Lesley MFA January 2022 residency
Art Talks speaker bios
Nicole
Cherubini
Nicole Cherubini is a mixed media ceramicist and sculptor. In a review in Art in America, her work was described as follows, ”the combination of glazed ceramics with the painted wood structures they are encased in or accompanied by creates a satisfying push-pull between flatness and depth, spontaneity and deliberation.” Her solo shows include those at the ICA in Philadelphia, Perez Art Museum in Miami, the Santa Monica Museum of Art in Los Angeles, and the Tang Teaching Museum in Saratoga, NY.
Gerald
Sheffield
Gerald Sheffield’s work reflects on the nuance of contemporary US history - representing the precarious state of national identity, freedom, and democracy through the shifting intentions of material artifacts. A graduate of SVA and Yale, Sheffield served in the United States Army for eight years as a Visual Communications and Military Intelligence Public Affairs specialist in Paraguay, Guatemala, Brazil, and Kuwait. His work has been shown at the New Museum in New York, BODEGA in Philadelphia, Zevitas/Marcus Los Angeles, and Xouthou Street in Athens, Greece.
Jordan
Weber
Jordan Weber is a sculptor who works in the cross-section of social justice and environmental racism based in Des Moines, Iowa. Last year the Walker Art Center commissioned Jordan to create a large land-based artwork in North Minneapolis. He is currently a Loeb Fellow at Harvard University.
Bree
Edwards
Bree Edwards is Director of the ArtLab at Harvard University, a new facility designed to support visiting artist residencies, art research, and production by Harvard students and faculty. She was previously Director of the Northeastern Center for the Arts in Boston, and Program Director of the Mitchell Center for the Arts at the University of Houston.
Tauba
Auerbach
Tauba Auerbach has described their work as an attempt to reveal “new spectral and dimensional richness…both within and beyond the limits of perception.” Engaging a variety of media, ranging from painting and photography to book design and musical performance, Auerbach explores the limits of our structures and systems of logic (linguistic, mathematical, spatial) and the points at which they break down and open up onto new visual and poetic possibilities. Solo exhibitions of their include those at the ICA London, MOCA Cleveland, Malmo Kunsthal, Standard (Oslo), and SFMoMA.
Jan 2022
Visiting Faculty:
Gerald Sheffield
Conversation between MFA faculty Alex Jackson and Gerald Sheffield, 2020
Jan 2022 residency thematic:
"Adjacency"
Considering how various cultural elements, materials,
and dimensions of our personal lives stand side by side.
The Auerglass is a two person pump organ created by Tauba Auerbach and Cameron Mesirow (aka Glasser).. The instrument cannot be played alone. Each player has a keyboard with alternating notes of a four octave scale. Each player must pump to supply the wind to the other player's notes.
Essay on Craft
by Ocean Vuong
Because the butterfly’s yellow wing
flickering in black mud
was a word
stranded by its language.
Because no one else
was coming — & I ran
out of reasons.
So I gathered fistfuls
of ash, dark as ink,
hammered them
into marrow, into
a skull thick
enough to keep
the gentle curse
of dreams. Yes, I aimed
for mercy —
but came only close
as building a cage
around the heart. Shutters
over the eyes. Yes,
I gave it hands
despite knowing
that to stretch that clay slab
into five blades of light,
I would go
too far. Because I, too,
needed a place
to hold me. So I dipped
my fingers back
into the fire, pried open
the lower face
until the wound widened
into a throat,
until every leaf shook silver
with that god
-awful scream
& I was done.
& it was human.
