January 12– February 18, 2018
Katie Kehoe: Provisions for Buoyancy, Kaplan Gallery
Krista Caballero (in collaboration with Frank Ekeberg): Birding the Future, Kaplan Gallery
Maria-Theresa Fernandes: The Fabric of Place, Common Ground Gallery
Opening Reception and Artist Talk: Friday, January 19, 7 – 9 PM
The 2017 Bresler Resident artists, Maria-Theresa Fernandes, Katie Kehoe, and Krista Caballero, present new work created during their residencies at VisArts. All three artists were selected by a review panel and received a free studio space for four months to develop project proposals that focused on social practice, community art, and/or performance. The nature of their projects required a dynamic mix of research, collaboration, physical construction, and public interaction.
While in Residence: Katie Kehoe created Provisions for Buoyancy which involved working with refuse materials salvaged locally to make a series of flotation devices that will be used as props and catalysts for interacting with the public. In her performance action, “Provisions in Washington, D.C.” Kehoe led a group of participants who dressed in life jackets and carried “provisions for buoyancy” through parts of Washington, D.C. that would be flooded if the sea level were to rise by 5 feet.
Kehoe also produced a series of drawings that reflect the idea of expanded waterways. “I envision these to be drawn in a visual language inspired by topographical maps and composed of multiple repetitions of the word AND,” Kehoe says.
Her installation includes a life ring, boogie boards, and a paddle board that serve as conversation starters and documentary photographs of her performances in Washington, D. C. Her process is documented through a blog entitled Provisions for Buoyancy.
About the Artist: Katie Kehoe (Born in Canada 1979) predominantly works in performance, installation, and drawing, and often incorporates duration, site-specificity, photography and video as defining artistic elements. She completed her M.F.A. at the Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, Maryland (2011); and formerly completed the Canadian Film Center Media Lab’s Interactive Art and Entertainment Program, Toronto, Canada (2007); and earned a B.A. Honors from Saint Mary’s University, Halifax, Canada (2002). Kehoe’s work has been presented across Canada and the U.S. and been reviewed by critics such as Gary Michael Dault (Canada’s leading art critic), Becky Hunter in Art Papers Magazine and Eames Armstrong in Performa Magazine.
Kehoe spent more than a year carrying a fishing rod and wearing rubber boots in Baltimore, MD, in One Year and Twenty-Four Days of Fishing (2010-11). A recognizable figure around the city, Kehoe uses ‘absurd objects’ as catalysts for interacting with the public. “A lot of people just want to be heard,” Kehoe said of the experience, “The fishing rod was an incredible device for engaging people.”
While in Residence: Krista Caballero created a large-scale Kaiserpanorama for the next phase of Birding the Future, an interdisciplinary project that explores current extinction rates by specifically focusing on the warning abilities of birds. Research indicates we are living through the “Sixth Extinction” where loss of species and biodiversity is occurring at an alarming rate. Across culture and continent, birds are seen as “message bearers” able to communicate the future, announce changes in weather and warn of coming disaster. Seen by many to be barometers of environmental health, it has been estimated that almost a third of all bird species will have disappeared by the end of this century.
This interactive installation includes viewing stations where people can look through a pair of lenses showing stereoscopic (3D) video. This new iteration of the project introduces 3D video modeling alongside footage shot on location as well as archival imagery to create a dynamic intermedia installation. Focus is on endangered and extinct bird species with emphasis placed on using sustainable building materials throughout the process.
This project is in collaboration with Norwegian sound artist, Frank Ekeberg who worked remotely on sound components that are integrated into the installation.
Birding the Future is supported in part by funding from the Montgomery County government and the Arts and Humanities Council of Montgomery County.
About the Artist: Krista Caballero is an interdisciplinary artist exploring issues of agency, survival, and environmental change in a more-than-human world. Moving freely between traditional and emerging media, her work creates situations for encountering alternative systems of knowing and perceiving.
In 2010 she created Mapping Meaning, an ongoing project that brings together artists, scientists and scholars to explore issues of ecological complexity and long-term sustainability through experimental workshops, exhibitions, and transdisciplinary research. www.mappingmeaning.org.
She received her M.F.A. from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts/Tufts University and in 2009 attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Her work has been presented across the United States as well as internationally in exhibitions and festivals such as the International Symposium on Electronic Art in Dubai, “Paradoxes in Video” at Mohsen Gallery in Tehran, Balance-Unbalance International Festival in Australia, and the Futurescapes Symposium in Norway. In 2017 Caballero and Frank Ekeberg were awarded Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowships for their collaborative project, Birding the Future. www.birdingthefuture.net
Caballero is currently the Director of the Design Cultures & Creativity program at the University of Maryland in College Park. This honors program brings together students from all majors to explore emerging technologies and their impact upon the world. www.dcc.umd.edu. www.kristacaballero.com www.mappingmeaning.com
Krista Caballero’s collaborator on Birding the Future is Frank Ekeberg (Norway) a transdisciplinary artist, music composer and researcher working in the intersection of art, science and technology. His work explores issues of ecology, time, space and change, with a particular focus on biodiversity and species extinction. His research-based approach often involves collaborations within as well as beyond the art field. Ekeberg has composed and designed sound for concert performance, dance, film, theater, radio plays and intermedia installations, and his work is widely presented in festivals, exhibitions, concerts and conferences around the world.
Frank Ekeberg received an undergraduate degree in music from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) before he went on to pursue a master’s degree in electronic music at Mills College in Oakland, California, where he studied composition with Pauline Oliveros and Alvin Curran, and a PhD in electroacoustic music composition at City University London, United Kingdom, with Denis Smalley and Simon Emmerson.
Place, travel and environment play an important part in fiber artist Maria-Theresa Fernandes’s internationally acclaimed work. Throughout her career, travel has given her the opportunity to reflect and create works relating to the surroundings of the countries she experienced. History and poetry are brilliantly woven into the fabric of Fernandes’s works, which translate her physical and emotional attachment to the lands she visited. Born in Kenya, Fernandes studied in London and Manchester, England. She received her B.A. (Hons) degree in Textiles with a specialty in Embroidery. The United Kingdom is the only country to confer this degree. A graduate from Cranbrook Academy of Art in Detroit with a M.F.A. in Fiber Art, Maria-Theresa Fernandes has participated in over 25 solo exhibitions and several international exhibitions. This global artist is the recipient of prestigious international grants and awards and such as the Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant, the Ruth Cheven Foundation award, and the UNESCO –Arts International award.
While in Residence: Maria-Theresa Fernandes delved into the history of Rockville during her four month Bresler Residency. She found inspiration in textiles and newspaper archives from the Beall Dawson House collection, as well as the Confederate soldier statue currently boxed in plywood while it waits to be moved from the grounds of the old Rockville courthouse. Fernandes brilliantly embodies historic facts and narratives in her new body of textile and stitched works.
About the Artist: Place, travel and environment play an important part in fiber artist Maria-Theresa Fernandes’s internationally acclaimed work. Throughout her career, travel has given her the opportunity to reflect and create works relating to the surroundings of the countries she experienced. History and poetry are brilliantly woven into the fabric of Fernandes’s works, which translate her physical and emotional attachment to the lands she visited. Born in Kenya, Fernandes studied in London and Manchester, England. She received her B.A. (Hons) degree in Textiles with a specialty in Embroidery. The United Kingdom is the only country to confer this degree. A graduate from Cranbrook Academy of Art in Detroit with a M.F.A. in Fiber Art, Maria-Theresa Fernandes has participated in over 25 solo exhibitions and several international exhibitions. This global artist is the recipient of prestigious international grants and awards and such as the Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant, the Ruth Cheven Foundation award, and the UNESCO –Arts International award.
