feeling. Through the evidence of flux, it suggests
that our experience of the world is a combination of the
immediately perceived, partially concealed and the infinite
connections made in between.
The conceptual lexicon I’ve developed around the nature of
existence has led me into an exploration of process, the third
dimension and the power of the object. I hope to demand the
viewer’s involvement through emotion, suggestion and the
unfamiliar to convey the poetic while acting as a reminder
that it is more important to think of ourselves before death
and that we all are hurtling towards death and nothingness.
One Way or Another
I created many works at Arteles I have yet to know how to
talk about. Because, the thing about art is you sit around and
think about things, and then you make objects that have their
own trajectory.
“As an artist you make things that are as convoluted as you
are.” - Kiki Smith
But, the heart of my experience at Arteles lies in self
discovery:
I learned to leave room for possibility. I can make all the
plans in the world, but life will turn out the way it will turn out.
Something is going to happen. You can’t anticipate what that
is going to be— life is a continual process of arrival into who
we are. It is not a ladder of predictable progress; you better
be present to process it, to feel something. The most we can
hope for is to make some sense of ourselves, the choices
we make and our reasons for living. We must account for
feelings along side thoughts.
I am still learning how to better exercise some control over
how and what I think, to be conscious and aware enough
to choose what to pay attention to and how to construct
meaning from experience, even from the banal, difficult and
painful ones.
But, I am thankful.

Silence Awareness Existence program / MARCH 2017
Jacky Cheng
Australia
www.jackycheng.com.au
About
My viewpoint from the act of ‘making and doing’ is highly
influenced by my Chinese cultural background. During
my childhood, folding hundreds of lightweight bamboo
joss paper commonly known as ‘spirit paper’ for people
in the afterlife yearned my desire to reconnect the activity
from my past and reflect my current practice with paper. It
became more apparent during my architectural studies in my
university years, which later transposed to series of artworks
that looks like topographical landscape. But it is not the case
as it is just mark-making the traces of actions of a person –
me.
I am drawn to the concept of ethnomathematics - the cultural
activity and memories of home, country and relationship. My
significant concern is correlating experiences and mapping
the esoteric relationship between the art of making and
attaining something sublime. Architectonic language such
as geometric shapes, repetition, light and shadow play an
integral start to every piece, as all things around us are a
form or shape. It is the amalgamation of inspirations that
allow each piece its rightful story. Aphorisms such as ‘less is
more’ and ‘God is in the details’ is practiced religiously when
exploring the idea of ‘two extremities of the same continuum’
– simplicity in complexity. I do not try to cut or imitate the
perfect lines of a mechanical machine but instead embrace
the process. Much like reminiscing about the journey and not
the destination.
Rituals and Remnants
No stipulated datelines. No unnecessary thought anxieties.
No demanding chatters. No questionable doubts. Just
honouring the privilege of one’s existence.
My journey throughout this residency allowed me to embark
on a series of work processes that respond to the values and
significance of the Finnish landscape of which she continues
to have an important part to play in the process of building
her national identity. I embraced and was excited to get to
know her.
The silence of the mind and speech, the awareness of self
and the respect of one’s existence paved my daily Rituals
in making and doing as well as collecting the Remnants of
thoughts and actions of what was left at the end of the day.
Rituals
The sumi ink drawing and stitching processes on a Japanese
sumi paper scroll is the mark making and traces of actions of
a person – me. Repetitions of lines were present throughout
the scroll as the chosen design element in response to Paul
Klee’s concept of line drawings - “a dot is a line that went for
a walk”. This ongoing vignette provided my daily ritualistic
response to all natural elements found during my journey:
a company of tall birch and pine soldiers standing proud
alongside man–made vertical and horizontal design lexicon
all around.
Remnants
This residency ignited so many memory layers stored within
me over the years. Some were not appealing but thankfully
the positives embraced most of my existence. The Finnish
landscape evoked all of that. Instead of escaping the thought
process, I challenged it all and embarked on several smallscale
works as a respond to my being. Much like reminiscing
about the journey and not the destination.

Silence Awareness Existence program / MARCH 2017
María Laura Verdinelli
Argentina
mlauraver.wixsite.com/mlauraver
About
I work with myself, putting into dialogue my works, thoughts,
curiosities and questions with what remains unknown.
I’m interested in establishing relationships between elements.
To find the balance between structure and creativity.
To be part of the invisible and create an image departing
from that.
I understand art as a way of becoming present.
To inhabit new states in the search of our authentic creative
gesture.
To create ruptures and to explore different paths,
so that new ways of knowledge can emerge and be expressed.
Freedom to roam...
In the abyss of words,
In the silence of creation.
In the instant.
Through the space of uncertainty,
Under the impermanence of
the landscape.
During the residence, I began to explore the concept of
jokamiehenoikeus, as a way to link natural environment,
silence and contemplation of the mind, with the production
of different personal records:
A selection of watercolors and ink draws, as an invitation
to wander in a visual way, without looking for a work with
a totality sense, just walk with the eyes as a new way for
training the mind and release all expectations.
A deconstruction of my own notes and writing, exploring the
inner space through observation to research about silence,
emptiness and space and new forms to approach them.
And a series of sketchbooks with repetitions of movements
to draw a circle (Ensō) which was my daily practice during
that time and I will use in the production of a future artist
book.

Silence Awareness Existence program / MARCH 2017
Leena Niemela
Canada
leena.niemela@yahoo.com
About
Leena Niemela is a Finnish-Canadian writer from Vancouver
Island, British Columbia, Canada currently completing her
Master of Fine Arts (Creative Writing) at the University of
British Columbia. She grew up in the hot dust of the British
Columbia’s North Okanagan between two worlds: one filled
with the canadiana of life in a small town and the other of
Saturday saunas, fresh baked “pulla” and Finnish church
meetings. Her writing is a mix of memories and wishful
thinking that explores heritage and identity, the coincidence
of found poetry, and mysterious workings of language and
the writing life. She writes non-fiction memoir and essays,
poetry and the occasional cartoon.
While at Arteles, Leena will be completing her first poetry
manuscript exploring the impact of immigration on
cultural connection between women in Finnish-Canadian
communities and their ancestral communities in Finland. Her
poems explore cultural belonging and identity, and the varied
constructions of Finnish-Canadian identity experienced by
the poet while living in Canada, travelling to Finland and
returning to Canada after these investigations. She wants to
interrogate the expected images in media and family lore,
constructs like the ‘stoic/silent Finn’, ‘sisu’ and in particular,
the social-psychological impact of the northern landscapes
and dark winters and how they are perceived to shape
existence for those who live there. She is interested in how
these concepts manifest in lived experience and translate
into words on the page.
Reaching for the gap
The night before I arrived at Arteles, I sat in a New York pub
with Duke Ellington quote on the wall: “You’ve got to find a
way of saying it, without saying it”. The words have stuck with
me like a riddle, and the more I puzzle it out, the more I realize
how language fails us, how writing confronts the impossibility
of conveying into language something that feels intrinsically
as real somewhere in the body, the head, or memory,
maybe. As I write, I record my thoughts about the process
of translating another language, another’s experience and
another cultured; as I walk in the woods, I read the tracks
left by a multitude of tiny and large animals I can’t name with
certainty; as I speak with artists working to convey meaning
through mediums in which I have no experience; as I navigate
the markets using my smattering of Finnish, I’m beginning to
understand an important element of the manuscript I came
to develop. In every exchange of meaning, we must also read
for the silences, misdirections and intangible spaces.

Silence Awareness Existence program / MARCH 2017
Matthis Grunsky
Canada
grunskm.tumblr.com
About
I am interested in moments of careful looking that occur
periodically in our experience of the world. In recognizing
these moments in my own life and expanding upon them
through the production of art, I hope to trigger similar
experiences of careful looking in others.
My work relates closely with the discourse of painting,
although the materials and methods I use often have roots
in object (rather than image) based practices. I strongly
gravitate to the history of conceptual art and my work
often reflects the trend of de-skilling and de-mystifying the
underlying processes of art.
Colour Study
Over the course of my stay at the Arteles Silence Awareness
Existence Residency I developed an immersive installation
piece composed of a projected javascript program and
multiple projection screens. Arteles was an amazing place for
conducting this research and I am grateful for the resources
that were provided.

Silence Awareness Existence program / MARCH 2017
Carrie Foulkes
UK
www.carriefoulkes.com
About
Carrie Foulkes is a peripatetic multidisciplinary artist
and writer currently based in east London. Her work is as
disparate as the geography of her life, with similar scant
regard for borders between media, thought and action, text
and image. The commonality is a deeply thought through
conception and an intuitive, visceral hands-on creation.
This form and content praxis can be seen throughout her
work, and meshes particularly effectively in her collages.
Often across an intricately executed background in pencil
or paint, jagged glossy cut outs bring texture and colour, as
well as ambiguous menace. It is work crafted as delicately
and crudely as folk art, springing from an awareness of that
tradition and many others, with a rawly expressive personal
voice. It calls to mind, in feel and intent if not medium, Joseph
Beuys’ assemblages, primitively symbolic, with tactile
overtones of personal history.
As well as collage, her artistic practice encompasses
chapbooks, poetry, essays, photography, film and painting.
Carrie holds a BA in Philosophy from Columbia University,
New York, and an MA in Poetic Practice from Royal Holloway,
University of London.
Monument for Finland /
Piece for a Frozen Lake
During my time at Arteles I started to explore the ways in
which my creative practice might expand to encompass
larger scale spatial works. Monument for Finland has arisen
from my ongoing research into the monument as a generative
site of memory, social narrative and transcendence. This
installation in the forest marks the centenary of Finnish
independence and is reminiscent of a mountain. The
sculpture alludes to Mount Halti on the Finnish-Norwegian
border, whose peak was almost given to Finland by Norway
as a gift. It also has characteristics of a lighthouse.
I enjoyed navigating intersections of my writing and visual arts
practices. This process resulted in many unforeseen things,
including Piece for a Frozen Lake: a gestural performance
and series of photographs and texts.
This was a fruitful and contemplative month. I shed poems like
birch bark, made collages, drawings and sound recordings
and wrote an essay on bees.

Silence Awareness Existence program / MARCH 2017
Kailey Bryan
Canada
www.kaileybryan.ca
About
My work often deals with the tension between the lived
experience of a body, and how that body is interpretated by
others. It considers that psychological “pathologies” may be
unavoidable reactions to physical and social systems built
to subjugate. Often I’m engaging the material culture around
me, finding ways to both perform and subvert objects’ social
meaning. In my video work I am always performing for the
camera, taking a fleeting and unsettling gesture and looping
it ad infinitum. I want the viewer to be seduced by colour,
texture, lighting, sheen, and then puncture that experience.
I want people to sit a space of simultaneous desire and
discomfort. I centralize my own body to foreground my
own accountability in my work; I am always only going to
be coming from a specifically white, not-differently-abled,
queer, feminized, middle-class set of experiences, and this
informs the production of the work. Repetition is perhaps
the unifying feature of my practice; an aesthetic technique
and personal compulsion that magnifies the weight of any
gesture while allowing me to feel control over it at the same
time.
I acknowledge the support of ArstNL, which last year
invested $2.5 million to foster and promote the creation and
enjoyment of the arts for the benefit of all Newfoundlanders
and Labradorians. I am currently working on unceded
Mi’kmaq and Beothuk territory, also referred to as St. John’s,
Newfoundland, Canada.
Diapause / Unfold / Collapse /
Study of the Artists’ Hand
My practice centres on repetition; on the co-existence of
desire and repulsion. These elements persist in the work
created while here; softened, perhaps. The projects exist on
a continuum: photography, drawing, animation, film. A photo
series that makes beauty from discomfort, images that draw
the viewer into the experience of their own skin. Tracing
paper works like clouds, isolating pieces of memory, former
selves, layered into obscurity. A short film about flies who
may or may not be sad, who may or may not know they are
trapped between two panes of glass, who may or may not
be freed by someone in the room; a quiet meditation on the
nature of power.
I came to Arteles directionless. I opted to follow my
impulses as they arose, trusting in the power of productive
play. I came full of nervous questions: is a residency selfindulgent,
or a stunning act of regeneration that subverts the
capitalist paradigm? This question and so many others were
passed around, reinterpreted and massaged in countless
conversations over the dinner table, over couch cushions, on
walks in the woods. And at the end of this month I’ve arrived
at the certainty that caring for ourselves is indeed amongst
the most radical of acts.

Silence Awareness Existence program / FEB 2017
Florencia Aguilera & Magdalena Lanas
Chile / Spain
magdalena.maustudio@gmail.com / florencia@torodgn.com
About
Our personal work has as a common Design base. Florencia
Aguilera as a Mothion Designer and Dancer based in Chile
and Magdalena Lanas as a Graphic and Lightning Designer
as well as a Visual Artist based in Barcelona. Our exploration
in the fields of communication and arts has drawn us to
explore in the Experience Design; our interactivity and
performance as a couple gathers us to make a statement
about the relationship between dance, languages and means
in the media arts, this time from silence.
Wir sind sehr müde. / müde: tired, fatigued.
From this state, ordinary and generalized in our day a day
society, we wanted to generate a self-exile to Finland, where
the silence, and timeless surroundings gives us the state
to create and narrate with no pressures. Through digital
and analog tools, the body, image and sound dialogue in
contrast of noise, performance materializes, where to rumble
has the tacit sense of finding poetry, beauty. To materialize
a honest language that shows our fears from silence. To
search light in our silence. Power the sound in silence. Find
the dialogue in silence. Experiment silence as a co-creation.
A relationship in between. Silence/Light and body/memory
and soul/presence and existence. Give a step to silence as
a language, where the searching act, the walking without a
north transforms itself in our goal.
Di 1. Means two.
VAGAR 2. To have time and space enough to do something.
DI-VAGAR 3. Talk or write without a purpose.
The formula is revealed: two that have the enough time to do
something.​
Maybe somebody will respond:
Performing installation.
From the initial statement “”Wir sind sehr müde”” (we are
fatigued) and facing the silent Finnish landscape, the narrative
axis from which the central idea of ​the piece develops: Diving
on silence as articulator of states of history and hysteria. The
story goes through the contemplation of three daily objects
loaded with neuroses of our own time and a moving body
involved in a composition of sounds and visualities, a fork that
represents hunger and anxiety, an object of female torture
that represents beauty and an element of nature that tries
to remit to the origin. Each object, free of emotional charge,
is contaminated from our experience with our environment,
drowning in reality and obsession for wanting to record every
moment. Is it possible to find poetry after collapse? The path
of this body without identity post-collapse, travels its words,
faces listening and dialogue with a distance that separates
us, 30 cm, an arm of distance with our peers, the world and
ourselves.
During a month of residence the narrative, sonorous and
visual dramaturgy was developed for a performance
installation. The images place the viewer in an emotional state,
through beauty and discomfort. The audience completes
the meanings from their experience with genuine sounds,
enlightenment, stage space and the body in between. We
use everyday elements to unveil their symbolic and narrative
possibilities. The rambling load our work of a visual honesty
that seeks to empathize with the observer.

Silence Awareness Existence program / FEB-MAR 2017
Goyo Kwon
South Korea
www.goyokwon.com
About
By dissecting rituals, objects, architecture and narratives
of private and social mourning, Goyo seeks sustainable
ways of mourning through visual narrative ranging from
video experiments to comics and drawings. In a society
constantly flooded with images of death and bodies in peril,
Goyo believes it is essential to start building platforms that
will enable better understanding of fragility, physicality and
holding on.
From gothic narratives that romanticized grotesque to Wartime
narratives that seek the definition of human condition
between gray zones, and to queer narratives juggling between
exploitation and exposition- the subjects of Goyo’s work is
nurtured through lineages of stories that sought to challenge
possibilities in representations of human experience.
Goyo has received BFA from Rhode Island School of Design,
and was a fully funded member of Royal Drawing School
Residency in Scotland.
[The Lover’s House] - a graphic novel
Written graphic novel script set on Hyunh Thuy Le Anicent
House, often called “The Lover’s House” named after the
novel [L’Amant (The Lover)] written by Marguerite Duras. The
script attempts to reanalyze concept of ‘mad love’,that Duras
extensively explores, through the eyes of a recently bereaved
Korean woman and a Chinese man.
Also worked on storyboards, concept art for the script &
paper moquette of the Hyunh Thuy Le Ancient House.
During the second month I worked with storyboards and
concept art for the novel. Built 3D paper model of the Hyun
Thy Le Ancient House for spatial reference. Experimented
with different approach to mark-making to find consistent
style for full page graphic novel.

Silence Awareness Existence program / FEB-MAR 2017
Amy Bernstein
USA
www.nationale.us/amy-bernstein/
About
Color and shape are powerful manipulators of the way we
think and feel, creating a myriad of associations through the
experience of geography, time, and culture. The use of color
or lack thereof has come to represent quality, sophistication,
sub cultures, and religion. What is the determining factor that
infuses color with its respective connotations? Is it context
or the way in which it is used, combined and contrasted
against itself in certain recipes which determine meaning
and influence? Is this simply the result of cultural habit or
something inherent in the colors themselves?
These questions intrigue me endlessly. I keep countless
color notebooks to remember combinations that pique
discomfort or incite strange pleasures to remember for later
use. My desire is that the composition will exacerbate the
oddity or electricity of the color choice, and that the result
is a designed tension – a random and candid snapshot of an
abstract universe. At times the outcome is joyful, at others
strained.
I struggle with elements of restraint and freedom, the traits
required to be good in the world, to know when to speak,
and when to celebrate silence. I believe these minimal
paintings to be compiled of small moments, to embody
notes on existence. As whole works, they vacillate between
the histories of philosophy, art, and design, searching for the
space in which they will take questions further. They hope
for beauty, but are often simply attempts at depicting the
unexamined.
Infinite Experimentation
My time at Arteles was centered around my painting practice.
I aimed to let the visceral impact and influence of place seep
into the formal constraints of my work in an effort to find
new language. The constraints of painting provide a given
limit within which, poetry and meaning must be found. I see
my work as a provocation, providing the starting point of an
experience. At Arteles, the community of artists as well as
the cultural and visual impact of the landscape of Finland
provided my work with a new and subversive vocabulary that
I believe will be the basis for bodies of work to come.

Silence Awareness Existence program / FEB 2017
Rowan Lear
UK
www.rowanlear.org
About
I believe in a living, breathing politics. I’m interested in
learning how systems operate, how social structures are
formed, and what strategies and spaces are available to
cultural producers to reimagine ideologies of the present.
My practice shapeshifts between writing, research, critique
and organising – though I create images and objects, these
often relate to performances, presentations and periods
of activity that remain largely invisible. Since 2014, I have
dedicated much of my time to running an artist-led festival,
Bristol Biennial.
She killed time
Her wrist was the first sign. The bones stiffened, muscle
mumbled. She wore a bracelet of bright copper, plugging
fresh ions into her mainframe. Then the smallest digits on
each hand would no longer straighten. They turned outwards
slightly, curling like claws. The energy required to extend
those tendons was reallocated to her remaining fingers:
enabling methodical movements across the keyboard or a
productive grip on the writing implement. She computed
that these were not mechanical failures, but gestures
of exceptional efficiency, the logical outcome of a body
becoming ever more effective at work.
And yet she observed as computers around her failed. Their
responses slowed, their calculations became erratic. Their
hardware or their wetware became visibly degraded, often
around the eyes or mouth. Other times, internal failure was
discovered only when they output strings of nonsensical
data. Sometimes they crashed, and sometimes this was
terminal.
One day, she watched snowflakes tumble towards the
earth. She noted their differing speeds and intensities of
movement, their flits and flails, their swerves and surrenders.
That sometimes they repelled each other, and other times
clung together. That they might live short, bright lives or
survive long, cold winters. That their bodies lived in a time of
infinitesimal disorganisation.
She paused, holding her breath, wondering if she too, could
live in that time.

Silence Awareness Existence program / FEB 2017
Amber Harmon
USA
4thharmon@gmail.com
About
I have always been in awe of silence. It is something everyone
has known in some form and yet it can have such vastly
different impacts on individuals. To me, there is no true or
set definition of silence. It is multi-faceted. Silence can heal,
silence can kill, silence can protect and do much harm.
Silence is infinite and yet so easily disturbed. I hope to grow
closer in isolating and understanding the various forms of
silence and use that inspiration to create unspoken words.
Love the Demons, Kill the Darlings.
I came to Arteles with the intention on exploring different
forms of silence and using them as character sources in my
writing. What I discovered, however, is that silence is willful
and the inspiration stemming from it cannot be predetermined
or even taken, but must be received without hesitation.
What I received during my residency were thousands of
words, none planned or at first believed to be relevant. I
worked on two different novels throughout my stay as well
as a daily exercise of repetitions where I would face each
day with a blank page and write sentence over sentence,
condensing paragraphs into one illegible line. Initially an
exercise to silence any unwanted words or plot ideas from
my mind, it evolved into a visualization of my silence. All the
words I will never give voice to, all the demons I could not give
light to- I cast them all on paper and immediately silenced
them. It was an inspiration of discovery and destruction, and
it revealed the truth of the silences I embody each and every
day. Violent, masked, vulnerable, and ruthlessly protected.

Silence Awareness Existence program / FEB 2017
Alasdair Bayne
UK
www.alasdairbayne.com
About
Alasdair is an experienced short film writer, director and
editor. Over the past 6 years he has made a bunch of
independent and funded short dramas and documentaries.
Interested in themes of adolescence, masculinity and social
inequality he strives to create honest, personal work.
Public - feature film screenplay
”Public” is the name of the feature film script that I have
written and developed during my (very productive) month
at Arteles. The film takes a critical look at the British public
school system and it’s relationship to the ‘elite’ of our country.
In my tim here I have also been developed and written a short
film script entitled ‘Konsomatris’; about the sex industry in
Northern Cyprus.

Silence Awareness Existence program / FEB 2017
Britta Albrecht
USA
brittaalbrecht.weebly.com
About
My art draws me to explore the connection between the
physicality of mark-making and anxiety disorders. As I
experience the outdoors, whether in harsh or pleasurable
conditions-- landscapes serve as a catalyst in the discovery
of these connections. Drawing and painting allows my mind
to rest in these moments. I appreciate the company of
nature for similar reasons. Creative mental space provides
a safe, yet vulnerable avenue to express ideas that I cannot
otherwise access fully through words.
Once inside this mindset, I am able to ruminate on more
subconscious elements of my psyche. My own mental
health manifests itself through repetition. I dwell on rows
of the same image, usually trees or lines—the consistency
highlights natural imperfections; failure becomes meditation.
Moreover, it is a space where I can experience solitude in a
meaningful way. Accentuating blank spaces with simple, yet
imperfect images brings to mind the daily struggles of human
kindness and inter-personal connection. Simple ideals are
difficult and mistakes are obvious. Repetition is staying
the course. These visual challenges represent the very real
and tangible challenges of personal connection. My art is a
study in the building of community, a practice I personally
pursuit as well. It is a study of how miscommunication is
both a shackle in the present, but a tool for introspection and
growth in the future.
Finding peace --
but not without strength.
Arriving at Arteles with no plan in mind created an inner panic
that eventually turned into acceptance and then all in all I
arrived at a place of peace. I was able to create a space for
myself where I could tune into the tiniest of details. Instead
of pushing these pieces of information aside, I was able to
slow down and react (or not) to what my mind and body might
be signaling. I feel that this will be a slow progression into
my work as I continue to reflect on the importance of what it
means to remain present.

Silence Awareness Existence program / FEB 2017
Jean Davis
USA
www.jeanzart.com
About
My work is based largely on the concepts of Emergence
Theory, where to put it very simply, the whole becomes
greater than the sum of its parts.
Place, or environment, interests me – but not simply as
physical location, or the subject of a landscape or cityscape.
I see shapes that bring to mind landscapes or buildings and
rooms as I work, however unplanned their presence may be.
My figurative paintings include elements of abstraction and
lack any truly definitive setting – by intention.
Place is ambiguous, always changing. When place (or
familiarity with it) is removed, paradigms shift. A person’s
immediate environment is defined by his or her perceptions
in both art and life; and perception is strongly influenced by
both the subconscious and the unconscious.
I aim to reveal aspects of my subconscious as I work, by
starting with intention but allowing creativity to subjugate
conscious thought as I progress. By intentionally relinquishing
control over the final outcome I aim to allow an unforeseen
system to present itself.
I am not on a quest to find answers through my art. Rather, I
look to find what is there that is as yet unseen and to give it
physicality.
Perception of Color and Light in a Vastly
Different Environment
I came to the Arteles Residency to explore the difference
a quiet, rural, northern environment would have on my
perception of color, light, and sound. My home is in a normally
bright, sunny environment - California.
My intention was to draw what I saw and to photograph my
surroundings, in day and low-light settings. My work was to
serve as investigation and research for later paintings. My
photographs would be possible reference photos, and would
show differences in colors when the sun is at a different angle
and at different times of day than I am used to in my home
environment. Would this different environment influence my
future use of color when painting?
I began by drawing the trees outside my window, and taking
photos during the day and night. During one of my morning
meditations, and after walks in the forest and around the
countryside, I found myself drawn to images of snowflakes,
mandalas, and recurring symmetries.
I drew from my imagination in charcoal, graphite, and conte,
first based on radial symmetry. My following drawings were
asymmetrical. I allowed my subconscious, rather than a predetermined
goal, to guide my hand. The resulting drawings
are purely in line, with no shading to depict volume or
atmospheric perspective.
These drawings have come home with me, and are the basis
for my new series of abstract paintings. I consider them
blueprints; references for the foundation of finished works
that go beyond the lines in their plans.

Silence Awareness Existence program / FEB 2017
Givan Lötz
South Africa
www.givanlotz.com
About
Multidisciplinary creative practitioner Givan Lötz escapes
definition and can usually be found stretching, subverting
or otherwise beguiling our understanding of the creative
production. He is at once a visual artist and musician who
lives and works in Johannesburg. He holds an honours
degree in Information Design from the University of Pretoria.
In addition to numerous exhibitions, talks and features Lötz
has been included in the ABSA L’Atelier Top 100 in 2012, 2013
and 2014 as well as Design Days Dubai in 2014 and 2015. His
most recent record, MAW, was released to critical acclaim
on Miami-based label Other Electricities.
In his own words:
“I am an artist because I am uncertain, because I am
searching. The moments of obsession involved in my process
of art-making aspires to achieve a mood of catharsis. My
art-objects are results of a philosophical inquiry - critical
thinking about what it means to be human, a way to illuminate
the relationship between the sciences and the arts with a
new perspective on our emergence in the universe. I have
a desire for innovative and dislocating descriptions of life
through a willingness to confront it in all its contradiction and
complexity.”
Origin and Limit + Pulse
My residency work engaged two loosely related projects
intermittently. One focused on visuals in a studio setup, the
other on sound in a field environment.
The first, Origin and Limit, explored ecstatic landscape
depictions employing dendritic mono-printing and charcoal
mark-making on paper in surprising combinations. Swearing
off the traditional picturesque models of landscape portrayal,
the resultant visual shorthand presents a compression of a
mental image to a narrow compositional window, hinting at
an expanse beyond the bounds of the work, looming closer
in its abstraction and describing a nature no longer familiar.
Keeping with the themes of place and memory, Pulse attempts
to transcribe aspects of the Finnish winter landscape to
minimal sound. Recorded in situ, the pieces graft traditional
instruments such as kantele, drum and horn onto an African
internal logic. The collection of short pieces can be listened
to here: https://givanlotz.bandcamp.com/album/pulse

Silence Awareness Existence program / JAN 2017
Ariel Ruvinsky
USA
ariel-ruvinsky-fibers.squarespace.com
About
My work explores the relationships between costume and
couture, fashion and style. Drawing from the realms of
surface and textile design, hermits and performative living,
my practice is influenced by the signifiers of dress and the
sociological implications of fabric and fiber processes. I
focus on uniforms and the ascetic practices of nuns, witches,
Santa Claus, and clowns and their meaning in contemporary
culture. My work deals with how the form and function of the
garment acts as an external architecture and are in service
to an internal framework or modus operandi for the wearer. I
often think about how the intersections of vernacular street
style and monasticism have informed haute couture and
contemporary fashion. Where are there new opportunities for
this type of occupational costume and couture to overlap?
How can shape and the voluminousness of fabric lend
itself to alternative realities? Using the narrative qualities
and capabilities of garments, I stitch together ideas of
ornamentation and the decisions of the designer into its own
hermetic story and world. Operating as both a collector and
bricoleur of techniques, I use gun-tufting, chain-stitching,
crochet, knitting, dyeing, and pattern making to create my
body of work. An MFA graduate of the Fiber department at
the Cranbrook Academy of Art, and an artist in residence
with the Talking Dolls collective in Detroit as well as The
Hollows in Brooklyn, I have been committed to researching
the narrative properties of garments in both field and studio
since 2008.
Cold Blooded (Video Stills)
I made hooded garments using two-way sequined fabrics
that would give the effect of a second-skin; human creatures
in the environment acting in tandem. Collaborating with
Marisol, a fellow resident, we chose to use the landscape of
Nancy Holt’s Up and Under, to perform slow movements and
investigate the space through costume and movement.

Silence Awareness Existence program / JAN 2017
Mary MacGregor-Reid
New Zealand
www.marymacgregor-reid.com
About
Over the last two years I have been exploring otherworldly
spaces in the context of performance and the performative,
building a cosmology through the linking of objects and
ideas, a cultivated web of interrelationships. My method of
working has been flexible; spanning object, live performance
and video, but always with a focus on the performative.
Ritual as performance seemed an appropriate space to
interact with the otherworldy, while also allowing the work
to quite naturally manifest across a range of media. Working
with the performative – particularly recorded performance
- I have discovered a method that allows for the sublime,
the unnerving and the amusing to exist side by side in a
contemporary art context.
This year I intend continuing to explore and deepen my
understanding of human experience of the otherworldly,
particularly the place of this experience in contemporary life.
Ataraxia
Time moves slowly and silently out in the countryside in the
middle of the Finnish winter. Long nights, short days and the
sun low on the horizon create an environment very different
to the one back home in NZ. I decided to explore time and
duration in the context of a silent ordeal. I would invite my
fellow artist’s to participate by enduring the slow melt of
ice against their skin and to experience the thoughts and
feelings this awakens.
I was informed by the old Finnish story of the Sielulintu, or
soul bird, who visits the human body at birth and death. I
gave the participants the chance to experience the cold of
the bird melting into their skin on an area of their choice;
perhaps where they felt they might experience the passage
of their soul. The pain of the bird against their skin stretches
time while it is being endured, but is a fleeting moment that
quickly fades.
I discovered that the constraints of shooting the videos at
Arteles actually created some unexpectedly interesting
results. For example, I found it necessary to use natural light
which created variations as the clouds shifted and the light
changed. This gave an added dimension to the durational
experience that I would not have discovered if I had been
shooting in a studio with artificial light.
My intention is to continue working with the project to
create a multi-channel video installation with accompanying
soundtrack.

Silence Awareness Existence program / DEC 2016 - JAN 2017
Marisa Finos
USA
www.marisarfinos.com
About
Clay is bodily - it is skin, flesh, and bone. It bruises, bends,
and breaks. It is incredibly vulnerable, yet resilient and
strong. Working with this material allows me to explore the
fragility of the body as it transforms through both life and
death.
My work focuses on the connection between the human body
as vessel and it’s relationship to the clay vessel. I explore
this notion by creating large-scale, site-specific vessels for
myself to inhabit. I build each vessel coil by coil, constantly
considering the form in connection to the parameters of my
body as I slowly enclose myself inside. The clay becomes an
extension of my body, as it responds to every pinch, push,
and pull. I occupy the vessel for hours at a time, focusing
on my perceptions in solitude and darkness. They become
transient and transformative spaces, functioning as portals
or tools to navigate through my own consciousness. Upon
the completion of my experience inside, I destroy the vessel
and reclaim the material, giving it another life and purpose.
It is my intention that my work serve as a platform to start
a larger conversation about the body, mortality, death,
the afterlife, and how these subjects are addressed in
contemporary culture.
’ THAW ’
‘Thaw’ is a site-specific durational performance exploring
numbness, bodily preservation, and disembodiment. Over
an eight-day period, I attempted to leave an imprint of my
body onto a snow covered frozen pool of water, using only my
body heat. Each day I laid down in the same spot, constantly
changing positions to melt as much snow and ice as I could.
These performances ranged anywhere from 5 to 15 minutes,
depending on the outside temperature and how quickly I lost
feeling in my body. The snow and ice not only recorded my
gestures and physical presence, but resulted in an exchange
that altered me as well. As I endured the cold temperatures
and the discomfort of going numb, I became hyper aware of
my body yet I could no longer feel myself.

Silence Awareness Existence program / JAN 2017
Williamson Brasfield
USA
www.williamsonbrasfield.com
About
Williamson Brasfield (b.1983, Palo Alto) received his MFA
from Yale School of Art, and his BFA from Penn State
University. Working in painting, photography, and installation,
his work has been included in the Nicaraguan Biennial of
Contemporary Art, Come Together: Surviving Sandy, and
most recently at Beverly’s, Bomb Popup, and Spaceheater
Gallery in NYC.
He lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
Reciprocity Studies
These photographs balance the acts of being seen, being
captured and being present. Rather than attempt to impose
stillness, they rely on the stillness of the camera itself, as
the sitter moves more or less naturally over the course of a
several minute exposure.
Reciprocity failure, a phenomena unique to analog
photography in which the film becomes progressively less
responsive to light over the duration of an exposure, is barely
noticeable in regular applications, but in long exposures, the
initial events will register more distinctly than events which
have occurred later.
Outside of photography, the word also has resonance, the
use of reciprocity to describe exchange or equality between
people. Reversing what is normally asked of a photograph,
these pieces concentrated on registering the sitter’s
individuality as a durational accruance of presence.

Silence Awareness Existence program / JAN 2017
Adrian Gouet
Chile
adriangouet.wixsite.com/adriangouet
About
My work explores the influence of the mass media on the
practice of painting, focusing on how the relationships between
tragedy and spectacle determine their modes of production.
In this context, my interest is in re-elaborating pictorially
the media imagery with which we live daily, and particularly
where terror and fascination can be confused continuously.
But far from any emotional charge, this re-elaboration uses
an aseptic pictorial treatment, depersonalized and distanced
from any comment or moral opinion. The emphasis, however,
is on the strictly formal description of all kinds of explosions,
energetic discharges, eruptions, sublimations, vertigos, falls,
suspensions, precipitations, disintegrations, deformations,
fusions and confusions of all states of matter. Physics in
its limit moments then leads to the limits of the pictorial
language that describes it.
La ruta del ácido (The acid path)
My residency period was focused on developing different
methodologies of relating a definite set of images, which
compose the iconographic repertoire with which I have
worked throughout my career as a painter in the last
seven years. For that, I used Tarot cards as a support for
projections, investigating their archetypal potential and their
ability to produce new visual and conceptual connections
within this set of images. The main goal of this process was
to achieve a greater awareness of the power and richness of
language and thus open up a new field of possibilities for my
pictorial work.

Silence Awareness Existence program / JAN 2017
Marissa Stoffer
UK
www.marissastoffer.com
About
It has long been acknowledged that vision itself has a
history. Painting is an act that reveals these historical
conditioned visual strata. It is a process of re-imagining and
re-making, and it requires an ever present consciousness of
its past. Each painting can be said to contain the memory
of painting and, and to quote Maurice Merleay-Ponty... “”If
no painting completes painting, still, each creation changes,
alters, clarifies, deepens, confirms, exalts, re-creates by
anticipation all the others”.
Thus through the process of looking, making, analysing,
correcting and refining I have formed my own visual language.
I am interested in the combination of paint and ready made
images or pre-existing works as a starting point which then
finds meaning through the juxtaposition of objects, shapes,
textures, and colour.
Through the process of playful destruction and re-generation
my work explores many peculiarities of history, mythology,
and beliefs, resulting in the creation of surreal, dystopian
places. Drawing my material from a wide variety of sources,
personalising the over abundance of available images I can
continue to convey meaning in a fractured world in which the
real and the virtual are increasingly confused.
Where the Shadows are Deep
Living in this winter landscape I felt compelled to work with
wood as a material through the synergy of the abstract and
the figurative, the symbolic and the merely formal. Alteration,
removal, and addition are at the centre of my work. Through
mischievous play I found myself transforming the natural into
something unnatural giving it another life.
I would like to thank Creative Scotland for all their support.

Silence Awareness Existence program / JAN 2017
Ellery Royston
USA
www.elleryroyston.com
About
I am a composer and sound artist. I perform on harp and
keyboard, usually augmented by electronics, and have
performed extensively as an improviser and in noise projects.
Over the last few years, I have developed an interest in using
scientific data about the real word, ideally real-time, in multichannel
sound installation as a way of exploring ecological and
social systems. Recently, I have created installations using
live geomagnetic data, historical data about civilizations over
time, and weather data about tides, for example. Humanity is
in the middle of many existential threats in the form of climate
change, mass species extinctions and ecosystem collapse,
all stemming from a disconnect with our place as a part of
a complex ecological system. I believe that because sound
has such an emotional resonance, it can help us understand
in an affective way these larger systems. I aim with my work
to create soundscapes that allow people to have an intimate
experience while at the same time feeling connected to the
world around them.
Metamorphism, music for Disembodied
At Arteles, I began work on a new sound installation piece.
In coming here, I was interested in considering the way the
residency theme of silence could play a role in my sound
work. During walks I began to notice the impossibility of
interacting with the ephemeral, snowy landscape without
in some way altering or destroying it. As my sound work
often deals with constructing environments, I worked on an
interactive piece that would reward stillness and silence from
the listener. A web camera was installed to track motion in
various parts of the room, and used to destructively alter
a 4-channel soundscape created from time-stretched and
processed samples from a small kantele, a traditional Finnish
instrument.
I also had the opportunity to collaborate with Marisol Cal
Y Mayor on the music for her piece “Disembodied”. We
collaborated on 15 minutes of ritualistic and minimal sound to
accompany her performance, created entirely from samples
of a toy piano.

Photo: Willamson Brasfield

Silence Awareness Existence program / JAN 2017
Elizabeth Liang
USA
elizabethliang@alum.calarts.edu
About
I am interested in the presence of consciousness and the
relationships between living forms. I am especially interested
in the relationship between man-made objects and nature
and the seemingly never-ending struggles and controversies
we face when dealing with the nature and validity of God.
Momentum
I came here mainly in pre-production mode for my thesis film,
which entailed a lot of research and writing, but I also worked
on a few collaborations with other residents of Arteles. I also
made a short landscape video, entitled, “”Momentum.”” The
focal point of the minimalist, monochromatic environment
is the horizon line, which I manipulated through camera
movements to highlight the psychological effects of our
desire for satisfaction.

Silence Awareness Existence program / JAN 2017
Zoey Hart
USA
zoeyahart.wordpress.com
About
Zoey Hart is a Brooklyn-based visual artist practicing (and
teaching) print-based collage, meditative drawing, social
practice and site-specific collaboration. Hart’s visual work
explores the aesthetics of organic imperfection through
the collection of mindfulness-based images and found
environmental materials.
Inspired by the unfolding adventures of a rare chronic
autoimmune condition, (and the consequently extensive
medical imaging produced during the diagnostic process),
Hart’s current project, In Honor of Imperfection, seeks to
merge internal and external realities through the depiction
and distortion of biological and environmental landscapes.
Previous iterations of Hart’s medically inspired series have
been shown at Flux Factory, World Money Gallery, Bushwick
Open Studios and online with Lady Art NYC and Eyelet
Collective. During her time at Arteles, Hart plans to realize
the next phase of her project (and health): rejuvenation.
Hart has spent the past five years creating, collaborating and
exhibiting work in and around Brooklyn and the surrounding
boroughs of New York. Formerly, Hart lived, taught and
collaborated in Northern Thailand, and the UK while
completing an MA in studio printmaking and international art
education from NYU, Gallatin (2015), and her undergraduate
degrees at Brandeis University and Glasgow School of Art.
In addition to her own studio practice, Hart is the founder of
SEE FEEL CREATE, a series of international art workshops
and collaborations.
In Honor of Imperfection
Chapter III: Empathy Channels
As a hybrid performance piece and drawing collaboration,
Empathy Channels has evolved into a creative experiment
in response to disability, chronic illness, and the indelible
marks left by diagnosis and treatment procedures.
Testing the potential of drawn line to enliven, heal and
re-animate the body, Empathy channels invited six of my
fellow residents to participate in bodytrace- a performative
interaction during which each participant used charcoal paste
to trace the natural path of his/her gaze across the marks,
scars and other unexpected moments of bodily terrain. By
angling the participants’ focus towards compassionate
understanding, each bodytrace challenged anticipated bias,
voyeuristic authority and recoil from the unexpected.
The documentation of each participant’s visual path became
an opportunity to re-animate the body through diverse
narrative and new interpretation. After each undocumented
performance, the lines were traced and interwoven,
illuminating a compassionate account of illness, healing, and
rejuvenation.

Silence Awareness Existence program / JAN 2017
Francisco Rigozzi
Argentina
www.franciscorigozzi.com
About
My name is Francisco and I am currently working on a project
called Gemini.
“Gemini” is an intelligible but-not-formal project which
encompasses the production of several works which are
able to remain autonomous but in dialogue with each other.
The project focuses on the expansion of the photographic
medium by means of painting, gesture and intervention.
It takes notice of the tension between presentation/
representation. It also deals with materiality and how things
incarnate; how they come into being.
The Smile From Saturn
My main concern during Arteles residency was to
further develop the foundational theoretical aspects of
Transmodernism in relationship to my practice, mainly
Photography; Taking into account Postmodern critique
and queer theory and with them making a comeback into
Modernism, I thought and worked towards the invisible, what
has been forgotten, what’s been buried so much in time that
has lost its meaning but may still come forward and speak
the questions that we are so willing to answer. I reached
many discouraging conclusions, but in the end, I asked what
was urgently missing: an exit. But in what screen may this
exit lay? In the one that we are missing, obviously.
Many are the centuries and Saturn –which has seen them all–
smiles, and stares silently.

Silence Awareness Existence program / JAN 2017
Marisol Cal y Mayor
Mexico
marisolcym.wixsite.com/marisolcym
About
Dancer, performer and choreographer.
I use the body as an instrument to create images, to express
emotions or symbols, to perturb and to arouse.
Sometimes narrative, sometimes sensorial, my aim is to
provoke a gut reaction in the audience.
I teach the infinite wisdom that is enclosed inside the body
and express, with a blend of different languages, the power
within us all. This power represented in all life’s duality.
Lately, I have been letting rotten emotions inside me die, in
order to re gain force and let the rebirth take place.
Disembodied (performance)
God is the continuous of the sacred from the inanimate to
the human. What is left of any substance is its sacredness.
Therefore, God is disembodied.
This solo piece is based in a beautiful gnostic text, Trimorphic
Protennoia. It this piece deals with the divine and ritual until it
reaches humanity. It approaches the relationship of duality.
It is a ritual concerned with the untamed and the divine, the
profane and the holy, masculinity and femininity, human and
animal.
This piece was in collaboration with the sound artist Ellery
Royston.

RESIDENTS + PROJECTS
2016 - 2015

RESIDENTS 2016
ARTELES CREATIVE RESIDENCY PROGRAM
June - October
Argentina
Australia
Brazil
Canada
France
Hong Kong
Japan
MARIA SANTI // Painting, installation, land art
SARAH CLARKE // Writing, devising
ELIZABETH ALLEN // Writing
VILMA BADER // Visual arts
TAHLEE ROUILLON // Music
RHYS JAMES // Film, Theatre, Photography
SKYLAR DELPHINUS // Dance, choreography
CY GORMAN // AudioVisual, Relational, Mixed Reality
LUANA DEMANGE // Contemporary Art
SAMUEL RODRIGUES // Painting
MARIANA LEAL // Painting, Drawing, Photo-object
KOUROSH GHAMSARI-ESFAHANI // Composition, music
RACHAEL MCARTHUR // Photography
ANGELA GLANZMANN // Installation, Media, Performance
SARA CAMPO // Image, painting, drawing
MAIA FLORE // Photography, video, installation
NAOMI CHAN // Interactivity, digital art, critical theory
YUKO NISHIGAKI // Illustration
MIHO YOSHIDA // Painting
AKIKO KEIRA // Drawing, Installation
ASUKA NIRASAWA // Painting, Collage, Installation
UK
CLAIRE BURNETT // Photography, installation
IAN BROWN // Contemporary Art
USA
ADAM WILSON // Writer
KATHY MOSS // Drawing, painting
SARAH RAPP // Design, technology, screenwriting
CANNEO CANUL // Visual Arts, painting
KELSEY MCDONOUGH // Painting, Drawing
ROSEMARY FEIT COVEY // Experimental print and installation
ZACK JOHN LEE // Audio, visual, spatial
JUDY SUH // Filmmaking, video, installation
KATHERINE RONDINA // Photography, bookmaking, installation
LOREAL PRYSTAJ // Photography, moving images, performance
ELIZABETH CLAIRE ALBERTS // Creative writing, radio arts
ALLISON BAKER // Sculpture, video, installation
DANIELLE RANTE // Drawing, Mixed media, Printmaking
ROBERT BEAM // Photography, Drawing, Installation
CAROLINE MCCAUGHEY // Writing, Film
JAZMYNE M. K. GEIS // Performative storytelling, Visual arts
KEVIN MACK // Painting, collage
SIDONY O’NEAL // Text, Performance, Multimedia
BROOKS DIERDORFF // Photography, Sculpture, Video
NICHOLAS KOVATCH // Installation, Sculpture
Mexico
South Africa
South Korea
Spain
Sweden
SISSY REYES // Video, photography
PAUL LOZANO // Painting, installation
NATALIE FIELD // Photography, digital-Manipulation
NICCI OLIVIER // Printmaking, painting, installation
SUNG EUN CHIN // Video, installation, art writing
SONIA TONEU // Painting, photography
HELENA OLSSON // Performance, video

SILENCE . AWARENESS . EXISTENCE - Theme program
January, February & November, December
NEO FUTURE - Theme program
March, April,May
Australia
CISSI TSANG // Cross-disciplinary, audio, visual
LIAM CROWLEY // Video, Sound, Sculpture
LAUREN GUYMER // Drawing, visual Art
FRANKIE CHOW // Video, Performance
HONI RYAN // Nomadic social practice
ELLIS HUTCH // Installation, sound, drawing
LUKE ALEKSANDROW // Ceramics, video, sound installation
ANNIKA HARDING // Painting, video, sound
ROBERT FULLER // Sound
Belgium
Canada
Chile
Denmark
VERO VANDEGH // Drawing, aquatint
BRANDON A. DALMER // Painting, Video, Installation
DANI MINUSKIN // Photography, installation
PIERRE LEBLANC // Time, sound, motion
JUANA SUBERCASEAUX // Painting
DITTE RASMUSSEN // Writing, embroidery
JEPPE ANDERSEN // Photography, sound
Australia
Iceland
Malaysia
Mexico
Netherlands
Puerto Rico
CHARLIE DONALDSON // Collage, Painting, Post-internet
TYLER VIPOND // 2D, 3D, Digital
PAUL HESLIN // “music”
SUTU // Digital art, Motion Comics
CHYNNA CAMPBELL // Film, Nail art, Design
ANDY THOMAS // Film, Digital art
EVA DAVIDOVA // New media, Performance, Photography
ALISON TAYLOR // Video, Sound, Words
SABINE LEBEL // Video, Sound, Words
ÓLÖF BENEDIKTSDÓTTIR // Visual art, poetry
CHOR GUAN NG // Creator, Music composer, Noise maker
JESÚS JIMÉNEZ // Photography, video, installation
ANNA HOETJES // Film, Performance, Installation
SOFÍA CÓRDOVA // Video, Installation, Performance
Ireland
AINE KELLY // Photography, sculpture, performance
SAM BACHY // Painting, installation, sculpture
Spain
SARAH RASINES // Sound Art & Visuals
ALBERTO MEHER // Sound Art & Visuals
Japan
South Korea
Pakistan
Poland
Spain
Sweden
Taiwan
Turkey
UK
RIEKO TSUJI // Photography, video, sculpture
ALINA ZHDANOVA // Video Art, Graphic Design
BYUNGWOOK JANG // Theatre, video
ABI TARIQ // Performing language as consciousness
BEATA KOZLOWSKA // Drawing, installation, painting
DAVID MORATON // Videoart, Painting, Video-mapping
LINA BERGLUND // Painting, installation
HSIU PING LIN // Metalwork, Large scale installation
DAMLA YILMAZ // Photography, text, installation
TAMSIN RELLY // Painting, Printmaking, Drawing
AIDEN ATKIN // Video, Photography, Sound
UK
USA
KATHERINE ANNE BRADLEY // Film, Sound, Photography
EMMA CHARLES // Photography, film, sound
OMSK SOCIAL CLUB FEAT.PUNK IS DADA // Visual arts
NICOLE KILLIAN // Design, Video, Writing
CHRISTOPHER ALLMAN // Sculpture, Costumes, Performance
SID BRANCA // Video, Sound, Performance
SELDEN PATERSON // New media, web, video
HOLLY CHERNOBYL // Performance, Video, Sound art
SADIE WEIS // Installation, Painting, Sculpture
SARA GOODMAN // Performance, Video, Sound art
GABE MICHAEL KENNEY // Installation, performance, print
RYAN KUO // Computer, writing, photography
ELENA BRUNNER // Drawing, Painting
USA
CYNTHIA HUNTINGTON // Poetry
HANNAH SECORD WADE // Painting, photography, installation
KATE ROBINSON // Creative writing, photography
NATHANIEL OBER // Sound art, video installation
MARISA FINOS // Sculpture, Performance
IRFAN AHMED // Creative writing, Photography
LEAH BEEFERMAN // Digital prints, Video, Sound
DEREK G. LARSON // Animation, Video, New media
HAI-HSIN HUANG // Painting, Drawing
GENEVA SKEEN // Sound, music
ALISE SPINELLA // Painting, drawing, performance
BETSY WEIS // Photography, digital, nature
RICHIE DEMARIA // Writing, music, photography
SUMMER MCCORKLE // Video, photography, installation
ALEXANDRA NEUMAN // Performance, installation, mixed media
ALEX CROW // Energy, movement, performance

RESIDENTS 2015
Arteles Creative Residency Program, March - September
Argentina
TALI SERRUYA // Performance art
ALEJANDRA URRESTI // Architecture, drawing, video/film
DELFINA MOORE // Painting, drawing, installation
VERÓNICA GÓMEZ // Drawing, installation, painting
Mexico
Netherlands
KAREN PERRY RIOJA // Sculpture, installation
CÉLINE TALENS // Performance, video, installation
Australia
HELEN THURLOE // Poetry, writing
SAMUEL JAMES // Video, animation, drawing
ELEANOR JACKSON // Writing, performance
NAOMI BISHOP // Painting and works on paper
KAYA BARRY // Installation, net-art
GEORGIA DE BIASI // Textiles, video, performance
ANNA SOLDING // Literature
EVIE CAHIR // Fine Art
MERRYL CUSTERS // Painting, drawing
MORGAN PETTERSSON // Literature, Cabaret/Performance
HANNAH MONSON // Acting, theatre-making, visual Art
LUCIE STEVENS // Writing
Poland MARIA OLBRYCHTOWICZ // Sound, video, installation
EMILIA MARYNIAK // Painting, installation
South Africa SWAIN HOOGERVORST // Painting, photography
South Korea
SOJIN LIM // Painting, photography
Sweden SUSANNE LUND PANGRAZIO // Painting, drawing, books
Taiwan
LING-YA SU // Painting, illustration, handicraft
Turkey
MERVE MORKOC // Painting, sculpture
Austria
LAURA SKOCEK // Installation, video art
UK
KIRSTY LOGAN // Literature
LAURA SPRING // Printed textiles
Belgium
KATINKA DE JONGE // Performance, video, installation
CATHÉRINE CLAEYÉ // Painting, installations in situ
MARY WALTERS // Drawing, print-making, video
HANA-MAI HAWKINS // Video, sound, digital media
MARIJKE AERTS // painting, drawing, in situ
EMILIA WHARFE // Writer, illustrator
Brazil PATRICIA BÁRBARA // Live art, Cinema, Contemporary dance
Canada
BRADY SIMPSON // Photography, painting, music
JEANETTE JOHNS // Drawing, printmaking, collage
EMILY MCMEHEN // Film, video, textiles
MATTHEW CARSWELL // Performance, installation, A/V
NATALIE WILLOW BOTERMAN // Intermedia
France
FELIX DUMERIL // Contemporary dance
PHILIPPE BEER GABEL // Music, video, photography
Germany
NATALIE BÖHRER // Painting
India
VISAKH MENON // Drawing, installation, video
Japan
SHINOBU TERADA // Installation, photography
MISATO INOUE // Contemporary dance
USA MARY ELIZABETH YARBROUGH // Multi-media installation
ELIZABETH WITHSTANDLEY // Photography, video, installation
ADAM NEESE // Photography, video
ELIZABETH MEANEY // Fiction, poetry
CECILIA CHARLTON // Painting
JASON PEARSON // Visual arts
JESSE PEARSON // Visual arts
BART RAWLINSON // Poetry & Fiction
ATIF AKIN // Media, photography, graphics
STEPHANIE PAINE // Photography
EMMA FINEMAN // Painting, photography
MEGAN SOLIS // Painting, projection, animation
MITCH PASTER // Lens based media
JESSICA S. FRANK // Poetry
AHMET CIVELEK // Painting, video, mixed medium
Kosovo
LENDITA XHEMAJLI // Sculpture, Installation, Drawing

SILENCE . AWARENESS . EXISTENCE - Theme program
January, February and December
ENTER TEXT - Theme program
October and November
Australia
Canada
Chile
Colombia
ELLIS HUTCH // Installation, sound, drawing
KATHERINE FRIES // Installation, sculpture, ephemeral
TAHLEE ROUILLON // Music
MICHAEL TERREN // Sound, music, environmental art
AMANDA MARCHAND // Photography, writing
CONSTANZA GAZMURI LYON // Photography, video
CARLOS OROZCO // Photography, video, collage
Australia
JANE SKELTON // Short fiction, novels, poetry
MYFANWY MCDONALD // Fiction writing
ISABELLE LI // Writing, translation
JESSICA MILLER // Children’s literature
GARRY MCDOUGALL // Writing, photography, painting
Belgium
NIELS POIZ // Video, installation, bookmaking
Canada JULIA MARTIN // Photography, writing, installation
PALLAVI THAMPI // Graphic design, typography & publication
Denmark
MARTIN KURT HAGLUND // Photography, writing
IDA MARIE SETTERGREN // Painting, graphics, drawing
LOUISE BØGELUND SAUGMANN // Photography
Germany
SANDRA BEER // Illustration, drawing, mixed Media
PIA ZÖLZER // Illustration, drawing, mixed Media
SSMIDD // Multipurpose artist
Hong Kong
JULVIAN HO // Drawing, painting, installation
Mexico
MAURICIO RODRIGUEZ // Sound, composition
JACOBO ALONSO // Painting, installation, video
New Zealand
CAROLINE ANDERSON // Writing, drawing, gifting
BETH SOMETIMES // Installation, socially engaged art, drawing
Sweden
TINA WILLGREN // Video
UK
IMI MAUFE // Printmaking, book arts, interactions
FREYA DOOLEY // Writing, sound, visual arts
USA
AMANDA DELTUVIA // Writing, acting, painting
TIMOTHY MCCOOL // Painting, drawing, sculpture
GINNA WILKERSON // Poetry, digital photography, mixed media
ILYN WONG // Mixed-media, installation
ALLISON WADE // Painting, photography, sound installation
SCOTT NORTHRUP // Video, sculpture, photography
ERICA MENA // Poetry
KATHY MCTAVISH // Composition, new media, installation
SHEILA PACKA // Writing
UK
SIMONE SMITH // Film, theatre, visual art
SHAUN STAMP // Objects, photography
USA
LIA MIN // Neuroscience, installation, sculpture
JOHEE KIM // Mixed media, installation, video
MARY INCE // Drawing, photography, video
ROBERT FALCONE // Sound and image
LORETTA MAE HIRSCH // Painting, drawing
ANTONIA KUO // Painting, photography, film
ANGIE KUNNOE // Photography
WILL HARRIS // Photography
GRACE PETERS // Music, Film, Photography
ANASTAZIA LOUISE ARANAGA // Performance, fabric, installation

IN THE RESIDENCY
Silence Awareness Existence Program, December 2016
“Open mind to whatever comes to my
creations, always with grateful heart.”
HSIU PING LIN
Taiwan
leilalin0709@gmail.com // leilalin0709.wixsite.com/mywombmymotherearth
Past few years, I have put my attention to the topics that are
related to women, female bodies and the relationship to the
mother earth. In 2014 we started a project called “ My Womb,
My Mother Earth – Uterus Painting”. Nearly two year, we have
hosted over 15 Uterus Painting workshops in Taiwan, Hong Kong,
northern Thailand border, Nepal, South India and other places,
thus collected all kinds of stories about people’s experiences
in life and related to womb. based on those uterus drawings, I
started to curating exhibitions, meanwhile continue working on
my handmade Jewelry brand, I work with precious metal, all kind
of hardwood (sandalwood), mainly do customized Jewelry.
BONTE Handmade Jewelry | Designer, Creator, owner Visual
Design of Dhartimata Sustainable workshop My Womb, My Mother
Earth Art Project| Exhibition curator / project initiator / creator

” I AM” PROJECT
“I am” Project : During my stay in Arteles, I kept telling myself “try
not to do anything” just let the ideas come to me, and follow the
flow, slowly I began to trust my intuition, I imaging an old ancient
object which can connect the sky and the mother earth, in the
end I made this mysterious object, the point of triangle is to link
the universe, and all the red wool strings, they are like the roots
to grow endless on the soil, also a symbol of blood. “I” means
masculine side , “am” means the feminine side , like the balance
of ying and yang.
Material: branches, wires, wool
Size: Triangle 60cm x 60cm

IN THE RESIDENCY
Silence Awareness Existence Program, December 2016
“Expession of Memorization”
ALINA ZHDANOVA
Japan
zh@aszt.info // www.aszt.info/ZAlina
Born in 1992, Moscow Russia, then I and my family moved to Japan
when I was 1 year old. Now I work as a freelance Video Artist
and Graphic Designer in Japan. Graduated at Kyoto University
of Art and Design, Information Design Department in 2015. The
biggest award I got is The Grand prize of the second CAF Prize,
Tokyo Japan. My graduation work “Favoritka” was shown in
Hiroshima animation festival and other places, and this work was
collected at ARGOS Center of Art and Media, Brussels Belgium.
My works explore the experience and memorization that based
on differences of the environment that I was born and I grew
up. When I’m shooting an animated film using stop motion, I’m
trying to record each moment. When making video, I usually use
ready-made music, but sometimes I effectively use human voice
or breath sound, environmental sound that can be heard from
outside. In this residency I would like to record various sounds
and to experiment with video work. I’m interested in the theme of
this residence, that is “silence”. I believe the experience of deep
silence air of Finland helps my work to get to the upper level.

SILENCE OF FLOWING THINGS
The theme of my staying in this residency was ‘Flowing’. I
collected human voices and I made some videos of what I felt and
of what was connected with everything and everybody. I started
to make a short animation, the title is ‘Silences’. It started with
people saying together ‘Silence.’ I asked people to express their
own thoughts of silence, then I tried to analyze their statements.
And I synthesized sounds that I heard in the forest. I’d like to
express the concept of flowing times, flowing things and flowing
connections in these works.
The theme transfers to meanings of emptiness or nothingness,
or relativity quoting Buddhism. It means that everything is just a
concept, we depend on each case and condition.
Loneliness, silence, winter darkness, - and the culture of a
different country - all that helped me to get new ideas.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Silence Awareness Existence Program, December 2016
“ We experience the world through the
filters of perception, the emotions that
consume us, and the memories that have
shaped and haunt us.”
IRFAN AHMED
irfanahm3d@gmail.com
Pakistan
I embark on creative journeys with my pen, and occasionally
with my camera. I love storytelling, which explains my passion
for creating worlds through words. My nostalgia for classical
literature and an inclination towards magic realism influences
my writing style - defining and elaborating worlds through
eloquent prose - while I explore a multitude of concepts ranging
from memories, reality and illusion, existentialism, love, loss,
mortality, coming-of-age, and the effect technology (and potential
new discoveries) will have on our lives in the near future, to name
a few. I hope to move and inspire people through my stories and
instill a thoughtfulness about the world around us and our place
in it.

NABOKOVIAN INDEXES
To liberate myself from writer’s block, which I suffer due to
technology – through procrastination or going into hyper-editing
mode while writing the first draft – I employed a technique that
I call ‘Nabokovian Indexes’. I coined it after the author Vladimir
Nabokov who used to write his stories on index cards.
Writing on paper allowed me to write with more fluidity as I could
focus on the story rather than on making it ‘perfect’ in the first
draft. Being confined to limited dimensions (of the cards) also
allowed me to focus on particular events I wanted to explore in
the story, especially in a non-linear format thus further reducing
the chances of getting inspiration block.
Once I had a significant amount written down I would move my
work to the computer. I used the technique to good use, writing a
few poems, but primarily working on the short story I had intended
to work on. I also did some photography to allow breathing room
for my writing.
The story I worked on aims to create a narrative about Muslims
that counters the general perception in western societies, which
has been shaped primarily by media coverage of conflict-ridden
regions in the world. I want to show how their desires are similar
to others, such as living comfortable lives and in harmony with
their neighbors and community. But I also want to delve into
the difficulties they face living today in western societies. I will
continue working on it after Arteles.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Silence Awareness Existence Program, December 2016
MARÍA JOSÉ CHICA
Colombia
mariajosechicav@gmail.com // cargocollective.com/mariajosechicav
I’m mainly a painter. My work has been moving between figuration
and abstraction following an interest of contemplating my
immediate surroundings and routine.

THE LIVING POSTCARD
I painted a big canvas, I drew, slept, cooked, walked, breathed,
dreamt a lot, took photos, organized, cleaned. I did Sauna a
few times, I knitted a scarf, I ate way too much chocolate, I had
long and interesting conversations, I met artists from different
countries, I watched a lot of movies and documentaries, I came up
with a couple of good ideas for new projects, I saw the landscape
change every day, I walked on a frozen lake for the first time, I
experienced being in front of a campfire while it was snowing, I
saw a big and beautiful halo around the moon...yes, that among
many other amazing things.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Silence Awareness Existence Program, December 2016
LAUREN GUYMER
Australia
laurenguymerart@gmail.com // www.laurenguymer.com
Lauren Guymer is a Melbourne based visual artist with a Bachelor
in Communication Design. Lauren has a sharp eye for detail and
works at length with tiny illustrative dots, lines, and marks,
creating extremely intricate and imaginative landscape drawings
with pen and ink on paper. Lauren’s work expresses her ongoing
fascination and love for nature and travel.
Since beginning her professional career in mid-2015, Lauren has
exhibited in more than 15 group shows and has shown her first
solo exhibition. She has had her work published in both print and
online, and has private collections across Australia and the UK.
Lauren’s primary focus is to continue her artistic development,
having been selected for a second artist residency in Iceland 2017.

TILA
During my stay at Arteles I utilised the time and space to develop
new concepts and to further my artistic practice. When I first
arrived I had no plans or ideas in place, so I was able to create
work as a response to the amazing Finnish forest and countryside
around me. I created numerous landscape drawings and paintings
with pen and ink, watercolour, and gouache. These drawings
were based on imagined ideas, or drawn directly from my studio
desk and during my daily forest walk. I also hand stitched my own
sketch books, and made a terrarium with moss and earth from
the forest.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Silence Awareness Existence Program, December 2016
“ Leah Beeferman is a Brooklyn-based
artist with interests in the digital,
the geological, and the north.”
LEAH BEEFERMAN
USA
leah.beeferman@gmail.com // www.leahbeeferman.com
I take pictures, record, and collect material in landscapes
that interest me: rocky, icy, or salty terrain in, typically, barren
northern or desert places. These landscapes evidence earthly
processes; they are manifestations of physical systems and laws
that determine the visible “real world” we live in. My visual work
and sound work have similar concerns: to create picture planes
or sonic spaces which shift between depth and flatness, confuse
“solids” and “empty” space, juxtapose the natural and the digital,
and hang in a suspended balance just on the line between
stillness and motion.
The finished pieces (c-prints; videos; sound pieces; performancescreenings
incorporating video, text, and sound) refer to the
tangible real world but remain in a place of phenomenal,
subjective experience. At the root of my work is the merging
of this “real” space — from my observations, photographs and
recordings — with an intangible and conceptual one informed by
abstract painting, contemporary physics, and the digital.
The landscapes are crucial to each piece, but they are just one
element within a larger set of concerns. In the work, they become
something more ephemeral and elusive: pictures which layer
gesture and landscape, and natural and digital color, in the flat,
yet vast, expanse of digital space; and sound spaces that suggest
sources immediately up close and real, and impossibly abstract
and far away. The work relies on the specificity its elements
provide, but makes use of it only as a beginning point to anchor an
experience that becomes, ultimately, intuitive and experiential.

LIGHT video still
LIGHT (Excerpt 1-4)
LIGHT MATTER
At Arteles I worked on some new pieces for an upcoming exhibition
at Sorbus, in Helsinki. I made a new video piece (title to come), a
new digital print (also title to come), and a text piece about the
science of light, white, color, and snow. I wanted to think about
perception, small changes, details, light, and environment. The
images are actually from Hyrynsalmi, Finland, but I did a lot of
shooting of images here in Haukijärvi that will end up in some
other future work.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Silence Awareness Existence Program, December 2016
ÁINE KELLY
Ireland
awnyar@gmail.com // cargocollective.com/ainekelly
I’m a recent graduate in Fine Art from the Crawford College of
Art and Design and currently based in Cork, Ireland. My work
examines the nature of photographical representation and what
it’s role plays in today’s image choked world. My practice involves
an investigative approach in order to find new ways to capture an
authentic ‘photograph’. Releasing myself from the camera, I work
directly with light sensitive papers, lens, transparent materials,
and most importantly, light. This photographic process allows me
to present reality in a way that human perception does not permit.

NOVEMBER’S ASHES
During my time I thought a lot about change. Change is often a
dominant thought when I practise meditation. I observe immediate
changes like my breath and more subtle changes I observe in my
emotions, memories and relationships.
I placed snow, ice, and foliage found from the forest onto light
sensitive paper that was exposed by sunlight and lamps. These
exposures ranged from 30 seconds to several days. After the
exposure, the prints were fixed, a photographic chemical that
stops and stablizes the papers reaction to light. Some of these
prints remain unwashed, meaning the photographic chemical is
still in these prints, causing them to deteriorate over the coming
years.
This work reflects on the futility of seizing change and has helped
me in processing the impermanence of all things in life

IN THE RESIDENCY
Silence Awareness Existence Program, December 2016
“ Open mind to whatever comes to my
creations, always with grateful heart. ”
HAI-HSIN HUANG
USA
hhhuang510@gmail.com // www.haihsinhuang.com
Mt works explore images indicative of contemporary life.
Particularly banal everyday life scenes that reveal an ambiguous
atmosphere between humor and horror. Such as ordinary family
photos, tourists at attractions and the routine disaster drills… I
am interested in the ridiculousness, fear, absurdity and loneliness
in society. To me, most aspects of life have the potential to be
ridiculous, absurd, awkward, funny and meaningless all at once.

FINNISH WATER. FINNISH WOODS. FINNISH PEOPLE.
I kept 2 drawing diaries of my Finnish experience. People and
their land.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Silence Awareness Existence Program, November-December 2016
DANI MINUSKIN
Canada
dani.minuskin@gmail.com // www.daniminuskin.com
Within the rhythms of our cyclic nature we encounter the wisdom
of ritual; repeated behaviours that invoke forces far larger than
us. As time unravels itself in circular motions, the accumulation
of generational memory nestles into the crevices of our psyche.
How are we impacted by the experiences of our ancestors? How
does familial history express itself in psychosomatic patterns?
What is our role in a long string of ancestral narratives?
My practice is an expression of our entanglement in this eternal
web. By means of repetitive processes, my work seeks to honour
the vulnerability and resiliency necessary to confront the repetitive
loops of these enduring patterns.

NOVEMBER’S ASHES
My main point of research during my two-month stay at Arteles
was the transmission of memory over generations. While there,
I used my immediate surroundings to embody and preserve
memories that linger in the spaces. I began multiple projects
around this theme: Messages in the Air (a collaboration with
Nathaniel Ober), November’s Ashes, and Kikka. Messages in the
Air was a dialogue of drawing and audio compositions inspired
from the sounds of unsilenced quiet spaces. The final work was a
video installation depicting a performance and spoken word which
took place in the basement of the residency house. November’s
Ashes is a work consisting of about 35 glass bottles filled with the
ashes from each sauna use during November and December. This
work will remain behind the onsite sauna. Kikka is a preservation
of a memory left behind and a work-in-progress. I found Kikka’s
notebook in the attic of the residency house, written in 1981 and
is full of poetry from her teenage years. With help translating it,
I turned her poetry into fading snapshots. Each poem is stamped
onto paper stained with the sauna’s ashes and charcoal and then
coated in honey. Over time, the honey disintegrates the text and
illuminates the ashes.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Silence Awareness Existence Program, November 2016
BRANDON A. DALMER
Canada
brandon.dalmer@gmail.com // www.badalmer.com
Dalmer (b. 1984) is a multimedia video and installation artist, and
occasional curator living in Toronto, ON. He holds a BFA from
the Alberta College of Art and Design, and has participated in
exhibitions and residencies across Canada and internationally.
He has been involved in a number of artist-run organizations and
curatorial projects aimed at the incubation of emerging artists;
such as The New Gallery, The Whitehouse, 811, The Roundtable
Residency and M:ST. As well as being one of the founders of
the 809 Gallery in Calgary. His practice is based within the
scientific method, exploring themes of impermanence, the way
images are made, the relationship humans have with expanding
technology, decaying memory, mortality and the passage of time.
Through research and process based projects, his work aims to
contextualize scientific theory into both multidisciplinary visual
and narrative work.

UNIVERSALIS
My time at Arteles was one of reflection and research. Reading
first about the theoretical repercussions on society after the
advent of Artificial Intelligence. Through interactions with my
fellow residents I became fascinated by the transferring of
information during the extended periods of silence. During my
last few weeks I created a series of wireframe animations synced
to electromagnetic data NASA had sonified. These are intended
as methods of deep listening. Allowing the viewer the opportunity
to drift into a meditative state. In addition to this video work, I
spent a great deal of time creating digital files that I then was able
to produce on my return to Canada.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Silence Awareness Existence Program, November 2016
“Focus on the tiny drama in the world.”
RIEKO TSUJI
Japan
rietsuji10@gmail.com // rietsuji.tumblr.com
Since I studied photography and video during my bachelors, I have
been interested in capturing ephemeral moments.
We need to be aware there is something disappearing. Things
which disappear are not things which are false nor bad. They are
just not recognized.
One of my mission is to find them and keep being handed down to
people who don’t know them.
Therefore, my artwork is mostly based on non-famous narratives
like someone’s personal history and a folk tale of a small town. I
try to make them sharable with the audience by using materials
which do not remain as a solid form, such as sound, smell and
temporary sculpture.

FORD
An artwork is sometimes a recollection of the artist’s past. For
me, it all started with a Ford. I found the American car when I
was walking down the long way to the super market, crashed
and covered with shiny white snow. I started picking up iridescent
pieces of the broken front window, together with rocks and
bunches of chamomile flowers that grew near the car. I took them
home and froze them in ice, as if in an effort to keep the scene alive
in my memory. Here I reflect on my experience in Hämeenkyrö:
while the ice will eventually melt away, as memories are destined
to fade, unforgettable fragments will always remain.It started
from one ford. While I was walking the long way to the super
market, I found that American car had broken and covered with
white shiny snow. So I picked up its iridescent front glass, rocks
and a bunch of chamomiles around the crushed auto to keep in
my memory what I have seen! Artwork is sometimes recollection
of the artist’s past. Here I store my experiences in Hämeenkyrö
with ice, which can be melted as if it was never there.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Silence Awareness Existence Program, November 2016
BYUNGWOOK JANG
South Korea
projecthavoka@gmail.com // www.havoka.com
Byungwook Jang is director of HaVokA Project. HaVokA’ means
‘destructor’ and refers to a project based creative team that
breaks free from previous conventions and strives for novelty
based on creative destruction. It also includes the pioneering
spirit of “shall we try to change the world?” through new formats
and experimental artworks. Once the theme and content to be
expressed through a performance is finalized, after researching
this performance from various perspectives, the performance is
created through actual experiments conducted in their everyday
lives.

SAUNA EXPERIENCE X CUT/INE
Many things are decided by a razor thin margin. Efforts and
investments that are made in the meanwhile are rewarded upon
judgement. We admit difference, but discrimination. Drawing line
is inevitable way of our society is running. I am not you. Humans
are animals with a practical sense of logic, and at very moment
each of us makes optimal decisions to maximize our own senses
of happiness. We draw lines. Goods and services of this world are
limited and finite. To have a desire to be happier than other people
is a fundamental human characteristic and this desire should be
respected.
Finnish sauna is used by both sexes at the same time. We are
undressed in sauna. It seems like a bare skin of Finn culture. It
is precious and private. It is an important part of Finn’s cultural
essence. I did sauna every other day. Dimmed light, sound
of burning logs, and smell of sauna. It was the most relaxed
moment when I was alone in sauna at very late time. One day,
I thought. What if there comes lines and walls at the primitive
place of we are taking the last barrier of ourselves off? When was
the first moment I drew line in our society? I do not remember.
This one-day special sauna is somewhat weird. Some enjoyed this
strange sauna on their own way, some took adventure of taking
clothes off in us for the first time, and some were anxious about
the sauna. Sometimes uneasiness might be an way of confronting
our reality.
Many things are decided by a razor thin margin. Existence
must be expressed not with numbers but with fundamental
characteristics and nature. We should break down walls. We
are surrounded by discouragement, frustration, depression and
hostility by razor thin margins. We tear down walls. We express
our objections. We execute our justified feeling in front of unfair
policies and standards.
What are the criterion? How do cutlines come to be? Wall, line,
distance and gap. How do cutlines come to be? Do you agree with
the standards that have included you to be so? If you happen to
one day be shunned to the ‘OUT’ group, what will you be saying
and thinking at that time? How do our perspectives of the cutlines
differ when looked upon as an ‘IN’ member and as an ‘OUT’
member?

IN THE RESIDENCY
Silence Awareness Existence Program, November 2016
“Human Nature”
JEPPE ANDERSEN
Denmark
jeppeandersen88@hotmail.com // www.jeppeandersen.com
I’m a Danish photographer studying Fine Art Photography on
my third year at Glasgow School of art. I work conceptually
around landscape photography and the interaction with human
interference in the nature. I want my work to talk about human
expansion, industrialization and the neglect of nature; without
being too obviously biased in my imagery.
The majority of my images have a combination of industrialized
behavior and natural elements, sometimes subtle sometimes
obvious, while still having a romantic feel to it: Factories and
silos that look like mountains. Grandiose landscapes ready to
be conquered. Power lines cutting through forests. Natural,
beautiful images that inspire hope, and eerily beautiful images
that despair us.

THE NAKED AESTHETIC OF TREES
I started to work on a series in which I photographed tall, naked
trees. Each image is a collage, existing of up to 10 images each.
By photographing them up close and putting them together, I
separated the trees from their surroundings and made them
stand out - to be experienced and awed. You can really feel their
texture and their majestic stature in this way.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Silence Awareness Existence Program, November 2016
“Emotion art”
VERO VANDEGH
Belgium
vero.vandegh@gmail.com // verovandegh.weebly.com
I’m interested in human being.
My work centres mostly on expressions, emotions, couples, and
other human interactions.
Two of my most recent series of images are “Reversals” and
“Patterns”.
“Reversals” is about the sensation to come back, to look back to
the essentials. It is an attempt to capture the experience of the
point before the movement, before the action, before the choice.
Like a standstill just where the doubt occurs...
“Patterns” is an observation of the repetitions, recurrences,
loops that occur throughout our lifelong experience. I started this
study focussing on nature as the subject with the idea of human
patterns in the background.
I feel like a creation tool that help the pictures to arise, and a
strong desire for deepening and accuracy leads me to the pictures.
It is a research, visually and symbolically, about the shapes,
concepts and patterns that make us what we are.

ICI (HERE)
This November in Arteles, I decided not to anticipate. I wanted to
work on what comes naturally in silence, in meditation, and to be
present in what I feel, hear, and see.
I saw contrasts, inside and outside. Immobility from outside and
movement inside, silence from the nature outside and the voices
in, warm and cold. The changing light. The shape of things on
the white snow.
From there, trees, shrubs, birds, squirrels, walkers... and
meditation inspired a series of 16 pictures. I could called it
“silence,” or “here,” or “now.”
When I look at them, on this 28th of November, I feel the quietness,
the tranquility, and the immobility I received here. It was a good
journey, a beautiful experience. The residency at Arteles was
made possible with the help of Wallonie-Bruxelles international.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Silence Awareness Existence Program, November 2016
DITTE RASMUSSEN
Denmark
dit.rasmussen@gmail.com // www.instagram.com/dittebeskidte
I have a Master in Modern Culture and a Bachelor in Art History
from the University of Copenhagen. I work creatively with writing
about exhibitions and art experiences. I am interested in art’s
accessibility and its potential to challenge certain environments
or positions. I have worked with art in public spaces and as an Art
Educator at the National Gallery of Denmark among others.
As an artist I work with embroidery, primarily as street art but I
have also participated in smaller exhibitions (alias ‘dittebeskidte’).
I like embroidery as artistic expression because it traditionally
was made by women to decorate homes. An obvious contrast
to political statements in the streets. With a simple mode of
expression I often concentrate on political themes as nationality,
ethnicity and gender. My academic and artistic interests interact
in collaboration with each other, because they are about art’s
capability to mirror the society and get people to turn their heads
in new directions.

KUKAT
During my stay at Arteles I wanted to work with the surroundings
especially the nature. I collected different kinds of plants and
leaves that I pressed and dried. I used them with my embroideries
in interaction with the Finnish words that symbolise them. The
mode of expression is simple and poetic – understandable and
transparent even for those who do not recognise the language but
only know the object.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Silence Awareness Existence Program, November 2016
NATHANIEL OBER
USA
nio@pointe9.com // www.nathanielober.com
Nathaniel Ober is a new media artist whose work crosses
disciplines from installation and performance, to video and
sound. His interdisciplinary works examine concepts of human
perception and natural phenomena. Nathaniel’s current research
is focused on astronomy and astrophysics, which deal with
techniques of sonification and processes that attempt to expose
our innate connection with the universe.
Nathaniel’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally
with over 40 solo and group shows. In 2009 he moved to New Delhi,
India to serve as Program Director of Visual Communication and
Interactive Media Design at Raffles Millennium International,
later transferring to the Raffles Design Institute in Colombo, Sri
Lanka. He is currently working as a hybrid artist and educator in
the Bay Area. He earned a Master of Fine Arts from the Digital
Arts and New Media program at the University of California, Santa
Cruz, and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Columbus College of
Art and Design.

FROM SILENCE TO SOUND
I began this residency with no intentions or direction, letting each
day inspire new thoughts and creative direction. I listened to the
sounds of silence and made an audio piece every other day in
collaboration with Dani Minuskin. I played with cans and bowls
from the kitchen and summoned a spirit in the basement. I made
food, friends and memories and listened to the sounds of these
simple acts.
I did many things while I was here, but perhaps, most importantly...
I learned to listen to others.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Silence Awareness Existence Program, November 2016
“Landscapes that suggests something
further, a sing, a delicate sense
of presage or indolence”
JUANA SUBERCASEAUX
Chile
juanasbx@gmail.com // juanasubercaseaux.tumblr.com
My imaginary arises in indeterminate space between nature
and human being: landscape, artifice, construction, the often
contradictory relationship between both worlds. From that
place, the matter of death appears. The end, the expiration of
one universe against the other, as each one inhabit in a radically
different temporality and in those points of intersection, is
inevitable to think in what lasts and what ends.
I don’t know how to define the kind of nature that attracts me
and maybe thats the first impulse in my choice: the strange, the
indeterminate. Vague scenes that associates to some hidden
message that hints something about waiting, pass of time,
decadence. Or that suggest that something is about to happen or
end. The contemplation of landscapes is inherent to the human
being and the distance between his existence and the evolution
of nature has generated a dark space, approached in many
ways through arts but consistently inabarcable. That distance,
that sublime and unnamed gap, is what I want to explore from
painting (landscape, nature and still life painting) and the edges
of it tradition.
I’m interested on generate landscapes that are not too complex
in its construction but that suggests something further, a sing, a
delicate sense of presage or indolence.

AGUAS MARINAS
I began to develop a narrative construction about a mysterious
dream-like experience journey, that is going to take form in a
kind on fake diary that’s talks about some uncertain landscape,
with descriptive paintings and botanical illustrations of the
surroundings.
The idea is to generate a mental image about a possible but
ambiguous nature, that suggests something further, a sign, a
delicate sense of presage, pass of time, decadence.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Silence Awareness Existence Program, November 2016
HANNAH SECORD WADE
USA
hannahswade@gmail.com // www.hannahsecordwade.com
My work has focused on landscape for the past nine years,
exploring themes of removal and fear, and a lack of control
over my surroundings. I work on a project-by-project basis, with
each series addressing a specific concern. My current series,
Everything All Together, is a gathering of landscape and debris
into large mounds. The mounds function as both hoards, and
trash piles. The works deal with the tension of wanting to contain
and guard pieces of my environment, and conversely, to throw
them all away.

UNTITLED COVERINGS
During the residency I worked on translating my paintings into
wearable coverings. Each garment was hand sewn over the
course of the month, and ready to wear by the final exhibition.
Viewers were allowed to try on the pieces, and become part of the
final piece.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Silence Awareness Existence Program, November 2016
“Cross-disciplinary artist”
CISSI TSANG
Australia
netizenette@gmail.com // www.samarobryn.com
Born in 1982 in Hong Kong, Cissi Tsang is a cross-disciplinary artist
living in Perth, Australia. Her work explores the sonification and
visualisation of the found environment using data. The main focus
of her practice has been on found artefacts in the environment, her
response to the natural landscape as a composer and performer,
and using the landscape as a narrative device.
Tsang has performed and exhibited her works in Australia, Asia,
UK and the USA under the name timeofhex, and her photography
has been short-listed in various international awards. She is a
PhD candidate at the Western Australian Academy Of Performing
Arts (Edith Cowan University) and holds a MCDArtDes from the
University of New South Wales.

THERE IS NO ESCAPE FROM YOURSELF
During my time at Arteles, I broke down elements of found data
(field recordings and field footage) and used them as the basis
for audio-visual pieces. I went on many long walks around the
area, to explore the terrain and to document my responses to the
environment. My emotive responses were channelled through the
reconstruction process, through a mixture of audio manipulations
and music visualisation. Some of the techniques I explored
included mapping hexadecimal data to music, mapping animal
tracks to create a graphical score for hand drum, and using
granular synthesis to explore the details within a sound recording.
I was particularly interested in exploring the use of the landscape
as a means of intra-personal communication, with the landscape
being used as a means to conduct self-reflection and analysis.
The resultant work is therefore an abstracted, internal landscape,
rather than faithful reproduction of the landscape as it was
documented.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Silence Awareness Existence Program, November 2016
“A word after a word after a word is power.”
~Margaret Atwood
KATE ROBINSON
USA
katerwriter@gmail.com // katerwriter.tripod.com
AKA @katerwriter, I began my literary career writing bad poetry at
age ten in Des Moines, Iowa, USA. Dreaming, mindful awareness,
and the appearance of the extraordinary in ordinary daily life
are my primary fascinations, and I aspire to dance always with
paradox and absurdity.
My writing contains an intersection of dreams, nature, spirituality,
and social justice themes. My works in progress are a themed
collection of nature essays, a poetry collection spanning several
decades, and a novel of connected flash stories created solely
from my dreams.
I dabble in natural light photography and record the beings and
places, urban and rural, that I live in and visit. In this era of global
weather catastrophe and degradation of environment, there is
a great need to stand as a witness and protector of beings and
environments who cannot speak for themselves.

I CONCENTRATED UPON USING CONSCIOUS AND UNCONSCIOUS MIND TO APPRECIATE
THE EXTRAORDINARY IN ORDINARY DAILY LIFE.
I’ve developed a renewed enthusiasm for blending my interests
in dreams, nature, literature, music and photography. I’ve spent
many hours hiking and bicycling around Arteles Creative Center
and attempted to capture the haunting ambiance of the forests
and lakes in photos. I also found abandoned, vacant buildings
visually appealing and emotionally evocative and symbolic of
inevitable change.
“Natural Soul” is a work in progress about my experiences with
wildlife in Arizona, where I lived for thirty-six years. I completed
one essay, “Snakey,” about a young king snake who entered
our home in 2005 and started another essay, “Miss T,” about a
humorous experience with a desert tortoise.
After the startling U.S. presidential election, I wrote a lengthy
essay examining President-elect Donald J. Trump’s narcissistic
traits and the human tendency to reassure people dismayed by
his rhetoric, that “everything will be fine,” when the reality is that
people with NPD enjoy the destruction created by their verbal
recklessness. The piece is posted at my blog, Jellyfish Day.
I discovered that my ability to edit older, unpublished fiction was
enhanced by the creative equanimity at Arteles. I re-edited Loop:
Life Is But a Dream, an unpublished novella I wrote in 2010. This
factor supported penning opening scenes for Dreamphemera, a
sequel. The rather dystopic current events have inspired many
concrete ideas for a sequel to my alternate history / metaphysical
sci-fi novel, published in 2014.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Arteles Creative Residency Program, October 2016
PAUL LOZANO
Mexico
lozanopaul@hotmail.com // www.paullozano.com
My work has a critical view on the environmental, social and
political issues. Often makes references to environmental issues,
construction and destruction of landscapes.
Use a variety of materials and processes to produce the pieces,
from traditional techniques such as oil on canvas or wood, from
intervening in the woods, or collect pieces of forests to intervene
them and take them to the gallery or museum. In installations
create a space to play with the public view.
“I am interested in creating arising after destruction, and likewise
analogy, I’m interested in how something beautiful gradually
degenerates into a horrible, horrible thing and how mutating step
is transformed into something beautiful.”

SUSTAINABLE HABITAT
The practice, is a historical and social foundation of man capable
of transforming nature and in this way create a world suitable to
him.
A dialogue will be produced with the landscape in reference to the
natural and urban.
Habitats change constantly via natural elements or via human
influence, I’m interested in mixing these two elements to achieve
my work.
A sustainable habitat is an ecosystem that is capable of producing
food and refuge for people and for other organisms without
running out of resources. This sustainable habitat can evolve
naturally or can be generated by man through architecture.
A sustainable habitat created and designed by human intelligence
should imitate nature in order to be successful.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Arteles Creative Residency Program, October 2016
“Claire Burnett, Scottish
environmental photographer”
CLAIRE BURNETT
UK
claire-burnett@hotmail.com // www.claireburnett.co.uk
Graduated this year with a BA(Hons) in Contemporary Art Practice.
My practice is photography based and I use it as a means of
observing and honouring nature. The majority of my photographs
are of naturally found forms: plants, light reflecting water, shadow
pattern. Anything wild that catches my eye, especially the small
details. I have a keen interest in environmental issues and believe
that art can be a means of gently spreading a message. Therefore,
I also bring aspects of humankind into my work. The comparison
and contrast between man-made and wild landscapes. Working
with humanity in mind, poetically exploring our relationship with
the environment. Our attempted control over nature, and the
durability that it shows in return.

RESUSCITATE
During my time at Arteles I have had the time to reflect on my
practice, explore (physically and creatively), put my feelings into
words, and try to capture the enchanted beauty of the forest.
My practice has had two contrasting sides to it over the last few
years: celebrating my own personal relationship with nature, but
also showing my animosity towards how our species treats the
earth.
I have created work from each side since I’ve been here, and
have been considering the possibility that each side can in fact
help the other. Reconnecting with nature- showing off its allure
and importance, then bringing in elements of mankind to try and
spread a message about control and protection.
Some images show natural forms being suffocated by man made
objects, but others show how thought-provoking each individual
leaf can be. Previously in my work I used a harsh, red line cutting
through a landscape to symbolise humanity and how we can be
so devastatingly destructive. Since I’ve been here, spending time
in the wilderness, the red line now symbolises life and the blood
flow of the forest.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Arteles Creative Residency Program, October 2016
KOUROSH GHAMSARI-ESFAHANI
Canada
kourosh.ge@gmail.com // soundcloud.com/kouroshkhan
Kourosh Ghamsari-Esfahani completed his B. Mus. in Violin
Performance and Contemporary Music at Wilfrid Laurier
University, where he was awarded a Music Faculty Scholarship
as well as the Terrence and Janet Levesque Music Composition
Award. Born in Karaj, Iran, he immigrated to Canada with his family
in 2000. He enjoys an active career as a contemporary violinist
and composer across Canada; his violin-viola duet “Masks”
was premiered by NUMUS, one of Canada’s leading new music
organisations. He has also presented at PDA Projects Art Gallery
in Ottawa, the Toronto International Electroacoustic Symposium,
and the Montreal Contemporary Music Lab. Kourosh’s current
projects explore the intersections of solo improvisations and
electro-acoustic design.

RHAPSODY OF AN EMPTY ROOM
For the final project, I decided to collaborate with fellow resident
artist Sung Eun Chin on a site-specific video performance
project, telling a mythic narrative. We transformed a room into
the installation and performance space, where we projected
the video with digital audio playback, and performed a joint
live improvisation- myself on violin and Sung with spoken
word. I created the sound track first by taking several samples:
conversations with Sung, my own improvisations on the violin,
sounds taken from the instruments at Arteles, and one audio
clip from freesound.org [https://www.freesound.org/people/
juskiddink/sounds/78955/]. Then, I altered, edited, and arranged
them using Ableton Live.
In addition to the final project, I gave a lot of my time at Arteles
to reflecting on the ways in which I practise and create music. By
documenting my processes extensively through audio and video
recordings, and writing about them on a daily basis, I was able to
address many issues- both artistic and technical. The freedom
enjoyed at Arteles made this an ideal environment for expanding
my perspective and becoming a better musician.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Arteles Creative Residency Program, October 2016
“Sounds to my eyes.”
SONIA TONEU
Spain
sonia.ferre.toneu@gmail.com // www.soniatoneu.com
Music to my eyes: thus operate sound of Sonia Toneu maps.
Are paintings, no doubt; colourful, too; and are equipped with a
musicality symbolic. The fruit turn ideas into an imaginary and
that imagination in works in which each element, each stroke is
an instrument in an orchestra that refines, interprets, improvises
and performs. The chaos is back order in the land of the color.
The set seems to live in a score plastic. Many laws come in play
during this translation of the sound to the image: a result frankly
seductive. Depends on each let be conquered by these songs of
siren.

TRAVEL AND MAPPING. TESTS OF COLOR, SHAPE AND MATERIAL
In Arteles creative center I’ve wanted to try everything in my usual
studio could not, I tried to be more free and innocent, playing
as a child with the materials, the composition of space, with
photographs, paintings on different media, video and installations.
I also spent some of the time to upgrade the ideas of my artistic
statement, writing with the help of my fellow residents.
I worked around the idea of sharing my experiences and emotions
through imaginary maps, where concur nature sounds, noises of
cities, roads, islands, forests and lakes. The result is an unknown
place, uncharted place. An imaginary universe where small parts
are linked to form a whole, as if it were an orchestra.
I have had a fantastic experience with the other residents, have
served me inspiration, motivation and support.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Arteles Creative Residency Program, October 2016
“in between”
SUNG EUN CHIN
South Korea
zinsethinks@gmail.com // www.zinsethinks.com
Sung Eun Chin’s work discusses about the way of seeing,
perceiving, and imagining. Her interest is focused on how
individuals can preserve their own subjectivity regardless of the
flow of information that surrounds them or is given to them.
As a methodology to approach her subject matter, Sung Eun
usually writes a short story -often a sort of myth- which then she
depicts through graphic novel frames. Graphic novels are built
only by fragmentary stills of a story and readers through their
interpretation correlate them. Sung Eun intends to emancipate
these narratives from the linearity of the story through her
incorporation of mixed aesthetics and media. Recently she works
on merging those elements into video work to embed psychology
of digital time in this subject.

RHAPSODY OF AN EMPTY ROOM
From inspiration to the final presentation, the project is solidly entangled with Arteles and its
surrounding. I wrote a short story inspired from the nature,
objects, spaces of the story, extracted a few lines and words, and
translated them to the various visual formats.
The story starts with an inner monologue of the main figure
(myself) while strolling around a forest, she meets a nymph of
forest, the nymph helps her to have a short journey to a room.
She attempts to fill the room and confronts difficulty in discerning
what she needs and wants. After the journey, she comes back to
the forest and carries on her walk.
Based on this story, the work consists of three main mediums:
the actual space and object, digital video/audio work, live
improvisation performance. First, the actual space/object are
the subject matter of the story and the visual expression and
also the core of this project, leading the narrative back and
forth, dissolving the boundaries between fictionality and reality.
The video work has various styles of moving images like 90’s
computer game interface, tacky digital collage, cinematography.
Meanwhile, the audio work and live improvisation were performed
in collaboration with violinist and composer Kourosh Ghamsari-
Esfahani, who is one of the residents of October at Arteles. As my
practice and research aim at emancipating the narrative from the
linearity of written stories, Kourosh’s interpretation and play on
the text infuses the colourful liquidity into the whole presentation.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Arteles Creative Residency Program, October 2016
“Creation is a way to say the unspeakable”
SARA CAMPO
France
saracampo27@gmail.com
Sara Campo likes to invent her own poetical/alternative
techniques to create images. Through minimalist and quite
simple actions, she tries to make an experience of image, and
to propose others meanings or new circulations to the reading.
She likes to consider her creations like a static journey, seated
at her desk but at the same time far away from it. Re-reading an
image is a way for her to be connected to her interior life, to be in
introspection. The deconstruction is an tentative attempt to show
how things can take a different form, how a story can be told in
another way. It is an art of unfinishement with the research of an
unfixed form. This research is linked to her background and to all
the processes and possibilities of printmaking, which she studied
when she was younger. Her foreign origins and an “elsewhere
heritage” also feeds her reflection.

COMBINING ROCKS
During the month I have spent in Arteles, I have worked on some
existing projects (a serie of drawings called ‘The Outside Coming
Inside’, and a serie of scratched postcards) and some new projects.
In my new work, I started by collecting small rocks outside, and
selected images of Finnish landscapes to attach to the rocks with
glue. This specific form, an image composed by a lot of smaller
pieces, gives me the freedom to tell a new story, by combining the
pieces in a new order. I am able to find new meaning, and a sense
of poetry in the work. Later I changed the scale and worked on
bigger rocks in the forest with enlarged pictures from my Finnish
family photo album. It is interesting returning these pictures back
into their original environment.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Arteles Creative Residency Program, October 2016
KATHY MOSS
USA
kathy.moss.artist1@gmail.com // www.kathymoss.com
I use botanicals as archetypes in my work. This emanates from
my regard for the natural world which is beautiful and my concern
about the marginalization of and degradation of nature. I use
these objects as subject matter, in silhouette. I have turned themflowers,
seed pods, skeletons of pine cones, thistles into icons.
The motifs are beards; they stand in for figures, or landscape, or
their arrangement a poetic depiction of the internal self. In the
early 1990s I began to evolve a language of signs, and a way of
painting and mark making specific to those signs. I was aware
of the suggestiveness of, and psychological meaning attached to
some flowers. They are ambiguous, mysterious, a way to get to
the paint. This is the text and the subtext of my work. Influenced
by work as a surface designer I have come to see repetition as a
type of abstract structure; one which infers less linear narrative
even as a narrative is added by the inferred denial of it. I imply
pattern as a way of giving meaning- suggesting a rhythm, and
then breaking that rhythm. The forms are somewhat silhouetted;
I am interested in the edge, dark on light, and its stark effect of
push and pull, the situation of figure on ground. Color is subtle,
implicitly referential. I think of my work as situational haiku: a
rare, tightly held moment. Ultimately the works must succeed
formally, hold the surface, have a discreet narrative, and be
beautiful.

PAINTING ROSES AND DRAWING TREES
I brought an assortment of small already prepared surfaces to
Arteles because I use the renaissance ‘chalk-and-oil’ gesso for
my paintings. My intention was to play with the paint, to find
things in the paint. I have a number of started paintings in my
studio at home and wanted to work out in small studies fresh
approaches to the work. There is specific subject matter that I
am drawn to- so called ‘girly’ subject matter such as ‘hearts’ and
flower forms, but the paintings are in no way ‘girly’. My work is
minimal and repetitive, although by repetition I am only implying
pattern. The motifs are painted individually and are in fact not the
same, although the scale might be; this makes them appear as
beats, stamps of the same image. I also played with scale, the
visual response to the size and shape of the particular support.
A second goal was to use more color which I accomplished
albeit subtly; for me the drawing and the situation of the motifs
are most important. I like to use darker color, less suggestive
as narrative and more about the poetry of the visual. In addition
to making these paintings I made drawings of the various trees
around the area. This is a continuation of a project I have been
working on for a few years; the trees in Finland are different from
the trees I have been drawing in upstate New York. Time away
from obligations and distractions enabled me to engage fully in
the further development of my artistic ideas.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Arteles Creative Residency Program, October 2016
NATALIE FIELD
South Africa
info@nataliefield.photography // www.nataliefield.photography
Natalie Field is a creative image-maker with a B.Tech Degree in
Photography from the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University
(Port Elizabeth, South Africa). Known for her digital artworks
created from deconstructed photographs, Field’s latest interest
lies with the spontaneity of in-camera effects. Through her art
she explores concepts around consciousness, our connection
with nature and the transmigration of the soul; imploring viewers
to reflect upon their own humanity.
Field first started exploring ORGANIC MORPHOLOGY and
TRANSFORMATION in the series “Breathe in… Breathe out… Let
the human in…” (2015), adding natural elements from the ocean
to point towards evolution and the ever-evolving state of the
human existence.
“Consider the human being as a part of the Universe. We are star
dust. All matter made up of the very same protons, neutrons and
electrons. In fact, you can even picture the atom as a miniature
Solar System, with the nucleus playing the role of a Sun orbited
by electrons as planets. The pattern of these atoms are repeated
within and without the human form, stretching through the very
fabric of space-time.

HUMAN.NATURE
The story of our universe begins with a singularity. Due to some
inconceivable force, space expanded and matter formed. The
stars, the earth, oceans, animals and even our bodies, are all
made up from this matter that existed since the beginning of time.
The Oxford Dictionary has a term for this collective: NATURE.
Human.Nature considers humanity and our relationship with
nature: both the external environment as well as our inner
biology. It reflects upon both matter (creation, the body) and form
(consciousness, the soul). It is about a return to nature. The citydweller
reconnecting with the earth. Soft moss under bare feet.
Cold air against warm body. The body that will eventually return
to the soil to give life anew.
Through my work I wish to celebrate the cycle of life, and alleviate
the fear of death. As such I worked with a colour palette that
evoked a mood of twilight, the transition between day and night.
As surely as day follows night, it stands to reason that life should
follow death.
Working in a foreign environment, it was important to me to
draw inspiration from the Finnish landscape and culture. Several
images from the series are imbued with narratives from Finno-
Ugric mythologies surrounding concepts of the soul and the
transmigration thereof.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Arteles Creative Residency Program, October 2016
ADAM WILSON
USA
adamzwilson@gmail.com // www.amazon.com/Whats-Important-Feeling-Adam-Wilson-ebook/dp/B00DB3D442/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8bc?ie=UTF8
Adam Wilson is the author of the novel Flatscreen, and the
collection of short stories, What’s Important Is Feeling. His short
fiction has appeared in The Paris Review, Tin House, VICE, and The
Best American Short Stories, among many other publications. He
is a recipient of the Terry Southern Prize, as well as fellowships
from the James Merrill Foundation and the Aspen Institute. He
teaches creative writing at Columbia University and NYU, and
is currently working to complete a novel that explores a diverse
array of topics including Social Media, International Finance, and
Hip-Hop.

SENSATION MACHINES
At Arteles, I continued work on a novel -- SENSATION MACHINES
-- that explores, among many other topics, global finance, news
media, love, death, and hip-hop. As I am used to working in a small
New York apartment, I relished the opportunity to write in a much
larger space, and, particularly, at a much larger desk, which I
used as a kind of living outline on which I was able to map and
constantly re-shape the structure my project, in much the same
way that detectives on television plot their murder investigations.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Arteles Creative Residency Program, October 2016
SARAH RAPP
USA
sarahktrapp@gmail.com
Sarah Rapp graduated with a B.A. in Film Studies from Barnard
College in New York City. For the past seven years, she has
worked as the Head of Community at Behance, a platform that
over eight million creative professionals use to showcase their
visual art online. She believes in the power of design-thinking
and technology both to impact our lives for the better and solve
some of the toughest problems we face today. Sarah is currently
exploring her own creative projects, including Screenwriting,
and working at the intersection of design, technology, and social
impact.

SCREENPLAY EXCERPT: FIRST DAY AT LISTEE
During my stay at Arteles, I began work on a screenplay for a
feature film. When I arrived in Finland, I had just completed seven
years at an exciting but demanding marketing job in the tech
industry. Suddenly, I found myself in the tranquil woods of Finland,
given a rare opportunity to step outside the world of routine
and responsibility. Reflecting on what I wanted to create and
express through my writing, I soon found the plot and characters
drastically morphing as I gravitated toward more personal topics
and imbued the protagonist with more of myself. Given the
distance from my “normal” life, I was able to regard the settings
and events of my New York life as rich opportunities for parody.
For the final showcase, another resident and I filmed a table-read
from one of the more fleshed-out scenes: the character’s first day
at her new job.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Arteles Creative Residency Program, October 2016
SARAH CLARKE
Australia
sareclarke@hotmail.com // www.sareclarke.com
Sarah Clarke is a writer, actor and theatre maker based in
Melbourne, Australia. She is a co-founder of theatre company
Second Breakfast with whom she writes, acts and produces.
Sarah became interested in performing from a young age,
devising music and dance concerts at home with her brother and
cousins. Storytelling has developed into a long-term passion, as
Sarah begins to find her voice as a writer.
Her first play, Semi Charmed, premiered at the 2015 Melbourne
Fringe Festival.
She graduated from the full time program at the Howard Fine
Acting Studio Australia in 2014 and from Southbank Institute of
Technology’s full time acting program in 2012 with an Advanced
Diploma Arts (Acting). She is a waitress, a drama teacher, an
actor, a writer, a sister, a daughter, a lover, and a friend, and she
has stories to tell.

PLAYWRIGHT
My stay at Arteles consisted of a lot of research and writing. I
drafted, deleted and repeated. The result is a web series script
ready for production, and two plays.
‘Justin Bieber I Love You’ follows Annabelle Williams as she
attempts to write the perfect year 12 oral presentation. She is
writing about love. Specifically, about loving Justin Bieber.
‘The Game’ unfolds over one evening as a long-term couple
attempts to spice up their relationship. They decide to play a
game. A game where strangers meet for the first time, and rules
are made up on the spot. It explores what happens when the lines
between reality and fantasy become blurred.
‘Girl in Box’ is the story of a girl who is stuck in a box. She is forced
to entertain herself to pass the time between meals. Based on the
true, unsolved abduction mystery of Eloise Worledge.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Arteles Creative Residency Program, September 2016
“Body is just a gate to the greater
conscious. Stay calm and take a breath to
feel the connection with our universe.”
NAOMI CHAN
Hong Kong
naomiwtchan@gmail.com // www.naomichan.net
Naomi Chan is a multimedia artist who was born and raised in
Hong Kong. With solid skills in traditional art, Naomi likes to
explore alternatives in many different media like installation,
electronics, interactivity and videos. She takes both theoretical
and practical elements as interconnected aspects in her creative
process. She believes art is a communication tool that goes
beyond existing text and spoken language which can deliver some
raw thoughts. Besides art making, Chan is a nature lover and
yoga teacher. She highly appreciates that yogic life attitude that
could raise her awareness of her existence.

SEIZE THE DAYS IN A NORMAL LIVING SITE-SPECIFIC INSTALLATION
SEASONAL [S]ELECTION MICRO-NARRATIVE CINEMA
A project of two pieces is about the things happened in Early fall of 2016, about a citizen of Hong Kong spent a month in Finland.
“Seize the days in a normal living” is an installation using the
wild berries in Fall of Finland and some second-hand clothes are
linens, pillowcases and with daily housework purposes. Making
the pattern on clothes likes a housewife’s daily activities in a
peaceful life. The piece attempted to raise a peaceful, normal,
and yet stereotyped feminine life, which is definitely not common
in Hong Kong.
Being in the countryside of Finland for a week, I started to think of
using the materials from nature. I tried to explore the alternative
of taking the colour from the seasonal wild berries that I collected
from the woods, put them on the clothes that I got here and how
could it be elaborated on topics related to September or early fall.
“seasonal [s]election” is a micro-narrative cinema emphasised on
time and space, audience viewing and expectation. 4 September
2016 was the legislative council election of Hong Kong, which
would be held every 4 years, and this was the first and significant
legislative council election after ‘Umbrella Revolution’ in 2014. As
a citizen of Hong Kong, I truly feel guilty about being absent and
did not use my stamp to fight for my city.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Arteles Creative Residency Program, September 2016
HELENA OLSSON
Sweden
helenapetronella@gmail.com // www.helenapetronella.se
Helena Olsson took her Master at Malmo Art Academy in 2014.
Through video and performance, her artistic practice explores the
line between documentary and fiction, how stories are created
and communicated in relation to history and identity in a social
and political context. She has exhibit at Malmö Art Museum
(SWE), Spectrum Berlin (GE) Bothnia Biennale (FI) and Gallery CC
(SWE).

FINISHING THE VIDEO WORK ”THE FEMINIST VISION”
BUILDING A NEW WEBPAGE
SCREENING AND PUBLIC TALK ABOUT THE VIDEO AT GALLERY RAJATAIDE I TAMMERFORS
During my time at Arteles I have been working on finishing the
editing the video The Feminist Vision. I also had a screening of
the work at Gallery Rajatila in Tampere with a public talk about
the work and how the situation of women in Sweden has changed
from the 1930s to today. My goal with screening and conversation
was to create an atmosphere where people could be comfortable
to express themselves, and therefore, I focused also on creating
a mood by allowing visitors to sit on cushions on the floor, served
coffee, cakes and fruit. During my time at Arteles I have also been
spending time with the other artists at the residency, discussing
and learning from the each other experiences and perspectives
of economic and political difficulties in one’s everyday life. We
had barbecue, numerous saunas, movie nights and discussions.
I have also experienced Finnish culture and discovered that there
are far more similarities than what I previously knew between
Sweden and Finland. But the best part of the residency has been
that I had so much time! Time to think, learn and find peace in
a different way than in everyday life. I also been building a new
website, starting doing research on a new. Thank you so much
Arteles for inviting me and Culture foundation for Sweden and
Finland for making it possible.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Arteles Creative Residency Program, September 2016
YUKO NISHIGAKI
Japan
yuko@nishigaki.org // portfolio.nishigaki.org
Yuko Nishigaki graduated from the University of the Arts in
Philadelphia with a BFA in Illustration. She is interested in
children’s book illustration and textile design. She often uses
folk/fairy tales as base concepts and then creates her own new
world. Her work is fun and whimsical, with dark undertones. She
pulls inspiration from her own childhood, dreams and nature. She
enjoys creating unique creatures and hiding narratives in each
piece.

THE CHILDREN’S BOOK, MIKKO AND ANNIKA
During this residency, I worked on a short children’s book that
is greatly influenced by the nature in Finland. On the first day of
the residency, I went to pick wild berries in a forest with others.
It wasn’t the first time for me to pick wild berries, but stepped
into the Finnish woods and felt soft green moss like a blanket
on the back of my shoes made me feel the real nature. Since I
had lived in New York in the past few years, it was definitely an
exciting moment for me. Therefore, this book story starts from
that a sibling goes berry picking in a forest.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Arteles Creative Residency Program, September 2016
MIHO YOSHIDA
Japan
tootsuoumi@gmail.com // totsu-awaumi.tumblr.com
I have an interest in the relationship between ourselves and
scenery. A familiar view is a segment that offers continuity to our
bodies and souls, and provides the foundation for our daily lives.
However, when our connections to our surrounding scenery is
shaken by disaster, or a move to a new location, the hold on our
own reality is rendered uncertain.
The things that encircle we living things are, in turn, life itself.
I reflect the places I physically walk through every day as oil
paintings spread across the flat surfaces of canvases, searching
among the points of contact between our mutual consciousnesses
and the way we ought to be, for a third field of vision.
As long as there is a horizon and depth in a field of vision, our
imaginations will discover a new profoundness therein.

THINGS SHINING BEHIND
While here, I experimented with creating a canvas by hand and
made an attempt at painting on this ambiguous support on the
frame. I worked in a form close to drawing, with a more seamless
borderline with the wall.
Each day I walked around and produced a large number of
drawings inspired by the landscapes around me. Although I was in
a place that was completely new to me, the beautiful countryside
filled me with nostalgic and familiar feelings.
My time here was too short for me to be able to create something
new by innovating in terms of my painting’s composition and
motifs. However, thanks to my many walks in the forest and by
the lake, a vision of “”the wide expanse of a bright body of water
hidden away at the back of the forest”” has left its impact on me.
I have a feeling that this deep scene will indirectly slip into my
paintings in the future.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Arteles Creative Residency Program, September 2016
KELSEY MCDONOUGH
USA
kmcd1@live.com // www.kelseymcd.com
I’m a Montana based painter working in fragmented landscapes.
Most of my time is devoted to being outside, wether that be
working or playing. My work is a reaction to the disillusionment
of nature from a female perspective. Exploring the factors that
are changing our landscape both through human physicality and
social norms. I am interested in combining the natural with the
contrived, representing the growing distance between humans
and the natural world. I focus on the exploitation of both nature
and the female form, combing a sense of realism with the artificial.

SLUDGE
I focused on a series of paintings exploring climate change and
the digitalization of our world. I feel that we are departing further
from our natural instincts everyday while leaving the planet
behind. “Sludge” is a representation of diminishing natural
resources, the melting of ice, fossil fuels that pollute and control
are world. I wanted to explore these ideas in less literal ways,
using geometric shapes and small bits of realism. Tying together
the fact that we are not only becoming separated from nature,
but also truth. “Sludge” is an exploration of the oozing mucky
problems the world is facing, what is real and what is natural.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Arteles Creative Residency Program, September 2016
“Reinventing constantly, pushing to say
it better, being an artist is always
a struggle and a joy.”
ROSEMARY FEIT COVEY
USA
rosemarycovey@aol.com // www.rosemaryfeitcovey.com
Rosemary Feit Covey’s work has evolved from traditional
printmaking to large scale experimental and collaborative works
engaging musicians, dancers and the spectator in an immersive
environment. For example, Red Handed, a project on the
theme of non-culpable guilt forces the public to walk on art, an
uncomfortable experience. The discomfort leads to reaction and
discussion. The art itself printed on vinyl is site specific and can
fill a large gallery. The project is portable and can be constructed
and displayed world wide.
Her environmental work involves research and a personal
interaction with the subject. Currently two projects are underway.
A trip to the North Pole area above Norway, inspired a series
of work called Black Ice. These works are constructed using
engraving, painting and Japanese paper. Another current project
is a collaboration with scientists and artists at Dartmouth
University, artistically calling attention to the critically endangered
Coconut Crab. A large crab currently resides in her studio for up
close observation.
Rosemary Feit Covey was born in Johannesburg South Africa,
her work is housed in over forty museum and library collections
worldwide. In 2012, five-hundred of her prints were acquired
for the permanent collection of Georgetown University Library,
Special Collections. She is a recipient of a Rockefeller Foundation
Fellowship and an Alpha Delta Kappa Foundation National Fine
Art Award.

THE EARTH IS A DELICATE THING
Abuse of the environment is highlighted by artists and scientists
worldwide. Our single voices when combined create a call. While
at Arteles I created wood engravings for a large scale work on the
globally diminishing water supply. Long walks and the chance to
think while in Finland also led me in an unexpected direction. I
started a new set of work called- The Planet is a Delicate Thing.
I combined fragile pieces of plants I found on my solitary walks,
with drawing and photography. I would never usually combine
media in this way. But never say never in art! Everything is fodder
for the artist. Arteles fosters this concept. Somehow I absorbed it
and I am grateful.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Arteles Creative Residency Program, September 2016
ZACK JOHN LEE
USA
zackjohnlee@gmail.com // www.zackjohnlee.com
My artistic interests lie in our experiences as existential beings.
My work explores our psychological and physiological reactions
to audio, visual and spatial awareness. By combining these
perceptions into a cohesive work of art the viewer is instilled with
a novel experience intended to spark a deeper curiosity about our
everyday awareness.

COVERED IN SPIDERS/TUULI HARP
“I began 2 new projects during my stay at Arteles. The first,
“Covered in spiders” is a musical composition experimenting
with sound recordings and my own instrumentation. The work
involved taking field recordings of the Finnish country side and
blending them with other recorded sounds. In essence it was an
exploration of sound and music production.
My second project, “Tuuli Harp” was a new direction in instrument
making. inspired by my field recording I began researching the
fundamentals of sound and discovered organology, the study
of musical instruments. Through this new found interest I
endeavored into making a simple string instrument that would
harness the wind to power tiny “hammer.” to strike the string.
“Tuuli,” the Finnish word for wind, is an instrument to be played
by nature and over time, eventually consumed by nature.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Arteles Creative Residency Program, September-October 2016
“La lucha nunca muere”
CANNEO CANÚL
USA
canneocanul@gmail.com // www.canneo.xyz
Boston University, Masters of Fine Art, 2016.
University of California, Davis B.A Philosophy of Language and
Critical Theory, 2013.
My work is a focus on the Chicano experience.
Through my work I endeavour to engage majority culture, as
my work offers cultural criticisms in an effort to decolonize and
re-indigenize the Americas.
I do so as I feel that it is important for all indigenous people and
cultures to combat all systematic forms of oppression, oppressive
governments, and ruling classes-in an effort to reclaim our
common heritages and achieve true ethnic and economic equality.
Awards and Recognition:
Esther B. and Albert S. Kahn Award (Nominated, 2016).
Dedalus Foundation MFA Fellowship in Painting and Sculpture
(Nominated, 2016).
Constantin Alajalov Memorial Scholarship (Boston University,
2014-2016).
Joseph Ablow Memorial Prize in Painting (Boston University,
2015).

MIRANDO INSTALLATION, 2016 NORTHERN STARS WATERCOLOR ON PAPER, 2016
An installation project referencing the US/Mexican border. The
installation offers itself as a witness to the social-politics of the
United States, and other countries that implement militarized
border zones.
My paintings incorporate iconography and symbols that are best
associated with the Latin American culture, gang culture, and
prison culture. I use these symbols and icons as a vehicle of
empowerment for communities of color-where such elements
are prevalent but seldom discussed in a larger cultural setting.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Arteles Creative Residency Program, August-September 2016
ELIZABETH ALLEN
elizabethallen240@gmail.com
Australia
While I tend to write stand-alone poems rather than long
sequences, certain themes and preoccupations bind my poetry
together – family, friendship, loss and acceptance, the attempt
to gain meaning from the experiences of daily life. My work is
confessional poetry with a playful and sometimes sardonic twist:
poetry of the personal and the “I”.
I attempt to convey that which can’t be expressed by traditional
autobiographical modes of writing. My writing is also concerned
with distance – the distances between our real and imagined
selves, between the past and the present, between people – and
how in all relationships (including that of narrator and reader) we
constantly juggle intimacy and connection with what is unfamiliar
and strange. I like to experiment with form as well as voice, writing
found poems, dramatic monologues, extended prose poems, and
micro fiction.
My poetry has appeared in many major Australian literary journals
and anthologies. I am the author of a collection, Body Language
(Vagabond Press, 2012), which won the Anne Elder Award. I live in
Sydney where I work as the events manager at Gleebooks, and I
was one of the judges of the inaugural Noel Rowe Poetry Award.
Apart from writing my other addictions are yoga and shopping.

I WENT TO ARTELES AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS LOUSY BOOK OF POEMS
During the two months I spent at Arteles I edited a second draft
of my poetry collection, Present (forthcoming through Vagabond
Press, 2017). I also began writing poems about my experiences of
daily life in Japan and Finland as a tourist and observer. As well as
this I wrote new work in response to well-known poems and texts
that have always been part of my poetic memory and cultural
identity such as “This Is Just To Say” by William Carlos Williams,
“The Cloths of Heaven” by WB Yeats and the fairytale Snow White.
Through these responses I explored themes of love and romance,
beauty, colour, food, consumerism, and feminism in a playful and
at times biting way. I also completed a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle
of a painting titled ‘Sininen niitty’ (‘Blue meadow’) and I wrote a
625-word jigsaw puzzle poem about a view of a yellow meadow. I
really appreciated the time the residency gave me to feed my soul
through the basic and repetitive daily activities of writing, cooking,
reading, running and going for long walks as well as the chance
to reflect on what I want my life and artistic practice to look like
in the future. For me, community is everything and while I will
greatly miss all of the artists I met at Arteles I feel blessed to have
crossed paths with them. I leave here with a much greater sense
of inner and outer space.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Arteles Creative Residency Program, August 2016
“Rachael McArthur is a lens-based artist
from Toronto, Canada working within
the medium of photo-sculpture
and character creation.”
RACHAEL MCARTHUR
Canada
rachael.elizabeth.mcarthur@gmail.com
// www.rachaelmcarthur.com
Rachael McArthur is a lens-based artist from Toronto, Canada.
She has graduated from Ontario College of Art and Design
University with a BFA in photography and works within the
medium of photo-sculpture and character creation. She uses
these mediums to embody surreal aspects of the traditional
portrait and the sculptural forms to represent her subjects.
Prop design and set creation are elements she implements to
create the stories through her work, the ideas represented in
her images are influences from real life experiences within the
family dynamic, personal development of the self and the fictional
representations of subjects.

RACHAEL MCARTHUR - LITURGIES
During my time at Arteles Creative Centre I have created a new
body of work called Liturgies. A liturgy is a fixed set of ceremonies,
words, etc., that are used during public worship in a religion.
I created 5 images while here at my residency inspired by the
idea of creating altars out of the surrounding nature in Finland
and I constructed my own natural places of worship. Within the
images I used my technique of photo-sculpture and pig parts to
reflect upon the constructed sets. I wanted to create a narrative
surrounding the ideas of sacrifice, flawed beauty and rebirth. This
exploration will continue on my return to Canada.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Arteles Creative Residency Program, August 2016
VILMA BADER
Australia
vilma_bader@hotmail.com // www.vilmabader.com
My multifaceted practice straddles various materials and
concerns, moving between painting, sculpture, installation and
performance. Framed by linguistics and semiotics, my work
can be seen to function as manifestos, but I see it as having an
implicit social thrust without being explicitly political or didactic.
Rather, it urges the viewer not to submit to dominant narratives,
but to work through and be attentive to the mnemonic messages
disclosed and revealed. The seriality and repetition which are
important components in my work heighten the sense of “losing
a portion of oneself” while alluding to the sheer volume of
information and data being generated in our every day lives. I
see my art as a collective activity and my role as an artist as that
of a facilitator who continues to speak but in a way that is not
heard. The viewer’s role on the other hand is that of an active
participator. It is only through projection and engagement that the
work exists. Since 2014, I have extended my enquiries from an
urban to a rural context, with a focus on environmental issues and
sustainability. This resulted in a one month walk of the Camino de
Santiago in Spain and two artist residencies the following year in
rural Bundanon in Australia.
Vilma completed a PhD in 2013 on an Australian Postgraduate
Award scholarship, an MVA in 2009, a BVA Honours in 2007 all at
Sydney College of the Arts, the University of Sydney and a BFA at
the National Art School in 2006.

HAND MADE IN FINLAND
Hand Made in Finland is an installation based work consisting of
a series of pieces within a larger body of work. The installation
is composed of five series of paintings on wood, a hand carved
wooden sculpture, a series of works on paper, and an assemblage
of flora collected from the forests in Haukijärvi. A characteristic
of the work is the playful proliferation of colour, shapes and text
that overlap, merge and play off each other. While playful, the
work has a formal quality through a reductive and minimalist
aesthetic. Similarly, colour is used not as a form of gratuitous
embellishment but for their strong properties. The predominant
material used in this installation is wood and its integrity is
preserved. The surface of most of the twenty-nine wooden pieces
are sparingly painted and much of the wood exposed. Each piece
highlights the difference in the way the wood’s grain differs. The
hand-carved cube follows the lines and rings of nature’s way.
When painted, the central forms are not enclosed in negative
spaces or happenstance voids but in gestural spaces with an
existential energy. The expressive gesture and concern for surface
textures is retained, juxtaposing the hand-made with the work of
nature, allowing these elements to blur, overlap and create new
perceptions. While the flora assemblage has a free and poetic
element, the wire grid it sits on has a formal quality. Each element
holds its place in the installation and enters in a dialogue with one
another animating the space for further exploration.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Arteles Creative Residency Program, August 2016
IAN BROWN
UK
ian@ibrown.co.uk // www.ibrown.co.uk/home
My individual practice utilises video, photography, sculpture,
performance, print and other interdisciplinary processes and
materials to produce artworks engaging the human interface
with the Invented World and the Natural World. There is a focus
on the mediation of these relationships through forms of popular
culture and how the commodification of culture impacts on our
engagement with these specific subjects.
‘Stories of Alienation and Disaster’ considered our relationship
with the technological and the natural by considering the disaster,
or ‘Accident’. The work centred on specific forms of narrative
dissemination, from folk song traditions to film and literature,
to work with fictional and non-fictional forms of communication
as a central position to navigate our assumed relationships to
these subjects. ‘An Incredible World of Beauty and Terror’ (with
Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew) questions plant/human relations
by bringing together diverse positions: from botany, scientific
illustration, natural history documentaries and science fiction
writings. In collaborating with a taxonomist and a phytochemist
dialogues were formed on methodology, speculation and forms of
dissemination. One element centres on how filmic and televisual
languages, utilised by natural history documentaries, create
a distancing from the subject through overt technical forms of
mediation (time-lapse, 3D).
I am part of the artist’s group, Common Culture, with David
Campbell and Mark Durden. We have taken part in group and solo
exhibitions throughout Europe, Asia and North America. Through
sculptural, photographic, performance and video projects,
Common Culture explores how contemporary social identity is
constructed through the rituals of consumption within popular
culture.

THERE IS NO ONE ELSE IN SIGHT (KETÄÄN EI OLE NÄKÖPIIRISSÄ)
During the month of the residency I produced a set of video works,
to allow an investigation into the natural world, the invented world
and the mediation of the human experiences of these subjects.
The consequences of filmic and narrative languages, associated
with fiction and documentary, have been explored with the use of
footage filmed around the region of Hämeenkryö and the use of
00/HO scale models.
The particular context of Arteles, and its immediate environment
of forests, lakes and particular light and weather conditions,
allowed me to tap into certain conventions within natural history
documentaries and science fiction narratives to appropriate and
deploy in alternate ways.
Alongside the production of moving image and photographic
work, the time to read, to travel and to produce a series of musical
compositions is indicative of how the residency has afforded me
the time and space to be productive, engaged and relaxed.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Arteles Creative Residency Program, August 2016
SISSY REYES
Mexico / Australia
sissymreyes@yahoo.com.mx // www.sissyreyes.com
I am a Mexican-Australian artist based in Sydney, Australia. My
practice sits between film narrative, video art and photography.
With a background in cultural studies and film production I am
fascinated by the way in which different cultures experience
social constructs and discourses, mainly those of gender,
consumerism, ethnicity and mortality. My work draws from the
storytelling elements of cinema and mythology, through which I
create surreal and colourful imagery and narratives that explore
these themes from a humorous, often absurd and sometimes
tragic perspective.

ARE WE THERE NOW?” AND ”THE MARTIANS ARE COMING!
“Are we there now?
Is an exploration of human mortality through time and light. Shot
with in the Hämeenkyrö area in the last days of summer, the
portraits are taken solely during twilight at long exposure intervals
which, allow the image to become blurred with movement. The
outcome is a photograph that looks a bit like a painting. The
portraits are presented as diptychs or triptychs, alternating
between a portrait of the person and the background landscapes
alone, so portraying the person in sequence as a temporal
element with in the space. I am interested in finding emotional
shifts with in the person as they move through the frame, as well
as how they connect or disconnect with the landscape. What
remains in the space they no longer inhabit? What is left behind?
Can we grasp the fleeting quality of a human life?
The Martians are coming!
Driving around dirt roads, past paper factories, abandoned pubs,
forest intersections and empty parking lots. It is late, late at night,
and you find yourself alone in the middle of a familiar place. You
stand still as the wind shapes the trees, as the clouds walk slowly
past the blue twilight which refuses to hide beyond the horizon.
You remain still, listening.
Melancholic gratitude.
Deep chested fear.
A moment of clarity perhaps.
You exist here… and you know then, just then… The Martians are
coming.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Arteles Creative Residency Program, August 2016
“A multidisciplinary filmmaker”
JUDY SUH
USA
iamjudysuh@gmail.com
// www.judysuh.com
Hailing from Chicago, Judy is an artist and filmmaker in the
process of developing a personal language using video. Her work
is characterized by a desire to take video out of screens and instead
integrating it into real space, installations and performances. In
this process she explores possibilities for transmedia storytelling,
with a particular interest in how narrative translates and evolves
from one medium to another.

TO THE MOON AND BACK
This project started off as an experiment for the variety of
surfaces and materials I can project video onto and the effects
I can get from it. It was during this time that I had the impulse
to research into the birth of cinema, as I was striving to push the
medium of video outside the screen and into physical space. What
emerged from the research was an eye-opening discovery that my
efforts may have come full circle back to the strivings from early
cinema. What they were inclined to do in the early 1900s because
they were still inventing the medium, I tried to create because
I wanted to break away from the confines of what we know as
cinema and mix with other medium. The resulting project was
a projection-mapped installation that uses George Meliese’s “A
Trip to the Moon” as a motif, that brings the moving image off
the flat wall, spilling onto the floor and other found objects as
a life-size video collage. Using techniques uniquely available to
projection mapping, I tried creating a world that recalls the past
and future at the same time, immersing the viewer into a magicrealist
dream.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Arteles Creative Residency Program, August 2016
“What lies beneath”
NICCI OLIVIER
South Africa
niccisolivier@gmail.com // www.assemblage.co.za
The broad concept which I am currently exploring is ‘Travel Light
/ The Psyche of a Nation’, which references decluttering, focusing
on the journey which takes you to what really matters. It embraces
the notions of freedom, clarity, vision, wisdom and peace. ‘Travel
Light / ‘ The Psyche of a Nation’ encourages making choices to
dispose of unnecessary excess.
The Human Condition and the causes of human behavior, that
which lies beneath, fascinates me. Nature plays a pivotal role
in ‘unearthing’ and connecting with our essential needs as
human beings. Therefore, key to my work process is sketching
in situ in nature in order to absorb, experience and understand
my surroundings which forms the starting point of my creative
journey. The land and nature is the place where people live and
journey. My interest is in the history, memories and stories,
implications from the past on the future which are formed in the
land where people live.
Developing the concept involves printmaking or painting layers
of images, texture, form, movement and cutting away parts
of the work to get rid of excess which creates new meaning to
a surface. I enjoy processes and while working I will naturally
question the mark making process, break a few boundaries and
always contemplate final presentation. Continual dialogue with
materials and subject matter are key to my creative practice. My
penchant for research, exploration and experimentation enables
me to develop a concept into either installation, multimedia, land
art and sculpture.

Nicci Olivier/ A Creative Right Of Passage
(part of a series)/Mixed Media/2016
Nicci Olivier/ ‘ Rukinlapa ‘
(part of a series)/ Mixed Media/2016
WHAT LIES BENEATH / THE PSYCHE OF A NATION
During my residency at Arteles my visual documentation and
response to the vast forests of Finland evolved into three projects
1. ‘ A Creative Right Of Passage ‘
2. ‘ Rukinlapa
3 ‘ Layered Lakes and Forests ‘
Each project evolved into a series documenting the journey of the
human condition. This involved the interplay of layers, layering,
cutting out, shadows and impressions in order to discover what
lies beneath .
The pieces are currently all in the form of intimate ‘sketches’.
My residency at Arteles encouraged me to declutter and develop
my concept by guiding me back to the basics of ‘Sketching :
The Mental Scaffolding Of The Mind ‘. Together with traditional
sketching I revel in ‘sketching’ and experimenting with materials,
cutting, working with my hands etc in order to find ‘sketched’
solutions which will inform resolved final artworks.
‘ A Creative Right Of Passage’ afforded me a wonderful AHA!
moment when I looked at the completed art work and discovered
the inherent structure for the basis of my creative process through
sketching.
Thank you Arteles!

IN THE RESIDENCY
Arteles Creative Residency Program, July 2016
ELIZABETH CLAIRE ALBERTS
USA
elizabethCAlberts@gmail.com // www.elizabethclairealberts.com
Elizabeth Claire Alberts has a PhD in creative writing from
Macquarie University, and has taught creative writing at
Macquarie University for the past seven years. Her creative
stories and poems have appeared in publications like Island
Magazine, Australia Poetry, Yarn Review, and her narrative
journalism has appeared in Earth Island Journal, Audubon,
Great Ocean Quarterly, Alternatives Journal, The Dodo, Afar, and
Wild. She is the co-author of a children’s book, Joselina Piggy
Cleans Her Room, and a contributing author to the book, Stories
of the Great Turning. In addition to her PhD, Elizabeth has a BA
in theatre from The College of Wooster, and an MA in creative
writing from Macquarie University. She is currently working on
an audio storytelling project, EarthVoice, which will tell stories
of passionate individuals working in the environmental and
animal welfare movements. These stories will be recorded and
crafted with passion, creativity, and high quality writing, then
disseminated online.

EARTHVOICE PODCAST / ”MERLOT’S MEOW: A SOUNDWALK THROUGH MEMORY”
While at Arteles, I began working on my scripts for my audio
storytelling project, EarthVoice Podcast, which tells stories of
people and organizations working to protect animals and the
environment. I plan to release the EarthVoice audio stories by the
end of 2016. I also wrote and produced a creative audio essay,
entitled “Merlot’s Meow: a soundwalk through memory,” and
worked on commissioned journal pieces for Earth Island Journal,
Overland, and The Dodo.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Arteles Creative Residency Program, July 2016
“I am an artist with a camera.”
LOREAL PRYSTAJ
lorealprystaj@gmail.com
USA
// www.lorealprystaj.com
Loreal Prystaj is a visual artist based in New York. Her work often
times exposes the relationship between time and space, with a
juxtaposition of the human form and it’s environment. Prystaj
creates using photography as her base medium, and expands
ideas through video, installation, performance, and interactive
pieces. Her archive of work has led to speaking at accredited
universities, being represented in numerous galleries throughout
the world, from within the States to China, Japan, Italy, and
France, and she has been published in numerous magazines such
as L’Oeil de la Photographie, CREEM Magazine, Icon and Hue to
name a few.
Loreal Prystaj continues to express her ideas through the eye of
her lens.
Light sheds truth.
Where it falls, the daily schedule disappears, routine no longer
exists.
When captured in thin slices of illumination, time vanishes, and
only truth remains.
As a child, even in the darkest moments,
a place full of color, wonder, and light can be created;
a world exempt from all darkness.
Light allows us to see beyond ourselves.
Darkness conceals all, and injects fear.
Many of our truths and happiness exist from the child within.
For who we are as children, is our being at purest form—It is not
influenced,
manipulated or forced;
it just is—and to just be, is where light can be found within each
individual.

REFLECTING ON NATURE
During this Residency I realized that there is no such thing as
compromising with nature; we simply abide to how it lives, and
exist as a part of it. Nature is very relevant to each individual’s
well-being, but more so than it is part of us, we are part of it.
I wanted to show this idea somehow in a way that was unique.
Rather than placing people “harmonically” or “naturally” (nude)
in nature, doing something different appealed to me. I woke
up one morning, looked in the mirror, determined to solve this
riddle…then I came across one mirror after the other throughout
my living space…I started experimenting!
I asked myself simply, what is a mirror? Yes, a reflective surface,
but why do people use mirrors? Do you look in the mirror? How
often? What do you see? Is it the small details you notice about
yourself? Are they good? bad? Are your accentuating them?
Getting rid of them? Would you change anything? What would
you change?
Often times, mirrors are used to emphasize the minute details,
but rarely used to look at the big picture. What if nature looked at
itself? What would it see? What would we be? Would our identity
stand out or would we be a small detail? Would nature change
us? Would we be a beauty mark or a blemish? Accentuated?
Concealed?
With observing nature’s schedule and landscapes, I placed myself
in its environments while nature looked at itself in the mirror.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Arteles Creative Residency Program, July 2016
“Music for effortless transformation”
TAHLEE ROUILLON
Australia
music@sonesence.com // www.sonesence.com
Tahlee Rouillon is music composer extraordinaire at Sonesence.
She offers peace seekers an easy way to achieve inner peace with
a sonic shortcut called meditones.
After going through many difficult changes, Tahlee also created
The Gentle Transition e-course for other sensitive souls struggling
with change (who want to feel a whole lot better).
When she isn’t blissing out to music, you can find Tahlee wandering
about the rainforest, eating good food with good friends and
laughing out loud. Really loud. When you hear it, you’ll know.
She also creates bespoke meditation music for other wellness
entrepreneurs and hangs out on Instagram a lot.

LUMINOUS
Nothing can dim the light that shines from within ~ Maya Angelou
Inspired by the eternal light of a Nordic Summer, Luminous
connects to your inner radiance.
Instead of the incandescent expanse of summer I expected there
was a surprising sweetness; bright blue skies, cotton candy
clouds, sunlight sparkling across the lake, and waves of wind
through wheat fields.
Channelling this gentle energy into the album through layers
of intuitive vocals, Luminous provides an effortless meditative
practice, so you can begin to beam with peace and joy.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Arteles Creative Residency Program, July 2016
KATHERINE RONDINA
USA
katherinerondina@gmail.com // www.katherinerondinaphoto.com
With landscape as my subject, I explore vast spaces and edges
of perception in pursuit of resolving the cognitive disconnect I
experience as I try to understand the largeness of the universe.
My work pivots on profound events and experiences in natural
spaces, such as qualities of light and sound. With an installation
of photographic objects, natural matter and lighting, I consider
how bodily scale is lost in landscapes and spaces that exceed
rational understanding. I disrupt perception creating a dialogue
containing non-linear timescales, microcosms and the quiet
depths of the universe. I allow mistakes while processing, such as
using water from ponds and rivers where I photograph to develop
my negatives. I store my film with soil and rocks collected from
sites I photograph, allowing it to register physical interactions on
the light sensitive emulsion. By allowing these intrusions, I locate
the photograph as an inscribed site of event–as a palimpsest.

LODESTAR / LUMINOUS MASSES
During my time at Arteles, I worked on creating and editing
images for an ongoing project titled Lodestar / Luminous Masses.
Using photographic negatives from a planetary observatory, I
created work in response to contemporary astrophysics research
surrounding black holes. Since these structures don’t reflect
light, they will never be visible. The enormity of the universe, with
complex forces continually reforming space, leaves me sleepless
at night as I try to locate my position within this endless structure.
I am fascinated with this inability to view black holes and use
materials, landforms and found objects attempting to understand
the complex theories of stellar physics. This project elucidates
the multiplicitous functions of the night sky: navigational
beacons, repository for folklore, space immense enough to
rehearse our dreams while also leading to innovative discovery.
Although originally scientific documents, the precise observatory
images are representations of an objective need to capture,
retain and comprehend. I view them as notations of pathways
across the night sky with my parallel wanderings on the land
duplicating these bodies in motion. As a location of immeasurable
fluctuations, variations and subtly, deep space resonates Werner
Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle—with the act of observation
altering what is being observed. Using the uncertainty principle, I
hope to establish methods of observing to expand what I see—to
look beyond what is in front of me to what could be farther.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Arteles Creative Residency Program, July 2016
SKYLAR DELPHINUS
Australia
RHYS JAMES
sdelphinus@icloud.com // http://www.skylardelphinus.com rhysjames01@gmail.com
Australia
Skipping around a giant sunflower, holding a red watering can,
wearing a tutu that was too big is Skylar’s earliest memory of
dance. Skylar is a technically trained dancer in all styles, inspired
by the world around her, with a strong belief that actions speak
louder than words. Her choreography fuses idiosyncrasies of
human behaviour and natural movement with technical dance
elements. People-watching is particularly important to her
process, as she believes one can learn so much just by observing
people who are under the impression that they are alone (think
Hitchcock’s Rear Window). This helps her incorporate nuances
of human behaviour in her work. Forever a student, Skylar wants
to develop her education, and become increasingly versatile and
honest.
Rhys is an emerging artist based in Melbourne, Australia. He
completed his studies in acting, yet his work ventures across film,
direction, theatre-making and photography. His aim has never
been to make statements or to change the world, but instead to
comment on the process of creation. Some of his pieces do not
bear much resemblance to the character of the body of his work.
His desire is to be proficient in many forms of art and to further
his investigation into different narratives.

A COLLECTIVE SOLO
Our work is normally devised and developed through ensembles
and collaboration. Here at Arteles we did not have this luxury.
Instead this month we explored duplication through video and
performance. Working with dance and film techniques we created
video with either complimentary images from a seperate space,
e.g. split screen or masked multiple people in to the continuous
shot. Arteles was an opportunity to freely create in foreign ground.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Arteles Creative Residency Program, July 2016
ALLISON BAKER
USA
abaker09@hamline.edu // www.allisonbaker.com
My work bucks notions of traditional femininity with a subverted
re-appropriation of femaleness using the very thing that
oppresses us: our prescriptive gender roles, our weakness, our
plight, and our fits of fancy.
We sad girls are bad girls. Blatantly refusing to act properly, show
decorum, and be the well-mannered darlings we were raised to
be.

WAFFLER
Sweetness is the most cunning means of crowd control, an
effective method to subdue the masses yet disarming enough to
preserve the egos of men.
Gilded gumdrops: pastel, gelatinous, rolled in sugar and arsenic
that suck fillings from your molars and leave sweaters on your
teeth.
My work is half-melted ice cream peppered with sand.
My work is an incantation.
Repulsive and candy colored to greedily over-consume until your
stomach sours and the grape gum has lost all its flavor, yet you
hungrily work your jaw, chewing away hoping that the cloying
artificiality will rush back to your mouth still wet with anticipation.
…
We sad girls are bad girls. Blatantly refusing to act properly, show
decorum, and be the well-mannered darlings we were raised to be.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Arteles Creative Residency Program, July 2016
“Linking the perceptions of enviroment
and the materials”
MARIA SANTI
Argentina
mariasanti38@icloud.com // www.mariasanti.com.ar
Today, my artistic work refers to the natural world. In it I question
the materiality with which I work, the power of images, the use
of the senses. I work creating a structure that interweaves the
strength of the material with the visible, my personal experiences
and the experiences of those whom my work challenges.
In this process I show an underlying premise: the matter is alive,
that is why I consider it an active component of the pictorial
practice, which is especially noticeable in its manifest expansion
during contemporaneity.
I am interested in the fusion between different representations
of nature; also in exploring an instictive “”sixth sense””, which
I think is a quality of the natural world, which makes purity and
beauty its primordial elements and which I feel closely linked with
the intuitive process present in my painting.
Since landscape has been modified by degrading actions, for
which man is responsible and whose consequences are largely
irreversible, I believe that my art practice has the capacity to repair
and take care of this world. Landscape has always been one of
the most prominent genres, today it has become something more
than the perception of the place around us. In the contemporary
scene, it is the undisputed protagonist whenever it tells us that
life on a horizon without seas and skies, in a world without life or
colour, is meaningless.

TIMELESS PATH. TO MAKE VISIBLE THE INVISIBLE
PONCHO PAINTINGS
This project is focused on environmental awareness. In line with
the history of the gathering, the starting point of the project is the
path in the landscape with observation and subsequent collection
of native plants. What grows horizontally, radicant, that is not
planted, the nomad, which will spread.
With the intention of achieve an awareness and appreciation of
indigenous plants in the region.
By combining various graphic techniques, seeking the
hybridization between the language of photography, drawing and
video, this work is developed as an open and susceptible notebook
with multiple transformations and combinations.
It’s an artwork that starts as a project in residence with the
native flora of Finland . It has the property of unfinished work,
without definitively feature as a mobile album. A succession of
fragmentary images, made silently defining a space by walking
movements that flow in relation with time.
Poncho Paintings is a project about exploring and tense my own
painting practice.
The residency like a laboratory where developing a special type of
read and write in space.
In this process I show an underlying premise: the matter is alive,
that is why I consider it an active component of the pictorial
practice, which is especially noticeable in its manifest expansion
during contemporaneity.
And linking the Poncho, that is a traditional cloth in Argentina,
displaying them in the amazing Finish nature. In the contemporary
scene, the landscape it is undisputed protagonist whenever tells
us that life on a horizon without seas and skies, in a world without
life or color, meaningless.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Arteles Creative Residency Program, June-July 2016
ASUKA NIRASAWA
Japan
shiropocha0@gmail.com // www.asukanirasawa.com
The concept of Nirasawa’s project is to find a phenomenon
that leads to a secluded existence, hidden from the external
world and representing the feelings and emotions in a profound
silence. Dynamics of modernity (sophistication) and primitiveness
(savagery) stirred her imagination. She has continued to do the
experimental drawing and photographic collage works for several
years. In her works, one can find a mix of the modern, traditional
and the pop culture world in a vivid, eccentric way with infinite
colors. Her process of creating a piece of art, creates a tangible
version of her thoughts and emotions, often involving moving back
and forth between the conscious and sub-conscious. Nirasawa is
always in the process of finding such a moment.

AMBIVALENT PERCEPTION [VIDEO INSTALLATION PROJECT]
Through the journey of Finland, Asuka Nirasawa’s work in progress
manifested itself into something unexpected. She explored the
environment that surrounded her. What she discovered was a
new variety of words, and wide range of colors in the sky and
nature. She looked at how humans’s related to their environment
of nature and observed their lifestyle. Nirasawa’s intrigue allowed
her to spontaneously accept the new world that surrounded her.
What caught her attention was the unique structure and design of
the houses people lived. Therefore she found a pinnacle point of
focus; each home was made of wood – natural elements. Almost
all of the structures were designed graphically, with vertical and
horizontal lines; something Nirasawa found to be an artificial
element.
She photographed many different homes, and added animation
effects specifically of straight line motions layered on the house
images. To her surprise through experimenting, Nirasawa
found a new image created. She was captivated by the natural
and unnatural elements that visually came to surface. What
she discovered was something similar to the sun rising, winds
blowing, and skies changing. This new experience was stimulating
for Nirasawa as she opened herself to the forests and silence –
she was forced to go deeper into her own imagination.
Asuka Nirasawa’s work in progress will be shown as 30 different
video clips. Each will play at different rates for about 2 minutes
continuously. The installation will be presented on horizontal
digital monitors.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Arteles Creative Residency Program, June 2016
CAROLINE MCCAUGHEY
carolinemccaughey@yahoo.com
USA
I am a writer and filmmaker who was born and raised in New
York City. I write personal essays, memoir, and articles about
politics, health, and the arts. In 2015 I graduated from Columbia
University with a MFA in Nonfiction Writing. I earned a BA from
Brown University, where I double majored in History and Art-
Semiotics.
Before graduate school, I worked in New York City’s film and
television industry, as a researcher in a law office, as a bike
messenger, a chauffeur, and a migrant farm worker. I directed,
shot, and edited a feature documentary about the squatting
movement and gentrification of Manhattan’s Lower East Side
called Your House Is Mine. I also spent a year hopping freight
trains and hitchhiking across the United States.
I currently live in the East Village. I love dogs and hate cheese.

HOLY DIRT
At Arteles I finished “Holy Dirt,” an essay on the current heroin
and opioid epidemics in the United States. The piece focuses on
intergenerational heroin abuse in Chimayo, New Mexico; the 2015
HIV outbreak in Austin, Indiana; needle exchange programs and
the politics of harm reduction; and my own personal experiences.
I also started two new personal essays and began research on my
next big project.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Arteles Creative Residency Program, June 2016
ROBERT BEAM
USA
BROOKS DIERDORFF
robertc.beam@gmail.com // www.robertcollierbeam.com brooksdierdorff@gmail.com // www.brooksdierdorff.com
USA
The ability to construct an object that collects and alters ones
environment has fascinated me ever since I built and operated
my first solar water purifier. To this day I am captivated with
the fact that there is energy and elements working that I am
unable to see, only able to record. Experiments rule my practice
and direct my focus to vast expanses and isolated locations.
Recording through photographic means, using both traditional
and digital processes, my work examines the effects of the record
and the experience of the viewer. Finding inspiration from the
land, scientific exploration, and natural phenomena – I focus on
perception and the spaces we create. Creating object and image
based works that infer our inherent need to explore and see
further. Through a broad range of experimental processes and
photographic materials, I create impressions of events in the
landscape that I believe to exist but are beyond my awareness.
These impressions of spaces and objects confound the standard
expectations of photographic veracity. The image responds to a
sense of space beyond our perception, not existing as a record of
an event, but as a site for viewing– becoming the event.
Though the foundations of my current practice originate in
photography, I currently work across a variety of media that include
video, sculpture, and performance, and installation. Combining
conventional and non-traditional methods and materials ranging
from woodworking to video to photograms, I explore the ways in
which images interface between various and often-contesting
representations of the natural world. My practice searches for
new meanings in the intentional and incidental forms that we
individually and collectively create through our interactions with
nature.

THE LIGHT OF OTHER DAYS
During our time at Arteles we collaborated on a number of
projects revolving around ideas about the light, time, and the
landscape. We sought out the unique characteristics of the
unending summer light in Finland as a point of departure.
We made Camera Obscuras in the various locations in Finland
including above the arctic circle and during the summer solstice
in order to investigate our own perception of those times and
spaces. We produced studio images by rephotographing images
of the sun taken from the Hubble telescope, and made a lens out
of water to focus the sun on to light sensitive photographic paper.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Arteles Creative Residency Program, June 2016
ANGELA GLANZMANN
Canada
angelaglanzmann@gmail.com // www.angelaglanzmann.com
My practice is concerned with a loss of orientation and
re-navigating a sense of place. My art and personal life intersect
through subjective experiences of hiking, camping and exploring
landscapes, which later show up in my work. These landscapes
have different manifestations of physical, phenomenological and
psychogeographical presence in my practice. I work through
these mappings and explorations via new media, installation,
performance and sculpture. My work is informed by a feminist
gaze that includes questioning colonialism, racism and power
imbalances within various geographies and spaces. Under these
considerations I use loneliness/aloneness as a subjectivity of
experiencing sensations of landscapes, questioning/criticizing
the romantic notion of the “sublime” experience in nature and the
patriarchal associations with it. Themes of survival also permeate
my work and I often use mapping as a metaphor for processing
trauma and fabricating memory. Within my performances and
installations, my projects become highly gestural, allowing bodily
presence and ephemera to arise.
Angela Glanzmann is an interdisciplinary artist and cultural
worker from Halifax, Canada. Her work has been exhibited
in galleries, artist run centres, festivals and public spaces
throughout Canada and the UK.

THE OTHER NIGHT AND OTHERS
Baked a chocolate cake, fermented a sourdough starter, devoured
Lucy Lippard, filmed 16 sunsets and sunrises, filmed my sleep,
drew maps of Pangea over and over, painted dogs, painted berries,
devoured Wayson Choy, readied Saunas, researched biochemical
feedback systems involving the pituitary gland, adrenal gland and
hippocamus, was flocked by mosquitoes, chopped wood, chopped
footage of chopping wood, sang songs that melted my teenage
heart, tried to build a sleep cave, saw Venus only once.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Arteles Creative Residency Program, June 2016
AKIKO KEIRA
Japan
keiraa302@docomo.ne.jp // akikokeira.wixsite.com/akiko-keira
For many years, I’ve been drawing with an aim of making “doodle
art” worthy of (appreciation) being appreciated as an art form (in
its own right).
Recently, what I’ve been trying to do is expand the range of my
artistic expression by exploring new drawing styles and other
possibilities to develop my ideas.
I look for things that inspire me to create new works. This
chance will, I hope, serve as an opportunity to stretch myself, to
experiment with other materials and techniques.

NATURE ALWAYS WINS
My first work was an attempt to counteract nature, which I saw as
being greater than the humans it surrounded. I wanted to make
something better than nature using strong red colors to oppose
the green and drawing straight lines not seen in nature.
However, as I thought in the beginning nature has won.
As a result I decided to make my second work closer to nature, I
tried to blend with nature rather than oppose it.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Arteles Creative Residency Program, June 2016
MARIANA LEAL
Brazil
falecom.marianaleal@gmail.com
// marianaleal.art.br
My work as an artist reflects my interest in psycho-emotional
practices and in the possibility of accessing and resignifying
subconscious contents.
Some works bring my indigenous/afro/european ancestry
references as Brazilian. Many information and knowledge comes
to my mind intuitively through mysterious channels, so I organize
them in a poetical way bringing renewed shapes to past events,
working contemporarily as an artist that is an inhabitant of the
future in relation to those ancient times.
I’m interested in the state of presence and in energy flows between
the center of the chest and the hands, between foot soles and the
ground, between the top of the head and the above.
Some nature elements are recurring in my works. Water and
feathers, especially peacock feathers that in a subjective meaning
symbolizes gifts that are blast to me by Oriental winds as an
ability and a tool to perform my art work. When metaphorically
stucked in head it works as an eye or antenna. When held in hand
it performs strokes and lines.
My paintings shows mysterious figures and beings that vibrate
and seems to exist in a coexistent dimension. In drawings there
are lines that flows by hand to paper by automatism resulting in
organic-geometric entities that are vibrational and feathery. When
I work with photographs images I put out tangible bodies to the
photographic content and so I can interfere in the material body
of these moments. Sometimes I also include to these pictures
things that the eye of the camera was not able to “see” because
they are related to an inner dimension.

WHERE YOU’RE GOING, IT DOESN’T EVEN GET DARK
The midnight sun .The inner suns . The flow of waters . The bodies
of energy . The lake .The beading pearls . The personal ocean.
The astronauts . The friendly shoulders . The landing tracks .
The center of the heart . The pieces of eart . The entourage . The
flowing tribe . The flying seeds . The rocket-shaped trees . The
rocket-shaped flowers . The bird house . The body entrances .The
inner dimension . The wings . And the roots

IN THE RESIDENCY
Arteles Creative Residency Program, June 2016
“Fuck your human(ist) hope”
SIDONY O’NEAL
sidonyoneal@gmail.com
USA
While my work is multidisciplinary, at its core remains a
performative writing practice, a translation-- something like an
algorithm or a grammar. Mostly, I am in murky pursuit and refusal
of (an)other humanism. Using mutable performances, music,
texts, textiles, and printed materials, I investigate the lethality of
(black) existence and oscillation, troubling the idea that a body in
place is structured by deficit, Iack, and non-being.

ALWAYS IN DOUBT: SKETCHES TOWARD AN ASYLUM
I spent much of the residency writing short critical texts, poems,
and digital collages investigating the black femme body as data
object, prosthesis, desiring machine, and errant algorithm.
many of these pieces will be activated in an upcoming series of
performances and installations.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Arteles Creative Residency Program, June 2016
JAZMYNE M. K. GEIS
USA
jaz@jazmynekoch.com // www.jazmynekoch.com
CY GORMAN
Australia
geomatdiplomat@gmail.com
// www.cygormanvisual.com
Born in Maui (Hawai’i/USA) Jazmyne has grown up in a place that
harbors diversity-- different cultures, ways of thinking, island
traditions and American influences--and through her artistic
work speaks to these life experiences. As an interdisciplinary
artist, Jazmyne uses dance movement, film, poetry, design and
visual art to explore socio-cultural narratives related to identity
and place. Her work is inspired by her mixed ethnic background;
contemporary cultural identities; traditional arts, mythology and
storytelling; the natural world, and the shifts between physical
and digital spaces. During the residency, Jazmyne will be teaming
up with Cy Gorman, and artistic contributor Neil Harbisson,
to work on their project Augmented Organism (AugOrg) —a
project bringing together science, art and technology with world
wisdom traditions, sounds and movements. AugOrg’s aim is to
use creative practice based research to lead their exploration in
the relationships between technology, organism, and its relation/
communication with its environment; with purpose to create
art that supports the voice of our natural world, using current
technologies as tools to connect us back to the wisdom of Mother
Earth, and re-instill presence and deepen awareness within our
communities and ourselves.
I create, produce & direct interdisciplinary artwork & projects across
transnational cultural, media & social landscapes. My educational
& professional skill sets facilitate unique collaborations, hybrid
language formations & conceptual or developments for adaptive
and responsive artistic and transmedia expressions. Key areas of
interest, research and artistic practice are:
Light/ Animateuring/ Transmedia/ AV Design/ Digital & New Media
Art/ Videography/ Photography/ Music Production/ Sound Design/
Movement & Choreography/ Therapy/ Relational Aesthetics/ Art
in Public Space & Cyberspace/ Audiovisual Philosophy/ Spatial
Awareness/ Experiential/ Theatre/ Geomatics/ VR/ AR/ Mixed
Reality.
When bridging the digital and physical realms a guiding light for
me is always to search for the work that is asking to reveal itself.
This for me relates to concepts of alchemy, biomagnetics & ‘being
in tune’ with the identities and environments that are holding
space for the work to emerge from. Properties of the physical
world oscillate with the metaphysical. Aesthetics dissolve into
metaesthetics. Outcomes or artistic products wherever possible
are crafted towards expressions of ‘presence’ that transcend
relational awareness of a dualistic nature.
For the June 2016 Arteles Residency I am working on Augmented
Organism. Augmented Organism is a project bringing together
science, art and technology with world wisdom traditions, sounds
and movements. Aug Org values connection with Land. Aug Org sees
nature as an intelligent voice. Aug Org’s purpose is to create globally
relevant art by supporting the voice of our natural world & use
technologies of today and tomorrow as tools to connect us back to
the wisdom of Mother Earth. Aug Org’s vision is to reinstill presence
in our communities and deepen awareness within ourselves.

AUGMENTED ORGANISM WWW.AUGORG.COM
During our residency we successfully achieved our creative
production goals to devise, script, perform & produce several
short environmental-contemporary dance films, sonochromatic
AV designs, 360 photography and video transmedia assets as
well as develop the foundations of a tourable live performance
including elements of our digital assets and our landscaped/
spatial set designs.
We embraced the Finnish spirit, it’s local customs, culture &
landscapes whilst integrating them within our shared practicebased
research areas: Technology/Mythology. Digital/Non-Digital
Communication. Geomatics & Spatial Design. Biomagnetics.
When visiting our chosen sites, we observed the movements of
nature; their sensory spectrums & immersive characteristics.
We allowed ourselves to be present & witness nature just as it
is. Collaboratively mapping physical and conceptual identities/
environments we converged space & place resulting in ‘embodied
nature-led design environments’ .
Our landscaped performance space became a zone to integrate our
embodied design environments connecting our interdisciplinary
practices with the surrounding forests. The long Finnish summer
days, disorienting at first, helped us explore at any hour of the
day to shoot footage, rehearse & perform outdoors. Ahead of
us now is the digital post-production process of integrating the
sonochromatic work of our third collaborator, cyborg artist Neil
Harbisson. Our Arteles production residency was successfully
crowd funded to the value of 14K+ using the Indiegogo platform.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Arteles Creative Residency Program, June 2016
NICHOLAS KOVATCH
USA
kovatch.nick@gmail.com // www.nicholaskovatch.com
Nicholas Kovatch is an active sculptor, installation artist
and instructor based in Minneapolis, MN. He was a National
Endowment for the Arts Fellow at the MacDowell Colony in 2014
and was a fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts in 2015.
Nicholas received an MFA in Visual Studies from the Minneapolis
College of Art and Design. His work has been exhibited across
the United States and is currently an adjunct professor at the
Minneapolis College of Art and Design.

IMPLANTED
While at Arteles, I constructed a site-specific outdoor sculpture.
The piece existed on the side of a large rock face and in the form
of a hexagon. A clear sheet of acrylic plexiglass covers the black
void interior of the form. My work is influenced by a minimalist
aesthetic and a curiosity to see how people react when their
traditional environment is disrupted and unfamiliar. The sculpture
at Arteles proposes questions about the relationship between
manufactured objects and the natural environment. The illusion
of the piece being physically embedded into the rock allows the
viewer to question where the sculpture, and void, originates and
ends. When standing in front of the piece a distorted mirrored
image of the natural environment and the viewer occurs from
the combination of the black void and clear plexiglass. This
reflection creates a personal experience for the viewer, as the
person becomes part of the installation. This interaction allows
the person to witness his or her relationship to space and the
environment existing around them.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Arteles Creative Residency Program, June 2016
“Stars, sky, earth, flowers”
DANIELLE RANTE
USA
daniellerante@gmail.com // www.daniellerante.com
Rante works in drawing, painting, printing, paper cutting, installations
and tableaus of small organic objects. Sourcing material directly
from the environments she visits, Rante’s practice incorporates
site-specific field research into geographical happenings, direct
interaction with the landscape and its inhabitants, and meditative
mark-making. Akin to a botanist collecting live plant specimens in
the wild, or an astronomist mapping locations beyond the earth’s
atmosphere, Rante is interested in the meeting place between the
physical environment we encounter and the narratives of a place.
She explores our cultural subjectivity in relation to historical events
or shifts in the landscape, investigating collective and personal
speculation, while remaining a present witness.

”BLUE OF DISTANCE” SERIES OF 3 LARGE SCALE DRAWINGS DONE WITH CARBON TRANSFERS, INK AND CUT PAPER
Arteles residency provided an excellent time to work on drawings
for an upcoming exhibition. I came with a pre-determined plan,
so it was easy to settle in and begin. For the drawings, I used
references from the surrounding landscape and plants native to
Finland.
I was also able to do additional exploration and experimentation
that I am looking forward to working with back in my home studio.
I collected pigment samples from plants throughout the month,
making a scroll of the pigment rubbings.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Arteles Creative Residency Program, June-July 2016
KEVIN MACK
USA
kevinmack.phl@gmail.com // kevinmack.virb.com
Endless bounds of shapes stacked and colors chased, my collaged
worlds are spacious yet flat. Similar to dismantling a toy, I dissect
and rebuild spaces to understand their precise particularities. I
am an explorer, and am always searching for new mazes to be
lost in, reconnecting with the unknown like an old friend. My
vibrant works play with physicality and layering. Paint is applied
like icing to give autonomy; ghostly outlines of previous thoughts
emerge throughout. My favorite color is purple.

COSMIC CARTOGRAPHY & THE ESCAPIST
In my two months at Arteles I found a home. I studied and fell
deeply in love with the ever-changing sky and all of its wild colors.
I wandered all night in search of a mythical moose. I slayed
hundreds of mosquitos and infused all my clothes with the smell
of bonfire. I painted for 13-hour sessions while everyone was
asleep, and I bonded with my ideal mug- a rectangular gravy boat
perfect for coffee and mixed drinks. I left a family to paint murals
in Romania on a spontaneous Instagram invite, and I came home
a proud stranger to a group of new residents. I was properly
challenged, and the work I made reflects that. At times I was
lonely, other times I felt loved. I made wonderful friends, many of
whom I know I’ll see again. In my two months at Arteles I made
six paintings and left behind a joyous mural for future residents to
enjoy. I am thankful for this opportunity which has brought me to
Finland, and has given me more than I could have ever expected.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Neo Future program, May 2016
“Scientific Mysticism”
CHRISTOPHER ALLMAN
USA
christopherkallman@gmail.com // www.peopleofieya.com
Born in raised in Utah as a devout Mormon, I left the faith in
my early 20’s, moved to Washington State and graduated from
The Evergreen State College, where I studied art, religion and
Philosophy. I then came to Chicago to attend The School of the Art
Institute of Chicago, earning an Mfa in Ceramics.
I like books, walking, thinking, solitude, friendship, drinking
tea, growing flowers & herbs, science, sci-fi and mysticism. As
an artist I seek to explore the intersections of spirituality and
science/technology.

SCI-FI FOREST COSTUME FOR SHAMANIC CHANNELING OF FUTURE BEINGS.
I made a sci-fi shield, that protects from bad vibes, a staff and
a mask meant to help induce a shamanic state for channeling
future beings.
I also made a few post human figurines and a little alter to house
them in.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Neo Future program, May 2016
ANNA HOETJES
The Netherlands
annahoetjes@gmail.com // www.annahoetjes.nl
The eye, the screen and the camera lens play an important role
in my work. I look at the relationship between the human body,
digital perception and collectivity. Lately I’m exploring narrative
fiction and technology as a mediator between the human body
and ‘the outside’. Looking is increasingly outsourced to machines;
augmented reality and virtual reality become more and more
important when registering our surroundings. I like to juggle with
the different definitions of reality and the multiple perspectives
that this causes.
My projects try to capture the moment that utopia and dystopia
simultaneously exist within a system. Who determines how we see
things and how we shape our own identity? How is the collective
represented? How does our own body relate to this collective?
And how do our own decisions and that of society merge?

INTERFACE and THE INFINITE NAVIGATION
The future doesn’t look much different from today in INTERFACE,
but no one has ever seen a face and cameras have replaced the
human eye. Every head is locked in a reflective mask; a one-way
mirror that allows you to look out, but no one can look in to see
your face. If you look at each other, you drown in an infinite empty
reflection of a reflection. This is the starting point of the short
science fiction film that I’ve been working on for months before
arriving to Arteles. The residency gave me the opportunity to edit
this film, getting musical input by Ng Chor Guan and the curious
eyes of all other residents.
Next tot hat I’ve been projecting found footage and my own footage
onto the trees in the forest, onto artificial fog and onto many of
my fellow residents here. Playing around with poetic narratives
that deal with navigation and space. Like this I’ve been developing
thoughts for new work that deals with the concept of parallel
universes as a way to think through contemporary structures of
labour, production, marginalization and the way space travel is
represented.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Neo Future program, May 2016
“A multimedia performer”
SID BRANCA
USA
sid@sidbranca.com // www.sidbranca.com
I am an artist, writer, and performer based in Chicago and Los
Angeles. My pastiche-driven practice blends contemporary pop
culture, classical literature, and speculative autobiography in
projects using performance, video, sound, text, and new media.
I am especially interested in the ways in which technology and
mass media teach us to view ourselves and each other.
I often focus on celebrity worship, the ubiquity of technology, the
cult(ures) of the Internet, and how these impact our experience
of the human body, the physical world, and our sense of self. In
exploring these, I then blend in elements of classical literature,
with a particular affinity for the tragedies of ancient Greece. I
draw out parallels across my varied sources related to issues
of gender, ability, mental illness, and the encouragement and
exploitation of destructive behavior. Within this mixture, I try on
different performative personas and write imagined futures for
myself, ranging from the fantastic to the tragic to the mundane.

[ENTER BODY INTO FIELD]
While at Arteles, I developed a performance character, a
constructed alien/human cyborg being with implanted memories
taken from a human abductee--musical theater teacher Sharon
White. Our cyborg, Shari, crash-lands on Earth, looking for answers
about the planet and their identity. As they face the challenges
of an unfamiliar environment and the dysphoria brought on by
conflicting memories, they send video transmissions out into
the internet, and comfort themselves with songs from classic
musicals.
After spending some time delving into research and writing, I
began rehearsing and performing as Shari. I recorded audio and
video footage for a variety of site-specific diaristic vlogs, musical
numbers, and quasi-documentary nature shots, which I will edit
into a series of videos to then be annotated through YouTube’s
interface.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Neo Future program, May 2016
“What does the brain do when it
doesn’t fabricate behavior?”
- Zhivka Baltadzhieva
EVA DAVIDOVA
Bulgaria
edavidova@gmail.com // www.vimeo.com/user1477168
Somehow I know that the space, and the circular time around,
are exactly as our viscera are. War What if we are the games
our children will program some day? How technology and
psychology are converging? Manipulation, yielding, contempt
and propaganda. war for profit I am sticking my fingers in the
flesh of utopia. Pursuing political action through displacement
of the awareness’ entry-point; through fantasy and the explosion
of technology’s “possibles”. I think of data as a clear sign, and a
trigger, of the permeability of the material world. A space can
become a person and, in a sense, give their information away.
Maybe also a download of “us” is happening, and erasure.
Nabokov talks about the intent of deception as an instrument
for the coercive. Being undeniably manipulated, I am interested
in using manipulation back—taking behaviors out of context
and creating a new, paradoxical sense of the being. I don’t try
to explain, to comment, or discuss, but to capture forces in their
unuttered state, and make them “act”.
Eva Davidova is a multidisciplinary artist based in New York. Her
work has been shown at museums, private galleries and public
spaces in New York, Barcelona, Madrid, Oporto, Sofia and many
others. She is recipient of international awards and fellowships in
the US and Europe. Her recent institutional solo exhibitions were
at the Contemporary Arts Center La Regenta in Tenerife, and the
Urban Video Project at The Everson Museum Facade, Syracuse, NY.

GLOBAL MODE. PLAYGROUND FOR DROWNING ANIMALS
At Arteles I worked on animations, 3D animals and Virtual Reality
interactivity for my ongoing project Global Mode. I also spent
many hours with “Cassandra”, the research part of the project,
which explores the shaping of our perception, the construction,
and the denial of a possible future.
In Global mode/ Playground for Drowning Animals, cruelty
and death are snatched off from everyday perception. Only the
fantasy—the shiny fairy tales—could hold them. Semi-human,
semi-cows, semi-horses, women, almost inexistent Instances of
life, these 3D animals are instances perhaps of an animal lost.
Their rebellion or submission changes with each appearance, but
they are one. I am also an instance, imagining.
I am interested in the capacities of Virtual Reality to combat
cruelty and pre-determination. By “cruelty” I mean the force
or sentiment behind all these: “war for profit”, “industrialized
farming”, “mental control”, “social injustice”, indifference
towards other’s pain, or even pleasure derived from it. By
“predetermination”—the acceptance of a role as a non-maker of
reality as is, or as it seem.
Virtual Reality it is already used to augment cruelty—by
transferring the physical confrontation to a virtual one—in drone
bombing. It is also used to present scenes as “absolute real”
although they are heavily staged and have an even heavier agenda.
And of course there are the exploding possibilities of intrusive
advertising, or oblivion of all kind. I work towards destabilizing
and turning around these purposes.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Neo Future program, May 2016
SOFÍA CÓRDOVA
Puerto Rico
sofia.v.cordova@gmail.com // www.sofiacordova.com
Sofía Córdova (b.1985 Carolina, Puerto Rico) is an artist focusing
on states of unbelonging and in betweenness .
Originally, her practice looked at dance music and colonialism as
both relate to the creation of identity, specifically for those that
are product of Caribbean Diaspora through the performance and
installation work, Baby, Remember My Name. Currently, she is
creating a work which asks how life might play out for humankind,
specifically for those in the margins, 1000 years from now through
a cross-platform piece involving 8mm film, music, video and live
performance, photography, painting and installation. This work
imagines a world where our current social structures - racial and
gender hierarchies, the environment vis-à-vis technological and
capitalist society - have been radically upended. The landscape of
this future world provides both a site for considering new realities
while serving as a distorted lens aimed at our present.
Córdova received her BFA from St. John’s University in Queens,
NY in 2006, and her MFA from the California College of the
Arts in San Francisco in 2010. She also completed the one year
certificate program at the International Center for Photography in
New York in 2006. She has performed at SFMOMA, SOMArts and
Galeria De La Raza among others. Her work has been exhibited
at the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art, AMOA/Art House, Southern
Exposure, The International Center of Photography as well as
other venues internationally. She was awarded the 2014-2015
Kala Fellowship and has recently participated in a residency at
the Bay Area Video Coalition in San Francisco. Her work will be
the subject of a solo exhibition at the Rochester Art Center in the
Spring of 2017 and is part of Pier 24’s permanent collection.

DAWN CHORUS - LA PREKUELA (WORKING TITLE)
Shot primarily in the woods of Western Finland and borrowing
from texts such as the Kalevala and Ursula K. LeGuin’s Earthsea
cycle to build its narrative, ‘Dawn Chorus - La Prekuela’ shows the
history of our planet in the next 500 years. This video serves as the
prequel to the video and performance work ‘Echoes of A Tumbling
Throne (Odas Al Fin De Los Tiempos)’ which takes place 1000
years in the future and which focuses on the decline of earth as a
site of rebirth and reinvention for those currently in the margins.
‘Dawn Chorus...’, though abstract in narrative, comprises my
most ‘cinematic’ work to date and functions as a sort of ‘play
within a play’ about the early days of our collapse as tethered
to our contemporary systems of global-industrial capitalism.
The work centers on how these systems have accelerated the
conditions of our fall by focusing on climate change and the
third world labor and inequity upon which our contemporary
technological infrastructure is built. The piece will also show
footage from the filmmaking itself as part of the structure of the
piece furthering its meta narrative. In keeping with my other work
which is concerned with creating simultaneously disorienting
and pleasurable experiences, this work, while dealing with very
concrete themes, doesn’t seek to be moralizing or entirely clear.
The video ends with a deluge -- itself a call back to the oft clichéd
idea of ‘washing away’ in various human mythologies, giving way
to the world presented in ‘Echoes...’

IN THE RESIDENCY
Neo Future program, May 2016
ALISON TAYLOR AND SABINE LEBEL
alison11@sympatico.ca
Canada
Sabine LeBel and Alison Taylor have been collaborating for over
fifteen years making short videos that tell stories while challenging
narrative form. Visual fragments, sketchy animations, voiceover,
found-object costumes and props, and densely woven images
and sounds, all work for an aesthetic that tends to be low-fi and
non-linear with multi-layered soundscapes as counterpoint.
The stories we tell often deal with queer themes and difficult
emotions: alienation, revenge, loss, anxiety, and remorse. We
like to work with soundscapes and landscapes, and use ‘obsolete’
technologies to capture sounds and images. Wild animals roam
our cities, and feral humans scavenge in a world without oil.

MESSAGES FROM VISITORS
Our main goal when we arrived at Arteles was to shoot the third
video in an experimental environmental trilogy, til then only
an loose idea floating around our heads. The landscape was
unfamiliar but familiar, similar to home.
Things imploded. Creative process sent us into the woods to
re-shoot at new locations discovered on aimless walks. Endless
light turned our world upside down and objects we found made
characters evolve and surprise us.
The visitors made allies with the trees. Red rubber boots and
climbing the roof. A dilapidated dock that felt important. The postoil
world of our imaginations became almost tangible as images
of cells dividing played on our naked skin.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Neo Future program, May 2016
NICOLE KILLIAN
USA
nicole@nylondip.com // www.nylondip.com
My practice is interested in the relationship between online
systems of association and the role of magical thinking within
our current cultural climate. The intersection of magical thinking
and associative systems form the framework of my research
manifested as collage- and installation-based practice. Magical
thinking allows the connections formed in archival collage to
become entangled in empirical histories and imagined narratives.
The information we glean from images is underpinned by our
engagement with images being increasingly defined by their
ability to connect with each other. My aim is to explore how I can
take control of these associative systems to reveal something
hidden about our world.

MYSTIC MEDITATIONS♀ // ░WHAT PIXELS FORM░
I made objects — smart stones + divining weapons — and shot
footage for a new project titled “Mystic Meditations♀” in which a
band of witchy women are found in the magical forest (hiisi) up to
something unbeknownst to others.
In addition, I worked on two videos for a bigger body of work titled
“░What Pixels Form░.” In this project within the duration of a pop
song, tweets from my language archive and whatever is in the
folders on my desktop are combined as moving image to make
poetry.✔

IN THE RESIDENCY
Neo Future program, May 2016
CHARLIE DONALDSON
charlie.donaldson91@gmail.com
Australia
// www.charliedonaldson.com
My practice is interested in the relationship between online
systems of association and the role of magical thinking within
our current cultural climate. The intersection of magical thinking
and associative systems form the framework of my research
manifested as collage- and installation-based practice. Magical
thinking allows the connections formed in archival collage to
become entangled in empirical histories and imagined narratives.
The information we glean from images is underpinned by our
engagement with images being increasingly defined by their
ability to connect with each other. My aim is to explore how I can
take control of these associative systems to reveal something
hidden about our world.

AARNIVALKEA RESEARCH SOCIETY
During my residency I completed an installation work related to
the Finnish myth of the Aarnivalkea (will o’ the wisp). Created in
the guise of an anonymous researcher, the laboratory-style setup
of the installation feeds unrelated information into a narrative
structure and allows the viewer to create their own story out of
the images at hand. This project continued my inquiry into the use
of associative image-driven systems on the internet as tools for
creating narrative.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Neo Future program, April 2016
“Primordial dreamer,
life spectrum documentarian”
SADIE WEIS
USA
sadie.mw@gmail.com
// www.sadieweis.com
Sadie Weis is a multi-media artist working in the disciplines
of Installation, Sculpture, Painting, Printmaking, and Video
with influences of the spiritual, the occult, magic, and science
fiction. Her primary philosophy and inspiration in art production
focuses on a combination of these elements to create alternative
environments and otherwordly sensations. These elements are
combined with the re-appropriation of found relics and memories
in accordance with organic processes such as crystal growth and
natural decay. She attempts to convey magic and beauty in the
implication of isolation of these discarded elements and broken
human memories of their former ‘worlds’ and their ultimate
transition and re-representation into dream-like and fantastical
universes via transcendental mediums. These creations become
ritualized moments of presence and awareness in a societal
landscape of common unconscious.

GRAVITY’S RAINBOW
Through the mediums of installation, painting and sculpture,
‘Gravity’s Rainbow’ addresses alternate dimensional
environments and channels to otherworldly sensations through
influences of spirituality, science fiction, the occult, magic, the
galaxy, and beyond. My creative research is based in astronomy
and astrology, space and time travel, fantasy, chemistry, alchemy,
extraterrestrials, and the exploration of mystical and metaphysical
realms. This research and experimental work continues to find
insight from these constructs which I have in turn manifested into
environmental installations consisting of self- cultivated crystals
on both found and discarded objects from nature and human
excess, as well as curious reliquary objects from the future,
mimicking an archaelogical uncovery from a future dimension. I
aim to create beautiful and wondrous environments, shrine-like
spaces, overgrown with crystals and mystical objects, arising
curiosity and wonder in the viewer. My inspirations come from
the future-world making that science-fiction novelists propose
in their iconic novels, such as feminist writer Ursula K. Leguin,
or by the possibilities of such a laboratory that one would find
in a Phillip K. Dick novel or a Blade Runner universe. These
multifaceted universes are forever magical and enchanting while
also paradoxically proposing dystopian futures.
During my period in residence, I created a transcendental time
portal within the peaceful
surroundings of nature as a means for reflective purposes
and contemplation of one’s place in this universe; one’s own
‘kopfkino”- one’s ‘cinema of the mind.’ Additionaly, I collected
various flora and objects of the surrounding nature, leaves,
blossoms, nuts, tree branches, moss, and imprints from
passing creatures and beings- both in nature and in human
circumstances- organic and chemical, useful and redundant, alive
and dead. Through a collaboration between chemistry and art I
crystallized and arrange these elements into a collective space.
This work explores but does not answer, questions evoking one
to examine more than the individual self. This portal/installation
created a collaborative experience between the viewer and the
unknown. How do we find a self within the intangible concept and
vastness that is the universe? How fleeting and insignificant is
one human life in the grand scheme of it all, and how do we defy
the face of this knowledge.? This work queries our iconography
and questions our places of worship, reflection, and intention
through sacred imagery.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Neo Future program, April 2016
RYAN KUO
USA
ryankuo@gmail.com
// www.rkuo.net
Ryan Kuo is an artist and writer drawn to reflexive systems
and acts of non-knowledge. Many of his works occur in video,
hypertext and game environments, and invoke a person or people
arguing. Common to them are dialectical processes, attempts
to triangulate new openings, wherein both artist and audience
retain questionable agency.
In 2014 Ryan completed a thesis at MIT’s graduate program in Art,
Culture and Technology which described vibrational and affective
metaphors for encountering the computer. He has also been a
medical student and a videogame critic. Recent interests include
spirals and sequencers, dogs, arpeggiators, office parties, and
the creep along the white margin.
Up to half of his residency will be spent jumping rope.

DEATH DRIVER / FILE
DEATH DRIVER intends to isolate and rematerialize seams and
aberrations on the road: evidence of an underlying violence that is
regularly paved over by the pace of capital flows. Commissioned
for the Speeding and Braking: Navigating Acceleration conference
at Goldsmiths College, DEATH DRIVER utilizes drivelapse films
sampled from the internet, which not only subtract visible time,
but reveal that the road easily recomposes itself around these
excised segments as a seamless line. The road is always readable,
although all signs point to death. That is why the line must spiral
out of control. DEATH DRIVER is a collaboration with the poet Levi
Rubeck.
FILE is a process work produced for Berlin’s digital Left Gallery,
which sells artist files editioned via blockchain. Rather than
reconstitute itself as a physical object, FILE aims to maintain
the contingency of the digital file. It offers shared access to
a folder in which the FILE is continuously updated alongside
research materials for an ongoing speculation on the the place
of the artist (or anybody, really) in the era of mobile studios
and virtual workspaces. The center of the FILE is a hypertext
essay multitasking as technical documentation for the FILE, a
collaborative wiki for the team building the FILE, and a todo app
that builds and releases anticipation for the always-imminent
deployment of the FILE. The FILE asks the user to file the file in
the file, and wonders, “How does one file oneself?”.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Neo Future program, April 2016
ELENA BRUNNER
USA
ebrunner@mica.edu // portfolios.mica.edu/ebrunner
Elena Brunner is a New England based artist who works primarily
in drawing and illustration. She is interested in unpacking
systems of power that are upheld physically, socially and
subconsciously. Her current project is the militarization of the
American police force. She collages digital images to make large
scale photorealistic drawings. She works primarily in black and
white as a way of presenting the images as factual or ‘objective’
even though they are completely constructed.

COPSCAPES
During my time at Arteles I focused on two large graphite
drawings I call ‘Copscapes’. Each drawing is 8 feet in length and
depict police barriers scattered through abandoned near-future
landscapes. These barriers simultaneously form, move through,
and obstruct the landscapes.
I also drew large ominous cop caricatures with black oil bar on a
white backgrounds. Thanks to conversations I have had at Arteles
I now see the drawing is a version of my own superego as well as a
representation of the oppressive gaze particularly the white male
gaze. I drew it as an act of expelling or revealing my tendency to
self-police.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Neo Future program, April-May 2016
“Happiness is a choice. If you don’t like
what you are looking at, change the way
you look at it.”
GABE MICHAEL KENNEY
USA
gabe.mpk@gmail.com // www.gabemichaelkenney.com
Hailing from the Laurel Highlands in southwestern Pennsylvania
and currently residing and working out of Columbus, Ohio, I am
an visual artist, cosmological researcher and social activist. As a
young man hungry for adventure, I pursued my BFA at Western
State Colorado University. There, I specialized in traditional
printmaking and formal aesthetic theory, while exploring the
wild, wild, west. Years later, I returned to school seeking my
MFA at Pennsylvania State University. Here, I focused more on
conceptual and contemporary art theory and practice, while
still obtaining a strong emphasis in printmaking. Since then, I
developed a framework that demonstrates arts true power to incite
sociopolitical awareness and advocate positive global reform in a
provocative, yet slightly entertaining manner. Currently, the work
has evolved into an eclectic hybrid of printmaking, installation,
performance and mixed media. During an exhibition or public
viewing, the work becomes a didactic presentation of abstract
ideologies embedded in historical research. By challenging
audiences to focus and engage in critical thinking, I create an
extraordinary opportunity for discoveries to be made. My work
consistently questions the intellectual power source, how do we
interpret information and where does it come from? Who are we
as a race, where are we in the vastness of space, and what are we
doing here?

NEO-FUTURE LAB #1: PARALLELS, MIRRORS, AND WORMHOLES
Part one of my investigation maps visual conclusions based on
a particular anomaly that took place when “The Technician” was
doing trial runs in “The Time Machine” back in May of 2015. This
anomaly is called “Skipping” and it happens when there is an error
during travel. If the user (The Technician) has a brief moment of
either hesitation, doubt, disbelief or in this case indecision during
the launch, the unit of consciousness splits in half, presenting a
blurry glimpse into two separate future realms, one seemingly
dystopic in appearance and the other, utopic. In Lab #1, “The
Researcher” emerges and attempts to clarify how and why “Time
Skipping” takes place, leading the investigation towards exploring
theories concerning Parallel Multiverses, Super String Theory,
Numerology, Free Will, positive and negative effects technology
imposes on our species, and the importance of understanding the
true power of the brain.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Neo Future program, April 2016
ANDY THOMAS
andy@android.net.au
Australia
// www.andythomas.com.au
Andy Thomas creates a visual fusion between Nature and
Technology, by taking photos of plants, insects and machines
and compositing them with artificially created forms in various
3D programs. His photographic endeavours have led him to such
exotic locations as Borneo, Laos and the rainforests of Tasmania
and the Daintree River. Over the past decade Andy has exhibited
work at galleries in Australia, North America and Europe. His
work seeks to explore ideas such as self similarity in nature and
how evolution and technology co-exist on the planet we call Earth.

VISUAL SOUNDS OF FINLAND
Andy Thomas has created a project visualizing the sounds of the
natural environment of Finland by travelling to various forest
locations and sampling nature with a digital camera and digital
audio recorder. The sounds are then used to trigger particle
effects in 3D software so as to produce an audio visual abstract
representation of the sounds of birds and other animals in and
around the residency and several other locations in Finland.
The final piece will be displayed at the nature centre in Haltia in
August 2016.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Neo Future program, April 2016
“If the doors of perception were cleansed,
then everything would appear
to man as it is, infinite.”
KATHERINE ANNE BRADLEY
katkat1991@hotmail.com // katherineannebradley.allyou.net
UK
Somewhere between techno paganism and digital dharma,
between post-humanism and new-materialism. Experimentation
with auditory and visual stimulation to induce meditative states
and expand consciousness. Binaural beats, homogenous visual
fields, immersion and sense isolation. I am a wanderer, I’m on
the spiritual path, I make films, sound, photographs, I draw,
I meditate, I believe in oneness and I don’t see a separation
between us, nature or technology; I take a transversal and interrelational,
non-anthropocentric world view and I want to blur the
lines between art, technology and spirituality to manipulate our
perceptual states towards a place of understanding and oneness.

TECHNOLOGIES OF THE SELF + YOU ARE LIGHT
I continued my research into ‘technologies of the self’. These are
spiritual technologies, or ‘bio-hacks’ like binaural beats, sensory
deprivation tanks and even phone applications that can be used
to aid one’s spiritual practice, with a view to helping us change
our perception and our understanding, and reach higher states
of consciousness. I am interested in developing technologies
that individuals can use in their meditation practice, and working
with other artists, scientists and designers to explore this area of
new technology. During the residency I started to develop ideas
for a Meditation Chamber that could read and respond to users’
biometric data with auditory and visual stimuli to deepen their
meditation.
I also worked on a film called “YOU ARE LIGHT”, in collaboration
with another resident on the Neo-Future program. The film
shifts through imagery of life at the micro and macrocosmic
scale, loosely narrating a personal and universal discovery of our
connection to all things.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Neo Future program, April 2016
“Ryokō is a sound and visual
experimentation joint project that finds a
comfortable place among the raw noise and
contemporary electronic music.”
RYOKO (SARAH RASINES & ALBERTO MEHER)
sarahrasiness@gmail.com // www.sarahrasines.com
Basque Country & Spain
Alberto Meher utilizes static and moving images removed from
conventionalisms. Over time he has researched different media
through which he has shaped his concepts: from theatre to video
creation along with performances, instalations, photography
projects, etc. He is intent on discovering sensory relations that will
convey experimentation and social themes thereby achieving the
right mix to unify his ideas and show them in real time as well as
pre-edited. He has taken part in various audiovisual projects like
XSANP, Piel (with Luis Tabuenca), Gastromusic, Pure Hemp and
Espiral Tangente. He has performed as a Vj with numerous artists
among which Alexander Kowalski, Ben Sims, Ángel Molina, La M.
O. D. A. and Grotèsque. He has also performed in plays like Volk.
He has performed at such venues as La Casa Encendida (Madrid),
Espacio Tangente (Burgos), Antic Teatre (Barcelona) and Burgos
Conservatory.
Sarah Rasines is a visual and sound artist. She was awarded
her Degree in Fine Arts at San Carlos Faculty of Fine Arts at the
Universidad Politécnica of Valencia. She divides her time between
artistic creation with her PhD research at the Faculty of Fine
Arts at the University of the Basque Country. She belongs to the
Research Group Ikersoinu (Sound Research and Artistic Space).
Her work has been exhibited in numerous venues, among which La
Juan Gallery in Madrid (2016), Huarte Center in Pamplona (2015),
La Cosmos Gallery in Bilbao (2015), Espacio Tangente in Burgos
(2008, 2012, 2015); in Muestra Itinerante de Artes Plásticas Ertibil
Bizkaia (Etirbil Bizkaia Plastic Arts Itinerant Exhibition) in Sala
Rekalde in Bilbao (2013); 2nd Edition of the T-Festa Festival with
the exhibition entitled “”Cuando de repente la furiosa descripción
toma otro rumbo” ( When furious description suddenly changes
course) at Azkuna Zentroa in Bilbao (2014). She has also done
numerous performances at Sala Magatzems Wall&Video, at the
Sporting Club in Russafa (Valencia), at Instituto Francés (The
French Institute) and at the IVAM in Valencia (2008-2010). Recently
we listened to her at Lata de Zinc in Oviedo (2016), at Màgia Roja
in Barcelona (2015), at La Escucha Errante Festival in Bilbao
(2015), at Gijón’s Noche Blanca (Gema Llamazares Art Gallery,
2014) and before that at Polifonía de los Tiempos at Guadalupe
Fort (2013), at the ZarataFest (2013, 2014, at the XXIV Exposición
Audiovisual y Sonora at the BBVA Foundation (2013), at the MEM-
MUSICAEXMACHINA Festival (2012), at the Arteleku AMMMRB_III
Conference (2012) and at Club Le Larraskito in Bilbao.
Ryoko is a sound and visual experimentation joint project that
finds a comfortable place among the raw noise and contemporary
electronic music. It establishes an interplay with the spectator
through simple and direct messages, without overlooking wellgrounded
research. They started this project together with other
musicians at the Dual Club at the Espacio Tangente in Burgos in
2015.

SYNKKÄ EI RALLILLE
Through this project we seek to render the language of the people
from near Haukijärvi an artistic instrument that will promote a
positive relationship.
We invited several people to take part in this project. Our
ignorance of the language renders us a reliable collector of their
contributions. Their secrets will always be kept secret.
The video contains two different scenes. The first one features a
youngster who lives with his family and his cars in a house close
to Mouhijärvi. The second scene contains images of a Finnish
family from Sastamala whose life story is fairly peculiar. The link
between the former and the latter scenes is a motorbike social
club. We have recorded part of their daily lives in different settings
common to all the protagonists, where we have spent time with
them.
We are currently looking into sound’s potential. Sound
experimentation has been our main concern over the last few
years. Our own artistic research is closely related to “nonidiomatic
improvisation.”, which liberates the musician from
abiding by any rule that goes against his or her own logic or
inclinations. We intend to make field recordings in Haukijärvi that
will later be processed with a view to integrating them with the
videos, the latter being the truly experimental stage of the project.
Last but not least, we undertake to make an installation which
will include images and documents that will illustrate the process
of our project complete with videos and soundtracks.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Neo Future program, April 2016
“Reassembling beauty through destruction”
SARA GOODMAN & HOLLY CHERNOBYL
hollychernobyl@gmail.com // hollychernobyl.weebly.com
USA
We’re interested in exploring queer narratives through science
fiction/Butoh movement & highlighting intersections of queerness,
feminism, & the “othering” of bodies. Queerness is a non-binary
identity, underpinned by a foundational antinormativity. Our work
together investigates the underworld, in-between spaces, &
reassembling beauty through destruction.
In our work together, there’s a clear throughline of failure,
surrender, collapse, celestial bodies, poetry, and resilience. Sara
& I both studied poetry at the university level, & are attracted to
Ecopoetry: poetry with a strong ecological emphasis or message,
often confronting disaster, the difficulty of urban reality, &
mapping patterns of micro systems (e.g. evolutionary biology)
reflected in macro systems (e.g. innovation systems such as
Google). All these points excite us! We are incredibly eager to
begin work on Love Letters to Earth, as the project is a neat
continuation, synthesis, & evolution of our previous work together.

LOVE LETTERS TO EARTH
Holly and Sara worked on a series of experimental shorts about
the life of a woman on inhabited Mars who is homesick for Earth.
The story is told through Butoh dance daydreams of earth,
documentary style interviews of humans living on Mars, and is
interwoven with field recordings of nature and glitchy interludes.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Neo Future program, April 2016
“Zen, Speed, Organic: 3 lifestyle diets.”
OMSK SOCIAL CLUB FEAT PUNK IS DADA
rafferty.pv@gmail.com
// www.punkisdada.com
UK
Omsk Social Club feat.PUNK IS DADA is “futuristically political”,
[i.e. unrealistic] proposing the contents and makings as a form
of post-political entertainment. The content examines other
virtual egos and experiences allowing the works to become a
dematerialized hybrid of modern day culture.
The Artist has a consumptive response to civil society, often the
“readymade” sits in the works a recognizable tool of identity yet
PUNK IS DADA sees this as a compression artifact (or artefact) of
Modern-western identity. She exploits the ease of these resources
to break down social, political, cultural and aesthetic dimensions.
She often creates work with a certain cosmic pessimism allowing
problems of the non-human world to be explored through her
works ultimate negation of form as anti form is her ideal structure.
Yet she declares herself an untrend; Omsk Social Club feat.PUNK
IS DADA assumes the visage of poverty in her anti-nostalgic
distopia she is industrial by nature and de-gendered by style.
“Zen, Speed, Organic: 3 lifestyle diets.” NO SEX PLEASE WE ARE
POSTHUMAN PUNK IS DADA FOREVER

ACIDWASH
Acidwash, a leaked NSA codeword explores the youth trend of
Sadness online through the lost art of Butoh. Perception, today
has become habitual and automatic, it negates the sublime, once
promised to us via URL. Mass Data hacks the arts to suspend our
own unique seeing technology. Its toys with our image ecology
leaving us somewhere between the life and the living. These
images are deeply unpersonal therefore they are personal to all
they let the viewer ponder subject, object, sound or animal - Life
trapped inside motionless matter - they are our future.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Neo Future program, April 2016
“Let your life be your Art!”
JESÚS JIMÉNEZ
Mexico
gsus08@mac.com // www.jesusjimenez.com
Working in photography, video and installation, I have found my
inspiration in a personal obsession for the object, the trace, and
the space. The photographed set of action art ephemeral absurd
situations for the camera is a description of my particular relation
with the World, the choreographed artwork for the camera as a
document aims to dislocate our perception the intention is to
appeal to open answers and questions from the audience it
appeals to the spectators for the virtue of human action to be
conscious active participants of our role traces in the constant
evolution creation of the Universe.

X7R8 CONSTELLATION
X7R8 Constellation is a mathematical program drawing that
encodes a new constellation. Working in photography, video and
installation, I have found my inspiration in a personal obsession
for the object, the trace, and the space. The set of action art and
ephemeral absurd situations are a description of my particular
relation with the World, the choreographed artwork as a document
aims to dislocate our perception the intention is to appeal to
open answers and questions from the audience not only on our
existance in the Universe, but also on the constant evolution of
the Universe.
Rolling Paper, hole puncher, grafite. Light box. Size variable.
2016.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Neo Future program, March 2016
“Curiosity is the key to creating.”
ÓLÖF BENEDIKTSDÓTTIR
Iceland
olofbenedikts@gmail.com // www.instagram.com/olofbenedikts
My creative process is driven by curiosity. When I find a subject I want
to work with I dig deep into various aspects of the phenomenon,
searching for any piece of information or knowledge I can use in my
process. Soon small sketches and short poems get mixed in with
the research and the border between fact and fiction start blurring.
The common thread in my works is this border of fact and fiction
and how our minds mix and match truths and untruths to create our
understanding of the world.The self and its interaction with the world
around it also plays a big part and is always an underlying theme.
In my practice I rarely manage to stay true to one medium from
one work to another, I let the ideas that arise control how they will
be materialised. Sometimes the materialisation is in a medium
that I don’t know, so I have to just learn it from scratch. I allow
the ideas to steer me into unexplored territories and they can be
pretty reckless drivers.

INTERACTIVE WEB ART
In Arteles I wanted to explore possibilities of creating interactive
web art. I was not only looking at technically interactive works
but also things(not only artwork) that engage popular culture and
reach out into the social and physical realm outside of the internet.
My point of reference for this sort of thing would be memes and
viral material. I am fascinated by the moment when a culture
jam, an artwork or a joke becomes a sort of a happening simply
because a large amount of people saw it, shared it with others and
talked about it. Since I wanted to explore this particular internet
behaviour I sort of went straight for the most fool-proof way to go
viral, which is of course kittens. I got the domain infinitekittens.
website and spent most of my time in the residency working on
a code and visuals for the website, although I did end up with a
couple of related side projects.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Neo Future program, March 2016
EMMA CHARLES
UK
emmavictoriacharles@gmail.com
// www.emma-charles.com
Emma Charles is a London-based artist. Working with photography
and moving image, her practice stems from an inquiry into
temporality. Drawn to the boundary as a physical and conceptual
notion, the photographic medium acts as a tool to address wider
social and political systems of time and space, focusing on the
point at which these divisions may rupture or collide. Charles
has been particularly concerned with the financial sector and
how time, productivity and labour are altered through technology.
Primarily focusing on the abstract elements of industry and
corporate environments, Charles’ work incorporates aspects of
documentary and fiction. More recently, Charles has directed her
practice towards exploring the materiality of the Internet, seeking
to uncover the hidden, physical infrastructures that support our
technologically driven lives.

WHITE MOUNTAIN
During the residency I completed a new film work ‘White
Mountain’. White Mountain is a 16mm docu-fiction film focusing
on the Pionen data centre. This former Cold War era civil defence
bunker was redesigned by architect Albert France-Lanord in
2008 into a data centre, housing servers for clients which once
included WikiLeaks and PirateBay. Located 30 meters under the
granite rocks of Vita Bergen Park in Stockholm, the subterranean
data centre has been designed with direct references to science
fiction films such as‘Silent Running’. Playing on the science
fiction aesthetic, White Mountain uncovers the varying forms of
temporality brought about through an exploration of data space
and geology.
In addition to the film, I also redesigned my website and completed
a music video for experimental and minimalist musician Nicola
Ratti and Where To Now? Records.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Neo Future program, March 2016
CHYNNA CAMPBELL
Australia
chynna@fatjunkie.com // www.fatjunkie.com
Chynna Campbell is an Australian filmmaker, nail art blogger
and the boss girl of the online store, fatjunkieshop.com.

HYPERBOREAN
Hyperborean is a collection of photos and gifs from remote areas
of northern Western Australia and the Arctic where there is little
evidence of human life. These places are bleak and beautiful.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Neo Future program, March 2016
“CEO, Beta Plus Inc.;
COO, City at Newcomb Crater”
SELDEN PATERSON
USA
selden@buttzlol.com // www.buttzlol.com
Selden uses contemporary technologies and their limitations to
process ideas about digital systems, constructed reality, new & old
visual languages, and the ways humans organize themselves and
their environments as they move further into the space-age future.
She runs a number of corporations that allow the multimedia
expression of these ideas, including a leading lifestyle
improvement products manufacturer, the first all-amenitiesincluded
colony on the moon, and the #1 waterfall museum.

INTEGRATIVE ONTOLOGICAL PRACTICES BY BETA PLUS SYSTEMS
[ SYSTEMS.BETAPLUSINC.COM ]
IOP B+ is a self-help & healing system designed to help integrate
the being-ness of the modern cyborg. While at Arteles I had
the time & space to develop the finer details of the philosophy
& framework behind the system, and produce a series of videos
made from a combination of animations created here, audio
recorded here, and footage captured previously. The unstructured
time allowed me to focus on rigorous technical work while also
taking contemplative time to work through some broader ideas.
Occasional discussions on the nature of our impending sci-fi
future with my co-residents helped the system evolve, leaving
me with a ready-to-launch cult with an informational website & a
range of accompanying AV materials, plus momentum to continue
expanding and deepening the project.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Neo Future program, March 2016
PAUL HESLIN
Australia
pxxlhxslxn at gmail dot com // www. pxxlhxslxn.com
I am predominantly interested in musique concrete and
microcomputers. My interest in musique concrete stems from
a hardline approach to authorship and creation, and a general
disinterest in sampling and remix culture. Recent developments
in microcomputing, plus opensource audio programming
environments, allow dynamic music systems to operate
on increasingly small and affordable devices, engineering
possibilities for a (maybe) democratization of electronic music
production.
About me, I grew up in the south of Canberra, which is a pretty
unremarkable part of the world. I was raised in a large and
extremely conservative family, and have found myself gradually
as philosophically far from that upbringing as possible.
I discovered sequencers and audio effects as a teenager, which
gradually became my predominant way of spending my spare time.
I have always been destructively interested in new approaches,
and creating new tools and environments to work within. I get
bored easily and that seems coincidentally to be where the most
satisfying work lives.

VAS-Y
The first half of my residency was spent programming a new
system in Pure Data which allows for sequencing and performing
music from a Raspberry Pi. One of the biggest challenges was
creating a specific system to turn parts of the patch on or off
to prevent glitches during performance. Once a version was
completed, I spent time recording source material in nearby
forests and working on a new composition, entitled ‘Vas-y’. I set up
microphones in the Arteles sauna and made a ‘studio’ recording
of the finished piece for release in the near future. Lastly, I began
work on some software updates, restructuring the compositional
process and beginning work on two further pieces of music. My
time here has been overwhelmingly positive, and has allowed me
to develop this work substantially within a short space of time.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Neo Future program, March 2016
“Sutu Eats Flies”
SUTU
Australia
sutu@sutueatsflies.com
// www.sutueatsflies.com
Sutu uses art and technology to tell stories in new ways. He is
an author, illustrator, and interactive designer. He is best known
for Nawlz, a 24 episode interactive cyberpunk comic book series
created for web and iPad. He has also created Modern Polaxis,
an Augmented Reality Comic book and the NEOMAD interactive
comic - a space opera set in the Aussie outback. His lastest
project is a sci-fi anthology called Razorlegs!

RAZORLEGS - TALES FROM THE COSMIC GUTTER
I worked on Issue 2 of ‘Razorlegs, Tales from the Cosmic Gutter’
- a comic book sci-fi anthology. I completed one short story titled
‘2 Extra Lives’, about a girl who is robbed in a futuristic mega
city and must risk her life to get back what was stolen. I also
began two other short stories which will also be featured in the
anthology.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Silence.Awareness.Existance program, February 2016
“I trace the sounds of my breath.”
ALISE SPINELLA
USA
as@alisespinella.com // www.alisespinella.com
Translation lies at the heart of my practice. I make paintings,
drawings, and performance to record elusive elements (memory,
time, sound) as form, and I use poetic systems to translate from
one metaphoric language to another.
In the ongoing project Meditation Drawings (2014 - 2016), I
trace the sounds of my breath along with the sounds from the
environment. While meditating, I use my body as an instrument
to record subtle internal and external sounds through gesture,
building each of these plein air drawings layer upon layer. The
end result is a time-lapse, archeological record of the painting’s
own making, as well as a snapshot of the landscape (physical
and personal) from which it was created. The objects are at once
autobiography, self-portraiture, and landscape painting.
With all my work, I investigate conditions in which the ethereal
and the concrete interact. I aim to slow the viewing experience,
to reward deep looking over time, and to celebrate the side-door,
narrative power of abstract images.

MEDITATION DRAWINGS
During my winter month at the Silence/Awareness/Existence
residency, I worked on a series of small drawings as a continuation
of the Meditation Drawings project. Each paper became an archive
of sounds heard: tree branches dropping snow, fellow residents
cooking dinner, boots crunching along the path, internal dialogue,
my heartbeat. The process of drawing-while-meditating evolved
and shifted while at Arteles, and I’m deeply grateful for both the
silent landscape and the people I met during this extraordinary
experience.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Silence.Awareness.Existance program, February 2016
“Time is matter, malleable and resistant.”
COMMISSION GÉDÉON COMMISSION AKA PIERRE N. LEBLANC
gedcom@gmail.com
// www.gedeoncommission.ca
Canada
Pierre N. LeBlanc studied Visual Arts at the Université de Moncton
and completed an MFA at Montréal’s Concordia University in 1992.
Pierre became the/la Commission GEDEON Commission in 01992.
As a “group”,we explore collaborative aspects of imagination
at the limits of experience and memory, collaborators are both
imaginary and real. Since 02010 time-as-matter has become the
focus of work that blends transposed experiential data and realtime
evolution of the expressive mo(ve)ment (soundvideo).
Our locus of interest is Event Philosophy; we ask the question,
“”How does one transfer the impact of an experience to a
transportable, modular material”? We are interested in the
noise of silence, how to inhabit it as well as transmit it. The idea
of silence is contradictory and therefore essential to the notion
of sound. Nothing is louder than the sound of silence. We are
inspired by the writings of Acker, Volodine and Wallace; the
sounds of P. Orridge, Artificial Memory Trace, and the quiet of
the films of Andrei Tarkovsky. Experience and reflection are our
mentors. Events are collected, re-contextualized and performed
both publicly and privately.
The Commission GEDEON Commission is seated in Corner
Brook Newfoundland, Canada and has shown work in Canada,
France, Ireland and Tasmania, and distributes work freely
on-line. Projects have been funded by the Social Sciences and
Humanities Research Council of Canada, Memorial University of
Newfoundland and the government of New Brunswick.

STASIS IN MOTION VERSIONS 1 AND 2
The opportunity to work uninterrupted by daily concerns was
instrumental in opening the space to explore programming as
an aesthetic concept. Silence, Awareness and Existence (the
theme[s] of the residency) were used as variables and wicked
mathematics were the tools to place them in direct interaction
to affect the placement, colour (tint) and interaction of images
created for the purpose.
The works hope to reflect on a complex series of relations between
the impossibility of silence, the improbability of awareness and
the enduring (endearing) nature of existence.
The high degree of randomization and interaction produces a
self-generating image to be projected while performing sound
environments publicly. Variability and unpredictability will be
reflected in the audio experience and create a platform for
evolution and variance inspired by Gilles Deleuze’s “Différence et
Répétition” and Henri Bergson’s “L’évolution créatrice”.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Silence.Awareness.Existance program, February 2016
BETSY WEIS
USA
betsy@betsyweis.com // www.betsyweis.com
I like to go out in nature (to a secluded place, usually far from my
city life) where I can walk, observe the landscape, trees, plants,
the weather, the sky, and take pictures. Returning to my studio
with a cache of digital files, I develop the pictures, recreating the
nature visit as I remember it. My intention is to show the beauty
of what is right in front of us and to suggest that more is literally
there than we can see, somewhere we can fall in, away from the
rest of the world. A photograph of a seemingly peaceful view of
a beautiful place may result, with the history of the land and the
memory of the day part of the picture.
Working at Arteles in rural Finland the time and (physical) space
between the outdoor photography and the inside computer work
is condensed. Usually, there is a longer in-between time when I
think about and remember the place I photographed, away from
the nature setting, while anticipating the studio work. At Arteles,
the creative cycle is circular; I can quickly commute back and
forth between real and virtual.
The space between what I observe and what I feel, what is
perceived and desired, what is chosen and realized, between the
action and the reaction, this intervening space, can be calmly
intellectual or suffused with emotion. This is where I work.

WISH YOU WERE HERE (SILENCE)
As soon as I arrived at Arteles, I started photographing the
forest, fields, and frozen lake, in the snow, wind, and cold. In the
studio, in order to create something from the digital files, I began
using the laser jet printer I found there to print my pictures,
and discovered that a slight blur of the wet ink resulted, and
an unrefined texture of the print instantly aged the image and
created a distinction between the real (nature) and the virtual
(computer work). Nostalgia and its counterpart fernweh were the
inherent characteristics I was feeling, and then found in the print.
Discovering my happy success with the laser printer, and
thrilled to be photographing in the beautiful Finnish landscape,
I was inspired to continue to spend the month making small
photographic objects to reflect the space and time passed at
Arteles.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Silence.Awareness.Existance program, February 2016
“The thing which stands a far is the
most intriguing object to the eye.
Intricate and alluring in distance, as one
gets closer it seems as it is; an empty field
filled with illusion.”
DAMLA YILMAZ
damlayil@gmail.com
Turkey
// www.cargocollective.com/damlayilmaz
Currently based in Istanbul, Damla Yılmaz holds a BA degree in
Visual Arts and Communication Design, Sabancı University and
completed her MA at Central Saint Martins College of Art&Design,
London on Photography. She is continuing her Phd onThe Sublime
in Contemporary Art at Yıldız Technical University
Her work is based on a quest on that which cannot be seen; but
felt and longed for. From metaphysics to psychology; she is stirred
by various subjects in which she finds promising lands, imaginary
friends and intimate relationships.
During her stay in Arteles; her aim is to bring text and photography
in one profound project called Spells; which contains photographs
of enchanted objects accompanied with poems she is been
writing for years. Yet; she is looking forward for an unforeseen
conception.

PRAYER SEQUENCE 1,2,3 (HANDWRITTEN PRAYER ON PAPER WITH FOUND OBJECTS VARIOUS SIZES)
2091 SAMPO (21X21 CM EACH 12 SQUARES, ACRYLIC ON FOREX)
Prayer Sequence 3/ Prayer for Hoofs; is a part of of the
project Prayer Sequence 1,2,3 includes different body
parts (teeth, fur and hoofs) of hunted animals found in the
residency building. These are handwritten mantras for the
deceased and their organs which were functioning perfectly
in nature long ago, though now become ornamental displays.
Sampo (2091) is an astroid discovered by Y. Väisälä at Turku
Observatory on April 26 1941 and got its name from the Finish
mythology Kalevala. It is a precious stone which got broken
into pieces during the fight between Kalevala and Pohjola; and
thereafter only tiny fragments could be found. As some other
specific astroids in mythological constellations; Sampo 2091 is
seen as a symbol for fortune in astrology that can be located in
individuals’ natal charts. The twelve squares represent the natal
charts of the residents in Arteles during the residency period
February 2016; and the placement of Sampo is measured in
degrees according to each resident’s specific birth data. Although
the circles are not visible on daylight; the little circles appear in
the dark just like the northern lights.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Silence.Awareness.Existance program, February 2016
GENEVA SKEEN
USA
geneva.skeen@gmail.com // www.soundcloud.com/geneeeeves
Geneva Skeen is an interdisciplinary sound and visual artist
based in Los Angeles. Her solo and collaborative works have been
performed or presented at the Los Angeles County Museum of
Art, Human Resources (L.A.), Les Figues Press, on the rooftop of
The Standard Hotel in downtown Los Angeles, and on the façade
of the Armory building in Long Beach, California, amongst others.
She graduated from Occidental College with a degree in Critical
Theory & Social Justice and a minor in performance studies. She
is an active member of VOLUME, a curatorial collective focused
on sound-based practices.

A FINE DUST | DEAFNESS (BLOW OVER) | WEIGHT OF WATER | A POWER LINE, AN ECHO
Deeply inspired by the richness of the landscape in true winter,
much of my work at Arteles became about gathering material
and beginning to process it, technically and conceptually. These
processes aligned with the research I was also conducting
on repetition as a means of transformation, using alchemical
symbolism as a guide for shaping the work. I left the residency
with a slew of works in progress exploring the absence of light
and subtle changes in repeated actions, including:
a fine dust: piano, voice, text
deafness (blow over): video
weight of water: piano, organ, cassette tape, field recording, voice
a power line, an echo: photo series, accompanied by processed
field recordings

IN THE RESIDENCY
Silence.Awareness.Existance program, February 2016
LINA BERGLUND
Sweden
linab80@yahoo.se // www.linaberglund.com
My work emerges from intuitive experience and an urge to make
visible that which cannot be seen. This visibility may be silent
and invisible to the eye, but seen or heard more like a feeling or
thought - an intuition that is recognized in the mind.
Painting is for me an ongoing process of transmitting energies,
transforming substances, observing mental unfoldings, and
understanding the relationship between internal experience and
external gesture. Painting has the properties to speak about the
layers, skins, surfaces and textures of physical and mental life.
To me it is a contact-surface where inner and outer worlds can
blend. A scene where the division of subject and object, observer
and observed, can dissolve.
I like to work with site-specific projects where I can collaborate
and tune in to the particular conditions of a place, and coordinate
my series of paintings with an awareness of the viewers presence,
gaze and movements in the space.
Besides my work with painting I am running a small Artist-In-
Residence program in my house in Sweden:
www.rudair.tumblr.com

UNFOLDING CONSCIOUSNESS THROUGH PAINTING
I have been working with seven oil paintings on plexi glass.
I approached the work with certain notions in mind, having
to do with mutual perception, sensing and being sensed,
transmission of energy, collaboration and empathy. I worked
by shifting my awareness between different states of mind:
Painting spontaneously, relaxed and playful, as in a mindful
meditation on the painting strokes themselves. I let my
thoughts dissolve in the colors, textures and sensations that
appeared, while simultaneously stepping outside the flow and
observing what was unfolding. In a reciprocal action between
doing and thinking, I asked my mind what am I actually doing
while I am painting? What does it really mean to apply paint
on a surface like this? What is the painting doing to me?
I use painting as a way of exploring and gaining knowledge about
life, and the tools that I have to do so; the senses, the feelings,
the intuition, the awareness, the thoughts, the paint, the painting
surface, the brushes, the words. The paintings themselves are
like traces of this ongoing journey.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Silence.Awareness.Existance program, January 2016
“Expand and connect”
BEATA KOZLOWSKA
Poland
b.z.kozlowska@gmail.com // www.beatakozlowska.com
Short after studying Literature and Linguistics at the University of
Warsaw, I moved to London to study at the Camberwell College of
Arts, and completed Drawing with a Bachelor Degree (BA ) (Hons)
in 2008. Later I continued my studies with a Master Degree in Fine
Arts ( MFA) at Chelsea College of Art and Design in London (2010).
Since then I have been fully involved in my practice that spreads
through many disciplines like drawing, painting, performance,
installation and sculpture.
My latest works live between the realms of drawing and painting
and are defined by the spontaneous force of gestural expressionism
and the improvisational drive that, playfully, weaves a complex
and structured “drawscape”. I tend to use most direct medium
such as drawing as a way of self observation and self definition.
I also explore other disciplines to extend my drawing meditative
practice into other time-based and three-dimensional spaces,
experimenting with performance and installation.
Opposite to the pop culture focused on searching the self in the
external imaginary, my works look deep inside and build complex
syntax and structures from within, authentic “quasi” maps or
geographical representations of the mind. Therefore there is
a possibility for unlimited re-creation, re-construction of the
abstract, non-objectified dimension. In other words my drawings
and installations project the subjective inner reality, and build a
way to Transcendence and Transition.

THEATRE OF LIGHT AND LINES
Art residency at Arteles this January was a good experience,
not only to withdraw my mind into further investigation of
line and drawing medium in general, but also to express the
improvisational essence of my work into new installations and
videos.
During the residency I made a series of works on paper,
using acrylic and gel pen. It was a response to the meditative
experience of being surrounded by the beauty of an untouched
frozen atmosphere and also a reaction to Sibelius music, heard
from time to time in my studio.
The occasional silence during the residency prompted me to
create site specific installations with shadows and projections,
mainly inspired by my fixation on the concept of line. I then
used video to record a three-dimensional journey across
these installations, with a playful approach that allowed
me to make new abstract compositions with every different
camera angle. I used red and black wool strings- and also
mixed media in order to recreate the unique atmosphere,
the silent narration of the “unknown” and the “unspeakable”.
I was fascinated by the frozen, silent landscape, brightly lid by
the winter Sun and bluish shadows thrown on the snowy fields,
and these magical light effects became one of the most exciting
elements reintroduced in my new drawings, installations and
videos.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Silence.Awareness.Existance program, January 2016
“Vibrating with the coloured music of life”
DAVID MORATON
Spain
davidmoraton@gmail.com // www.davidmoraton.com
I am currently focused on three-dimensional fully computer made
animations that are a faithful reflect of Contemporary Classical
Music, specially the one from Finish composer Einojuhani
Rautavaara. I have a perceptual condition called synaesthesia,
this means that when I hear sounds I get to see involuntarily
colours in my mind. So in my practice I project this very personal
chromatic experience of music and sound, always under the
frame of my philosophical vision of Nature, that roots into the
concepts of mystic and the sublime.
I started studying Computer Science but after three years I left
it to study Art and became Graduate in Fine Arts in Valencia and
also in Hannover. These two educational systems, Spanish - more
traditional- and German -more “free style”-, gave me a rich
artistic basis to grow. After my studies, I blended all my knowledge
in art and technology, transitioning gradually from oil painting to
video art. Studying all kinds of computer and digital techniques I
eventually became a professional in the film industry. I currently
work as a Senior FX Technical Director, developing computer
visual effects based on Nature phenomena for blockbuster
movies such as “Jupiter Ascending” or “Interstellar”.

SYNAESTHESIA AND NORTHERN LIGHTS
During my residency in Arteles I really felt the connection with
my best self, helped by the opportunity of a month of free time,
surrounded by a very mystical winter environment that truly
resonated with my artistic core.
Mainly I worked in the second part of my synaesthetic video
animation “Visus Sonitus”, based on the second movement of
Concerto for Birds and Orchestra, composed by the internationally
acclaimed Finish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara. When I asked
him two years ago what inspired him to compose this movement,
called “Melancholia” , he told me that the essence of anything he
ever composed was “the atmosphere”.
I couldn’t have expected when I came to Arteles that I would
find the real atmosphere of this music in front of my eyes.
Under -30 degrees, I took many photographies of the frozen lake
and I developed software tools to map those images into a 3D
environment. This way, I could move freely my virtual camera. I
worked as well on the look of the sounds of the orchestra strings,
inspired by the shape of Northern Lights.
Also I started working on the third movement of this Concerto,
called “Migration of Swans”, by studying birds flocking algorithms.
In the meantime, I had the chance to start a book about the concept
of time. As time there seemed to be slower, like a prolonged celo
note with the colour of the twilight.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Silence.Awareness.Existance program, January 2016
“Apes are still apes, though you
clothe them in velvet.”
ALEXANDRA NEUMAN
alexandrabneuman@gmail.com
USA
// www.alexandraneuman.com
Have we permanently disconnected from our intuitive relation to
the infinite? or are we about to achieve unlimited virtual access to
outer and inner space?
Through performance and installation I aim to pinpoint where
contemporary humans stand on the evolutionary timeline, taking
seriously the idea of some form of an earth-conscious postbiological
future. I employ and conflate symbolic extremes of the
virtual and material in order to encourage a critical examination
of our current confused status between ape and avatar, and to
bring forth the vulnerable materiality of our bodies and emotions
as mediators of this transformation process.

OOTHECA: FEMALE BODIES, BUGS, AND FUTURE
Ootheca (pronounced owa-thee-kuh) is a firm-walled egg case
or capsule made by any member of a variety of insect species,
commonly associated with the mass larvae of cockroaches and
praying mantids. I chose this word as the title for my compilation
of micro-fictions because to me it sounds like the name of an
alien queen, and a female energy is already intrinsic to the word
through the egg making.
In Tantric philosophy the egg or Yoni is the inner sanctum, the
sacred temple that is the womb, a point from which to draw cosmic
wisdom and power, and from which we all came. In my tiny stories
I attempt to visually engender this power, weaving technological
alien insects with hyper sensory female subjects, using bodies
of water as earth wombs and sink drains as space portals.
Atexcac
Just outside Guadalupe-Victoria, there are three volcanic lakes,
their toxic bodies guarded by cacti and black widow spiders. Each
sits still and blue-green, basking and bubbling in sunlight, and a
thing swallowed by one is said to get spit out by another.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Silence.Awareness.Existance program, January 2016
RICHIE DEMARIA
USA
demariarichard@gmail.com // richiedemariajr.wordpress.com
Richie DeMaria is from Santa Barbara, California. He is a writer
for the Santa Barbara Independent. In his spare time he loves
to go outdoors, play music, take pictures, and spend time with
family and friends. He is very grateful to participate in the Arteles
residency.

”DAWNS & DUSKS” AND ”VAST”
I worked on two albums of ambient music, called “Dawns and
Dusks” and “Vast.” I also took pictures.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Silence.Awareness.Existance program, January 2016
SUMMER MCCORKLE
summermccorkle@gmail.com
USA
// www.summermccorkle.com
My interests are in using photography, moving image and
sculpture to channel the invisible and play with perception.
Using visual traditions such as portraiture, documentation or
landscape, I explore issues of time, memory, disappointment,
meditation, wanderings and uneasiness. Many of my pieces are
about the desire to believe in something and how this desire
manifests itself. I strive to create work that makes the viewer
question what they are looking at and transforms passive looking
into active looking.

DES ABENDS
During my stay, I explored and documented in video and
photography the landscape surrounding Arteles and the nearby
country roads and woods. The final video piece will merge moving
images from these excursions with a voice over narration that
weaves together text taken from Frankenstein about gaining
knowledge and text written during my time there that touches
on memory, memory loss, grief, acceptance and the surreal
experience of being in a place like Finland in January, with its
beautiful icy and cold short days. Piano music from Schumann’s
Fantasiestucke Op 12 will be played throughout to reflect the
struggle in the mind between learning and forgetting.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Silence.Awareness.Existance program, January 2016
“In search of the unseen”
ALEX CROW
USA
crowsta930@gmail.com // www.alexcrowflies.com
My body is my temple, and an amazing vehicle with which to roam
around this beautiful, crazy, bizarre, ridiculous, inspiring world.
Inside the history that I have with my body, I can feel that the more
I have access to my own form, the more that I feel connected to
all other forms. What are these invisible ties that we have to each
other and the Earth? Of what is the body made? The ways in which
we can connect are endless; the methods many. And for me, the
energetic body is an internal/external landscape of information
just waiting to be discovered. As an active dance artist and yoga
teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area, It is my wish to continue
to dance through my life, unveiling her mysteries through the
landscape of bodies, and along the way work to encourage other
human spirits to come into contact with their own unique form of
expression, truth, and sense of inter-connectivity.

FROM HEART TO HANDS
Over the span of time spent in and around Arteles, I made a
habit of softening into presence. By offering my self space
to “do” nothing, I was brought into an authentic creative heart
space from which these “hand dances” were brought forth. What
began as play, transformed into an experiment with non-verbal
communication that stemmed from the heart. I asked myself,
what can be understood through movement alone? I chose to
mask the “personality” of my face in order to draw the audience’s
eye to the hands (extensions of the heart), and hopefully offer a
focused space where communication between performer and
audience could happen organically. Outside of this particular
project, I found myself offering heart communications through my
hands in the form of Reiki and Tarot, which only added to my own
personal understanding of what it means to speak from the heart.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Silence.Awareness.Existance program, January 2016
ANNIKA HARDING
Australia
annikaharding@hotmail.com // www.annikaharding.com
Annika Harding is an emerging artist and curator from Canberra,
Australia. Annika’s art practice investigates people’s interactions
with environments, drawing on the tradition of landscape painting
and exploring the sublime within a contemporary context. Starting
with photographs and video taken in the landscape, Annika uses
the practice of painting to extend her own engagement with a
particular moment and environment, and create a new experience
of landscape that is grounded in the materiality of painting.

STOPPED IN THEIR TRACKS
In addition to a collaborative video project with Robert Fuller,
while at Arteles I became fascinated by the nearby land art sites
Tree Mountain by Agnes Denes and Yltä ja Alta (Up and Under)
by Nancy Holt. Interacting with these environments, which were
created by artists, and observing other artists interacting with
these landscapes, was really inspiring and is something I will
continue to explore in 2016. While at Arteles, I made watercolour/
gouache paintings featuring fellow Arteles residents stopped in
their tracks at these sites. Our interactions with these sites were a
lot of fun, but when people found stillness in them I knew that they
were having a sublime experience- I could feel it too, in stillness
myself and observing both them and the landscape. The freedom
to experiment and create at Arteles has opened up questions for
me to address in my art practice around the relationships between
stillness and movement, figuration and performance, silence and
sound, and artists and their interactions with landscapes.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Silence.Awareness.Existance program, January 2016
ROBERT FULLER
Australia
robertbrucefuller@gmail.com // soundcloud.com/robert-fuller-21
Writing after the text is deleted tends to be shorter and more
concise.

I DID EVERYTHING, I DID NOTHING
I came with no expectations.
Arteles was space and time. To develop skills and ignore
strengths. Taking on objects and inspiration from nature and the
recycle centre.
I made vibrations in the air and shook some electrons in a
computer, now that organisation of bits can be interpreted by the
hearing organs of animals around the world.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Silence.Awareness.Existance program, January 2016
ANNIKA HARDING + ROBERT FULLER
Australia
annikaharding@hotmail.com // www.annikaharding.com + robertbrucefuller@gmail.com // soundcloud.com/robert-fuller-21
Annika Harding and Robert Fuller applied for an Arteles
residency to make collaborative video work. Annika is an artist
whose practice concerns the traditions of landscape painting
and the sublime within a contemporary context, and Robert is a
professional science communicator who experiments with sound
and makes music in his spare time.

DISRUPTING SYMMETRY: 30-SECOND RUCKENFIGUR VIDEO PROJECT
Together we planned to create a series of videos with sound,
testing Michael Fried’s theory on the sublime in Caspar David
Friedrich’s work as contingent on a subtle disruption of symmetry,
particularly noticeable in his figurative compositions. Each video
features one of us as a ruckenfigur in a landscape, in stillness
but then disrupting the symmetry of the moving image through
a particular movement, and returning to stillness. This project
is still being resolved. The limited light, extreme cold, snow and
landscape around Arteles made for an unusual experience of the
beauty and terror of the sublime. The snowy landscape challenged
our notions of stillness and silence; literal white noise, breath
seen and heard, sounds heard from far away on the lake and the
road, and the persistent sounds of life, even below -20 degrees,
all feature in these videos.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Silence.Awareness.Existance program, January 2016
SAM BACHY
Ireland
sambachy@live.ie // www.cargocollective.com/sambachy
My work has generally resided within an ongoing exploration
of the connection of memory and place, and the creation of
immersive environments. Often regarding a specific site or
structure, my work aims to create a suggestive space that can
engage the viewer and allow for the evocation of memory of place
which is individually personal and familiar. Certain objects or
actions that are common place in our lives become signifiers for
places particular to us and act as narrative devices that recall
past place and events. This is also true of more subtle elements
of places such as the shape of a room, the materials and colours
that make up a space, textures, lighting, sounds, etc. In my work
I aim to explore, through various media, how these elements can
suggest a space to the viewer and how they can act as points of
reference for the viewer to situate themselves.

KOTA
During my stay at Arteles, I wanted to explore and contrast the
physical need for safety provided by shelter with our mental need
to situate ourselves in places of familiarity through routine and
activity. I began this project by documenting man-made structures
in the surrounding area, while simultaneously researching
traditional Sami shelters. I wanted to try and find where basic
shelter as protection from the elements and the domestic, and
its associated everyday rituals, could connect. This resulted in
a structure that only suggested a shelter through it’s form, and
objects that only suggested domestic life through their symbolic
arrangement within the structure and our familiarity with them.
The lack of use of both the structure and the objects within it
meant that the installation became an illusion, a set, that only
alluded to safety, familiarity and domestic space.
The sense of isolation in the surrounding area also became
important to the work as isolation is often something we crave
in our search for personal refuge. With this in mind the structure
was made to fit a single person, creating a personal space.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Silence.Awareness.Existance program, December 2015
“Keep it simple”
CARLOS OROZCO
Colombia
info@carlos-orozco.net // www.carlos-orozco.net
The media of photography is the main resource of my creative
work. My starting point is the concept of landscape, I understand
landscape not only as natural environment and its representation,
but as a collective imaginary. Therefore, landscape could be
subject to the codes of those who have configured it, among
others: a physical experience, images that engage memories,
ideas and emotions.
My aim goes beyond geographical location and suggests
symbolism and the recognition of shapes and forms (mountains,
sea, stones, etc.) that are collective.
Finally, my creative practice meets analog photography, digital
manipulation, video, installation and collage.

THE SURFACE OF THINGS
”THE SURFACE OF THINGS IT IS DEEP BEYOND MEASURE
THE PROFOUND IT IS THE UNKNOWN
WHAT WE KNOW LIMIT US”
During my stay in Arteles I was drawn to the darkness. I came
across with the thought of darkness as an immeasurable way
to discover silence in images among some other questions that
arise at the time.
I began to leave behind old ideas like fear and insecure about
darkness to walk into the idea that darkness it is pure light so
dense that it is imposible to see unless it hit any surface, still this
for me was a limited way of thinking.
Understanding darkness in any level, physical and spiritual,
as a powerful gift that has been given to us to makes us
wonder about what is beyond we can see, makes us doubt our
perception, thoughts and ideas of the world and this lead us to
new discovers and a more profound understanding of ourselves.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Silence.Awareness.Existance program, December 2015
MARY INCE
USA
maryince00@gmail.com // www.maryince.com
Recently, I had a residency in the supposed perfect place to
explore what I thought silence looked like: the sand dunes of
Provincetown, Massachusetts, USA. I had to redefine silence at
some point.
I had expected to find the absence of sound. It was very noisy out
there. Isolated, but noisy. Good noises. After much wandering
among the dunes and along the seashore, I discovered that the
silence I was seeking had nothing to do with the absence of sound.
I started to wonder where silence came from. Was silence the
island inside of sound; or, was sound the island? Was silence the
spaces between the notes of music ; the spaces between letters
that made literature and speech? Or, was it the crest of a wave;
the retreating blades of grass?
Silence is always elusive and undefined. There appears to be
no boundaries; even in so called political and social repressive
silence. Only imagined boundaries. Silence is a state of nonbeing.
A state of omission, absence of input, non-communication.
However, sometimes this non-communication becomes
communicative. This is based on a sound/silence communication.
The island or the border. To speak out or remain silent. There is
also metaphorical silence: the place between back and forth; up
and down. The whole idea of silence touches all life. When viewers
participate in my drawings, photographs, and videos, I would like
them to go away wondering how silence fits into their lifes; affects
their interactions with others; where they might discover it.

DECONSTRUCTION OF THE SILENT ORDERLINESS OF THE FINNISH LANDSCAPE
I came to Arteles to investigate the silence of snow fields. The
time period I was in attendance had virtually no snow. I was forced
to reimagine my project. After wandering the surrounding fields,
the lake side, and country roads, I soon came to realize that what
I was drawing in my sketchbooks each day was a sort of hash
mark representation of what I perceived as a very orderly Finnish
landscape. The neatly arranged outcropping of rock formations in
the orderly plowed fields. The birch groves. And, the very polite,
gentle Finns themselves. I was deconstructing this orderliness.
My time at Arteles, and the form of Silence I found there, will
add another dimension to the larger “what does Silence look
like” project that I have been working through at several other
residencies.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Silence.Awareness.Existance program, December 2016
“Nothing stays the same; everything changes,
and evolves under given conditions.”
JOHEE KIM
USA
joheekim@gmail.com
// www.joheekim.com
Everything is connected and interacts with its surroundings. This
is necessary. All being becomes, influences and is influenced.
Everything is transitory and temporary, interconnected with all
others.
The human mind and emotions follow the same laws of the
universe. I observe relationships between different states of being,
and experiment with the shifting perspectives and hidden layers
of meaning found there. I seek to understand the processes, and
with such understanding I am inspired to reinterpret them in my
visual language. I often get inspirations in nature, philosophy,
literature and science theories.

WINTER SOLSTICE
“I open my eyes and seek to see. There is only void out there,
nothing to be seen. But there must be something. In anxiety I
continue trying. Time and space floats around me, dreams and
reality dance together. I must see.
Frozen darkness embraces me and becomes a shield. I brave
myself and abandon hope. Soon, I can see there is something.
Faint shapes appear before my eyes. I trace the silhouettes and
study the lines. I see it. I see it but I don’t know the meaning of it.
It’s the winter solstice. Time shifts.
I merely gaze now. I no longer want to seek. I am without effort,
without care. I feel calm. Slowly, light fills in my space. I see
it. Full of colors. Full of warmth. I see every shape and every
line. It is there. It has always been there. I just didn’t see it.
***
a triptych with mix of photography and a video projection.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Silence.Awareness.Existance program, December 2016
IDA MARIE SETTERGREN
Denmank
idasettergren@gmail.com // www.idasettergren.com
MFA From The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, 2013.
I have a raw approach to my materials. The process is playful,
simple and experimental with few, but strong and powerful effects
and the decisions leading to my final methods are uncomplicated,
but efficient.
With different materials such as diluted acrylics, water, ink and
spray paint I consciously control the workflow in an organic
process where chemistry and natural elements balances between
my will and their own.

FROZEN PALMS
When I was at Arteles Creative Center I worked outside in the frost.
It really just started with me hearing about watercolors influence
during frozen weather. It all started with experiments and
developing simple effects. Not before long, I had learned to control
the discoveries to my benefit. The process let me to mix the new
ideas coming from the frost with my former mode of expression.
I’m deeply fascinated with the work of processes, whether it’s natural,
organic, technical or picturesque and I often let the proceedings
of coincidences play an equal role in the making of my works.
I therefore constantly am working with new methods to expand my
knowledge with the mediums I work with. I always try to maintain
an examining approach to the materials, for instance combining
tools, learning new crafts or simply letting nature’s own elements
take part in the process.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Silence.Awareness.Existance program, December 2016
MARTIN KURT HAGLUND
Denmank
martinkurthaglund@gmail.som // www.martinkurt.dk
I graduated with a BA in photojournalism in 2010 and has
since then worked as a freelance photographer for various
clients, mainly in the fields of reportage and portraits. I
have a deep interest in the way we humans interact with
each other and our surroundings, how we live our lives and
survive in different conditions, and this interest has allowed
me to go to countries like China, Ukraine, the Philippines.
During the past year my focus has turned towards an attempt at a
more conceptual and personal form of photography, using dogmas
or avoiding rules of technical regulations and incorporating
experiences I’ve had and skills I’ve acquired during the years.

ANALOGUE NATURE STILLS, CAFFENOL PROCESSING AND PERCEPTION RE-NEWED.
I’m from a world of photography, that mostly want focused, pretty
images. There’s no room for film winding errors, accidental
double exposures and weird scanner decisions. I was trying to
loose a bit of control when I was out in the woods, shooting more
from the hip which was hard for me to do and I don’t think I really
believe in it. It’s much more interesting to consider it a controlled
loss of control, since I still consciously choose my subject, frame
it, expose, decide on flash or not, move the camera slightly on
a slow shutter exposure and so on. The loss of control comes
from me being forgetful, the state of my equipment, processing
the film, scanning the images - embracing the errors instead of
discarding them - and the subsequent reflection on what makes
the image ‘great’, eventually going for the ‘ugly ducklings’ instead
of the more ‘perfect swans’.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Silence.Awareness.Existance program, December 2016
LORETTA MAE HIRSCH
USA
loretta@lorettamae.com // www.lorettamae.com
My mission in life and art is to embrace adventure, be passionate,
create from the heart and do it all with grace and style.

THE SHADOW SELF
The Finnish winter being famous for its darkness, S.A.E offers
an extreme retreat into existence through art, silence and nature.
The program brings together creative minds that are interested
and working around the theme on various fields.
I went to Arteles for inspiration, and to work on a series of
paintings and drawings expressing the shadow self. Purposefully
being in Finland during the darkest time of the year surrounded
by the snow white landscape and in an environment where
when the sun is out, the shadows are long and prominent,
and to make art alongside other creative people working
with the similar theme of silence, awareness, existence.
The self discoveries, experiences and friendships I made during
my time at Arteles continue to inspire me.

IN THE RESIDENCY
Silence.Awareness.Existance program, December 2015
ROBERT FALCONE
USA
refalconemd@gmail.com // www.robertfalcone.com
Robert Falcone has been making music and visual art since the
mid 1960’s. He drew cartoons for the Cleveland State newspaper,
the Cauldron from 1969 - 1970, and worked in the production and
design space at Kent State University 1970 - 1971. Robert took an
art break to pursue his medical career from 1973 - 1987. Falcone
has been producing music and visual art continuously since with
over a dozen solo exhibitions and two dozen group shows.. He is
currently completing an MFA at the Columbus College of Art and
Design in Sound Installation. The Lindsay Gallery represents him
in Columbus Ohio.

SILENT MEDITATIONS ONE THROUGH TEN
Site specific installation (and performance) on the theme
of silence. The videos (10) can be viewed on Vimeo @
https://vimeo.com/user32649071/videos

IN THE RESIDENCY
ENTER TEXT - Theme residency program, November 2015
SCOTT NORTHRUP
USA
scottcnorthrup@gmail.com // www. scottnorthrup.com
I am most interested in big abstract questions of romance, loss,
and longing, especially the feelings that we secretly harbor
for one another. My work explores this through personal and
collective memories, actual and constructed experiences, and
the tangling and untangling of the very loose threads that connect
us — the real and the unreal. I often employ found objects and
appropriated imagery and text, which are preloaded with history
and meaning, as a form of cultural shorthand toward my personal
visual vocabulary. This is both an attempt to communicate with
others and to fill in the blanks of memory and persona. The
inclusion of religious and popular iconography in my work takes
into account these parallel forms of worship while aiming at a
larger sense of function and design in our daily lives. Through
the construction of self-portraits, personal landmarks, and mash
notes to the American Dream, I am self-mythologizing, exploring
objects and actions that might seem remarkably unremarkable
on their own. I see this as a form of transubstantiation, in that
through my intervention with these common objects, I might
bring something to light that was secreted there all along.

ALONE. // I THINK WE’RE ALONE NOW // POP TART LOVE AFFAIR //
HÄMEENKYRÖ, MON AMOUR
I arrived without supplies or plans and within days began
impulsively making work. By the end of my residency, I had
assembled the zines Alone., a collection of cut-up poems I made
from a vintage American war novel found at a recycling center
in Tampere, and I THINK WE’RE ALONE NOW, comprised of six
autobiographical stories that I wrote at Arteles, as well as the
videos POP TART LOVE AFFAIR, a short loop based on an old text
message, and Hämeenkyrö, Mon Amour, a confused but romantic
textual film of new and appropriated subtitles that is intended to
be projected onto the landscape at sunset. I also left with several
projects in various stages of completion — photographs, collages,
a screenplay — which I will continue in Detroit.

IN THE RESIDENCY
ENTER TEXT - Theme residency program, November 2015
“I often look, from the outside,
as if I am standing absolutely still.“
JULIA MARTIN
Canada
goodbye.julia@gmail.com // www.theabsentgoodbye.com
I make work about serious things as unseriously as I can.
I take pictures, I write words. Sometimes I combine the two.
I’m an interdisciplinary artist, I embrace the slippages between
mediums and processes in my practice, while acknowledging that
I am uncomfortable with the mastery of anything. In not knowing,
there is surprise.
My practice is quiet.
I don’t require a studio, just a room, any room,
I am rarely marked by the materials I use.
Except for the time I smashed 15 bowls with a hammer.
In my bare feet.
That day there were so many surprises.
Otherwise, I often look, from the outside, as if I am standing
absolutely still.

CUT ME DOWN / SPLIT ME OPEN / BURN ME UP
I FIND MYSELF
AT AN IMPASSE
I FIND MYSELF
LOOKING UP
“IMPASSE”
TO SEE IF I USED IT CORRECTLY
I spent much of my time at the Arteles residency wondering if
Finland was haunted. I left understanding that it’s me who’s
haunted. I might have known this already and should try not to
project onto an entire country.
I HAVE

IN THE RESIDENCY
ENTER TEXT - Theme residency program, November 2015
“I create generative methods for building
multichannel video and sound environments
that flow from the web to the room.”
KATHY MCTAVISH
USA
kathy@mctavish.io // www.cellodreams.com
I am a cellist, composer and digital media artist. I create crosssensory,
immersive landscapes. My work blends data, text, code,
sound and abstract, layered moving images. My recent work has
focused on creating generative methods for building multichannel
video and sound environments that flow from the web to the room.
Much of my work integrates online, collaborative story-making
and resource galleries with interactive media installation. I work
in traditional gallery spaces but also in spaces with historic
significance or with resonant qualities that become a part of the
work itself.
My recent work has focused on mapping web standards, patterns
and metaphors to expressive creative outcomes. I am drawn to
generative forms for what they can express: relentlessness,
torrents, encodedness, electrical transmissions, stuttering before
god / stuttering before nothingness / holy glitches. I am interested
in the physical dimension of “reading” in immersive spaces - the
revelation of meaning / search for foothold / articulated map.
I have a background in cello performance, mathematics, ecology,
music theory and software development. The confluence of these
disciplines informs my work as a composer and multimedia
artist. As both a musician and a mathematician, I am fascinated
by multi-threaded, dynamical systems and chance-infused,
emergent patterns. As a queer artist I am interested in the ways
we construct personal stories / myths and the infinite, bendable
between.

::: B R 1 N K ::: A GENERATIVE, TEXT-BASED WORK
Arteles provided reflective time for me to research new
approaches to coded work. This work in progress can be viewed at :
https://vimeo.com/155922645 and https://vimeo.com/155486850

IN THE RESIDENCY
ENTER TEXT - Theme residency program, November 2015
“I tell myself to look deeper.”
SHEILA PACKA
USA
sheilapacka@gmail.com // www.sheilapacka.com
As a writer, I have a fascination about migration, maybe because
my grandparents emigrated from Finland to northern Minnesota,
near Lake Superior. Forests and lakes are often my sources.
Lately, I’ve been finding my material underground. I’m interested
in stories and images that include the covert, hidden, unrevealed,
layered, spectral or subconscious. I often collaborate with my
partner Kathy McTavish (composer and media artist). I like the
synergy between music, visual art, language, and performance.
Right now, I’m at work on a project called “2Three Rivers.” This
title is from a geographic area in northern Minnesota, a three way
continental divide, where the rivers flow in opposing directions (to
Hudson Bay, Lake Superior and the Mississippi River). Aspects
in the environment or in nature often can be applied to human
experience. I am contemplating the opposing forces in Minnesota,
and the world, between resource development (mining, fracking,
etc) and environmental protection.

A RIVER BETWEEN TWO LANGUAGES
As a grandchild of Finnish immigrants, I often found myself
between two languages in a dizzying, mysterious space that, for
me, often had no words. The gaps between landscapes, language,
and cultures were great. At the residency, I found myself in a
generative mode. I wrote short stories, poems and an essay. Then
as an experiment, I converted the poems to prose, the essay to
fiction, and both the essay and fiction into poems. This creation,
re-creation, de-creation, and trans-creation must be driven by the
question of who might I have been if my family hadn’t migrated?
How can I best preserve the gaps, the fertile “between” spaces?
The composition and decomposition continues and this process
will likely become a book and media project.

IN THE RESIDENCY
ENTER TEXT - Theme residency program, November 2015
“In the business of wonder production.”
TINA WILLGREN
Sweden
tinawillgren@yahoo.com // www.tinawillgren.com
I am a visual artist working primarily with video. I like to distort
standardized symbols, letters and preset images by manipulating
file data in chance-like ways. The weather symbols, font libraries,
stock photos, traffic signs and preset animations of my works are
shared vocabularies both shaped by and shaping reality. When
altering and animating texts and images I have a sense of mocking
a system I am governed by, as well as creating a floating world
where the meaning of forms continuously shifts to let imagination
run it´s course.

HALLUCINATION
During my time at Arteles I dived into an old idea that had been
lying about on my hard drive.
With a font created from distorted letters as a base I animated
the word hallucination, to form and dissolve to the sound of an
indeterminate ambience. The word itself interests me since it is
connected to the mysterious capacities of the mind, to art making
and to the digital world. It gives associations to the dangers of
losing touch with reality, to psychosis or bad trips as well as to
visionary states of mind. It also shows up in many compelling
contexts. Newspaper articles from last year tells the tragicomic
story of a homeopathy conference south of Hamburg, Germany,
that ended in chaos. The delegates, probably conducting a
therapeutic experiment, took a hallucinogenic drug that misfired.
When the emergency services were called to the hotel where
the meeting took place, they found the 29 alternative healers
hallucinating, staggering around, groaning and rolling on the
grass. A crew of around 150 people were involved in the rescue
of the group, of which none, luckily, was in mortal danger in the
end. The exact whereabouts of this conference are still shrouded
in mystery, but I have enjoyed thinking about it when working
on the video. My aim has been to create a space for the senses,
where sounds, movements and signs interplay, and an oscillation
between confusion and clarity takes place.

IN THE RESIDENCY
ENTER TEXT - Theme residency program, November 2015
“Style is knowing who you are, what you
have to say, and going for it.”
GARRY MCDOUGALL
utravel@optusnet.com.au
Australia
Concentrated writing of novels, poetry and short story, with the
aim of bold and imaginative storytelling. Parallel interests and
practice in photography and painting. Numerous exhibitions.
Artist-in-Residence, uni of Western Sydney. Prize winning short
story and poetry. Two published guidebooks. Initiator of long
distance walking trails. Now completing his third novel, ‘Knowing
Simone’, and extending poetic material based on Travel in
Portugal, France and Spain.

Behind Finlayson's
Your ghostdyehouseandspinnery’s
ropebucketandbarrel
left behind clocks
laughing at lane sign
'Nothing Here'
door to Finlayson’s
themed
baa rr s aa ndd cC aa ff es,
Tampere’s
T a m m e r k o s k i r a p i d s
T a m m e r k o s k i r a p i d s
T a m m e r k o s k i r a p i d s
T a m m e r k o s k i r a p
T a m m e r ko
T a m m e
rapids
building immensities.
TAMPERE THEMED POETICA
Main activity- editing and completing my third novel, Knowing
Simone,
Tampere poetica a surprise secondary task.
Other tasks- reviewing my travel journals, notes, reflections and
poetica of recent walking journeys in France, Spain and Portugal.
Development of a major narrative poem, The Bucaneers Return
Reflection on a possible fourth novel, a late medieval tale of a
Catholic canon and a mass murderer at the time of the early
Reformation, Renaissance, ‘discovery of America’ and invention
of the printing press.
Tampere themed poetica based on walking around the city,
foreshore and locale on October 29 and 30, 2015. It is one
of several works completed during the Arteles residency.
‘Behind Finlayson’s’ is one of seven impressionistic pieces written
at the time, responding the geographic and linguistic qualities
of Finland and Tampere, Finland’s third largest city where the
Tammerkoski raids join an upper and lower lakes. These rapids
have provided power for centuries to millers and factories in the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Today, “Finlaysons” factory
is home to museums, cafes and restaurants as local and tourist
attractions.

IN THE RESIDENCY
ENTER TEXT - Theme residency program, October 2015
“From A to Å”
IMI MAUFE
UK
bluedogtours@hotmail.com // www.imimaufe.com
Imi Maufe completed a Master degree in Multi-disciplinary
Printmaking at the University of the West of England, Bristol in
2004 and moved to Bergen, Norway in 2009, where she works
from a studio in the city’s container harbour. Interested in the
notion of travel and how one can depict journeys using artist’s
books, prints and interactions Maufe is forever exploring on long
and short adventures. Maufe’s use of minimal text, now bilingual,
is integral to her work and she also likes to curate, collaborate
and collect.

THE UNKNOWN, UNRESEACHED LANDSCAPE OF RURAL FINLAND
October 2015 was mostly sunshine. Coming from a place of rain,
the outside beckoned, the bicycle with red rims took me along
kilometres of rough track roads. Alone, with map, working out
the lay of the land, I travelled daily for the first 10 days. Thinking,
thinking and looking, taking in my surroundings and taking photos
of the buildings i passed. No contact with the locals apart from
stealing photgraphic images of their property, I thought some
more when returning to Arteles, the sauna and my sun drenched
room. With no plan or purpose I set about making notes and
playing with images of these buildings, ghost buildings, buildings
that i really knew nothing about. No history, no news about the
inhabitants. No knowledge of the Finnish interior or the Finnish
personalities that lay within.
A-Ö : finnish countryside alphabet is a text piece written during
the residency and letterpress printed as a book and boxed edition
(complete with woodcut buildings) at the Letterpress Collective in
Bristol, UK directly after the residency at Arteles.

IN THE RESIDENCY
ENTER TEXT - Theme residency program, October 2015
“Not all those that wander are lost.”
GINNA WILKERSON
USA
info@ginnawilkerson.com // ginnawilkerson.weebly.com
I conceptualize all of my work, whether text or visual art, by
searching for the surreal and unexpected in ordinary places
and objects. I want to capture the essence of a view or an object
while also leaving the image open to interpretation. I very seldom
photograph people; rather, I like to find odd views or angles of
inanimate objects in an architectural landscape. Part of my
inspiration is the work of the surrealist writers and artists the
early 20th century, who portrayed the imagined as if it existed in
the shifting world of reality.

AND THIS IS HOW IT WAS
I have always been curious about the myriad ways in which a
person’s life experiences and memories mesh with the inner
self. During my stay at Arteles, I captured images reflecting
various aspects of my life memories, and then wrote dialogue/
poems incorporating those memories into words. During
the next few months, this work will be compiled into a book.
The images here are examples of the visual part of this
project. Here is one example of the text I call dialogue poems:
You said:
Let’s go to the city on the train.
I want to see the movie Tommy –
you’re not afraid are you?
Afraid, yes: of the city, the New Yorkers,
the subway, and Tina Turner’s Acid Queen.
Why had I thought I would like New York?
The Big Apple at Nineteen
They told me to:
try to look like you know where you’re going;
don’t look around at everything like a tourist.
Keep your hand on your purse.
I sat through part of the movie in the restroom;
all of it was just too much.
And that is how it was in 1975.
My first trip to New York City,
invited by a college friend for Spring Break.
Her house in the suburbs looked too much like home.

IN THE RESIDENCY
ENTER TEXT - Theme residency program, October 2015
“Writing has to do with darkness and
a desire… to bring something back out
to the light” - Margaret Atwood
MYFANWY S. MCDONALD
myfanwymcdonald@yahoo.com.au
Australia
I’m not much of a talker, so I guess I was drawn to writing. People
are quiet for different reasons. Some people are quiet because
they don’t have much to say. Others are quiet because they have
a lot to say, but don’t know when or how to say it. I’d put myself in
the latter category. I like writing because it gives you ample time
to shape and mould the words before you send them out into the
world.
Many respected authors have noted that a writer who thinks
they’ve mastered the art usually hasn’t. Perhaps then the
greatest struggle for any fiction writer is not putting pen to paper,
but continuing to write in spite of the uncertainty and the doubt.
There is certainly something mystical about writing. The story that
seems to write itself. The character who refuses to be boxed in, no
matter how hard you try to control her. But writing is also a craft
like any other. You have to strike a balance between the chaos
and giddiness of the creative urge, and the order and discipline
required to communicate your vision to the reader.
I like stories about outsiders. The type of people that might be
overlooked in a crowd. The people who dwell in corners and tell
lies. Those who say one thing and mean another. People who
appear to be heroes, but are in fact villains. Everybody’s life has
a dark corner. Those are the places where I find my inspiration.

CLEAVE
Chopped wood
Found peace with an axe.
Paid homage to holes
Watched a lazy sun.
Found a friendly rock
Pondered distance
Then chopped more wood.
Lit the fire
Looked closer
Laughed harder.
Swam in ice
Got lost in the dark
Drowned in the steam
Disappeared in the mist.
Rewrote a fairy tale.
Chopped some more wood.
Then went home.

IN THE RESIDENCY
September 2015
“Look for the cracks, enter there
and continue”
SAMUEL JAMES
Australia
samueljames0@gmail.com // www.shimmerpixel.blogspot.com.au
Samuel James works as a video artist with performance makers,
dancers and theatre makers, making either dance films or
projections for live performance. Working in the live arena aligns
him closely with how phenomena are generated in the moment
of live action and time, the confluence of expectation and a
continuous moment. He is interested in the phenomenology of
media yet focusses more on its limitation. He thinks of the camera
as a kind of reference tool which doesn’t capture all the present
phenomena and therefore must be complimented by some other
kind of expression. In his other work, performance is the articulate
component but by himself he works with video light drawing to
articulate video artifacts and environments. He sees drawing as
the affect of seeing and re-seeing the phenomenological moment
and focusses on mark-making as untrained like a child etching
something into the void without seeing or reading it.

”MOMEN” - VIDEO LIGHT TRACINGS
The self is comprised of many thoughts, each layered over the
other like veils of hidden knowledge. People know their own
thoughts deeply but do not always expose them because they are
the serious, dark ghosts in an intricate web of their being.
Participating in conversation, physical activity pushes out those
things to the surface like saunas push toxins to the surface. This
is the way to see what lies beneath, and to see it often through
daily doings. Seek the ghosts, call up the ghosts through daily
doings and also at night when they come out, those feelings of
the dark.
As a way of addressing phenomenology I use drawing with light as
a kind of blind, non-pictorial effort of transforming visual sense
back into the other senses. These traces indicate some affect
of seeing and re-seeing but are mainly in themselves another
phenomena delayed in time. This blindness, or drawing in the
darkness allows for non-visual phenomenology to influence mark
making like a child etching something into the void without seeing
or knowing it.
Projecting on multiple surfaces around Arteles takes this
transformation of the mark to another associative level, like a
person suddenly appearing in a foreign place. They quickly make
relationships with it.

IN THE RESIDENCY
September 2015
“Hello?”
MARY ELIZABETH YARBROUGH
Canada
maryelizabeth.maryelizabeth@gmail.com // www.cargocollective.com/MEYARBROUGH
I have long been oblivious to the lyrics in popular music frequently
droning in public spaces. A few years ago, for no particular reason,
I suddenly keyed into the ubiquitous love song playing over the
speakers and was struck by the words; I wondered how many
times and in how many ways had that single phrase been sung
before? I began paying close attention to the language of love
in songs of every ilk, captivated by their eeriness, earnestness,
repetition and violent imagery. This spurred an interest in the
limitations of language for expressing love and desire and how the
bank of clichés constantly filling the background of public space
through popular music impacts our capacity for articulation.
While in residence at Arteles, I will be creating original tracks
and album art for a 12”” vinyl album that explores tropes and
clichés in popular love songs, using samples from existing songs
for the compositions and existing album art and music videos as
inspiration for the visual art.
I am a multi-disciplinary artist, furniture maker and musician. I
received an MFA in furniture design from the California College
of the Arts in San Francisco, California, where I currently live and
work.

NEVER GONNA LET YOU GO
Coming to Arteles, I set myself two main objectives: to experiment
with new drawing techniques that were both technically unfamiliar
and a progression of my practice and to generate an audio library
that would provide the basis for a full-length album exploring love
and cliché.
Previously, my visual art practice has focused on a laborintensive
technique using cutting and collage and with adhesive
papers to generate drawings that blur the distinctions between
conventional 2D drawing and sculpture. During my residency, I
experimented with digital drawing. finding new possibilities in the
qualities of replication and reproduction in ways that echo textiles
(one of the amazing elements of Finnish design) and printmaking.
The mammoth task of trawling through pop’s vast repository of
love songs, riddled with language that has moved to meaningless
truism, posed an enormous but exciting challenge. Gradually, I am
developing a taxonomy of musical love, defining songs, bringing
together samples and establishing the album’s underlying
concept.
Over the weeks, dedicated time to play, destroy, replicate and
create new work from both the principles of my own drawing
practice and the seemingly ubiquitous quality of love has helped
distill the project’s central question: how do we understand one of
the most primary forms of human connection, sifting through the
garbage and the greatness of love?

IN THE RESIDENCY
September 2015
ELEANOR JACKSON
Australia
eleanorjjackson@gmail.com // www.eleanorjjackson.com
Eleanor Jackson is a Filipino Australian poet, performer, arts
producer, cyclist, writer, gal about town, feminist, freewheeler,
and friend.

THIS DISTORTED MAP
The residency at Arteles gave me an opportunity to reflect upon
the core questions of my practice as a poet and performer - the
relationship between poetic and vernacular forms of language;
the interactions between text, performer and audience; and the
quality of sense-making and place.
All of which are just ways to say that, while at Arteles, I thought
and wrote about what we say, how we say it, who we say it to
and how it will be interpreted, particularly given the context and
environment in which those things were said.
At Arteles, I worked to revise a play set in Brisbane, Australia,
which was a delightful exercise in writing “out of place”, especially
for a piece about the quality of nostalgia and the displacement of
home. We are always remembering things wrongly.
I also worked on a series of poems inspired or influenced by
my time at Arteles, its physical surrounds and the people I
encountered while here. Rather than create a physical map that
is accurate, navigable and representative, the poems are a sloppy,
confusing and misrendered guide to a specific time and place. A
stick gives rise to a joke, then a careless sound which generates a
line, the stick is redecorated and repurposed, the line changes, is
erased and what remains is a temporary tattoo that secretly you
hope won’t wash off.

IN THE RESIDENCY
September 2015
“So you say that we shouldn’t
be more abstract?”
TINA CAKE LINE
Belgium / Netherlands
katinkadejonge@gmail.com // www.tinacakeline.org
Tina Cake Line is a collaboration between Katinka de Jonge and
Céline Talens. They work within the field of theatre, scenography
and fine arts, creating performances in the (semi) public domain.
Tina Cake Line is interested in that which we call normal behavior,
and that which we call security. Thus they created their own
security company, that is specialized in promoting and explaining
normal behavior. This ‘company’ enables them to research and
infiltrate in the world of security-business, using the terminology/
jargon of the field, and in this way trying to explain what potential
threats the world should be saved from. Performances are site
specific, and always use the language and style of the site. Within
this field/site TCL plays with conventions, borders of realness and
absurdism.

THREE TREES ON CLIMATE CHANGE AND OTHER OFFICE-SOLUTIONS
As you can see, This is our temporary office. It is green, sustainable
and epiphytically on this forest. In our company authenticity is very
important, we like the purity of the forest. We found a location
that can be seen from different distances and vantage points. Our
company believes it is important that people should be able to
stay at a distance, observing, without having to feel scrutinized.
An then, if they so desire, find ways to get closer, and perhaps
even enter and participate. That is why we thought a forest has it
all. Please feel welcome to visit us.

IN THE RESIDENCY
September 2015
CATHÉRINE CLAEYÉ
Belgium
catherine.claeye@gmail.com // www.catherine-claeye.be
The imaginary language of Cathérine Claeyé’s work is based
on nature. Seeing nature as an infinite principle, she uses it not
because of the naturalness but because she experiences nature
as a phenomenon. That it is there with an obvious presence,
makes it special. According to her, nature is complete, whatever
its manifestation or developmental stage may be.

ZONE (09’15), 13 X 18 CM, OIL ON CANVAS
Firs, birches and pines
repeat themselves
like a refrain
not willing
to confine
me in what I see
There is always space between
them, us and everything.
I can’t explain
and won’t complain
I’ll walk until I see:
in joy is everything.
because they aren’t
all the same
as they reveal
unforeseen
relationships.

IN THE RESIDENCY
September 2015
KAREN PERRY RIOJA
Mexico
karenperryrioja@gmail.com // www.karen-perry.blogspot.mx
“I have explored different construction
possibilities in two and three dimensions
with puzzle pieces. Nowadays I preserve
the original colors so that I can play and
explore into de creation of sculptures
and installations.”
Puzzle pieces are fragments of information. Although they are
meaningless by themselves, they generate an image or a shape
when built as a whole. Separately, each piece is an information
unit, which builds an image. With this construction premise in
mind (units that brought together can cause a shape to exist) I
use the idea of the puzzle in order to create my work. My entire
artwork is made out of puzzle pieces that have been used and
disposed.

CONSTRUCTION UNIT
In the work that I have been producing since 2011, I have explored
different construction possibilities in two and three dimensions.
With so many and so tiny pieces, the shape combination that I
can obtain is very broad. Nowadays I preserve the original colors
so that I can play and explore into de creation of sculptures
and installations. The chromatic scale I have found within the
thousands of pieces of the hundreds of puzzles that have worked
with, is very wide. I like to think of them as carton pixels that allow
me to create new shapes. Every piece is still part of a whole, but
its configuration is no longer submitted to the printed information
on it nor to the precision of its shape, it now acknowledges a
new kind of rearrangement and its scale admits a new and
different lecture of the work of art. In this new lecture, the twodimensional
support invades the tridimensional space to point
out another interpretation that goes beyond the contemplative act
of figuration, thus suggesting its possibility to be understood as a
tridimensional shape that relocates.

IN THE RESIDENCY
September 2015
“Professional daydreamer”
KIRSTY LOGAN
UK
hello@kirstylogan.com // www.kirstylogan.com
I’m a professional daydreamer, and author of two story collections
(The Rental Heart and A Portable Shelter) and a novel (The
Gracekeepers).
My short fiction and poetry has been published in over 100
anthologies and magazines, recorded for podcasts, broadcast
on BBC Radio 4, and exhibited in galleries. I regularly perform
at events and festivals around the world; recent performances
include London, Copenhagen, and Brussels.
I’m interested in folklore and fairytales, ideas of loss and grief,
stories as facets of identity, and Northern (particularly Scottish
and Scandinavian) history, geology and psychology. I live in
Glasgow with my fiancee and our rescue dog, and I am coming to
Arteles to begin work on a new novel.

RUST & STARDUST
In my month at Arteles I began the first draft of a novel, Rust &
Stardust, which explores folklore and fairytales, loss and grief,
stories as facets of identity, and Northern (particularly Scottish
and Scandinavian) history, geology and psychology. The retreat,
and particularly my conversations with the other writers and
artists, inspired me to rework the novel’s structure and tone,
taking it in a direction I didn’t expect. Before I came here I was in
a bit of a creative rut, and I am so grateful to the other artists here
for inspiring me and helping me to see my work anew.

IN THE RESIDENCY
September 2015
“Now I’ve got a hundred words and
thousands of charms, I have brought the
words out of hiding unburied the spells.”
Inside the Giant
The Kalevala
HELEN THURLOE
hthurloe@gmail.com
Australia
I’m a writer and poet from Australia, with Hungarian and British
undertones.
My work is diverse in content and form, with sprinklings of folk
art, furniture design and scientific discovery. While most of my
output is text-based, I’ve also produced web-sites, postcards, and
hand-made books, in both solo and collaborative endeavours.
Persistent themes include the transmission of culture in family
and communities, the influence of class and politics on domestic
space and objects, and how gender shapes destiny.
Current long-form projects include a comparison of language,
textiles and fairy stories from the Finno-Ugric peoples (Hungary,
Finland and Estonia), exploring congruent sensibilities that may
have persisted or reconnected over the past millennium. I’m also
working on a new novel that explores a fictional future where
medical resources are rationed by the state. The poems are about
everything else.
My first novel, about forced marriage in contemporary Australia,
is to be published by Allen & Unwin in 2016.

WORDS, LINES, TEXTS
I did a lot of scribbling at Arteles, like the lines on the bark of the
silver birch. I also tossed a lot of draft pages onto the floor, like
the yellow leaves that fell from the branches during September.
Then I burnt those tangled texts in the sauna fires, leaving a few
precious words of smelted gold.
During my time at Arteles I read the Finnish epic poem The
Kalevala, wrote my own poems (a few with shared Finnish/
Hungarian words) took way too many photos of lakes, hugged shy
trees that whispered their names to me, and restructured my YA
novel (Promising Azra).
By the time I left, I had also opened my heart to some wonderful
people, and to an enduring, taciturn landscape.

IN THE RESIDENCY
August - September 2015
MARY WALTERS
UK
mary.walters7@gmail.com // ww.mary-walters.com
I am an art teacher and artist living in Edinburgh, Scotland. I am
fascinated by wild wilderness places of the North, both in terms
of their landscapes, and of their physical formation and social
histories. For me, any physical or social landscape is in a constant
state of flux, and therefore defies any attempt to pin down a
moment of its time in whatever art medium. Thus it is that tension
between the continuing fluidity of the story of any place, and the
desire to create a permanent artwork at one particular moment
which presents me with my dilemma as an artist. I enjoy working
in whatever medium is suggested to me by the place itself, but
within the constraints of baggage limitations and travel, for this
residency I intend to explore fully the possibilities of the world of
drawing in it fullest sense.

EXPLORING DRAWING
I went into the forest and drew what I could see, looking in all
directions. My initial drawings were a direct response to the new
Arteles forest environment, hardly knowing what direction is North.
I continued my drawing journey into explorations of direction,
boundaries, and unknown territories, while simultaneously trying
to distil my drawing into a calmer style of mark-making. I enjoyed
the differences between my first hand responses, and my more
considered works from the memory of those responses. I take
back with me a rich resource of discovery and experiment, which
will inform work for some time to come. Thanks you Arteles.

IN THE RESIDENCY
August 2015
“My work is never finished, it’s
an ongoing process of creating,
destroying, reviving and growing.”
MARIJKE AERTS
Belgium
morisaerts@hotmail.com // www.marijkeaerts.be
My paintings consist of several conflicting interacting layers.
Underlying layers are either being covered or uncovered in an
ongoing process of concealment and discovery. This sparks a
tension, a confrontation of things that happen coincidentally and
subconsciously with compulsive, focused actions. Brushstrokes
and the act of painting take the upper and during the creation of
the painting. The paint applied by means of the brush stroke is the
image; this is in fact an attempt to isolate the act of painting from
painterly norms.
If brush strokes are the essence of a painting, how can they
function autonomously, independent from the presumed norms
of ‘classical painting’? Can painting be reduced to merely the
execution of applying a brushstroke? Questions such as these
inspired me to create several installations, in which the same
action was repeated over and over again. Each time with a different
medium: a mannerist repetition of identical actions, compulsively
executed. Contradictory short strokes, combining to suggest
several different images, result in extremely enlarged pixellike
black-and-white images. The range of choice of supports
for these drawings is unlimited; the space presents itself as an
endless foundation, a breeding ground from which these drawings
sprout, continuously assuming different proportions.

LEAVING TRACES
This month I made a series of little drawings, and several bigger
works on panel. Based on these drawings, I made a bigger piece
in situ. When drawing in space you don’t have to deal with the
limitations paper or canvas gives you.
As a side project, I found a tiny space in my room, that I’d use as
the exhibition space for the drawings. I also made a piece in that
room with black paint.
I also did a work on a door where I enlargened 3 of the small
drawings.

IN THE RESIDENCY
August 2015
NAOMI BISHOP
Australia
naomibishop75@aol.com.au
The Unexplained and Unexplored are recurring themes in the
work of Naomi Bishop. In her paintings and works on paper she
explores darkness, silence, mysterious events and peripheral,
other worldly places.
She is interested the way the natural environment shapes people,
and the ways in which natural and celestial phenomena are
interpreted and developed into rituals and belief systems. She
has a shared interest in both science and metaphysics, and the
point at which they might converge and reveal secret knowledge
from unseen worlds.
Naomi was part of the residency program at Arteles in January
2014, and is returning to this August to observe the forests and
lakes in the summer season.
Naomi Bishop has been exhibiting internationally since graduating
with a Masters of Fine Art from Chelsea College of Art in London
in 2003. Her work has been exhibited at The Whitechapel Gallery
in London, The Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin, Fondation
Hippocrène and has had solo exhibitions at Galerie Nicolas
Silin in Paris. In Melbourne her work has been shown Strange
Neighbour, Neon Parc and Rubicon ARI. She has recently been
selected as a finalist in The Blake Prize, The Rick Amor Prize for
Drawing, The Gold Coast Art Prize and The Arthur Guy Memorial
Painting Prize and has had touring exhibitions supported by The
Australia Council and Arts Victoria.

THE VIEW FROM NOWHERE
This Summer I have continued working with mysterious symbols
and imagined ritual objects and substances. I have made images
of memorial stones, forest burial grounds and illusory thresholds,
that might be used for conjuring supernatural forces, contacting
or remembering departed souls. Elements of rock, bone, wood,
earth, and salt are interpreted and developed into imaginary
sacred objects.
Chance plays a part in the creation of the images, from initially
finding a shape with which to work, through to the movement of
the paint and the fall of light and shadows across the painting on
the studio table. I have worked with the colours I see here in the
infinite summer sky, misty pink mornings shift through mauves
and then to brilliant, endless blue.

IN THE RESIDENCY
August 2015
“History and soul...in this world.”
SHINOBU TERADA
Japan
terry@dream.ocn.ne.jp // www.shinobuterada.net
I think everything in this world has each history and soul, and I
would like to preserve and cure them by bandages. I hope to share
the feeling we should treasure the past. I have been influenced by
medical surroundings, because my father is a doctor.

HISTORY OF THIS WORLD
Walking around, looking around, and breathing deeply in the forest.
I felt the history of this world, and hoped to treasure that.
I picked up small decayed woods, wrapped them by bandages,
and created photography works.
And I researched the garden of residency, wrapped big stone
and some commodities as site specific works.
Everyday, little by little, I was working here, happily.

IN THE RESIDENCY
August 2015
“Colour - Print - Pattern - Process”
LAURA SPRING
UK
hello@lauraspring.co.uk // www.lauraspring.co.uk
Laura Spring, originally from Staffordshire, is a textile designer/
maker living and working in Glasgow creating bold graphic print
designs that are transformed through screen and digital print into
fashion accessories, kitchenware and stationary. She is a graduate
of Glasgow School of Art where she was awarded a BA in graphic
design in 2002.
With an enormous love for colour, print, pattern and process,
Laura aims to create products and designs based around these
ideals. Bold patterns mixed with bright colours transformed into
beautifully crafted products underpin Laura’s work. Inspiration
changes from collection to collection but recent work has centred
around the relationship between motif and function.
Laura is committed to supporting local manufacturing and ethical
methods of production in the creation of her work. All trims,
finishes and supplies are sourced within the UK where possible
and when materials are required to be sourced from abroad, Laura
ensures these items are fair-trade.
As well as working on her own collections, Laura enjoys collaborating
with other artists/designers and companies across various fields.
She has worked with artists Laura Aldridge and Ciara Phillips to
produce limited edition ranges of bags for House of Voltaire 2012 and
2014 respectively. She has also produced limited editions for Lush
Cosmetics, Belle & Sebastian, The National Trust for Scotland, Not
Another Bill and is currently working on an exciting project called
India Street, curated by Katy West. This took Laura and three other
designers on a two-week research trip to India in February 2015 to
develop designs and prototypes for the next phase of the project.
This is due to launch in Glasgow in June 2016.

AUGUST
Taking photos / collecting things that caught my eye / looking for
patterns / colours / textures / trying new things / drawing / writing
lists / planting new ideas / visiting places I’ve always wanted to
go / taking a step back / enjoying a different pace / enjoying the
incredible landscape / meeting new people / asking questions
/ planning a new collection / absorbing as much as I could /
rummaging in second hand stores...

IN THE RESIDENCY
August 2015
KAYA BARRY
Australia
kayathiea@gmail.com // www.kaya.com.au
Kaya Barry is an artist, researcher and tourist, based in Brisbane
and Melbourne, Australia. Her creative practice usually takes the
forms of interactive installations or net-artworks that examine
a range of spatial, material and environmental encounters. As a
practice-led researcher, Kaya’s creative processes are informed
by a range of theoretical perspectives such as new materialism,
mobilities, and geography.
During the residency Kaya will be exploring how we re-orient,
align and move with environmental experiences that confront and
surround us. Influences found in the surrounding area, such as
the changing sunlight, the seasons, and the geographical position
will be used as aesthetic resonances that combine into immersive
experience. Her intention is to play with ways that photographic
processes (time-lapse, long exposures, panoramas, etc.) frame
and alter our perception of the environment we are with/in.
Kaya has recently completed a practice-led PhD on creative
practices in tourism at Deakin University, and completed a B.
Creative Arts (Honours) in 2007 at Griffith University. She currently
teaches in new media theory and practice, and has exhibited within
Australia, Iceland, Denmark and online.

BETWEEN TWO BARNS
A series of site-specific explorations of sensing movement.
In the forest things are moving together, growing together, in and
around each other. Each step pushes one movement into another.
Like a trigger for movement, or perhaps a proposition set in
motion.
I walk around to attune to the sensing of movements of the sticks,
grass, moss, rocks, trees, wind, light, pressure, and balance. I
then intertwine the surveying flagging tape through where I felt
a movement trigger the next. This might be the pressure of my
shoe against a rock, a stick breaking, or leaves settling as the wind
eases. I photograph, sketch, and diagram the process. The result
is a series of experiments across an array of media: diagrams of
surveying tape, interactive installation, and photographic timelapse
documentation.

IN THE RESIDENCY
August 2015
TALI SERRUYA
France / Argentina
tali.serruya@gmail.com // www.taliserruya.com
Tali Serruya is an Argentinean artist based in France. She studied
theater at the National Academy of Dramatics Arts of Paris and
performance art at the Geneva University of Art and Design.
Her research is based on the concept of “theatrical plasticity”,
creating aesthetic experiences at the edge of theater and
performance that alter the notion of perception. She studies the
porous border that links - and therefore differentiates - theatricality
from performativity and the way we constantly navigate from one
to the other.
The concept of plasticity is reflected in her work in two different
ways: plasticity as volume but also as malleability. Volume of the
form, of traces, of time, of space. Elasticity of the codes codes,
the structures, the grammars. Plasticity of gestures, movements,
impressions.
She created a “laboratory for artistic research and experimentation”,
where she regularly collaborates with other artists and theorists.
Her performative practice, enriched by these meetings, has deeply
evolved and became more material, through installations and
publications.
Her work has been showed internationally (Switzerland, South
Korea, Spain, England, Morocco, Finland...)

BETWEEN TWO BARNS
Stemming from an interest in the relationship that links and
separates the performing arts to the visual arts, my work is
situated at the border between performance and sculpture.
Through what I call theater plasticity, I create different space-time
contexts of representation. This plasticity exists in my work in the
performing bodies and in the passage of time, both as volume and
as elasticity. They become parameters that, fully extended, turn
imperceptible, eternal.
The change of temporality in the performing bodies confronts the
audience with their own physical temporality, positioning them
both inside and outside of the work, bringing the performative time
into the sculptural one.
“Time as body as time” is a piece that can be considered as
a durational performance and, at the same time, as a living
sculpture. It’s a piece where time fades, where a minimalistic
slow flow of movement exists in space. It is another space of time.
Another space of life. It is a suspended form of existence.

IN THE RESIDENCY
August 2015
VISAKH MENON
India
visakhm@gmail.com // www.visakhmenon.com
Visakh Menon is an artist from India, currently living in New York.
His interdisciplinary practice spans video, installations, media art
& works on paper. His recent body of work focuses on the visual
language of digital artifacts & the aesthetics of glitches. This series
of works on paper are conceptually based on various digital process
analyzing image compression algorithms and interpolation which
is then translated to paper using a unique process combining the
frottage (rubbings) and collage and paying homage to geometric
abstraction and color field paintings.
The algorithmic aesthetics of these works brings up the notion of
code as a rule for converting a certain piece of information into
another form or abstract representation.The thematic continuum
spanning the various bodies of Visakh’s work is based on a
fascination with human machine interaction.
Visakh has exhibited nationally and internationally including recent
shows at the Paul Kolker Gallery (NY) Fountain Art Fair, NY Film
Fest, Lincoln Center, DUMBO arts festival, Governor’s Island Art
Fair, Spattered Columns (NY), Gallery Aferro (NJ), Digital Media
City Gallery (Seoul) and included in the Rhizome Art Base. He was
selected for the Mentoring Fellowship for Immigrant Artists at New
York Foundation for the Arts in 2010 (NYFA). In 2007 Visakh received
an Master of Fine Arts from the Maryland Institute College of Art.

GLITCHES (FROM THE TAPE DRAWING COLLAGE SERIES) &
COMPRESSIONS (WORKS ON PAPER)
Over the last month here in the beautiful countryside away from
the buzz of New York, I have taken the time to unwind & reflect
on the last few years of my studio practice and contemplate on
a new series of works. Besides which I have been working on
two projects, following up on my previous works from my studio
practice. Both these series of works start off in the digital medium,
exploring the visual language of glitches and compression /
interpolation algorithms and then translated into works on paper
using an unique mixed media technique.
During my time here at the Arteles residency I have had a chance
to further study the nature of interpolation algorithms specifically
bicubic and bilinear and how the mathematical nature of these
process effect image compression and how these processes work
with reference to the subjective nature of color.

IN THE RESIDENCY
July 2015
“A little contrast goes a long way.”
BRADY SIMPSON
Canada
info@bradysimpson.com // www.bradysimpson.com
Brady Simpson is a visual artist and musician residing in Edmonton,
Alberta, Canada. His work in photography garnered him one
of Alberta’s Top Ten Emerging Artists in 2014. With numerous
exhibitions under his belt, both locally and nationally, Brady’s
photography attracts attention to the minute within the everyday.
His series “The World at Large” has been a creative outlet allowing
viewers to experience a dynamic play on scale. With a focus on
natural lighting, his fine art and travel photography creates a warm
contrast. This contrast is also evident in the abstract and heavily
textured paintings that round out his portfolio. Brady offers visual
images with the aim of creating a story, much in the same way his
music does. With over 25 years of being a musician, he is able to
craft songs that are lyrically rich with pleasing melodies that he
has performed in numerous Alberta venues. Brady continues to
draw inspiration and enjoys creating art in an ever expanding set
of mediums.

DEFRAGMENTATION
Defragmentation is the process of reducing fragmentation,
organizing into smaller numbers of contiguous regions. This is
the process that I took into the Arteles residency, a simplifying of
scattered ideas and developing narratives that fit my style more
succinctly. The painting ,””Defragmentation””, is a representation
of that process, piecing together experiences to gain an insight
into direction while the painting “”Fragmentation”” is a visual
representation of what was left behind, the cause, the urban
landscape. At the Arteles residency I was able to solely devote time
into creativity which was a new experience for me. This resulted
in a simplified landscape of ideas and proof of concepts in my
visual art, photography, and music. With the persistent light that
permeates the Finnish summer I worked on my songwriting and
completed two new songs while in my residency. The solitude and
plethora of instruments was a definite inspiration to write music.
My photography series “”The World at Large”” was continued during
my residency. I was able to find new applications for a conversation
on scale and the objects that we interact with everyday. My travel and
fine art photography was bolstered by new cities, objects, and views
upon which I have captured. New projects were fortified during my
residency, “”Project Ghost”” which utilizes multiple exposures has
begun which I hope to view to completion in the coming months.
The time I spent at Arteles was a catalyst for new ideas and an
important time to build in a peaceful, creative environment.

IN THE RESIDENCY
July 2015
JEANETTE JOHNS
Canada
jeanette_johns@hotmail.com // www.jeanettejohns.com
Jeanette Johns is an artist who grew up in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Her
practice consists primarily of works on paper that deal with her
particular interest in two-dimensional representations of space.
Johns has taken part in exhibitions and residencies across Canada
and internationally and is the recipient of many awards and grants,
including a SSHRC Graduate Scholarship She holds a BFA honours
from the University of Manitoba and has recently completed her
MFA at Concordia University in Montreal.
“The experience of looking for the sake of knowing is where I start.
Particularly the act of observation as a tool to teach us about what
we are looking at. This interest draws me to representations of
physical places, and the flat rendering of the three-dimensional
space we occupy. I am fascinated with landscape and consider
how we become familiar with it through the visuals of cartography
and geometry and through our experience of great lengths of time
and distance. My research takes me into the cross-sections of
mathematics, geography and print media as my inquiries seek to
better appreciate the visual documents and graphic manifestations
that shape our understanding of the space around us. My
attachment to landscape is connected to an attempt to understand
the infinite, whether being a viewer relative to the vastness that
surrounds or contemplating the presence of the horizon line as a
symbolic reference. There exists a distance between the rational
intentions of the scientific and the empirical knowledge of the
individual that I want to explore – between taught knowledge and
sense experience.

TIME TESTS AND TRAJECTORIES
I came to Finland interested in the trajectory of the sun and set on
observing the long path that it draws during the summer hours. It
is very hard to ignore the sun, as it is the only star you encounter
during the month of July at this latitude. The twilight, called civilian
twilight and which lasts the whole night, lets you carry on with
most outdoor activities without the aid of an artificial source of
light. It is a tempting situation to have more hours in the day- but
eventually one must sleep. There does not seem to be a special
source of stamina that comes with this nocturnal light.
To log my observations I used the cyanotype process to record
the intensity of the sun at different points in the day and track its
position in the sky. This light sensitive paper allowed me to make
step test intervals of various periods in the day, showing the drawnout
setting of the sun and even capturing some of the twilight. My
process became one of measurement and experimentation as I set
up guides, shadows and stencils. I developed an awareness of the
day in terms of light and angles instead of numbers on a clock face.

IN THE RESIDENCY
July 2015
ELIZABETH WITHSTANDLEY
USA
withstandley@yahoo.com // www.withstandley.com
Elizabeth Withstandley is an American artist and filmmaker from
Cape Cod, Massachusetts who lives and works in Los Angles,
California. She is also one of the co-founders of Locust Projects, a
not-for-profit art space in Miami, Florida.
Her work explores current and popular culture through real and
fictitious situations using photography, film and installation. Many
of her series touch upon exaggerations of the common person
in a day in age where the entertainment industry is the center of
many people’s lives. The work explores self worth, ones’ position
in society, and how we are defined as people with an emphasis on
social norms and outcasts. Using portraiture as a starting point,
much of her work examines American culture. The subjects are
often part of a documented or constructed narrative in which they
become part of a collection, or examination. The visual simplicity of
her work at times looks like figures in a scientific study, cataloged
and archived as part of and anthropological dig.
Her work has been shown at the Torrance Art Museum, Torrance,
CA; Winslow Garage, Los Angeles, CA; Museum of Contemporary
Art, North Miami, FL; The Moore Space, Miami, FL; Fredric
Snitzer Gallery, Miami, FL; Wooster Projects, NY, NY; The Ringling
Museum of Art, Sarasota, FL; The Tel Aviv Artists’ Studios, Israel;
The Bass Museum, Miami, FL; Cultural Center, Sao Paolo, Brazil
and Galerie Valerie Cueto Paris, France.

YOU CAN NOT BE REPLACED
“You Have Not Been Replaced” is a two channel video installation
that documents all 82 current and former members of the Dallas
choral symphonic rock band, “The Polyphonic Spree”. The project
began at the end of 2012 by shooting individual still portraits of
all twenty-two of the current band members in Los Angeles when
they were on tour. The past 24 months have been spent contacting,
arranging and traveling to photograph the rest of the sixty plus
former band members.
The band started 15 years ago as a twenty-two-member group
with a unique sound and donning matching cult-like robes for their
performances. The installation will display colored rectangles in
a large grid. Over time the rectangles will fill in with portraits
of band members and their instruments. The series recognizes
and questions the notion of one’s individual importance as it
cycles through a song leaving one questioning whether they are
replaceable. Over the years people have come in and out of the
band, some have called it a right of passage in the Dallas music
scene. In the images the band members are represented in the
band’s signature stage-ware, a white robe, which adds to the
cult-like appearance. The musicians/singers have each brought
something unique to this band, who are they? Are they memorable?
Unique? Individuals?

IN THE RESIDENCY
July 2015
“They say that you can’t take it with you.
But you need to figure that out
for yourself.”
GEORGIA DE BIASI
georgiadb@gmail.com
Australia
Georgia’s work mostly addresses the unknown, death, and
communion, and in the broadest sense the ‘interface’ between
states. She works with textiles, video and performance.
For pathfinding in a state of uncertainty, Georgia considers
parallels between traversing physical and imaginary landscapes
and how we might measure the immeasurable. Her processoriented
work references “the outdoors”, scientific field research
practices and methodologies of measurement and data recording.
At the same time she contemplates the things that provide
solace, comfort or hope in an intensely personal space of loss and
transformation.
Occasionally Georgia works with elements of sport and motor
racing, related to perceptions of competition and the limits of
precision and control.
Collaborative, site-specific, and spontaneous processes are all
equally important to her practice.
Georgia recently completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts at University of
New South Wales Art & Design. She has exhibited work in Sydney
group shows and later this year will undertake a studio residency
at the Green House, UNSW Fowlers Gap Research Station, in
western NSW (Australia).

500 KILOMETRES TO A NEW YOU
The process of piecing oneself together, after a death that is not
your own, largely remains uneven, idiosyncratic, and open-ended.
The newly bereft find themselves in this suddenly-visible domain
and seeing with new eyes. But while it is familiar to billions,
navigation is not clear for any one individual who finds herself
there. Yet we proceed because we are compelled, through some
capacity to remain alive and breathing in spite of everything.
Using landscape as both analogy and reality I decided to walk large
loops through the region to involve myself in the residual experience
of being human. Moving at a human pace, through a landscape that
can be interpreted at a human scale, and apprehended by a fallible
body.
Ropes and rigging, drawing, maps and GPS tracking apps, and
knot theory in mathematics are some of the ways that I have
chosen to document and consider this state. The working title is a
way for me to frame our anxiety-inducing modern social attempts
to compete and add metrics to just about anything, and the futility
of such an approach to address experiences of change that may be
impossible to fathom.
*Results not guaranteed

IN THE RESIDENCY
July 2015
“My painting is seeing.”
SOJIN LIM
South Korea
paris_0@naver.com // www.sojinlim.com
Sojin Lim is an artist based in Seoul. She moved a lot, while she was
growing up. She realized that her identity has changed whenever
she tried to get used to the different culture and environment of
the each town. She considers herself as a hybrid individual from
these perplexed societies. With this identity, she believes that
the exception is from emotional conflicts and its surrounded
circumstances. This exception gives her full of inspiration to her
artwork. She finds aspect in physical irregular phenomenon, as
of its unpredictable character. These unpredictable and unstable
states are main concern in her work. She compounds these
psychological and physical phenomena into work, which becomes
her own regulation.

TREES, BIRDS, LAKES, AND WHIMSICAL WEATHER
Basically, I got inspired by the surrounding atmosphere, here
in Arteles. It filled me with inspiration for my work during the
residency. Trees, birds, lakes, and whimsical weather were my
main resources.
My eyes naturally followed the surroundings, while I took walks
along the bumpy roads. The boundary lines between trees and
skies were beautifully harmonized. Birds and insects were chirping,
seasoning the landscape. Then, they melted down together into my
work. They turned into a wooden wall sculpture with ropes, and
nets like a folding screen as a part of nature.

IN THE RESIDENCY
July 2015
ALEJANDRA URRESTI
Argentina
aleurresti@hotmail.com // www.alejandraurresti.com.ar
I like my house.
I find tidying up relaxing.
I can wait.
I get bored.
I quit Medicine at University.
I studied Architecture and Photography.
I quit Architechture.
Since I won some scholarships, I travelled to Cuba (Batiscafo) and
to Finland (Nifca).
In Cuba I read over and over.
In Finland I played paddle ball game.
I work with photos and videos. But it´s been a while, photos are
not enough.
Not enough for me.
I lowered my head and took a pencil.
I started to draw.
I draw as far as my arms could reach.
I use my hands.
I like the sound made by the pencil over paper.
I´d like drawing nicely, but I can´t.
I keep drawing.
Stones.
Words.
I have just published a poetry book called “¿Alguna vez viste un
pino balanceándose así?”

STONE
I picked up four stones in Haukijärvi, drew their shapes and threw
them away.
Be the drawing a stone
Be the stone the stone
Mountain
One and more stones
The perfect stone
More and more stones
Stone is reality
Stone is a thing
It is what it is

IN THE RESIDENCY
July 2015
ADAM NEESE
USA
adam.b.neese@gmail.com // www.adambneese.com
Adam Neese (b. 1985, Longmont, Colorado) was raised in
Grapevine, TX, halfway between Dallas and Fort Worth. His work
explores the personal and cultural mythology of place and its
relationship to the landscape. Adam’s work has been exhibited
throughout the US and internationally, at venues including The
Rourke Art Museum, Louisiana Tech University, and De Fotohal in
Amsterdam. He holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the School of
the Art Institute of Chicago in photography and film, and a Master of
Fine Arts from The University of North Texas where he is currently
a Visiting Assistant Professor teaching photography.

KAUNIS SUOMI
Printed images were once found in books, books that were
disseminated throughout households, books that helped
developed the imaginations of people leafing through them. There
is something particular about a landscape image- an allusion to a
specific place in which the experience of a sunset, or a river, or a
forest has occurred. The point of view of one camera then becomes,
through reproduction, an archetypal image that can provide a basis
of our experience of a beautiful place.
This project addresses the way we interpret space through the
printed image. The source materials are images from a set of
books I found second-hand in Finland titled Kaunis Suomi or
“Beautiful Finland.” I find landscape images in these books and
backlight them through a window in the Finnish countryside,
allowing the image on the backside of the print to be revealed and
recorded. This gesture reveals something unseen before; an image
that reflects the complex way that place is understood through the
imagery of it.

IN THE RESIDENCY
July 2015
“The digital is the sublime”
HANA-MAI HAWKINS
hanamai.hawkins@gmail.com // www.hanamaihawkins.com
UK
As an artist I concern myself with the idea and processes of digital
media, producing short films, cinematic idents and digital images.
The use of CGI features heavily in my work, referencing the hyperreal
surface of gameplay and representing the dichotomy of the
utopian/dystopian promise that the digital age brings.
A fascination with the processes of digital tools and software is
in part what fuels my work. An avid interest in sound and music
production has led to the creation of intense musical soundscapes
as part of my practice. Incorporating these into digital films creates
an even more immersive, sensorially-dimensional experience.
My films are visions of otherwordly landscapes - journeys across
undulating hills made of alien surfaces. Despite this disorientation,
an interest in structure and order also influences my work, often
leading to the depiction of architectural forms, sometimes crosspollinating
into the practice of sculpture. The aim of my work -
through the very fabric of the filmic landscapes, accompanied by
the structured soundscapes, is to situate you within the vision of a
digital sublime.

THE UNTHINKABLE FOSSIL’ / INTERACTIVE VIRTUAL WALKTHROUGH
The work I have completed at Arteles takes as it’s source Benjamin
Bratton’s writing on the Post-Anthropocene. The interactive piece
encourages you to walk around a gallery-like room, offering space
to contemplate particular passages in ‘Some Trace Effects of the
Post-Anthropocene: On Accelerationist Geopolitical Aesthetics’ in
it’s reference to ‘us’ as the unthinkable fossil. Images of objects
on blank colour canvasses occupy the room. Although appearing
natural, they are each in fact images of 3D models sourced from
digital asset stores. The work references our fragility in the place
of an ever-accelerating world of economic and digital power, and
offers up a vision displaying at once notions of fossilised ancestry
and the new wave of descendency to come.
Arteles has given me the time and freedom to learn new software,
and I have made the first tentative steps into incorporating game
design into my work. My interest in structure and landscape
has been maintained during my stay, largely influenced by the
expansive space and light of the surrounding environment. The
resulting series of images are of generated digital terrain rendered
visually into object format, concurrently contesting the concept
of landscape as an expansive entity and opening up an infinite
possibility of compositions.

IN THE RESIDENCY
June - July 2015
“Sun Stories”
EMILY MCMEHEN
Canada
emily@mazibel.com // www.mazibel.com
I am an interdisciplinary artist, currently working on a series of
collaborative storytelling projects, across cultures and borders,
that follow the Sun. I believe in finding new ways to tell our old
stories, and in democratic means of collaboration where everyone
who participates has the opportunity to find their voice, or to
discover a new way of speaking with it, and to have an equal part
in bringing a story to life. I work with artists and non-artists,
and practice skill sharing and hands on learning as a part of the
collaborative experience.
I have been honoured to work with Vodou communities in Haiti
to create a film that invites the viewer as a welcome stranger
into a sensory experience of the history and reality of Vodou. I
have likewise had the pleasure of working with contortionists in
Mongolia to reveal the parallel pathways of truth and lies, and to
explore the potential for the human body to serve as a lightning rod
for spontaneous artistic expression. I hope now to work with Arctic
peoples in seven countries to tell the old stories of the Sun with
new voices in our rapidly changing world.
During my residency at Arteles, I will be embarking on a storytelling
project with collaborators from Mexico, Canada and Finland, to tell
a traditional story from the far North under the Midnight Sun.

SUN STORIES
Exploring the relationship between the sun and the earth, and
creating the framework for a broader narrative about the sun
as experienced by man and a multitude of creatures: Reindeer
shamble along the side of the road as if they are waiting for
someone to come along with answers, and the road bends into
the wilds and the black and green lines, just trying to blend in. We
are interlopers in a shared dream, and we write in shadows on an
endless painted morning.

IN THE RESIDENCY
June 2015
“All day long wearing a hat that
wasn’t on my head”
MARIA OLBRYCHTOWICZ
Poland
mariaolbrychtowicz@op.pl // www.marysiao.tumblr.com
Maria Olbrychtowicz born in 1992. Currently studying at the
Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow at intermedia department . She’s
interested in relation between sound and objects and looking for the
solution- how to overpower the apparent dichotomy of sound and
matter. She is developing the idea of acoustic utopian architecture
- designing a building dedicated only for playing Steve Reich ‘s
piece ( from the album Music for 18 Musicians ) Architecture is the
burin for sound matter.

ARCHITECTURE EXERCISES
Every touching experience of architecture is multi-sensory;
qualities of space, matter and scale are measured equally by
eye, ear, nose, skin, tongue, skeleton and muscle. Architecture
strengthens the existential experience, one’s sense of being in the
world, and this is essentially a strengthened experience of self’
(Juhani Pallasmaa; ‘ The eyes of the skin- Architecture and senses’)
The title of my work refers to academic research - exercises,
lessons, lectures and also to the empirical learniNg through
physical exercises. I created the laboratory of sensual studying
architecture. I’m interested in gravitation, weight, contrast,
tension, rhythm and scale of different objects that surround me.
I spent many hours in the woods , so every day after the ‘exercises’
I felt every muscle. I think this is the experience which I need as
an architect. I will need it in the other part of my project where
I’m focusing on designing a building – a special kind of acoustic
sculpture. I use the term ‘Acoustic Utopian Architecture’ to
describe the idea of system of mobile shapes and solids that
would modulate the sound waves. I’m thinking about it as a living
organism which responds to the sound.

IN THE RESIDENCY
June 2015
“I write novels and short stories that
explore connections between people.”
ANNA SOLDING
Australia
anna@annasolding.com // www.annasolding.com
Anna Solding’s first ‘novel constellation’ The Hum of Concrete,
which centres around the themes of friendship, love, loneliness,
intersex conditions, mental health, immigration and sex, was
published in 2012. It was nominated for People’s Choice Award, the
Most Underrated Book Award and the Commonwealth Book Prize.
She has co-edited a collection of stories, Cracker! A Christmas
Collection, and has worked as fiction co-editor for literary
magazine Wet Ink. Anna has had many short stories and reviews
published; she has been awarded two Arts SA grants and she will
in 2015 spend one month at Arteles Writers’ Retreat in Finland and
one month at the Katharine Susannah Prichard centre in Western
Australia furthering her writing. Popular speaker and workshop
co-ordinator, Anna is regularly engaged to speak at Writers’
Festivals and she has conducted workshops at the SA Writers’
Centre, Burnside Library and Salisbury Writers’ Festival. Anna
currently works as editor and publisher at MidnightSun Publishing
in Adelaide. She is passionate about punctuation and chocolate.

THE SONG OF GLASS - A NOVEL CONSTELLATION
Although it took we quite a long time to settle in and leave all my
stresses and commitments behind, once I started writing I was on
fire. I have been working on a novel of connected short stories,
a ‘novel constellation’ set in Sweden where I grew up. It’s about
five different men who all become fathers during the course of the
novel. Because it’s light all the time in Finland in June, I feel like
my days have been so long and I’ve been extremely productive.
Long walks, intense new friendships and beautiful saunas have
helped the creative process in unexpected ways. I didn’t come here
intending to finish my project but now I’m quite optimistic that I
will - and I will be inspired for years to come.

IN THE RESIDENCY
June 2015
“Reductive Scientific Surrealism”
CECILIA CHARLTON
USA
charltoncecilia@gmail.com // www.ceciliacharlton.com
Through a neat application of acrylic paint and the implementation
of deceptive abstraction, I create a platform from which we can
experience and discuss issues of human perception, history,
and social convention. Working in a new genre which I am
terming reductive scientific surrealism, I create forms that are
potentially anthropomorphic yet unrecognizable, well-ordered
yet extemporaneous. Contradictions enable subjectivity and
personal inquest, while encouraging dialogue about the languages
and symbols that I am initiating. Susan Sontag asks in her 1965
journal, “What are the sensory mixes of the future?” Present in
my artworks is the space where science and humanity overlap and
eerily begin to speak the same language, in an attempt to answer
this question. Within the digitized appearance of the paintings
there is a sense of spontaneity – suggesting the presence of a
person. Paramount is the implication of disarray, buoyed by the
neurotic meticulousness with which the elements are constructed.
I am interested in innovating and crafting new visual languages
to discuss issues pertinent to today. Through my paintings, I
transform the real world, suspending time and sound, and offer a
meditation on dualities: individuality/ homogeneity of the person,
contemporary/ archaic thought processes, and real/ digital space.

GESTALT / SPACE STUDY (WALL PAINTING I)
While at the residency, I explored the relationship between the
actual and the imagined through the creation of a large-scale wall
painting. To begin exercising these ideas, I completed two separate
series of technical drawings. The first series (seen in the image),
shows the development and ultimate construction of an imagined
object. The second series explored the architecture of the room
where the wall painting exists today. When both the imagined
object and the architectural representation of the room were
forced into the same space, the result is the suggestion of truth
but also a simultaneous and obvious disruption. I am interested
in the concept of gestalt as a way to understand more deeply the
world around us – in the words of psychologist Kurt Koffka, “The
whole is other than the sum of its parts”. While each element in
the painting has a meaning unto itself, the relationships between
elements holds equal gravity. My goal with the work is to create a
sense of wholeness in a variety of scales, begging us to consider
the interpretations of our own perception.

IN THE RESIDENCY
June 2015
“My painting is an organic concrete
style of painting - and an ongoing
attempt to think through seeing.”
NATALIE BÖHRER
natalie.boehrer@t-online.de
Germany
It is what it is, is not, is actual.
I am intrigued by the possibilities of something simply ‘being’
itself. How anything can become or exist in a state of being and
find itself in its material state.
My small drawings fixed on canvas, as well as my large canvases,
move between picture and relief. The ripples and wrinkles caused
by glueing the drawing onto canvas, as well as the watercolors,
are a controlled process that penetrates the drawing through the
structure and forms the materiality of the painting. On the large
canvases, this structure is achieved through the many layers of
paint which resemble a sculpting effect.
My starting point can be a look at the scenery. How do I perceive
something, what is the angle of view, what is the ratio between near
and far, how does something stand out and how does structure
play into all of this?
Through this entire process my goal is to single out a picture by
itself. It is not part of a series but a method with the same material
output. This process always explores the question of possibility
from reality, of being and how something can become.
The material, its fragility, patience and materiality, and the
question of how the picture becomes a suchness, when it finds
itself as a subject in its materiality, is one of the questions that
become a possibility of through the work process.

DAZZLED WITH LIGHT
During my residency here at Arteles I have the sense that light
here is like a transparent, colored filter, moving through the
landscape, creating many different tones, especially neon, giving
the environment many different appearances within a short period
of time.
The light can be very bright, so it dazzles me, and I often can’t see
the things clearly.
I was thinking here about these behaviors and developed the idea
of creating images using light as a fluorescent colored moving
filter to describe the moment of distinguishing itself.

IN THE RESIDENCY
June 2015
MISATO INOUE & FELIX DUMERIL
Japan / France
emisato.elf@gmx.net & fdumeril@gmx.ch // www.t42dance.ch
We have a contemporary company based in Bern, Switzerland.
But we are most of the time touring worldwide and spend little
time in Switzerland. We are both dancers and choreographers and
interested in corroborate with artists from different fields. We are
always happy to meet and share our artistic views with people.

IN THE RESIDENCY
June 2015
DELFINA MOORE
Argentina
delfimoore@hotmail.com // www.delfinamoore.com
Delfina Moore is an Argentinian artist based in Buenos Aires. She
has a degree in visual arts from the Instituto Universitario Nacional
de Arte (IUNA) in Buenos Aires. She also studied photography at
the Escuela Argentina de Fotografía.
She has made individual shows and participated in various group
shows in Buenos Aires.
I investigate the role of affection in one’s work, related to all that
has influenced us through life, and that has become a part of the
ways in which we feel and see the world around us.
I’m interested in the concepts of loss and absence, in how a crack
or gap can become the motor that generates the work.
I’m concerned in the subject of copy, as a way of being able to
approach something, and create a dialogue with it, in order to make
it one’s own. I sometimes see my work as an intent of grasping the
absent or the impossible.

TEXTILES
During my time at Arteles I worked on a series of water colors
and textiles. I’m interested in crafts and in the simple gestures
within handmade work. In making something palpable and in the
proximity or intimacy an object can present. In these projects I
explored the ideas of permeability and permanence.

IN THE RESIDENCY
June 2015
JASON PEARSON
USA
jwaynephoto@yahoo.com // www.dickandwayne.com
Jason Pearson earned a BFA from Minneapolis College of Art and
Design and MFA from Syracuse University, both in photography.
Jason often collaborates with his twin brother Jesse, they have
exhibited their photography and drawing both nationally and
internationally. Pearson is the recipient of a number of grants
and residencies including; Arteles Creative Residency Program,
Haukijarvi, Finland, (2015); McKnight Photography Fellowship
(2012-13); Jerome Foundation Travel and Research Grant (2011);
Djerassi Resident Artist Program (2008); The Cooper Union School
of Art Summer Residency (2007); and Anderson Ranch Arts
Center Residency (2007-08). His work is in a number of private
and public collections including the Museum of Contemporary
Photography, Chicago, Illinois; Museum of Modern Art, New
York, NY; Leslie- Lohan Museum, New York, NY. In 2013 Pearson
published his first limited edition monograph, No Kissing through
Location Books, Minneapolis, MN. From 2010 - 2015 Pearson was
Curator of Education at Rochester Art Center in Rochester, MN
and responsible for designing and implementing all educational
programs for kids, teens, adults, and curated all exhibitions of
regional artists. Currently Pearson maintains a rigorous studio
practice in Minneapolis, MN and teaches in areas concerning
contemporary art, photography, painting/drawing, museum
practice, and graphic design in collaboration with the University
of Minnesota, Rochester Community and Technical College, and
Winona State University.

TRAVELS WITH MY TWIN
Jason Pearson, in collaboration with his twin brother, Jesse,
began their research for the Arteles project at the National Library
in Stockholm, Sweden, before coming to Finland. Since 2012,
they have been studying the film works of their distant relative,
and reknowned Finnish/Swedish filmmaker, Mauritz Stiller. Their
current project focuses specifically on one of Stiller’s films, entitled
The Wings (Vingarne), 1916. The Wings was the first of its kind in
history to depict a homosexual relationship onscreen, and to tell
a story using retro-narrative flashbacks. The only known copy is
archived at the National Library of Stockholm, and only twentyfive
percent of the original print remains intact. The Pearsons
embarked on this residency project to determine how best to
rework this important piece of film history, while maintaining its
conceptual dignity, and to consider its potential to be realized in
other formats.
Working in parallel with the film project, the twins produced a
series of psychologically challenging artworks constructed from
found materials, and drawing from the aesthetic traditions of
Finnish design and textiles. The isolated and creative environment
at Arteles.

IN THE RESIDENCY
June 2015
BART RAWLINSON
USA
bartrawlinson@comcast.net // www.bartrawlinson.com
My work explores the intersections of personal identity and
group dynamics. I’m curious about the processes of individual
separation and integration (consciously, unconsciously) from the
ever-widening circles of influence -- family-of-origin, primary
relationships, community, geography, social/political expectations.
My writing practice examines the forces that individuals and
groups struggle with and against to form identities that break free
or conform to self (group) definitions and imposed boundaries.
What are the spaces / gaps between an individual’s awareness of
self versus others’ perceptions of that self? To what degree does a
person-as-individual differ from the person-in-a-group and what
s/he represents to the group?
Growing up in small-town rural Texas in a strict fundamentalist
religion has influenced how I interpret the possibilities and
limitations of self-creation. Writing poetry and fiction allows me to
evaluate / inhabit / reenact multiple personalities, life approaches,
and points of view. Memory and invention are closely allied; my
objective is to work with the tensions they create on the page.
Bart Rawlinson received the 2013 William Matthews Poetry Prize.
He is also the recipient of the Joseph Henry Jackson Award, the
Eugene Ruggles Poetry Prize, and the Robert Browning Prize in
Dramatic Monologue, among other awards. His poetry and short
fiction appear in Asheville Poetry Review, Assaracus, The Rumpus,
New Millennium Writings, Cutbank, Santa Clara Review and other
literary journals. He earned an MFA, Creative Writing from San
Francisco State University and is an Associate Professor, English
at Mendocino College in Northern California.

WRITING: NOVEL / POETRY / SHORT FICTION
Before arriving in Finland I outlined three writing projects:
completing a poetry manuscript, writing a collection of short
fiction, and a novel. Though I’ve written five poems (only two of the
rough drafts were strong enough to continue the revision process)
and a complete draft of a short story, my time at Arteles has been
focused on the novel.
I grew up in a rural area of Texas that is dotted with oil derricks.
The first salt-dome well — and the one that ushered in the Texas
oil boom — was drilled at Spindletop in 1901, approximately 40
miles from the town where I was born. It wasn’t until I moved to
California that I began to develop an understanding of the culture
of oil and its influence.
The novel is the story of poor rural farmers — the Hartless family
— and how their lives are shaped and ultimately destroyed by the
discovery of oil on their property.
Creating this image of my rough draft pages seemed odd. These
are the building blocks, not the final work. I’ve included the
handwritten notebook where I keep my notes for scenes that
still need to be written and where I ask myself questions about
the characters, plot possibilities, and historical details. I will have
a full rough draft by the end of the year. I’m taking a paid leave
of absence from my professorship from January, 2016 through
August to complete the rewrites and edits.

IN THE RESIDENCY
May 2015
“I’m a full-time dreamer”
NATALIE WILLOW BOTERMAN
Canada
nboterman@gmail.com // www.natalieboterman.com
Within my intermedia-based practice, I embrace chance experience
and intuitive response using the objects and situations I encounter
on a daily basis as the subject matter and impetus for my practice.
Film, video, photography and installation-based work stems from
a ritual of finding, recording, and amassing source materials, and
daily routine is subsequently transformed into process. During
production, at the forefront of my mind is an inherent need to
access and interpret a metaphysical space, and themes of time,
memory, and ephemerality permeate each work.
Over the past 3 years my work has been largely focused on nature,
the environment, cosmos, and personal history. Oral history plays a
key role in the development of my ideas and process as I reconnect
with my early childhood memories spent outdoors exploring the
natural world up close. It is these fundamental moments that
have shaped the artist I have become, and the trajectory of work
I am currently invested in making. My time in the studio is an
extension of this discovery, one that transports me to the childlike
wonderment where everything was new, exciting and fulfilling;
where boundaries are tested.

I wrote a list of things I wanted to do this month while I was on
the bus ride here. Looking at it now, I was able to accomplish a lot
of them, but they aren’t the moments that stand out in my mind.
What I will remember most is the time I got lost, the moment I was
able to see and feel the ground breathe, the day I rode a tree as it
swayed in the wind, and a daily running route off the beaten path
that revealed something new in me with every loop.
I guess, in short, nature invites the natural Natalie

IN THE RESIDENCY
May 2015
“Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet”
MATTHEW P. CARSWELL
Canada
matthew.carswell@gmail.com // www.rswell.ca
Oh hi.
Did you know that the identification and collection of material and
its exploration through action form the basis of my interdisciplinary
practice? Well, my works seek to build a continuous narrative
throughout a life lived, employing the production of artworks as
a method for documenting experience. My use of long duration
performance, often in unscheduled intervals, produces objects
and installations
as by-products or artifacts of ephemeral actions. I exploit myself
as material, figuratively as time elapsed during a performance and
literally in the projects that feature the harvest of my hair.
I identify a period of time that is dedicated to the research and
collection of information or material which is subsequently filtered
through a variety of mediums and actions.

26 MAY 2015
HAUKIJÄRVI, FINLAND
“A month is a long time,” I thought, as the bus was taking me from
the airport in Helsinki to 26 Hahmajärventie.
Arteles presents a natural landscape, removed from the city and
its distractions, where I was able to reset my practice – to begin
making work that engages enough to be made. My time was
divided equally between projects I brought with me, and those that
were inspired by and from my surroundings. The extended daylight
hours beg to be filled, and as the days pass, ideas flow so naturally
that they risk being observed without manifest.
Where did the long time go? To Arteles.

IN THE RESIDENCY
May 2015
EMMA FINEMAN
USA
emmafineman@yahoo.com // www.emmafineman.com
Emma Fineman is a visual artist from San Francisco, USA. In 2013
she received her BFA with Magna Cum Laude Honors as a Painting
Major from the Maryland Institute College of Art. Upon receiving
her BFA Fineman has already been included in various exhibitions
including solo shows in Baltimore and Miami, and group shows
both nationally and abroad. Currently Fineman lives in the Bay
Area where she works in her studio in Oakland.
“My current body of work addresses the tension between an old world
rooted in lived experience and our modern world that exists in virtual
space. The impact of virtual experience, derived from technology,
removes me from the physical realm. This phenomenon causes
me to experience moments differently, creating a consideration
for how an experience should be represented virtually, as opposed
to how it actually is, thus pulling me out of that moment. In my
work, the use of painterly, romantic, and figurative techniques
represent the “authentic,” and the use of fabricated collage evokes
“the virtual” -- calling attention to this mashup of tradition and
modernity. Subject, object, and architecture are arranged to reveal
the non-linear timeline and history that my subjects carry for me.
Growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area, in a climate dense
with fog, has influenced me to represent landscape in a blurred
and dreamlike way. The use of natural settings, organic shapes,
and colors specific to this landscape are repeated elements in my
work. San Francisco is an area of technological innovation and
is filled with “early-adopters.” Technology being integrated into
every day life is something that I have observed, participated in,
and critiqued within my life and work”

BETWEEN TWO BARNS
During my stay at Arteles I expanded upon the concept of the
displaced landscape that is central to my work, by creating a body
of narrative paintings that address the presence of the figure
form within the context of a natural setting. I was intrigued by the
familiarities of this new and distant environment, which became
home to me over the course of my stay in Haukijärvi. These
commonalities are represented both figuratively and abstractly in
this new body of paintings in which the non linear arrangement
of subject, object, architecture, and landscape reveal the narrative
history that my subjects carry for me.

IN THE RESIDENCY
May 2015
EMILIA WHARFE
UK
emiliawharfe@gmail.com // www.emiliawharfe.com
My formal title is that I am a Writer and Illustrator, but I feel like
it is a lot hazier than that. My work is most alive for me when it
takes and tweaks everyday experiences and blurs the traditionally
imposed boundaries between author-illustrator and reader. I try
to act as an intermediary between things that we think we know
(whether scientific or historical) and those that are less tangible
(emotions, myths and fictitious creatures).
My artistic process means I spend my allotted times, alternately,
outside finding flowers, and indoors hiding within the dark, to
create ghostly spaces and shapes that combine certainties and
the unknown. I then blend the organic shapes left behind with
illustration to invent new worlds and characters.
When I write I play with an annoying sibling, Dyslexia. I am bilingual
too. I use the linguistic chaos and humour that results, along with
theories of nonsense, to convey multiple meanings - or sometimes
none at all - and play with readers’ expectations. My writing and
images play off and complement each other, continually teasing
and re-embroidering the elements of reality held therein with
imagination and a playful surrealism, to create new metaphors
and expose the liminal spaces within the tale fragments I excavate
and try to retell.
My guide in all my work, Paul Grice’s Quantity Maxim: ‘to be as
informative as required and no more so.’

GHOST MAN
Between the beautiful lakes, sparse countryside and the many
Daim bars (which apparently is a Swedish invention, sorry Finns!),
what I really love about Finland is the people’s dry and slightly dark
sense of humour. So at Arteles I began illustrating little jokes – in
particular I became interested in Lady Mondegreen (a misheard
song lyric) I used this as a tool for creating misunderstandings. I
soon fell upon a much-loved song, ‘Don’t stand so close to me’ by
The Police and thus ‘Ghost man’ was born. It is a short, nonsensical
book that hopefully embodies Finnish humour, and an experiment
into my own illustrative style.

IN THE RESIDENCY
May 2015
“SOFT & RAW”
EVIE CAHIR
Australia
eviecahir@hotmail.com // www.eviecahir.com
Evie Cahir was born in Ballarat, Australia. In 2012, she obtained an
Associate Degree in Illustration from NMIT in Melbourne. She has
had two solo and five group exhibitions so far, as well as a number
of collaborations and projects, focusing on Comic Anthologies and
Editorial Work.

SENSE OF PLACE, A VISUAL SELF - SURVEY.
Moving (travelling across the world, running around the block,
going for a smoke etc.) creates a map that translates and
documents the present in a disorientating and de-centred
landscape and scene. Throughout the residency I have realised
that my body is an intelligent device for measuring and recording
space. Muscles have memory drives, neurons are empathetic
and everyone has their own relative perception of space and
time etched and self-programmed into their own physicality.
The work created here is documentation of this realisation.

IN THE RESIDENCY
May 2015
“Art, science and politics,
technoscientific criticism.”
ATIF AKIN
USA
a@paganstudio.com // www.paganstudio.com
Atif Akin is an artist and designer. He exhibited in many online
and offline shows and took part in international projects in the
field of art, science and politics. He taught various courses in the
context of contemporary art and design in Europe and Istanbul.
He joined the Visual Arts Department faculty at Rutgers University
in September 2011. Currently he teaches at Mason Gross School
of the Arts and runs his studio in New York City. He co-curated
an extensive media art exhibition, Uncharted: User Frames in
Media Arts, in 2009 and edited a book by the same name. He has
worked with cultural institutions such as the Goethe Institute,
KHM, University of Liege, ZKM and Ars Electronica. Currently he is
working on Mutant Space, a research-driven art and design project
on radioactivity and nuclear mobility.

MUTANT SPACE, ONKALO
Mutant Space is a large scope visual art project about nuclear
power and radioactivity. Research consists of visual surveys
around power plants and physics research and development on
radioactivity. It aims at contemplating on politics of nuclear energy
through artistic practice. Project works at all different scales, from
atomic to landscape, installing radioactive material which drives
generative digital animations together with landscape images.
Since 2010 for this project I travelled to Chernobyl in Ukraine,
Metsamor in Armenia, Hanford site in WA. Onkalo spent nuclear
fuel repository, located 132 km from Arteles on the shore of Gulf
of Bothnia, is a deep geological repository for the final disposal
of spent nuclear fuel, the first such repository in the world.
Throughout the residency I’ve been researching on site and also
doing a literary survey about Onkalo. One of my major research
question is a semantic one about conveying the information about
this material to the distant future generations.
At a theoretical level, Mutant Space is directly related to theories
of Timothy Morton on ecology and hyperobjects He radically
argues that the very idea of “nature” which so many hold dear
will have to wither away in an “ecological” state of human
society and approaches this paradox by considering art above all
culture, politics, science, etc. In The Ecological Thought, Morton
introduces the concept of hyper objects to describe objects that
are so massively distributed in time and space as to transcend
spatiotemporal specificity, such as global warming, styrofoam,
and radioactive plutonium.

IN THE RESIDENCY
May 2015
LAURA SKOCEK
Austria
laura@viablethings.net // www.viablethings.net
The kinetic objects of Laura Skocek are subtle and technologically
refined, they deal with biological rhythms, the physiology of sleep and
dreams. She uses digital scanning techniques in her video works,
and her focus lies on the ephemeral and more recently the pursuit of
developing new ways of interaction with people as well as machines.
Born in 1984, then studying Digital Arts at University of Applied Arts
Vienna, she has been living and working in Vienna and completed
artist residencies in Salzburg (subnet AIR, 2013), Lithuania (Nida
Art Colony, 2014) and Iceland (SIM Residency in Reykjavik, 2015).

ELECTRONICS // ANIMATION
The residency gave me the opportunity to tinker with new ideas
for interactive objects and to develop previous versions of textile
sensors further.
Image 1 (bottom): Noise Piece 1 + 2, Photocredit: Stephanie Paine
Image 2 (top right): Sketch for soft room installation, Photocredit:
Stephanie Paine
Part of my time was spent on the post production of a 2-minute
stop motion film, shot in my Viennese studio last summer,
involving editing, keying, compositing, the production and adding
of foley sound as well as effects.
Image 3 (top left): Video-still from the animation film “Saboteur”
(working title) by Laura Skocek, story by Christoph Gruber and
Laura Skocek

IN THE RESIDENCY
May 2015
“Kantele evangelist and sound searcher”
PHILIPPE BEER-GABEL
France
byebyemusic@gmail.com // www.beer-gabel.com
33 years old / kantele player / yin yoga teacher
Music is a medium and a vocation in which I connect and share with
the world around me. My music is an intimate expression of myself.
It is my intention to offer an accessible sound, color and story which
reaches to our divinity and humanity. Music is a language without
borders. I aspire to play music, which serves to build a community
orientated spirit and supports a peaceful evolution. Music is a part
of our collective memory; our universal story yet speaks to each
of us personally. Music has a social function of bringing people
together and embracing differences. The combination of Kantele
and pop music brings together people of different generations,
cultures and music tastes. My music facilitates a rare opportunity
to share an experience between groups of people who would not
otherwise come together. I am passionate about exploring the
possibilities of the Kantele’s unique sound and to revive its ancient
history in today’s popular music.
I believe music can transform and bring clarity to who we are,
what we desire individually and collectively. The healing sounds
of the Kantele assumes the necessary role which peace plays in
the development of the individual and our society. Historically,
the Kantele was used as a shamanic instrument to calm the soul
and bring emotional, spiritual and survival abundance. Audience
members today continue to make a similar remark that when I
play, reflection, relaxation, a sense of peace is very present.

THE ROOM OF LETTING GO
The nature of my work is about our ability to let go, our vulnerability
and the relation to the present moment. During my time in Arteles
I have been refining my live performance “The room of letting
go”, a 55 minutes piece made of 10 songs which aims to create a
space in which people can sink safely into themselves. People are
invited to relax and release emotions, past, present, future thanks
to the unique and soothing sound of the Concert Kantele. Some
videos of travels and archetypal objects take also the relay from
time to time. In this space it is ok to sit, to stand, to lay down, to
feel free and to get away from the conventional gap between “the
performer” and “the audience”.
In Arteles, I have been working on different sound effect and the
inclusion of some field recording as well as reflecting on how to
improve the relation between sound and image in the specific
space offered by Arteles. With in mind : to give back to music
the social and ritual function it has had in the past. To get people
together, share some stories and knowledge or like in shamanism
to accomplish certain ceremony.

IN THE RESIDENCY
May 2015
STEPHANIE PAINE
USA / Turkey
stephanielpaine@gmail.com // www.stephaniepaine.com
I love working with the essence of photography, the camera
obscura, and aim to explore its meaning through lenless
techniques. My process begins with the creation of a pinhole lens
for digital photographs or a box camera for film, which further
lends to an exploration and invention of new methods for myself.
I’m influenced by land, nature and all things animalistic. I like to
observe, to discuss, and contemplate the meaning of anything.
Originally from Michigan, I moved to live and work in Istanbul
in 2010. I have an MFA in photography and video from Purdue
University and teach in the art program at Sabanci University.

UNTITLED
These two series are processes in the broader theme of my
interests in the natural environment. They also represent an
exploration of my reactions to such a setting as Arteles, completely
unlike my current home yet reminiscent of my former. In my
approach I considered: firstly, to rely on the photographic medium
as is, with its most basic principles of light and shadow, framing
and composition, and texture and volume; to make aware a place
that is both real and entirely fiction. Secondly, to maintain memory
through collection and preservation: to preserve time, to preserve
form, to preserve this one thing before wilting only hours after
being plucked from its little habitat; a memento mori easy to carry,
easy to keep.

IN THE RESIDENCY
May 2015
“Lets do it, but let’s do it with excitement
and freshness!”
MEGAN SOLIS
USA
megsolis7@gmail.com // www.megansolis.net
Much of my work presents attitude. I enjoy illustrating characters
from my imagination and giving them ambiguous narratives for
the viewer to interpret. I allow myself to intuitively create marks
with an almost childlike freedom. I am attracted to loose lines,
bold pattern and vivid colors. These personalities are distorted
creatures that although slightly grotesque have the ability to sit
in such a confidence that it can almost become intimidating - but
humorous nonetheless.
I take delight in seeing the viewer react to a piece I have made.
Usually it is met with giggling and laughter while pointing out
elements that they relate to or find ridiculous. For now, I would
like to continue to convey this sense of playfulness and flippancy
and keep my work lighthearted yet intriguing.

EASY ON THE EYES COMFORTS
In the beginning weeks at Arteles I felt stifled by my drawings. I
had always thought drawings as precursors of development to
‘real’ pieces. ‘Real’ meaning the distinguished sculpture, or the
sophisticated painting; of course.
So as I progressed through with no real work to show, I simply
let these quirky ink pen drawings emerge. With help from fellow
residents I began developing ideas to transfer these illustrations
into soft fabric sculptures held by wire and other materials.
Although I was excited about the idea and even found bags full of
fabric in the city I couldn’t find the telling urge to actually make
them. I realized then my wish was to keep the integrity of these
drawings. They were incredibly more revealing and raw then I
could have re imagined with the sculpture. They were unconscious
desires for comfort, for home, and for myself.
As I cut up these studies they soon transformed into a puzzled
assemblage of collages filled with broken thoughts, fabric and
pattern. The theme being comfort I thought about the comfort in
material, food, iconography, in touch, in memories, and connections.
During my time I was instinctively making associations between
the country of Finland and my home. My need was to create pieces
that had universal themes different audiences hopefully could
relate to.

IN THE RESIDENCY
April 2015
EMILIA MARYNIAK
Poland
emilia.maryniak@gmail.com // www.emiliamaryniak.com
Art for me is an incessant process of asking questions
Whether it’s based on a visible world of nature, or the imaginary
world of physics and its underlying philosophical concepts – it’s
always about the mystery of existence.
It is about a tangible world and the way it takes us to its secrecy, so
we cannot see what is real, and what is not.
It is about the human need of understanding the state of one self,
through the physical body, a self-memory, and the construction of
ego. It is a constant question: What are we the most, and what is
the essence of our being?

DADDY, DADDY, SLEEP, SLEEP, SLEEP - CAUSE WHAT IS THERE IT’S OUR FEAR - Installation
(including 2:25min video with sound - on loop; acrylic painting on paper; mix media collage; nest made of natural branches; glockenspiel )
This project is about weaving and plaiting through a memory. Its
core is a braided nest made of a natural branches, with a colorful
glockenspiel in the middle of it.
Past comes back with a sound of the old children’s play. It’s
combining the real with the real-like dream. It’s made of something
that you never said. It was gone before you were there.
The Old Bear is sleep, sleep, sleep
The Old Bear is sleep in deep
We afraid of him so we tiptoe on the grass
Cause when he’s up – he will eat us
[old Polish nursery rhyme]

IN THE RESIDENCY
April 2015
VERÓNICA GÓMEZ
Argentina
veruschka1@yahoo.com.ar // www.veronica-gomez.com.ar
I see each piece I produce as chapters of a large imaginary book
that is spread out in space. The information that goes into my
work is often complex and with a rather artisanal character; I
imagine a baroque mise en scène is the best environment for
it to be expressed in order to appeal to the recipients’ cathartic
emotions: humor, drama, empathy and recognition. Several clues
are intertwined on stage in each of my installations, suggesting
a narrative around a latent protagonist. Of all the literary forms,
Fable—in which animals are always the main characters—is a
frequent tool for fiction. I work in diverse media: painting, drawing,
installation and video.

LETHARGY / WOMEN-FOREST.
For a month, I looked for that instance where the color is
screened by a mild stupor a limbic time. Hammershøi. Morandi.
Hugo Simberg. Helene Schjerfbeck. I thought of them. And on
the edge of the forest as only border almost always dim sky.
In my portraits, women are adorned with vestiges of the
forest. Lichens. Cornamenas. Birch skin. Roots. They are
ghosts. Sometimes scary, but only because they are afraid.
In mid-April, on an almost completely thawed lake, the birds
screamed like crazy.

IN THE RESIDENCY
March-April 2015
“Living artistry. Love, dolls, zoology.
Science, science, science.“
PATRICIA BARBARA
Brazil
barbarakimberly@gmail.com // www.abonecaconceitual.com
Hello, would you like to play doll?
I’m Patricia Bárbara, A boneca conceitual - the conceptual doll. I
started performing professionally at the age of 37, but actually I’ve
been performing my whole life. For me, it is the way I live, how I
conduct myself, how I interfere in the world. Graduated in Cinema,
I’ve been working in the industry for over 20 years. I started flirting
with contemporary dance and visual arts in 2007 and all of a
sudden performing became The Way.
I love science and animals, and I took to myself a responsability to
address my art both as an animal and a scientist. Crazy, I know.
Either arrogant ou naive, or both, you may say. I could not deny. But
I promise you I’m interested in learning, not in being right.
Also, as a doll shoud be, I’m ready to interact and give what you
need as much as it may be possible.
I almost never give up, but I’m not afraid to give in.
Ready? Let’s play.

THE LAND IN THE END
Combining a scientific approach to an artistic execution seems
to be more and more the path I’m running towards. Civilization
could be defined as an overcoming of nature - just to be nice and
don’t say overruning. It is so imperative we reconsider civilization
models that for almost 60 years this thought has been addressed
by a certain amount of humanity, although it is still small in
numbers, fairly.
How far we are from a supposedly inherent relationship with
nature? If a catastrophe hit us and all electronic knowledge
breaks down, would we be able to manage nature and life? More
specifically, if older people and their wisdom also die along the
electronic knowledge, how much could we do with our bare hands
and our senses? Would we be able to look at animals as another
being, maybe friendly, but never as pet or as opponent?
How naive can this manner of thinking be? Would a regular farmer
or hunter or fisherman laugh at me in compliant way? What are the
secrets, that are not really secrets, but just subjects we dismissed
long time ago?
This investigation process has just began. Well, in fact, it started
around four years ago, but it is still very novice. So much to learn.
So much to figure out. It is a jump off the cliff, a dive in the abyss.
I’m wiiling to take it.
Resilient are the children, the nature and the dearly beloved ones.
I want to fit in with those.

IN THE RESIDENCY
March-April 2015
AHMET CIVELEK
USA
ahmet@ahmetcivelek.com // www.ahmetcivelek.com
I was conceived in London, born in New York and raised in Istanbul.
I moved to New York when I was seventeen to study Pratt Institute
and consequently moved to London for a year to study fine arts
Central St. Martin’s. In 2010 I moved back to New York and set
up a company, The Destruction Company, that was immediately
related to my work at the time and continues to relate to themes
in my work and process. This Destruction Company closed in late
2011 and I immediately got back into making art, which I have been
doing ever since. I live and work in New York and continue to visit
London and Istanbul intermittently.

-
I have been working on videos and also parts of paintings that are
going be finalized after Arteles. Although I had ideas of the videos
I wanted to take, it is not the direction I am taking. I think I see
Arteles as more of a place to think about the things that I have
been experimenting in my own studio, then actually producing a lot
of work. I am looking back at 6-8 months of work I have done and
digesting them and bring some newer elements from here as well.

IN THE RESIDENCY
March-April 2015
“Just painting and stuff”
SWAIN HOOGERVORST
South Africa
swainross@gmail.com // www.swainhoogervorst.com
Swain Hoogervorst is a visual artist from Cape Town, South
Africa. He works predominantly in the medium of oil paint
and has been painting full time since 2012. He has exhibited
on various group shows, locally and abroad, and held his first
solo exhibition at the AVA gallery in Cape Town in May 2014.
“My paintings have grown out of an interest in colour, where the
photograph functions as a springboard for intuitive and technical
explorations. The photograph is a trigger, necessary to – but in no
way identical to – the painting. How to keep searching, never to
settle, to keep asking: What is painting?”
Hoogervorst lives in Cape Town, South Africa where he works from
Eastside Studios.

REPRESENTATION OR ABSTRACTION OR BOTH
I came to Arteles with an open mind and the hope of rediscovering
painting for myself. The only thought I had in mind was that I
would be making paintings of the snow to explore the colour
white. However the snow melted rather quickly and the Birch trees
surrounding Arteles grabbed and held my attention, as did the
ever-changing landscape. I took to making small paintings of the
view from the studio window as well as quick small-scale paintings
based on close up photographs I had taken of the birch trees. The
composition of the trees, the texture and colour of their bark as
well as the space in between them related to themes that I am
trying to unpack in my work back home; my fascination between
representation and abstraction, whilst focusing on colour, mark
making and form.

IN THE RESIDENCY
March 2015
“Somebody to whom things made matter
very little - somebody who is obsessed by
Making.” - E.E.Cummings
HANNAH MONSON
monson.hannah@gmail.com
Australia
For me, art is about sharing and connecting. A way to bind maker
and viewer in a common place of humanness to reveal the spectacle
of our unspectacular selves. To do this I tell stories. Through each
discipline I explore I am constantly re-imagining the ways in which
a story can be told and how it can access it’s audience. How can a
story be told without telling? How can a strangers art make us feel
not so alone? My work is messy, imperfect, transdisciplinary and
never separates the real from the absurd.

007
ARS EST GRAVIS’
In this duration based, multimedia installation I will be exploring the
entire collection of James Bond 007 films with a very large bucket
of popcorn that is the approximate size of a communal kitchen bin.
This piece encourages the audience to physically participate in the
installation with the choice of positioning themselves on to the
furniture in front of the screen or immersing themselves entirely
in the vat of popcorn that is present. Once managing to get inside
of the container I encourage the participant to actually consume
some of the popcorn present and remain inside it for as long as
they deem necessary before continuing on with the film. This
experience allows an immediate, physical demonstration of the
visceral and tangible capacity that art offers by not just covering
their entire body in the art but placing it deep inside of them.

IN THE RESIDENCY
March 2015
“Morgan Pettersson is a writer and
performance artist aiming to inspire
environmental protection through
her work.”
MORGAN HANNAH PETTERSSON
Australia
morganhannah.pettersson@gmail.com // www.morganhpettersson.com
Morgan Hannah Pettersson is an Australian writer and
performance artist aiming to inspire others to protect the
environment through her work. As a travel and environmental
writer her work has appeared in publications around the world in
both print and audio visual formats. Chosen as one of thirty young
people from around the world to travel to the end of the earth in
2013 as an ‘Antarctic Youth Ambassador’ she spent two weeks
on expedition in the last untouched wilderness on earth. Her
experience in Antarctica lead to her writing her first book ‘Antarctic
Youth Ambassador: protecting the last great wilderness on earth’
a book to inspire more young people to follow their dreams and
get involved in conservation projects. Her latest literary project
is an adventure mystery book aimed at the young adult market
featuring strong environmental themes. As a performance artist
she has performed in shows in three Fringe World Festivals under
her stage name Bella Bowtie. Her performance style is cabaret/
circus with her mime act exploring the deeper human emotions
behind relationships from the 2013 Fringe World Festival receiving
critical acclaim.

REFLECTION
My time at the residency has been spent consolidating and
exploring the journey that I have made over the past two years
and how much this has impacted on my writing. The natural world
plays a huge role in my work and I have been exploring themes
of conservation as well as trying to understand how the different
facets of my life fit together and relate to my work. In essence,
attempting to identify and better understand how to make a small
change in how we perceive, interconnect with and appreciate our
natural world, has become the core focus of my work. During the
residency I have been working on the formulation of a major piece
of fiction set in Antarctica whilst also taking the time to free write
and explore small bursts of text without labelling their form.

IN THE RESIDENCY
March 2015
“Taboo is in the eye of the beholder.”
JESSICA S. FRANK
USA
jsfrank79@gmail.com // www.jessicasfrank.com
As a poet, I like to explore the more taboo topics in hopes of
understanding what makes certain ideas so bad. Anything can be
taboo, it all depends on the circumstances and the interpretation.
Sex is taboo topic for some, which is why it is a common theme
in my poetry. What people think about sex comes from what they
are brought up with and what they have discovered on their own.
I find that fascinating because the ideas fluctuate from beautiful
to utilitarian to shameful. What makes something so basic and
biological so widely interpreted?
When I’m not exploring the profane parts of existence, I am
somewhat of a confessionalist poet, but with an active imagination.
I take experiences and conversations and turn them into something
to be shared. There’s a value to just about everything people
experience, and discovering a truth about others that one may
have only previously known in him or herself can be life-changing.
Poetry is in every part of the clichéd human experience; it’s just a
matter of fleshing it out.

SUNRISES, SUNSET, AND THE NIGHT SKY
Leaving behind three kids and a husband was not done easily,
so I knew whatever I accomplished at Arteles would have to be
something I could not do at home. I came to this program not
knowing what I would be working on exactly, but having some
rough ideas of themes I’d like to explore.
What shocked me most was hearing the stories from the other
artists--who hail from around the world--that didn’t differ too
much from my own stories. We all had loved, lost, created, laughed,
and went back for more. Combining that with the natural side of
things I got to witness at Arteles—early sunsets and ice, giving way
to longer evenings and the reemergence of spring—made me want
to explore just how being on this big jiggly blue planet together
gives us all something in common.
While watching the sunrise one morning, it occurred to me that the
sun that rises over Finland is the same one I see in Wisconsin. A
basic science fact I already knew, but traveling all this way made
it more concrete. Couple that with two natural phenomenon we
witnessed here – the best Aurora Borealis display in a decade and
a partial solar eclipse—and suddenly, I was creating new work
about nature.
Whether it’s a sunrise, the losing of one’s virginity, experiencing
crushing loss, or laughing at a joke, we are all in this business
of living together. Humanity shares commonalities that know no
continental borders.

IN THE RESIDENCY
March 2015
“In the end, we’ll all become stories.”
Margaret Atwood
LUCIE STEVENS
Australia
luciejstevens@gmail.com // www.luciestevens.com
I’m an emerging Australian novelist currently based in Berlin.
My creative interests lie primarily in historical fiction and magic
realism.
Stories are my favourite thing, so it was inevitable that I would
become a writer. As a child, my stories were often about animals
encountering the supernatural. While my protagonists now tend
to be human, I’m still fascinated by the intersection of what is
considered ‘real’ and ‘unreal’, and the cultural influences that
define aspects of life under these terms.
I’m drawn to historical fiction and love the research process it
demands. My current work-in-progress has seen me learning to
weave on an eight-shaft hand-loom, investigating circus in the
early 1900s and studying German architecture. Research for my
first novel, ‘The Grace Stroke’, involved everything from identifying
names commonly used in the Frankish kingdom, to discovering
when nail polish was commercially available in France.
Writing about times and places unfamiliar to me creates
opportunities to travel, learn and meet people I couldn’t otherwise
access. The statement ‘I’m a writer’ is my skeleton key to the world.
Portrait by Amy Alexander: www.welldonenobody.com

TISSUE
During my time at Arteles, I worked on a novel for young adults, set
in Germany during the final days of the Weimar Republic.
The narrative follows circus performer and weaver Augustine
Clavette, who is offered a scholarship to the Bauhaus Design
School. Away from the sequestered life of the circus, Augustine is
exposed to a world of politics and change. It is 1932, a time when
identity determines fate. But Augustine’s heritage is uncertain.
Abandoned as a four-year-old, Augustine has been raised by those
wishing to control and exploit her.
To free herself from the past and ensure she has a future,
Augustine must discover why her mother deserted her in Berlin.
Her investigations lead her first to Paris and then back to Berlin,
where she must confront her father about a shameful secret that
has influenced the course of her life.
This work explores the influence of story-telling, both ancestral
story and story which is propagated culturally and politically. It
also examines enchantment and manipulation, a theme present in
my first novel, ‘The Grace Stroke’.
The quietness and isolation of Arteles makes it the perfect place for
focused writing. Experiencing a new landscape has been inspiring,
and I can see the setting of my next manuscript being shaped by
frozen lakes and birch forests.

IN THE RESIDENCY
March 2015
SUSANNE LUND PANGRAZIO
UK / Sweden
smlundpangrazio@gmail.com // www.susannelundpangrazio.com
Susanne Lund Pangrazio uses a combination of painting, drawing
and photography to explore subject matters such as memories,
myths and solitude. She sometimes adds other elements to her
drawings and paintings such as wire, balloons or ribbon which
make the work strive towards a three dimensional format.
Her works often hold a liminal position where the boundaries
in between the real and the imaginary are in a constant state of
flux. Within her practice personal and common experiences are
intertwined and build an uneven weave of thoughts, opinions and
hope.
Susanne obtained an MFA in Fine Art at Duncan of Jordanstone
College of Art and Design in Dundee, Scotland in 2013. She also
holds a Bachelor of Science with a major in Latin American Studies
from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. She has exhibited in
Sweden, USA and in the UK and strives to interconnect her different
academic backgrounds within her art practice.

”IN THE MIDDLE OF THE JOURNEY OF OUR LIFE I FOUND MYSELF WITHIN A DARK WOOD
WHERE THE STRAIGHT WAY WAS LOST.” DANTE ALIGHIERI, THE DIVINE COMEDY
I arrived at Arteles with a vague idea of what I wanted to do but I
quickly found myself wandering into other territory. The freedom
to let the mind and ideas wander freely has been the true strength
of this programme. In conclusion I have focused this time on two
different streams in my practice; to develop and find new pathways
within my painting practice, and to conceptually explore the subject
matter in my work. After endless walks in the surrounding area I
started to think about the forest; a place that gives life but that is
also historically a place of perils where fears need to be overcome.
I started to think about the adaptability of humanity and how our
quest for a rational and civilized society has led us away from
nature instead of working in its favour; how we perceive ourselves
as being above nature instead of a dependent part of it.
During this month I have slowly started to experiment with visual
ways of interpreting these thoughts with Indian ink, oil paints and
oil pastels. The sketches and thoughts made here form the starting
point for a larger body of work that will be exhibited in Aberdeen,
Scotland, later this year.

IN THE RESIDENCY
February 2015 - Silence.Awareness.Existance program
ANGIE GUNNOE
USA
acgunnoe@hotmail.com // angiegunnoe.blogspot.com
My work is informed by my experiences and interest in psychology,
spirituality and the human condition. The images I create are
intended to invoke wonder and curiosity about the nature of
existence. They present fragments of space that are both physical
and metaphorical, asking the viewer to loosen their view of what
is real.

LEARNING TO WALK THROUGH THE DARK
“Whoever you are: some evening take a step out of your house,
which you know so well. Enormous space is near.”
Rainer Maria Rilke
I spent the residency creating photographic images, primarily at
night. This required me to confront my own fears of the dark and
the mysterious sounds that come alive when everyone else seems
to be asleep. There is an added peculiarity in the night landscape
that attracts me. The intersection of beauty and strangeness in
the landscape holds a feeling of both tension and stillness and
brings with it the experience of other-ness.

IN THE RESIDENCY
February 2015 - Silence.Awareness.Existance program
“The goal of life is to make your heartbeat
match the beat of the universe to
match your nature with Nature.”
-Joseph Campbell
GRACE PETERS
USA
mojavebirdmusic@gmail.com // www.mojavebird.com
Contrast and resolution have become my greatest tools of
expression in the realms of both sound and image. They both
mimic aliveness, as one extreme dictates the existence of the
other end of a given spectrum, the spectrum in which we choose
to exist. Some people decide to remain in the safety of warm and
cool grays, but I see the truest aliveness in the darkest moments
before the light hits, in the dissonance before the resolution.
Layering ambient sounds from synthesizers, pianos, and organs,
I like to create textures that are simple, yet rich, often drenched
in reverb. The addition of spacey vocals has led to the descriptors
“haunted” and “eerie,” yet the aim is to be soothing and honest.
Nature continues to inspire me, teach me, ground me, create me. It
is a gift to be in it, to capture its stillness, softness, and contrasting
strength and grit. Layered images blend into the sounds, creating
a convergence, a reverence.
My gratitude to be able to create and appreciate life to this extent
is unending, and I aim to create an environment where people can
know their own worth and forever inspire, and be inspired by it.
I play/write/record/perform music in Portland, OR, USA under the
name Mojave Bird.

HERE, NOW, LIKE ALWAYS
waking with the sunrise :: contemplating, breathing, intending ::
observing blues and and creams of morning skies :: retreating
within, listening :: VIDEO :: snowy walks with tripod and
camera :: capturing images to be layered together :: finding
beauty in the blurred, close up images, as well as the clear
and focused :: dancing between the two :: MUSIC :: allowing
melodies, deep and dark, to flow out :: haunted, old pump
organ :: pulling out the stops :: resonating with the morning’s
intentions :: creation of virtual musical instruments :: balancing
between composed and free-form :: finding beauty in blurred
layers of improvised melodies as well as the clear and focused
:: PERFORMANCE :: single file line :: music on headphones
:: groups walking in the woods :: listening, observing ::
doing, not doing :: meeting yourself in the darkest places ::
comfort, discomfort, comfort :: finding beauty in the clear and
the unclear, the blurry and the focused :: tranquility in the chaos,
loudness in the most quiet spaces, then reverse :: be anywhere,
with anything :: we are here, now, always, like always, but now we
know it ::

IN THE RESIDENCY
February 2015 - Silence.Awareness.Existance program
“Good art provides people with a vocabulary
about things they can’t articulate.”
-Mos Def
WILL HARRIS
USA
willharrisphoto@gmail.com // www.willharrisphoto.com
I am a visual artist who mainly uses photography. My work is
mainly inspired by memories, found objects, and every day life. I’m
interested in trying new things and experimenting as it relates to
my work.

UNTITLED
I came to Arteles with a very loose idea of what I wanted to do and
no expectations of how the final project would turn out. I left with
sounds derived from photographs of the landscapes.

IN THE RESIDENCY
February 2015 - Silence.Awareness.Existance program
“The image is an apparent reality.
The nothingness, the infinite and
the uncertain are the concepts
that are behind my photographs.”
CONSTANZA GAZMURI LYON
Chile
conigazmuri@gmail.com // www.cargocollective.com/constanzagazmuri
I am photographer and i also work with video. My interes is focus on
images that embody subtle and desolate landscapes. I recurrently
work with images that contain fog, this pictures generate visual
results that moves away from the photographic language and
approach the pictorial language. Based on this idea the formal
results of my photographs are close to the pictorial movement of
the German Romanticism.
In conceptual terms, there is also a closeness; the problematics of
my visual investigation is linked to the thematic of this stream as:
the vacuum, the sublime and the uncertain.
Another subject with which I am beginning to work is the gloom .
Im interested to work with photography from his basic
component; Light and for the shadows; the absence of light.
I am interested in the ambiguity that acquires the image of the
landscape by not having enough light; camouflaging their shape
with its background and constructing an uncertain image with
multiple readings.
Both fog and gloom limited the vision beyond the here or the
nearby. Seeking to focus my work around the uncertainty of
the invisible/ intangible, the insecurity of the indefinite. The
idea of nothingness or infinity are very inspiring and in some
way their are possible places that shelter behind my images.
I´m also interested in the influence of the abscence of light in
people.

SURVIVOR PLANTS / PICTORIC PHOTOGRAPHS / ONE DAY WALKING THROUGH THE HORIZON
I develop three projects during Arteles residency :
Survivor plants emerges from the encounter with plants that grow
in the snow covered fields and survive the extreme weather and
low light conditions during wintertime. The images correspond to
plants that where found during my explorations in nature. The final
image is a hybrid, a mixture between different parts of plants.
I generate Pictoric photographs, following my interest of working
with the language of photography from its displacement to the
pictorial language.
Using long exposure and techniques such as panning and zooming,
I create photographs that are focused mainly on the atmosphere
and the abstraction of the landscape.
Finally, One day walking through the horizon is a video
performance that originates in the idea of the appropriation of
space. This occurs by the transit through a fictitious horizon line,
from sunrise to sunset. This transit is just in one direction and the
reiterative action will be broken at one point by the action of sitting
and contemplating the landscape during some minutes. This video
is related with different concepts that include: the relation of the
body with the context, the resistance and weathering of the body by
the repetition of the same action, as well as time and transit. With
this video I return to a concept that I have been using before in my
visual research; the horizon itself, a fictitious limit of vision that is
infinite and unreachable. It is here but at the same time far away.

IN THE RESIDENCY
February 2015 - Silence.Awareness.Existance program
LOUISE BØGELUND SAUGMANN
Denmark
mail@louisesaugmann.dk // www.louisesaugmann.dk
Louise Bøgelund Saugmann is a Copenhagen based artist. In her
artistic practice she works conceptually with photography as a tool
to document and explore personal and public spaces.
A meditative work process is the way into her motif-world, which
centers on visual spaces aiming to capture mental states, moods
and presence.
Recently, the relation between photography and meditation has
captured her. She is interested in, how the medium of photography,
and it’s claimed close relationship with reality can make ‘inner’
pictures visible and show what is not immediately visible to the
eye.
Her work draws from both an aesthetic and a theoretical
foundation.
Saugmann has exhibited in Sweden, Germany, Denmark, Finland,
Norway and England. Her stay at Arteles was kindly supported
by the Culture Foundation for Denmark and Finland and Knud
Højgaards Foundation.

12 FRAMES INFINITE
Approaching my work in the amazing surroundings of Arteles, it
was important for me to spend many hours outside, alone, in order
to study and relate to the silence and landscape around me.
The photographic medium has a kind of noise or speed, which is
about capturing the moment. The moment here and now that never
comes back. For me it is interesting to work with the opposite. To
make the photograph slow and silent and to dwell on the same
subject for a long time and photograph it many times. Although
I point the camera at the same scene, the images are different,
when I shoot handheld and light changes.
I manipulate images together in different ways, aiming to
create imaginary landscapes that visually move away from the
photograph, approaching an abstract and painterly expression. So
as to create mental, quiet, timeless spaces, where a meditative
presence in interaction with, time, coincidence, and light plays a
crucial role.

IN THE RESIDENCY
February 2015 - Silence.Awareness.Existance program
PIA ZÖLZER
Germany
p.zoelzer@gmx.de // www.piazoelzer.de
Pia Zölzer is an illustrator living in Cologne. Using oil pastels on
carton, her work is a processing mixture of colour and confusion.
She uses expressive, often dark images to document an intense
process of visual quest. Her pictures are busy playgrounds for
animal-like hybrid creatures acting in shadowy landscapes within
misrepresentive dimensions. It´s an indifferent wilderness in her
pictures that gives ample scope to the viewers interpretation.

”THE SKY IS AN ENORMOUS MAN” EMANUEL SWEDENBORG
My work is highly influenced by old myths and folklore. It contrasts
everday life with legends of mystical creatures and their places.
Therefore i like to see my surroundings as sureal playgroungs for
different encounters and interactions. My pictures are trying to
create a certain atmosphere of ambiguity, avoiding to sum up to a
clear conclusion.
I spent the residency reading articles about finnish pagansim. I
was drawn to the intersection of a polytheistic view according to
my own personal beliefs. Thats why i started to study the unique
athmosphere of the nature around me. There was the strong
presence of silence and being that help me easily to connect with
the idea of pagan. In combination with the most amazing dreams i
had, i couldn´t resit of the feeling theres something truly mystical
about finnland.

IN THE RESIDENCY
February 2015 - Silence.Awareness.Existance program
SANDRA BEER
Germany
hello@sandrabeer.de // www.sandrabeer.de
Sandra´s work is based on impulsive dots and vital lines, using her
preferred medium, indian ink on paper. These imaginative worlds
are always powerful and far beyond any previously captured reality.
Most of her characters are perceived as both abstract and figured,
comparable to an unkown constellation of stars.
Sandra Beer´s pictorial language is an untiring effort to detect and
explore new levels of reflection and their figural representation.

ROBOT TALES
The drawings were made at the Arteles Center in Finland. In a
snowy landscape, far away from any city. I start to illustrated part
of the stories of Stanislaw Lem`s “Robot Tales”. I was inspired
by the Nordic environment where landscapes change every day
from white to blue to dark. Sometimes it feels like on other planet.
Nature and the peaceful atmosphere puts me in the right mindset
for the first drawings. The result is a screen printed box with 5
leporello folds of 5 stories of the “Robot Tales.”

IN THE RESIDENCY
February 2015 - Silence.Awareness.Existance program
“The small details of everyday life are in
silent continuous transformation, but with
the act of listening, these details can
become very present.”
KATH FRIES
Australia
kathfries@gmail.com // www.kathfries.com
Kath Fries traces the impermanence of present experience in her
art practice, as an ongoing personal reflection on the textured
passage of time and fragility of life.
She works with natural and found materials to explore tactility
and nuance in her sculptural installations, which embody
interconnections between our senses and our surroundings.
Quiet observation is an important aspect of Kath’s process. By
focusing on instability and materiality her work reveals poetic
links between humans and nature, locality and history, micro and
macro, existence and mortality.
Kath would like to thank the Ian Potter Cultural Trust for
awarding her an early career travel grant, which has enabled her
to participate in this residency, and Sydney College of the Arts
post graduate support scheme for assisting her PhD research at
Arteles.

SNOW AND ASH
When I arrived at Arteles, a thick blanket of snow covering everything
and it instantly enthralled me. I delightedly waded through the kneeto-waist
deep snow leaving behind deep footprints. Occasionally I
fell over and found my self visually observing the snow close up
and feeling the snow’s changing tactile touch as it melted against
my skin. My art practice often reflects on how our bodily senses
engage with our surroundings, so with this in mind, I deliberately
began using my hands and arms to reach around and into a mound
of snow. My hands met in the middle, hugging the snow and creating
interconnecting burrows. These ephemeral snow interventions
went beyond merely looking at the snow, to understanding how it
felt on my skin and how it changed after thawing and refreezing,
dissolving in the rain or resealing after a fresh snowfall.
Embracing the Finnish sauna tradition further enhanced my
tangible snow experiences, as one’s sauna-heightened body
temperature dramatically contrasts the touch of frozen snow. Ash
from the sauna, with its specific colours and textures, became a
mark making devise in my snow work. Although both materials
are quite ephemeral and transitory, the act of scattering ash is,
for me, intrinsically linked to grieving, ritual, cremation, mortality
and the human body. In these works, the ash also symbolised a
trace of contrasting temperatures and contact between the snow
and the body. Over time my installations naturally changed with
the weather conditions and eventually disintegrated back into the
ground.

IN THE RESIDENCY
February 2015 - Silence.Awareness.Existance program
“Sounding Embodied Intuition”
MAURICIO RODRIGUEZ
Mexico
info@mauricio-rodriguez.com // www.mauricio-rodriguez.com
I compose out of ‘Emptiness’.
I literally do so because that is the way the imaginary background
of my inner ear presents itself to me. The non-referential space of
emptiness has been always the conceptual and vivid container of
my work. The ‘Void’ is not neutral though, it is an active landscape
that gradually forces me to detach my own music from it. The
borderline aspect of my work comes from the intention to unveil
“A Something” or “A Sonic-Thing”, while somehow retaining the
source-force of the “”No-ness””, which is indeed “Wholeness” at
the same time.
Exercising my inner ear from ‘Within’ the dark-matter of my
imagination has been a self-imposed methodological technique,
integral to my compositional process. Thus, intuition is the primary
source in my art, a source that later is carefully shaped to translate
my inner space to the outer world.
It is the “kinetic energy” displayed through the human body, the
element that allows me to render my intuition and imagination into
reality. The body actions as manifested in my music performances,
aim for a multi-modal artistic approach, where the listenerspectator
experiences an “inter-subjective”, but nonetheless,
tangible sounding-physicality, that vividly retraces the internal
seed of pure and abstract imagination.

MEMENTO ANIMUS’ (SOUNDING EMBODIED INTUITION)
In ‘Memento Animus’, sound works as reminiscent experience of
“soundless” music created from “pure kinetic energy”. The piece
unfolds from the physical presence of the performer, his/her
sensed relation to the triptych score, and from embodied reactions
towards the musical instruments (sounding objects).

IN THE RESIDENCY
February 2015 - Silence.Awareness.Existance program
ANTONIA KUO
USA
antoniakuo.art@gmail.com // www.antoniakuo.com
Antonia Kuo creates a fluid dialogue between drawing, painting,
photography, 16mm film and video, investigating the omnipresent,
unrelenting vital impulse in nature perpetuating time and
existence. With an emphasis on experimental methods and
physical interventions, the materiality of her work is brought to the
forefront, referencing the intangible, transitory or degenerative.
Through a multilayered process, the images are in flux and undergo
successive transformations from their original state, subverting
the construction of representational truth or fixity.

ETERNAL RETURN
The work I focused on at Arteles was a layered, mixed media
attempt to visualize matter, motion and energy -- incorporating
re-photographing drawings and source material with multiple
exposure, physically altering the film surface, or creating moving
image 16mm films compiled from strings of animated still images.

IN THE RESIDENCY
January 2015 - Silence.Awareness.Existance program
“Art is what makes life more interesting
than art” - Robert Filliou
AMANDA MARCHAND
Canada
amandamarchand@earthlink.net // www.amandamarchand.com
Amanda Marchand’s work cross pollinates between photography
and writing and is guided by a deep emotional honesty, a love
of poetry, critical theory, and the natural world. Lately she has
become fascinated by the mysteries of the Universe, often finding
herself in bed with her children watching “documentaries” about
life before the dinosaurs, experiments in physics, or the far reaches
of the cosmos.
Her photographic series, “Night Garden” will be published by Datz
Press in 2015. She is also the author of the book of fiction, “without
cease the earth faintly trembles.” She was raised in Montreal and
now lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Whenever You’ll Try I’ll be With You
WORK IN PROGRESS - PHOTOGRAPHS
My experience at Arteles was transformative, beyond expectations,
beyond plans, beyond art even. I set out to photograph, with
medium-format camera, the mystic Nordic winter outdoorscape,
the blue twilights, the phases of shifting light, the white
and monotone palette, against snowfall and sky, stripped bare
of media, color, polemics. And this I did with a big Canada Goose
coat and red Arteles bicycle. Given the themed program, Silence
Awareness Existence, I was interested in making something
that could be contemplative in its minimalism, yet piercing like
the practice of meditation itself. I am excited about the work-inprogress
from this residency, but even happier to have met such
talented artists, such kindred souls, new friends who enriched
my time there beyond anything I could relate in words. Hoping my
gratitude for them, and for Teemu and this incredible place will be
there in its infinity in the photographs.

IN THE RESIDENCY
January 2015 - Silence.Awareness.Existance program
“The Party Within :
A Smart Casual Connecting Principle”
CAROLINE ANDERSON
New Zealand
caroline.m.anderson@gmail.com // www.thepartywithin.com
Caroline Anderson aka Crystal Diamond is an existential rogue
scholar who subscribes to her own founded philosophy, The Party
Within (a smart casual connecting principle). Currently writing a
book of the same name, Caroline perpetually unpacks snack sized
renditions of her explosive psychic experiences in a roundabout
oblique fashion that draws newcomers into the story as it is penned.
Her dedication to party artistry reflects a dedication to continued
improvement of the overall vibe of Earth. Resourcefully revelling in
simple tasks while deeply investing in human relationships is her
signature move. She is doing this by way of an epistolary Peace
Party Puzzle, distributing original handwritten writings (riddled
with drawings) to selected parties by post, planting psychic seeds
and crystallising invisible connections between disparate parties,
an instinctive method that reveals its importance layer by layer as
time rolls around on itself. Schooled at fashion school and in the
hospitality industry Caroline happened into the art world when
suddenly she had a lot to say, and needed a forgiving word to
shelter under. Art is her new umbrella.

ESSENTIALLY APPITIZERS
At Arteles I was working on my “book” project, an ode to the
electrical currents passing between us (humans), transmuting
into various forms of dynamic creative energy upon reception and
acceptance into another humans socket. All the while refining my
remix of some ancient mystical notions into a current celebratory
form of casual language.
I wrote some words down all in a row on a computer doc and many
more in notebooks via pens. I danced; stretched and snacked with
my fixed term platonic wife, got hot in the sauna, cooled down in
the snow (angel style), giggled in bed, cried in bed, drew oblique
comics, played animal games, swiped left a lot, hosted a bedroom
disco and a game of pass the parcel with the other residents, went
silent, piped up, wrote 30 postcards, crunched around outside,
walked on ice.
Outside of Arteles in greater Finland I befriended some local sonic
artists I’d been a crazed fan of for years; visited their homes and
studios, watched them play, shared stories, got electrified. When
it was time to leave I gifted some pieces of party puzzle to Finnish
VIPs as invitations to be part of the party process...a psychic downpayment
on a future comeback special.

IN THE RESIDENCY
January 2015 - Silence.Awareness.Existance program
“Music for effortless transformation”
TAHLEE ROUILLON
Australia
music@sonesence.com // www.sonesence.com
Tahlee Rouillon is music composer and producer extraordinaire at
Sonesence. She offers peace seekers an easy way to achieve inner
peace with a sonic shortcut called meditones. Plus, Tahlee creates
bespoke meditones music for other wellness entrepreneurs. Her
blog is soaked in collaborative inspiration from her incredible
clients and her own musings on life.
When she isn’t blissing out to music, you can find Tahlee hulahooping
in the park, wandering about the rainforest, eating good
food with good friends and laughing out loud. Really loud. When
you hear it, you’ll know.

TRUE NORTH
Inspired by vertical space, beautiful forests, slow sunrises,
presence and crisp beauty - I created a new meditones album
called True North.
Hailing from Australia, the name of the album wasn’t just inspired
by the direction in which I was travelling to Arteles, but also the
idea of meditation as a compass that brings you home to yourself.
The idea of north has a magnetic pull, a lifting quality, a direction
of positivity. And I believe that your intuition holds true wisdom and
that this awareness is more easily accessed through meditation.
The album is just over 30mins long and comprised of 3 tracks. One
to stimulate Alpha brainwaves for calm focus; one to stimulate
Theta brainwaves for floating bliss; and one for Delta brainwaves
for deep rest.
I experimented with lots of arpeggios in the first track; reverberant
vocals with lots of pre-delay on the second track; and long, slow
time stretching of some instruments I found at Arteles in the last
track.
I found working in Arteles gave me a new sense of time and space
- one much slower and deeper than I had experienced before.
Translating this depth of rest into a musical journey was truly life
changing.

IN THE RESIDENCY
January 2015 - Silence.Awareness.Existance program
BETH SOMETIMES
New Zealand
misssometimes@gmail.com // www.honeymoongap.com
Beth’s creative responses to existence are forever appearing
in new mediums so she is usually approaching things as a
beginner. Her ideas often reference or are triggered by the denser
psychological metaphor inherent in the familiar. She is committed
to developing work that is accessible to audiences from across
varied experiences of art and often works with people. Beth has
an ongoing relationship as an artist and creative producer with
Australian social change/arts company Big hART. This background
couches her personal arts practice within an expectation to grow
political awareness and influence actualisation. Her practice is also
informed by a lengthy relational engagement with Pitjantjatjara
communities and the socio-political circumstances of Central
Australia. Interests include vulnerability, privilege, core strength,
fear, depression, how we define ourselves, stay cool & make
waves in the context of consumer capitalism. Career highlights
include: writing a postcard a day for a year, sailing a boat through
a shopping mall blindfolded and carving a giant banana split out
of foam.

EMOTIONAL ROLLERCOASTERS WEB PRESENCE
The time at Arteles turned out to be about suspending disbelief in
the possibility of a nutso venture. I went on many a diversionary
cerebral adventure and luxuriated in a gentle physical routine and
inspirational company. Designing a theme park called Emotional
Rollercoasters proved to be a perfect framework to hang some really
fruitful reading, drawing, research, development and writing upon.
It felt like I went on a convoluted adventure to get to exactly where
I thought I was going. And I was still really surprised to get there.
Emotional Rollercoasters is a site of existential contemplation and
philosophical adventure with an aesthetic of mass appeal; a series
of interactive artworks that take the form of viscerally experienced,
conceptually realised rides. It will not be a didactic space of well-being
instruction but a realm of clues, language and visceral experiences
that seek to speak to the experience of being alive and navigation
of the emotional realm in this present moment. We crave moments
of recognition – catalysing triggers to the truths of our being.
More about it at www.emotionalrollercoasters.org

IN THE RESIDENCY
January 2015 - Silence.Awareness.Existance program
“The self is only a threshold, a door,
a becoming between two multiplicities”
- Gilles Deleuze
JACOBO ALONSO
Mexico
mastacarra@gmail.com // www.jacoboalonso.com
Through my work I represent the body as the temporary state that
we are part of, driven by the personal process of self-observation.
I use my body as a tool to explore the uncovered territory designed
by my human form.
I search the limits as a body in its phenomenal way, trying to find
how I could be out of this form created by reason.

YO AUSENTE.
My work was directly influenced by the atmosphere that surrounded
me: I acted as a producing tool.
I wanted to keep my previous knowledge apart, to be open and aware
of both external and internal elements: silence, peace, immensity,
the wind, the snow and most importantly the absence of sunlight.
These were the main elements that triggered the learning and
production processes. The most important part was to be alert
and documented on how the body behaves when receiving this
new information, to be able to perform work according to external
stimuli.

IN THE RESIDENCY
January 2015 - Silence.Awareness.Existance program
“The infinity of thoughts and
all fragile space between.”
SSMIDD
Germany
info@gedankenschmied.net
// www.gedankenschmied.net
With no boundaries in concept, approaches and media SSMIDD’s
GEDANKENSCHMIED-PROJECT unfolds in different branches
such as for example works referring to RGB-color space (www.
rrrgggbbb.de), the quantum aesthetics of the matter of thoughts
(www.matthewclaire.de), the processed depths and surfaces of
urban spaces on planet earth (www.videosurface.net).
BIO: artnews.org/artist.php?i=8498
BIBILIO: gedankenschmied.net/html/bibliography.html
EXPO: gedankenschmied.net/html/expo.html
VIDEO: gedankenschmied.net/html/video1.html

THE ARTISTIC SCIENCE OF DISMANTLING REALITY // PHOTOGRAMMETRY AND OTHER
AUDIOVISUAL FRAGMENTS AT THE DOWNFALL OF THE OCCIDENT
After molecules have nowadays been split to atoms, protons,
quarks and even preons theoretically there wouldn’t be much left
to discover if one assumed that the physical world would be real.
Comparing to those pointlike entities at the fragile bottom of our
convictions the size of a single pixel on a liquid-crystal screen
seems as vast as a theme park assembled by monochrome football
fields. Still, this peculiar LCD-matter or any other similar visor
or pixel-beam serves as THE common playground for countless
contemporary artistic expressions today. Seen that way they are all
somehow coarse, rectangular expressions. Even if they had been
driven analog by derivation, they would end up being advertised and
spread throughout the world using the same matrix of similarities.
So then, where should we spot our artistic expressions today?
Where is the most obvious stage to mirror this all-pervading entity
that pursues our perceptions until the realm of dreams? In spite of
everything – this stage was not even what we were really looking
for. We wished it to be something much more profound, specific
and diversified. Something simple and quite general though not too
commonly underestimated or misunderstood. But for a moment it
felt like discovering an island that gave us a hand on the ostensibly
infinite path to artless authenticity.

IN THE RESIDENCY
January 2015 - Silence.Awareness.Existance program
“Turn it up a bit, I perceive something
mysterious.” -Pierre Henry
MICHAEL TERREN
Australia
michaelterren@gmail.com // www.michaelterren.wix.com/home
I’m a composer and sound artist working with digital sound
synthesis and field recordings in live performance and studio
works. My works tend toward an interrogation of mediality, mimesis
and the interface of electronic and bio/anthrophonic sound.
The relationship between sound media—and their constitutive
practices and cultures—is a source of great fascination for me.
One of the ways I’ve been exploring this is by creating imaginary
yet plausible field recordings using synthetic sounds, landscape
morphologies situated between reality and non-reality. These
“recordings” reflect on my own ecological heritage, that of the
southwest Australian biodiversity hotspot, as well as the practices
associated with field recording, sound transduction, and listening.

DISQUIET (STEREO PA PERFORMANCE, 23 MINUTES)
Disquiet explores silence as a relational, cultural and deeply
subjective status, engaging with our contemporary experience of
sound and listening in profoundly complex ways that cannot be
simply defined as an empirical absence of sound. Silence rendered
as speechlessness, empathy, suppression, anticipation; silence in
reverence and remembrance, as an element of play or disturbing
voyeurism; silence as the delimiter between musical time and
normal time; the silence beyond our auditory perception or beyond
what loudspeakers are capable of reproducing. Sound becomes
a frame through which silence operates at a metaphysical level,
and the act of listening effectively becomes an inward, almost
meditational listening-to-your-listening.

ARTELES
Hahmajärventie 26
38490 Haukijärvi
Finland
+358 50 300 6304
info@arteles.org
www.arteles.org