You Cannot Control What is Wild - Solo Exhibition at Taft Gardens by Natasha Wheat

You Cannot Control

What

is Wild

On View at Taft Gardens until June 28th

by Natasha Wheat

2022/23 Taft Residency Artist

Photo by Marc Alt

This exhibition is a flower shop

This exhibition is a bedtime story, 

        the protagonist is a heroic plant

This exhibition is a warning sign

Heterotopias are what Michél Foucault describes as spaces that exist so that we can maintain our perceived Utopias. Examples are schools; bathrooms; mental institutions; nursing homes; and here, the burn piles of plants that have been gardened off the stage. Backstages are exciting places, messy spaces, chaotic, exclusive spaces for those already excluded. 

The burn pile is an ashtray where 

 our wildest dreams, 

   and deepest fears go 

           to become nothing, 

                  or nothing of themselves

Over eight months, the artist gathers outcasts and documents them before they are burned, and then responds, again and again, forming compositions, often on paper.

In this work, 

    sometimes we see reflections, 

                and sometimes we do not

Some of this work may biodegrade, some of this work is burned, some of this work is made from floodwater and pigment.

Belief systems are what stand between our hero and her victory. 

Boliviana Negra is Coca variety that grows in the jungles of South America; the daughter of the plants that would not die. Millions of gallons of glyphosate were dropped from above, and the resistors came together to birth her. She replaces an Ecuadorian rose in our flower shop neon sign, because she is not compliant. 

Sacred plants become enemy plants in shifting contexts 

The river rose, and then she fell, leaving marks that would be erased by time. Fire roads were built back over her, and she settled within confinement. 

Perhaps 

she believed she was happy, 

or perhaps 

love and safety 

are stories that we tell ourselves, 

                     while driving on asphalt, 

                                        powered by gas

Exhibition Text by Natasha Wheat

"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. 

April 2023 Rotational Artist - Richard Amend

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

January 2023 Invitational Artist - Shana Moulton

Over the last month, while Taft Gardens was closed to the public, we hosted our Invitational Artist-in-Residence, Shana Moulton.

A UCSB professor and media artist, Moulton examines bodily and spiritual anxieties in live performances, single-channel videos, and multi-channel video installations. These moving-image-works feature her alter-ego, Cynthia, searching for purpose and fulfillment through home decor, cosmetic rituals, and communing with nature. Tortured by her social isolation and personal idiosyncrasies, she finds temporary release in a parallel universe of companionship inhabited by animated objects, self-help paraphernalia, and pop-cultural gurus.

However vibrant and whimsical the collision of spirituality, pop culture, and consumerism are, darker themes of escapism, uncertainty, and isolation pervade each video and performance. Journeys into Cynthia’s subconscious often yield only more personal crisis, channeling the neuroses and disembodiment of the technology-enhanced, post-spiritual world.

While at Taft, Moulton shot video in the gardens that will be featured in upcoming exhibitions in New York and Europe, as well as a new video-performance piece that she will debut at Taft’s Art in Nature fundraiser on May 6th, 2023.

Portrait: Marc Alt @marcaltphoto

Graphics: Louise Sandhaus @lulusandhaus

November 2022 Rotational Artist - Christopher Ulivo

Christopher Ulivo, a painter from Ventura, is the Taft Gardens 4-week Rotational Artist in Residence for November. During his residency, Chris is seizing the opportunity to further develop an idea he originally had some years ago – one where he will create a narrative story told from the viewpoint of the the gardens plants. 

“Most people (during residencies) do something super positive and beautiful about nature. But what if there’s a little more sinister intent or all the other kinds of fallacies and foibles? We assume it’s great, but they’re fighting with each other too, sending chemicals to ward off animals and get rid of pests and stuff,” he jokes.

Chris, who is known for his surreal and fantasy-infused paintings, is using this residency to do something different from what he typically does at his art studio. He is creating handmade and hand-drawn pages and will handwrite the story on the pages he created. He intends to print and publish a small edition of the book in 2023. 

Like his artist-in-residence colleague, Natasha Wheat, Chris was also deeply inspired by the burn piles. 

“Seeing that kind of rot and decomposition was moving to me. Part of the narrative is that the plants will be vindictive and fed up … the plants are writing a memoir,” he said, noting that the visit to the burn pile gave him a clearer vision of the direction to take the narrative in. “I think the narrator will be moss. It’s very intelligent and wise; it can’t draw, so it needs someone to be like its press agent. I’m the toady for some super wise old plant.”

Giving flesh to fantasy is what drives his creative process. Chris sees himself as an advocate for the possibility of complex visual narratives in contemporary art. 

“Imagination is a really powerful engine, but you have to work on it,” he said. “I’ve spent most of my days working on my imagination – I don’t work from any references ever. It’s really about honing a sense of curiosity and mind. I have an ability to imagine and recollect things, then create things just from my sense of imagination. They’re always wrong, but they’re hopefully consistently sincere.”

Chris received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Tyler School of Art, Temple University, and his Master of Fine Arts from Rhode Island School of Design. He has exhibited and organized shows across the United States and Europe including: Half Gallery, Los Angeles; Susan Inglett Gallery, New York; Axel Obiger, Berlin; Museum of Contemporary Art, Santa Barbara; The Felix Art Fair, Los Angeles; The Armory Show, New York; and The Benkai Museum, Athens.

Chris is grateful to have a new space to imagine in and loves that of the residencies he has done, his residency at Taft Gardens is “idiosyncratic.”

“I love botanical gardens because I kind of like that it controls nature in a way. A lot of times, botanical gardens are like a museum – and I appreciate that – and they want to have a catalogue of species. Here, it feels like people are responding to the space,” he said. “They’re really creative about how they use this space. It feels like there’s a lot of intersection of their aesthetics with the landscape.”

Copywriting: DeAnna Carpenter @shewhobuilds

Photos: Marc Alt @marcaltphoto

Graphics: Louise Sandhaus @lulusandhaus

October 2022 Rotational Artist - P. Lyn Middleton

Taft Gardens kicks off our 2022/23 Taft Art in Nature Residency Rotational Program with clay artist P. Lyn Middleton residing in our newly remodeled Protea Studio for a 4-week residency during the month of October. P. Lyn will develop a series entitled "Faux Thoreau makes Faux Rocks: 5 Daily Meditations at a Garden called Taft."

Before leaving her 27-year career in graphic design education, P.Lyn took up clay and hasn't stopped since. Her storefront P S P A C E (open from 2013-2017), a gallery on the east end of Ojai, became a stage to exhibit plates, bowls, drinking vessels, and tiny plates. A few pieces were recently on exhibition at the Carolyn Glasoe Bailey Foundation group show, and you can explore her works at @pspaceplyn.

On one of her visits to Taft Gardens, she received the idea to make rocks. And since she already works with clay and has a love for rocks, the idea was a natural pairing. Both clay and natural rock undergo similar processes that involve the elements of earth, wind, and fire, as well as pressure. Through her residency, P.Lyn will explore rocks as an ancient manifestation of the planet and vessels as one of the first artifacts of human beings.

“The five daily meditations was my outline of how I would sculpt my time in the Taft environment,” P.Lyn said. “Making, meditating, walking, breathing, and visually documenting. The making of the rocks is meditative in itself — a simple work of basically joining two pinch pots. I have added sound to my faux rocks by making them hollow and added clay beads so that they rattle.”

P.Lyn hopes that visitors will see the connection and the irony in taking a rock outside of its usual context and placing it in an environment where it typically isn’t found, such as on a wall. She also hopes visitors will explore and imagine the myriad possibilities that can be created with faux rocks and their arrangement.

Copywriting: DeAnna Carpenter @shewhobuilds

Portrait: Marc Alt @marcaltphoto

Graphics: Louise Sandhaus @lulusandhaus

2022/23 Artist-in-Residence - Natasha Wheat

The beauty in the ‘backstage’

“Everything I have learned has been through art, but not really about art, about everything else.”
~Natasha Wheat

Natasha Wheat is an interdisciplinary artist from Ojai who works through various mediums of art to challenge structures and hierarchies, drawing the viewer’s attention to underlying social issues and the collapse of human belief systems. In her nine-month residency, Natasha is interested in exploring and drawing attention to the ‘backstage’ – the part of the Garden that isn’t easily visible to visitors. 

“When I saw the botanical garden for the first time, it’s very much a utopia. It’s a curated, beautiful space that tells a specific narrative about other parts of the planet, about different places,” she said. “I wanted to see everything that gets pulled out when the gardeners are here. Where is everything that wasn’t pretty enough or was the wrong kind of plant? I wanted to see all of that and that’s what I’m working on in the studio space.”

This theme of the backstage, or heterotopia, is the thread that runs through Natasha’s work. The heterotopia, as Natasha describes it, is “the place where we store undesirable bodies so that our utopia can exist.” The heterotopias that Natasha is exploring at Taft are the burn piles. She is documenting the plants from the burn pile by tracing them to create a composition. From there, she will return them to the pile. She shared that some writing will be a part of this exhibition. 

Natasha is also weaving a larger social conversation into her residency and signs of it (pun intended) can be seen when visiting her at the Historic Art Studio. She has on display, a neon of a hand holding coca leaves – an indigenous plant native to South America.

“I’m taking the burn pile outside of the context of just Taft, and thinking about enemy or illegal plants, and people being criminalized and spending time in jail because they grew or engaged with a certain plant” she said, referring to coca – an indigenous plant that is used in many sacred ceremonies and is a key ingredient in cocaine production. “There is a strain of coca that has come from the jungle called Boliviana negra They think it’s from farmers crossbreeding the coca that wouldn’t die from the roundup herbicide, being sprayed from above. But it’s like the hero of my story and is a really intriguing idea of the resistance fighter being a plant.” 

Natasha has exhibited nationally and internationally at venues that include The Detroit Art Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, The Museum of Folk and Craft Art San Francisco, and the Berkeley Art Museum. In addition to her studio practice, she is an art educator and founder of Project Grow, an art studio and urban farming program based in Portland, Oregon, that employed developmentally disabled adults and investigated the intersection of food, value systems, society, and physical contact with the earth as a form of de-institutionalization. 

When asked what she is looking forward to during her nine-month residency at the Gardens, she replied, “The wild space, the undeveloped space … and getting to know the 200-acre wildlife corridor.”

An exhibition of works developed during Natasha’s residency will open at the annual Art in Nature Fundraiser on May 6th and remain on display through June 2023.

Copywriting: DeAnna Carpenter @shewhobuilds

Photos: Marc Alt @marcaltphoto

Graphics: Louise Sandhaus @lulusandhaus

2021/2022 Artists-in-Residence

Stephanie Washburn & Jane Mulfinger

The Taft Gardens 2021/2022 Art in Nature Residency artists are Stephanie Washburn & Jane Mulfinger. Their Exhibition, displaying the culmination of 7 months working at Taft Gardens during their shared residency.

Shared Studio, Shared Objective

Read about the 21/2022 Taft Artists-in-Residence in The Ojai Vortex

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STEPHANIE WASHBURN

For her residency at Taft, Washburn explores a series of sky drawings and a related video-project. Washburn creates the atmospheric imagery through layers of additive and subtractive work in ground graphite. She then slices the drawings in various configurations that leave the paper's structural integrity barely intact. The video focuses on the effect of the wind, breath, and voice blowing through cut strips of drawing. The work activates a material awareness, an uneasy sense of both delicacy and physical violence, in relationship to the Romantic skyscape imagery.

Washburn is an artist and teacher living in Ojai, CA. She works in a range of media and explores our relationship to the physical world and the concept of nature. Her work has been included in recent exhibitions at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Claremont University, Fellows of Contemporary Art and Acme Gallery. It is in the public collections of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego and the Agnes Gund Foundation.

Jane Mulfinger

In her series entitled, They Became Evanescent, Mulfinger painted images inspired by the Taft Gardens and surrounding landscape, seascape, and geology that have words tucked into them. She chose each phrase from a collection of texts that she extracted from literature and daily weather reports over time. Expressions that are ostensibly about fleeting climate conditions reflect much more about human perception than the words and phrases matter-of-factly state. She reveals temporal preoccupations - and awe - over a realm we cannot grasp in our attempts to describe something much larger than us.

Jane has received grants and awards from Microsoft Research, the University of California, the British Council, and Unilever, was a resident artist at the American Academy of Rome, and was commissioned for site-specific works in twelve countries. As a conceptual artist and UCSB educator, imbuing others with creative agency has become a part of her work while continuing her sensorial practice.

2020/21 Artist-in-Residence - Cassandra C. Jones

Cassandra C. Jones is a remix-artist and storyteller living and working in Ojai, CA. She received her MFA from Carnegie Mellon University, and her work has shown in galleries and museums throughout the US and Europe. Jones uses digital photography to create collage, installation, and video works that spin narratives and present a prismatic reflection of our self-involved, technology-based, snap-happy contemporary lifestyles. She does this to offer a space of possibility, growth, and discovery. And within that space, aims to create experiences that are magical and transformative.

While in residence for the first Taft Art Residency, Jones developed, Woah and Wonder, a botanical series based on the flora of Taft Gardens. Using digital photo-collage, she has reimagined various plant specimens in the style that she is known for and has been working with since 2004. As a long term resident of Ojai, her work also reflects the history and contemporary times of the area and how technology, the rapidly changing environment, and the pandemic have played a role in our perception, interaction, and preservation of nature. 

Jones currently serves as that Taft Art Chair and facilitates the Art in Nature Programming.

805 Living Cover Story: Art in Nature Residency

May 2021 Issue of 805Living Magazine - Page 62

read the article

Ojai Quarterly Magazine

The Ojai Quarterly Summer Issue covers the Art in Nature Residency highlighting Cassandra’s work along with Jaide Whitman, President of the Board and John Taft, founder and Taft Gardens Visionary. Read the Story on Page 60.

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Cassandra C. Jones in the Ojai Vortex

The Online Magazine The Ojai Vortex, introduces Cassandra C. Jones and the launch of the Art in Nature Residency at Taft.

read the article