"Beauty in the Burn Pile" - VORTEX Spring 2023

Written by Andra Belknap | Photography by Marc Alt

“There’s some really great rotting stuff up here.”

It’s a sunny afternoon at the Taft Gardens after a fresh rain, and artist-in-residence Natasha Wheat is leading me to the burn pile. Wheat is close to the end of her nine-month artist’s residency at the gardens — part of Taft’s Art in Nature Program. She’ll exhibit her work, alongside live performances from fellow artists in residence, on May 6. 

Richard Amend: 1-Month, April 2023

During his month-long residency, Richard Amend is focusing on Observational Sharpie drawings quickly executed in a Moleskin sketchbook no bigger than an envelope your bills come in, and then large-scale black pastel drawings, completed enough to finish later in the studio. Although abstraction is the main ingredient in my painting practice regarding systems and color, drawing remains the core of my foundation.

From the 2004 Carnegie Museum (Oxnard) exhibition “Between Abstraction & Revelation,” Jo Lauria writes in the catalog essay “Under a Liquid Sky,” Richard Amend is a painter who has a clear vision of beauty and a great feel for decorative design. Despite the prevailing arguments against the representation of beauty in late 20th century art discourse, Amend has chosen to produce paintings and drawings that reach for the sublime: they are quiet, graceful works full of lyricism and luminosity, deepened in sensation by an insightful application of design and pattern. Amend uses the format of landscape as a point of departure to render mysteriously radiant abstractions of nature, especially lush canopies of trees, foliage, illumined against the shimmering sky and nightscapes resplendent with ethereal light. The artist skillfully blends unabashed romantic realism with design devices to create a highly saturated, stylized approach to the plein air tradition. His concerns are to clarify nature through abstraction, by controlling the relationships of space, scale, detail, color and illusion.”

March 2023 Rotational Artist - Shelley Burgon

Harpist, composer and sound installation artist, Shelley Burgon is residing at Taft for the Art in Nature Rotating Residency creating compositions and sound installations using the harp as the primary sound source which is then embellished and processed with electronics. Shelley received her MFA in Electronic Music from Mills College and holds an BA in Jazz Studies. Her sound art focuses on handmade sound and light sculptures that combine scientific theories and mysticism to create ambient contemplative experiences. She will be exhibiting a sound and light installation in the Gardens on May 6th and will also perform a new harp composition inspired by the Gardens live at the Evening Fundraiser Event.

February 2023 Rotational Artist - Sally England

Meet Taft’s February Rotational Artist, Sally England, in-residence at the Protea Studio from February 3rd-February 25th. Through the use of ancient handwork techniques such as knotting, weaving, and twining, Sally England aims to bring the past into the future. Sally’s fiber-based forms are inspired by the human connection to nature, as well as geometry, architecture and symbology. Working primarily through muscle memory, Sally's work creates a sense of wonder, connection, and potential through all her work. Sally sees Taft as a magical Seussian garden, an inspiring land of discovery and wonder. Her curiosity lies in the question "What creatures lie within?" Sally earned a Bachelors in Communication Arts from Grand Valley State University and attended Pacific Northwest College of Art MFA in Applied Craft & Design. Pop your head into her studio during your next scheduled visit to Taft to see her works-in-progress until February 25th. 

2023 Research Residency Artist - Rosemary Holliday Hall

Introducing Taft's Artist Researcher in Residence Rosemary Holliday Hall, residing at Taft from February through April 2023. During this unique residency, Rosemary is using the land and its inhabitants as her studio and embarking on embodied explorations of the insects who live and migrate through Taft Gardens. Through different modes of research (field recording, movement, and sculpture) and special focus on Taft's newly planted Pollinator Garden, Rosemary will explore how culturally and ecologically humans relate to and are intertwined with insects and how through pollination and decomposition insects directly tie, transmit, and transform life and death processes. The pollinator garden presents an opportunity for cross-pollination of ideas and communication between insect, artist, gardener, visitor, scientist and plant. Rosemary Holliday received her BFA at the University of California, Davis in 2013 and her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2019. Her work has been shown in exhibitions in Chicago, Los Angeles, Saugatuck, Sacramento, and Washington DC.

Portrait @marcaltphoto
Graphics @lulusandhaus