Island Time: Galveston Artist Residency – The First Four Years

Island Time

Galveston Artist Residency The First Four Years

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(1) Bert Geary and Eric Schnell in the front courtyard of GAR. (2) Surfin’. (3) Indian Jewelry playing at the Grand Opening Party. (4) The back courtyard. (5) The back courtyard at sunset. (6) Eatsie Boys Food Truck in the front courtyard during a GAR opening. (7) The opening for the Residency Show Year 3. (8) Colin Hunt painting.

Cover image by Logan Beck, 2012. Courtesty of Galveston Artist Residency.

(9) The buffet from Feast/Dream. (10) Roasting marshmallows. (11) The entry glyph for The Fourth Pyramid

by Jesse Bransford. (12) New New Berlin by William Powhida and Jade Townsend. (13) A monarch caterpillar about to form a chrysalis in the back courtyard. (14) GARchangel Year 3. (15) The Ghost and The Darkness. (16) Installation view from Plant People.

GAR gallery. 2012. Photo by Logan Beck. Courtesy of Galveston Artist Residency.

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We wanted to make the residency sustainable for the long term, which is absurd, in a way considering how fragile Galveston really is. But that is the spirit of this project: to make the most beautiful thing that you can imagine, in the most unlikely place.

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Island Time

6 Plant People (installation photo at Galveston Artist Residency), 2014. Courtesy of Galveston Artist Residency.

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This exhibition has been made possible by the patrons, benefactors and donors to the Museum’s Friends of Steel Exhibitions: Director’s Circle Chinhui Juhn and Eddie Allen Fayez Sarofim Ms. Louisa Stude Sarofim Curator’s Circle Dillon Kyle Architecture, Inc. Mr. and Mrs. I. H. Kempner III Major Exhibition Circle A Fare Extraordinaire Bergner and Johnson Design Jereann Chaney Sara Paschall Dodd Marita and J.B. Fairbanks Greg Fourticq Barbara and Michael Gamson Brenda and William Goldberg Blakely and Trey Griggs George and Mary Josephine Hamman Foundation Leslie and Mark Hull Jackson and Company Louise D. Jamail Anne and David Kirkland KPMG, LLP Beverly and Howard Robinson Lauren Rottet Robin and Andrew Schirrmeister Yellow Cab Houston Mr. Wallace Wilson Michael Zilkha Perspectives Exhibition Circle Bright Star Productions Inc. Elizabeth Howard Crowell Dillon Kyle Architecture, Inc. Ruth Dreessen and Thomas Van Laan Leigh and Reggie Smith King & Spalding L.L.P. Susan Vaughan Foundation, Inc. The catalogue accompanying the exhibition is made possible by a grant from The Brown Foundation, Inc. Funding for the Museum’s operations through the Fund for the Future is made possible by generous grants from Chinhui Juhn and Eddie Allen, Jereann Chaney, Marita and J.B. Fairbanks, Jo and Jim Furr, Barbara and Michael Gamson, Brenda and

William Goldberg, Leticia Loya, Fayez Sarofim, Robin and Andrew Schirrmeister and David and Marion Young.

The Museum’s operations and programs are made possible through the generosity of the Museum’s trustees, patrons, members and donors. The Contemporary Arts Museum Houston receives partial operating support from The Brown Foundation, Inc., Houston Endowment, the City of Houston through the Houston Museum District Association, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Texas Commission on the Arts, The Wortham Foundation, Inc. and artMRKT Productions.

Island Time

Photography All works courtesy the artists Installation Photography Gary Zvonkovic Images on pp. 2–3, 10–11, 22–23, 48–49, 62–63, 66–67 Eric Schnell, Sallie Barbee Cover image Logan Beck ISBN: 1-933619-57-0 © 2015 Contemporary Arts Museum Houston Contemporary Arts Museum Houston 5216 Montrose Boulevard Houston, Texas 77006 T 713 284 8250 F 713 284 8275 CAMH.org

CAMH also thanks its artist benefactors for their support including Michael Bise, Bruce High Quality Foundation, Julia Dault, Keltie Ferris, Mark Flood, Barnaby Furnas, Theaster Gates, Jeffrey Gibson, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Jim Hodges, Joan Jonas, Jennie C. Jones, Maya Lin, Julian Lorber, Robert Mangold, Melissa Miller, Marilyn Minter, Angel Otero, McKay Otto, Enoc Perez, Rob Pruitt, Matthew Ritchie, Dario Robleto, Ed Ruscha, Cindy Sherman, Shinique Smith, John Sparagana, Al Souza, James Surls, Sam TaylorJohnson, William Wegman, and Brenna Youngblood.

Official Airline of the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston Editor Rose D’Amora Design Amanda Thomas Typeface Travaille, designed by David Amrock Printing Page, International, Houston, Texas

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Galveston Artist Residency The First Four Years

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(17) The back courtyard during construction. (18) The gallery during construction. (19) The Ghost. (20) The UNmusic concert with Da Camera of Houston’s Young Artists. (21) Jade Townsend shooting paintballs during New New Berlin and the N(ev)ADA Art Fair. (22) The Darkness. (23) Magic Spell photo. (24) Installation view from Plant People.

(25) Joe Joe Orangias’ rock for the Pink Dolphin monument. (26) From the opening for The Fourth Pyramid by Jesse Bransford. (27) Cilantro going crazy in the back courtyard. (28) Wearing Josh Bernstein’s bird costume during the opening for the Residency Show Year 2. (29) Deinstallation of Jonah Groeneboer’s The Dislocated Center of the Material World. (30) Turkey Tail Fungus. (31) Grace Ndiritu at the opening for the Residency Show Year 4. (32) Magic Spell photo.

Fast-forward several years and I assume my current position in Texas, directing the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston and learn that the studio I visited and much of its contents were blown away in Hurricane Ike. That devastating storm was still a very recent painful memory for the entire region when I arrived. Schnell decided to use the tragedy to start a new phase of his life and founded the Galveston Artist Residency.

From the moment I attended their opening night festivities, and got to see the marvelous building that

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Bill Arning Director of Contemporary Arts Museum Houston

Island Time: Galveston Artist Residency: The First Four Years

I have known Eric Schnell since we were both in New York City many years ago. He has a true, pure spirit and is a visionary. My first involvement with Houston on a professional level was when I was invited by Terrie Sultan (the former Director of the Blaffer Art Gallery at the University of Houston) to curate their Houston area artists’ show in 2003. I can clearly remember my visit to Schnell’s studio in Galveston—at that time—the very word Galveston seeming oddly mythic to me from the many references to it in popular culture. Entering his lair I found it to be a strange and wild place. A fraternity was hosting a weekend-long event on the beach and at the time and the whole Seawall was a massive, boisterous loud party with scantily clad young people bopping on car hoods. Schnell’s studio was, by contrast, a quietly magical space where small, enchantingly poetic drawings rustled as components throughout large scaled, complex installations. I remember meeting the dog that had brought Eric to the Island in the first place. Eric’s visit to Galveston was prompted by a friend’s need for a dog sitter and I silently envied his time in this remote and very special place.

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Rob Whalley and Eric created for artists’ studios and gallery space, I have felt emotionally invested in the space. Seeing the marvelous band Indian Jewelry tear up their courtyard and noticing the way the artists comingled, I knew this was special. Some of my favorite art events ever have happened there. One such event was The New New Berlin, of which I was declared Mayor; the Pink Dolphin Monument dedication ceremony on East Beach, and watching the sun’s angle slowly change the mood of a lusciously minimal Jonah Goenboer work. But like many a Houstonian, Galveston is just far enough away—especially for a timid driver like me—that I have missed many exhibitions and performances I fully intended to see, such as Autumn Knight’s Ghost of Robert Rauschenberg performance and Bill Davenport’s Best of the Beach. So I asked GAR to give us a reprise for Houston audiences to both inspire more of us to get on the highway and see their projects, as well as filling in the gaps for those one-time events forever missed.

I salute Eric Schnell and Sallie Barbie for creating a space this magical, and I want to thank them for their efforts to share this with our audience. Looking forward to many more seasons on the beach.

Eric Schnell

Galveston Artist Residency’s primary purpose is to give artists a year to sink inward, focus on the studio, and do what they need in the hope that a break like this can fuel future work or help propel them toward an insight that could allow the work to grow in a way impossible without this gift of time. Galveston Artist Residency is an artist-run initiative located on a barrier island off the coast of Texas. I think that a large part of what makes us unique is our location. Galveston is a profoundly strange place.

Above and left Galveston Artist Residency studio. 2012. Photos by Logan Beck. Courtesy of Galveston Artist Residency.

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Island Time: Galveston Artist Residency: The First Four Years

Director of Galveston Artist Residency

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When you hear the word Galveston you expect what follows will break your heart. That’s just the way it is; it has been that way for as long as people have been recording its history.. This will most likely continue into the future, as seawater rising and global warming are sure to make barrier islands increasingly hard to sustain as livable options. The clock is ticking and it has no mercy. But why should we be afraid of being constantly reminded of our tenuous hold on things? There is something wrong with you if you can’t love Galveston. There is something wrong with you if you don’t hate it at the same time. It is the perfect American city.

There is something about the raw, vulnerable fragility of the place that gets under your skin. The people who live here are exceptionally shifty, sad, resilient, and capable of a great stubborn courage. The light of the place is intense, bleaching everything to the color of bone.

As you pass over the bridge from the mainland, you feel uplifted to finally enter something different from Houston’s seemingly endless suburbs. Time does seem to slow down and this seems wrong. Shouldn’t living in a place that is always about to be destroyed make time speed up? Every storm season becoming a lifetime.

But no, the accelerated temporality seems to work in reverse; time starts to crawl.

I would argue that this combination of increased temporal awareness and the magnification of the problems we all must face makes Galveston the perfect environment for artists to live and work. Especially when you factor in how quiet it is here. While you can’t hide from the American condition, it is also hard to hide from yourself here. There is very little to do, at least in terms of the multitude of distractions artists would face in the big city. You end up having to turn inward whether you want to or not.

It is likely that GAR would have happened even if Hurricane Ike had not hit Galveston, but the storm may have strengthened our resolve to see the project through to completion. The biologist Bert Geary and I

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Island Time: Galveston Artist Residency: The First Four Years

Galveston is no resort—there is no escape from real world problems; in fact, there is a compression of problems into a small space. Like Pandora’s “pithos” of human sins waiting to be released into the world, surrounded by oil refineries and chemical plants, stuck with a Level 5 biohazard lab that contains all of the nastiest viruses and creepy crawlies on the planet, cruise ships anchored in the channel spilling out tourists, oil spilling from leaking freighters in the bay, pleasure piers and rainforest cafes, cocaine bundles washing up on the beach with dolphin stickers on them signifying property of the Gulf cartel, extreme poverty in close proximity to weekend-only beach houses. Somehow all of these horrors are kept in balance by the sad, quiet beauty of the place, a ghostly redemptive memory clinging tightly, never totally erased by anything nature or man throws at the island.

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had always wanted to collaborate on a project and the idea of making a place where creativity was encouraged for its own sake—where the beautiful was reason enough—seemed to help both of us heal somewhat from our Ike-broken hearts. We wanted to make GAR sustainable for the long term, which is absurd, in a way considering how fragile Galveston really is. But that is the spirit of this project: to make the most beautiful thing that you can imagine, in the most unlikely place.

Bert’s assistance and hard work setting up the foundation that GAR relies on for much of its financial support simply can’t be overstated. This was very important for us, as Galveston is not a wealthy city and we did not want to be dependent on the same revenue sources that the existing nonprofits relied on; we wanted to find another path, so that GAR would be a gift, not a burden. The architect Rob Whalley devoted much energy to this project and spent a lot of time here, lending his thoughtful touch and molding the identity of the physical spaces. Sallie Barbee, our first and only employee, has been a trusted ally and friend. You need people like this because starting something from scratch is harder than most people think. Joe Havel always knew what to say in the early days when the unavoidable moments of frustration or discouragement would start to seem overwhelming. And of course GAR would be unimaginable without the artists who came here and threw themselves into this complicated small city.

Galveston is great for self-reflection and I think this is an important part of the GAR experience. You end up spending a lot of time staring at the water and the billowy, dramatic clouds. This relative quiet was what hooked me; in 2002 I came to take care of a friend’s dog and have not been able to leave. I’ve tried, with no real luck. The proximity of the beach is nice, you can get

around on a bicycle, you can watch as the layers of sad history peel themselves away in front of you, and you never run out of paper-thin layers of weird, subtle shit.

I am grateful to have been able to be a part of this project from the beginning. I am grateful for the artists who threw themselves into this place, being affected by its sad history but also mindful of the images they have left behind. There was Autumn Knight’s epic performance Wall—the most visually striking performance art piece I have ever seen—in which she collaborated with local Galveston women who were not actors or artists. The same year, Joe Joe Orangias was able to build the historic Pink Dolphin Monument, a permanent sculpture dedicated to sexual minorities.Fig. 3 I often think of the first artist we brought in, Colin Hunt.Fig. 4 GAR was still being built and the studios were not even close to being finished, but he and his wife Heather found in Galveston a place that mirrored in many ways their own heartbreak as they felt the pain of the still-recent loss of their daughter Willa. The city offered them a place that understood great loss and the fact that for the living we must keep going and rebuilding, as best we can.

There is no place to hide on a sandbar. If you spend a year here, everything in you will rise to the surface, the good, the bad, and the yet-to-be-named. Galveston can be hard. The extremity of living in a place that is hyperaware of its own destruction trickles into everything.

Locals like to say it will make you or break you. A barrier island is a shield that the storms break upon.

Fig. 2

I think the idea of GAR is that it should be a fun project and based in affection; after all, close friends started it.

We want the programming of the space to be intuitive and heartfelt. We buffer the gift of time with exhibitions in the gallery and music events and community projects. This project has been a great deal of fun and I think that the gallery programs have reflected that, from Mapping Galveston, Best of the BeachFig. 1, The Fourth PyramidFig. 2 (where Jesse Bransford helped us cast a spell on the entire island), and Powhida and Townsend’s The New New Berlin to The Ghost of Robert Rauschenberg, a theatrical collaboration with Da Camera of Houston and Autumn Knight. There is a serious side to this project; it involves taking risks and trying to lead with the heart, which can be harder than it should be in an art world that leans towards the cynical and snarky.

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Island Time: Galveston Artist Residency: The First Four Years

Fig. 1

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I feel that the need for artist residency programs like GAR will continue to grow. It is not so easy making courageous or innovative art these days. The art market seem to offer little real help to all but that one-­ina-million artist who wins the fame lottery. Artists have to work second jobs to survive and the “cushy” ones, like tenure-track teaching gigs, are disappearing. The need to support creativity for its own sake has never been higher. If we as a species are to have any hope at

all of surviving long into the future, it will most likely be because we find new ways of being: new ways of perceiving and shaping our surroundings and consciousness. It is most likely to be the artists and the poets who will first glimpse these new paths.

The project is still in its early days and we are constantly learning as we go, but we are committed to this sandbar city and to watching island time unfold. Galveston can be terribly beautiful in unexpected ways, and we plan on staying the course, watching the island dissolve into sad, rapturous time.

Eric Schnell, Galveston, Texas July, 2015

2—— For those interested in seawater rising, I recommend NOAA scientist Kristopher Benson’s 2014 paper “Implications of Gulf Coast Dynamics for Coastline Building Strategies.” See galvestonhistory.org.

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Island Time: Galveston Artist Residency: The First Four Years

1—— See Cabeza de Vaca’s Adventures in the Unknown Interior of America.

This excellent early travelogue (written in 1592) names Galveston “The Island of Doom” and was first brought to my attention by Josh Bernstein, who has built an entire body of work around it.

21 AR backyard patio. 2012. Photo by Logan Beck. Courtesy of G Galveston Artist Residency.

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(33) Seedlings (a.k.a Plant Babies). (34) Baby dill plants. (35) Shitake mushrooms. (36) The GAR basketball net made by Maria Molteni. (37) Autumn Knight playing “The Ghost” for The Ghost of Robert Rauschenberg. (38) From the opening of New New Berlin by Jade Townsend and William Powhida. (39) Burying Adam Putnam’s Obelisk for the Plant People exhibition. (40) Sarah Rothenberg from Da Camera playing a concert in the GAR Gallery.

(41) GAR during the Biker Rally. (42) The Wild Moccasins playing at the Residency Show Year 4 opening party.

(43) Pillowcase posters for Feast/Dream in collaboration with Kelly Sears. (44) Autumn Knight as “The Ghost” from The Ghost of Robert Rauschenberg. (45) Abijan Johnson and Brandon Bell performing The Ghost of Robert Rauschenberg. (46) Magic Spell photo. (47) Flying a Fighter Kite during our Kite building workshops.

(48) Eric Schnell manning the grill during the opening of New New Berlin.

Artists

Nick Barbee

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Josh Bernstein

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Jesse Bransford

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Bill Davenport

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Jonah Groeneboer

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Eric Heist

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John Hodany

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Colin Hunt

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Alexandra Irvine

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Autumn Knight

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Nsenga Knight

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Grace Ndiritu

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Joe Joe Orangias with LĂŠuli Eshraghi

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William Powhida & Jade Townsend

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George Rush

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Victoria Sambunaris

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Davide Savorani

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Dan Schmahl

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Kelly Sears

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Zahar Vaks

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Hilary Wilder

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Josh Bernstein

Mosquito King

Ask Forgiveness

Nick Barbee

Mosquito King , 2013. Mixed media. 36 × 54 × 100 in. Courtesy of the artist.

Nick Barbee is an artist based in Texas. His work examines the role of representation in historical narratives. In 2011– 2012 he was an Artist in Residence at the Galveston Artist Residency and from 2009–2012 he was a Fellow with the Core Fellowship program, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

Prior to moving to Texas, Barbee earned his MFA in Painting and Drawing from Tyler School of Art, Philadelphia and his BFA in Fine Art from Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY.

Josh Bernstein received his BA from Amherst College and his MFA from Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University. His work has been exhibited in The Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Bryan Miller Gallery, and the Lawndale Art Center. Houston Chronicle, Houston Press, Artforum. com, and ArtFCity.com have covered his work, which is included in several private collections and the collection of The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

Barbee’s work has been shown at The Dallas Contemporary, MFAH, Art Palace in Houston, Vox Populi in Philadelphia, as well as Siena Heights University in Adrian, Mich., University of Texas at Dallas, and most recently at Gallery HOMELAND in Houston. He has lectured on his practice at Rice University, Sam Houston State University, Cranbrook Academy, and University of Michigan.

Nick Barbee lives and works in Galveston, TX.

Island Time: Galveston Artist Residency: The First Four Years

Ask Forgiveness , 2015. MDF, acrylic and latex paint, birch veneer, oak veneer, mahogany, walnut, basswood, balsa. Graphite on Paper. 41 × 72 × 36 in. Courtesy of the artist.

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Bernstein’s two largest bodies of work to date have both centered on exploration, and some of the more cockeyed historical attempts to square the rest of the universe with specific, idiosyncratic worldviews. The first is a reimagining of Spanish explorer Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca’s harrowing trip thorough Texas. The second is a series of attempts to rise above his head, drawn from an amalgam of eccentric early conceptions of outer space.

Bill Davenport

Best of the Beach

The Fourth Pyramid

Jesse Bransford

Best of the Beach , 2012. Found objects. Courtesy of Bill’s Old Junk Art Center, Houston, Texas.

Jesse Bransford is a New York-based artist whose work is exhibited internationally at venues including the Carnegie Museum of Art, Hammer Museum, MoMA PS1, and the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, among others. He holds degrees from The New School for Social Research (BA), Parsons School of Design (BFA), and Columbia University (MFA). An associate professor of art at New York University and currently the chair of the Department of Art and Art Professions, Bransford has been invested in belief and the visual systems it creates since the 1990s. Early research into color meaning and cultural syncretism led him to explore occult traditions in general and the work of John Dee and Henry Cornelius Agrippa specifically. He lectures widely on his work and the topics surrounding it. In 2013, he co-organized The Occult Humanities Conference in New York, of which there will be a sequel in 2016.

Artist and writer Bill Davenport has lived in Houston since 1990, when he arrived from Massachusetts with a mattress strapped to the top of his truck. His sculptural work since then has focused on objects too quirky to sell, too heavy to move, or too negligible to preserve. After a two-year stint as editor of Glasstire.com, he returned to art-making as proprietor of Bill’s Old Junk Art Center, his shop and gallery at 1125 E 11th St. in Houston Heights.

Island Time: Galveston Artist Residency: The First Four Years

The Fourth Pyramid , 2013. Tempera paint on wall and floor, panels and paper. Dimensions variable Installation at Galveston Artist Residency (destroyed). Courtesy of the artist..

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Eric Heist

Greenhouse

43-01 21st. St.

Jonah Groeneboer

Greenhouse , 2014. Gouache on paper. 11 Ă— 10 in. unframed. Courtesy of the artist.

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Jonah Groeneboer is an interdisciplinary artist working in sculpture, installation, drawing, video, and photo. He uses the aesthetics of Post-Minimalism and abstraction to engage with systems of form and meaning-making.

The theoretical foundation of his practice is based in new materialism, non-universal phenomenology, and queer studies, as well as his own experience as a queer and transgender person. Forthcoming shows in 2015 include Greater New York at MoMA PS1 and Blue Shift, a solo show at Platform Centre for Photographic & Digital Arts in Winnipeg, Canada. Groeneboer has shown in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, London, Berlin, and Oslo. He had a solo show at the Galveston Artist Residency Gallery in 2013.

His work has been covered in The New York Times, The New Yorker, and Art Journal. Residencies include Oxbow School of Art, the Fire Island Artist Residency, and Recess’s Session program in New York City.

Island Time: Galveston Artist Residency: The First Four Years

Stills from 43-01 21st St. , 2015. Single-channel (color, no sound) video, 3:28 hours. Courtesy of the artist.

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Eric Heist received his BFA from the University of Delaware, Newark, DE in 1984 and an MFA from Hunter College, New York, NY in 1990. He has had over 25 years of experience as an artist, educator, and administrator. He is a founder and is currently the director of Momenta Art, Brooklyn, NY. As an artist, his work has been exhibited with Schroeder Romero, Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, Clementine, Islip Art Museum, Roebling Hall, Team Gallery, White Box, PS1 Center for Contemporary Art, New York, NY, Galveston Artist Residency, Galveston, TX, Dare-Dare, Montreal, Quebec, and Elizabeth Valleix, Paris, FR. He has experience teaching at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY, New York University, Cooper Union, New York, NY, Lafayette College, Easton, PA, and the College of New Jersey, Trenton, NJ. He has been a guest juror at Virginia, Commonwealth University, Richmond, Pa. Heist has been a visiting artist/art director at Tyler School of Art, Philadelphia, PA, Savannah College of Art and Design, Savannah, GA, School of Visual Arts, Cooper Union, New York University, New York, NY, and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC. He is a 2006 New York Foundation of Art Fellow.

Conversion Levels High , 2013. Acrylic on paper. 60 × 40 in. Courtesy of the artist.

Colin Hunt

The Crib

Conversion Levels High

John Hodany

He has had solo exhibitions at Zürcher Gallery (New York/ Paris), Lena Brüning (Berlin), Loyal Gallery (Stockholm), Rare Gallery (New York), and Fons Welters Playstation (Amsterdam). Other notable exhibitions include three-­ person shows at Eleven Rivington (New York), Galveston Artist Residency Gallery (Galveston, TX), Rosalux (Berlin) and group shows at Sabine Knust (Munich, Austria), Galerie Conradi (Hamburg, Germany), Greenberg Van Doren (New York) and, most recently, The Museum of Drawings (Laholm, Sweden).

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His work is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art and the Artothèque du Limousin (Limoges, France) and has been featured in Art in America. In 2013, he was awarded a residency at the Galveston Artist Residency.

John Hodany is a painter/sculptor who lives and works in New York and Berlin. He received his BFA from The Cooper Union School of Art and attended a two-year postgrad fellowship program at De Ateliers ’63 (Amsterdam).

Island Time: Galveston Artist Residency: The First Four Years

Crib , 2013. Oil on linen. 6 × 9 × 1 in. Courtesy of the artist.

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Colin Hunt was born in 1973 in New York, N.Y. He received his BFA from The Cooper Union in 1995 and his MFA from Columbia University in 1998. He has exhibited nationally and internationally. Highlights include, in New York, Artists Space, White Columns, ZieherSmith, National Academy Museum, and Brooklyn Museum, and, in Philadelphia, Vox Populi. He is currently showing in Laholm, Sweden at the Teckningmuseet. He was the inaugural resident of the Galveston Artist Residency in 2011. Hunt has taught at Columbia University, The Cooper Union, and Montclair State University. He has been published in Columbia Magazine and The Brooklyn Review.

Untitled , ca. 1980–present. Beach glass collected along the Texas Coast. Courtesy of the artist.

Autumn Knight

WALL

Untitled

Alexandra Irvine

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Alexandra Irvine holds a BA in art history from the University of Houston and has completed graduate studies in both architecture and art history. An arts administrator by trade, she was a curator at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston from 1996 to 1999. Although she has had work included in a few group exhibitions over the years, she is not an artist. She enjoys finding, collecting, and arranging things in aesthetically pleasing configurations. Irvine is a crafter, reader, learner, meditator, aunt, and fairy godmother who shares her home with a dog and a rabbit and hopes one day to live on an island in the Caribbean.

Island Time: Galveston Artist Residency: The First Four Years

WALL , 2014–2015. Video and live performance. Photo Credit: Autumn Knight. Video Credit: Robert Pruitt.

Courtesy of the artist.

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Autumn Knight is a Houston-based interdisciplinary artist.

Her performance and installation work has been included in group exhibitions at various institutions, including DiverseWorks Artspace, Art League Houston, Project Row Houses, Blaffer Art Museum, Crystal Bridges Museum, She Works Flexible, Skowhegan Space (NY), The New Museum, and The Contemporary Art Museum Houston.

Knight recently completed residencies with In-Situ (U.K.), Galveston Artist Residency, Millay Colony for the Arts (Austerlitz, NY), YICA (Yamaguchi, Japan) and Artpace (San Antonio, TX.) Autumn received her BA in theater from Dillard University (New Orleans, LA) and MA in drama therapy from New York University.

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Nsenga Knight was born and raised in the East Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn and currently resides in Durham, North Carolina. She has exhibited work at Project Rowhouses, Berman Museum of Art, Smack Mellon, Artspace, Alcott Gallery at UNC-Chapel Hill, Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Art, Amistad Gallery at the University of Pennsylvania, New Museum for Contemporary Art, and MoMA PS1, among others. She has held artist residencies at Elsewhere Museum in Greensboro, North Carolina, Brandywine Workshop in Philadelphia, Film/Video Arts Center in New York, NY, and was a BCAT/ Rotunda Gallery Multimedia Artist in Residence in Brooklyn. She was most recently a recipient of the Southern Constellations Fellowship in 2014, and was also been awarded Leeway Foundation Art and Change Grant, Finishing Funds from the Philadelphia Independent Film and Video Association, and Brooklyn Arts Council grants. Knight earned an MFA at the University of Pennsylvania and a BA in Film Production at Howard University.

An Idealized History

A Guide to the Last Rite , 2011. Lithograph print. Edition of 25. 6.5 × 39 in. unfolded. Courtesy of the artist.

Grace Ndiritu**

Island Time: Galveston Artist Residency: The First Four Years

A Guide to the Last Rite

Nsenga Knight

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An Idealized History , 2007. Double channel video (color, sound). 7:47 minutes. Courtesy of the artist and LUX, London.

Grace Ndiritu (Kenya/U.K.) studied textile art at Winchester School of Art in Southampton, England. She attended de Ateliers, Amsterdam 1998–2000, and has had residencies at recollets, Paris (2013); MACBA, Barcelona and L’appartement 22, Rabat, Morocco (2014); and Galveston Artist Residency, Texas (2014–15). Her archive of over 40 “handcrafted” videos, experimental photography, paintings, and shamanic performances have been widely exhibited. Upcoming solo exhibitions will be taking place at Reid Gallery in the Glasgow School of Art (Turner Prize Season, 2015) and at Klowden Mann in Los Angeles (2016).

Ndiritu’s recent solo exhibitions took place at La Ira De Dios, Buenos Aires (2014), Chisenhale Gallery, London (2007), the 51st Venice Biennale (2005) and Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, England (2005). Recent solo performances and screenings include Museum Modern of Art, Warsaw (2014), Musée de la chasse et de la Nature and Centre Pompidou, Paris (2013), ICA Artist Film Survey, London (2011), and Artprojx at Prince Charles Cinema London (2009). Ndiritu has been featured in Apollo Magazine’s 40 Under 40 (2014) and The 21st Century Art Book (Phaidon, 2014). Her work is housed in museum collections such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, NY) and

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NevADA Art Fair

William Powhida & Jade Townsend

Spaceship Earth (Portal 29.330247°N, 94.735097°W) , 2015. Still from projection Golden Flow of the Merri Yaluk. 9:20 minutes. In collaboration with Léuli Eshraghi.Courtesy of the artists.

Map of the NevADA Art Fair. in New New Berlin, 2 014. Mixed media. Courtesy of the artists and the Galveston Artist Residency.

Joe Joe Orangias is a visual artist, writer, and curator based in New York City. His projects, often collaborative and site-specific, focus on monuments, public space, queerness, decolonization, and sustainable development. He earned a MFA from Tufts University and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and a BFA from the Savannah College of Art and Design. Orangias has exhibited at Gaffa Gallery, Sydney; Hinterconti Projects, Hamburg, Germany; Proof Gallery, Boston; Art Palace, Houston; and the Jockey Club Creative Arts Centre, Hong Kong, among other venues. He was awarded an SMFA Alumni Traveling Fellowship for research in Aotearoa, New Zealand; an Art School Alliance Fellowship from the Hochschule für bildende Künste-Hamburg; and residencies at the Galveston Artist Residency, RM Gallery in Auckland, New Zealand, and Atelier OPA in Tokyo. He has published writing in Temporary Land Bridge and Scope: Contemporary Research Topics (Art & Design).

William Powhida makes fun of the art world to highlight the paradoxes and absurdities of economic and social value systems that keep the visual art afloat on a tide of inequality. His work relies on research and participation to diagram, list, perform, and critique the forces that shape perceptions of value. He is responsible or partly responsible for exhibitions including Overculture at Postmasters Gallery, Bill by Bill at Charlie James Gallery, POWHIDA at Marlborough Gallery and #class at Winkleman Gallery. His complicit criticism has been rewarded with gallery representation, numerous exhibitions, and critical debate.

Léuli Eshraghi is an artist, curator, and Ph.D. candidate at Monash University Art Design and Architecture in Narrm Melbourne, Australia. His practice is centered on indigeneity, language, memory, body sovereignty, and queer

Island Time: Galveston Artist Residency: The First Four Years

Spaceship Earth (Portal 29.330247°N, 94.735097°W)

Joe Joe Orangias with Léuli Eshraghi

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Jade Townsend is an artist currently living and working in Minneapolis, Minn.

“Jade Townsend’s highly theatrical sculptures and installations use familiar imagery to explore themes of displacement, allegory, and alchemy with subjects drawn from history, literature, popular culture, and everyday life. Townsend’s works integrate many types of materials in a diverse range of forms. While varied in appearance, his art is interconnected through its underlying themes, use of recurring visual motifs, combination of found and fabricated elements, and overall dramatic sensibility. Initially a painter of abstract compositions, Townsend turned to making three-dimensional work to better explore complex concepts. Regardless of their final form, Jade Townsend’s sculptures, installations, and drawings use

George Rush is an artist living in Columbus, Ohio. He received an MFA from Columbia University School of the Arts in 1998 and a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 1992. Since 2001, he has had solo shows in the United States, Denmark, and Spain. In 2014, in addition to his show at Galveston Artist Residency, he had a one-­ person exhibition at the Canzani Center at Columbus College of Art and Design. He is a recipient of grants from the New York Foundation of the Arts and the PollockKrasner Foundation. Since 2010, he has been on the faculty at Ohio State University, where he currently serves as chair of graduate studies for the department of art.

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Untitled (Jetty), Galveston, Texas

Interior for Anders , 2012. Acrylic and gouache on laser printed paper. Courtesy of the artist and the Galveston Artist Residency

Victoria Sambunaris

Island Time: Galveston Artist Residency: The First Four Years

Interior for Anders

George Rush

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Untitled (Jetty), Galveston, Texas, 2015. Chromogenic print mounted on dibond. 39 × 55 in. Courtesy of the artist and Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York.

Victoria Sambunaris received her MFA from Yale University in 1999. Sambunaris structures her life around a yearly photographic journey crossing the American landscape. She spent the last year at the Galveston Artist Residency photographing the petro/chemical and shipping industries around the Gulf Coast in Texas. She is a recipient of the 2010 Aaron Siskind Foundation Individual Photographer’s Fellowship and the 2010 Anonymous Was a Woman Award. In 2011, a 12-year survey of her work was exhibited at the Albright Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, N.Y. and has been traveling throughout the U.S. Her work is held in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art (New York), The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, National Gallery of Art (Washington, D.C.), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Albright-Knox Art Gallery (Buffalo, N.Y.), and the Lannan Foundation (Santa Fe). Radius Books recently published her first monograph, Taxonomy of a Landscape.

Sambunaris is represented by Yancey Richardson Gallery in New York, NY.

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Untitled 1

Dan Schmahl

Untitled (Stressed 27) , 2015. Print on fabric. 50 × 60 in. Courtesy of the artist.

Untitled I , 2015. Archival pigment print. Courtesy of the artist.

Davide Savorani is a visual artist and performer. After graduating from the Academy of Fine Arts in Ravenna, Italy, he has performed extensively in projects by Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio, Kinkaleri, ZimmerFrei, MK, and Invernomuto.

Savorani creates installation-based works involving a variety of media, from drawing to photography to sculpture to performance. His practice reveals active, relational, and process features as response to the notion of the exhibition space meant as a static area for inactive objects.

He has taken part in several group exhibitions, including: REVISIT at Overgaden in Copenhagen, Denmark (2014); Urban Bodies at Museo Villa Croce in Genoa, Italy; Prune in the Sky at Toves Galleri in Copenhagen, Denmark; Not an Image But a Whole World at Kunstraum Niederoesterreich in Vienna (2012); The Inadequate at the 54th Venice Biennale’s Spanish Pavilion (2011); Against Gravity at ICA in London (2010); HaVE A LoOk! Have a Look! at FormContent in London (2010); Instruction Series: Le Club Nautique de Kinshasa / Pool Malebo, at Raum in Bologna, Italy (2010); #02.Mal d’Archive at La Friche La belle de Mai in Marseille, France (2010); Santarcangelo Festival 39 in Santarcangelo di Romagna, Italy (2009); And Yet it Moves at Fondazione

Dan Schmahl (b. 1986 in Key West, Fla.) is a multi­disciplinary artist whose practice uses photography, video, print­ making, and installation. Taking cues from romantic landscape painting and traditional landscape photography, his work attempts to gain a better understanding of place through dissecting chosen landscapes and the relationships we share with them. Schmahl also publishes artist books, zines, and other printed matter through a risograph printing project called Super Hit Press. He received his BFA from Florida State University in 2012. Schmahl is currently living and working in Galveston, TX.

Island Time: Galveston Artist Residency: The First Four Years

Untitlted (Stressed 27)

Davide Savorani***

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Kelly Sears (MFA, University of California, San Diego) is an experimental animator and filmmaker. She intervenes with archival materials from America’s postwar history through cutting up, collaging, and compositing film and media source materials. Her work investigates contemporary political narratives of power that include expansionist doctrines, militarization, occupation and surveillance.

Her work has screened at film festivals such as Sundance, South by Southwest, American Film Institute, Los Angeles Film Festival, Ann Arbor, Black Maria, and museums and galleries such as Hammer Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and Wexner Center for the Arts.

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She has been awarded residencies from the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, The Museum of Fine Art, Houston’s Core Program, and the Galveston Artist Residency. She is currently an assistant professor at the University of Colorado-Boulder, where she teaches filmmaking and animation.

Post Arctic Post Arctic , 2015. Water-based pigment, oil, balsam, and glitter on paper and vinyl. 26 × 24 in.

Courtesy of the artist.

A tone halfway between lightness and darkness , 2015. HD video. 7:30 minutes. Courtesy of the artist.

Zahar Vaks

Island Time: Galveston Artist Residency: The First Four Years

A tone halfway between lightness and darkness

Kelly Sears

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Zahar Vaks is a visual artist based in New York City. He earned his BFA from Tyler School of Art at Temple University and his MFA from Ohio State University. He has shown in New York; Philadelphia; Columbus, OH; Las Vegas; Galveston, TX; and Vienna. Zahar attended the Galveston Artist Residency from 2012-2013. Currently, he is a member of Ortega y Gasset Projects, an artist-run curatorial collective and exhibition space in Gowanus, Brooklyn.

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Black and Brown Chair (After Rietveld) , 2015. Hand-painted paper (acrylic on Yupo).

Courtesy of the artist and Devin Borden Gallery, Houston, Texas.

Hilary Wilder makes paintings and installations that address how specific places are represented; the works often respond to misunderstandings about landscape or location, or to the simplification or “cultivation� of natural themes in art and design. She is the recipient of several awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, a grant from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, and a Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Professional Fellowship. Wilder has exhibited work in solo exhibitions at venues that include The Suburban (Oak Park, IL), Open Satellite (Seattle), Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, and Devin Borden Gallery (Houston, TX), and in numerous group exhibitions, most recently at the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum (Lincoln, MA), the Wilton House Museum (Richmond, VA), Artspace (New Haven, CT), Monster Truck Gallery (Dublin), and INOVA (Milwaukee). She lives and works in Richmond, VA.

Island Time: Galveston Artist Residency: The First Four Years

Black and Brown Chair (After Rietveld)

Hilary Wilder

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(49) Magic Spell photo. (50) Magic Spell photo. (51) Bill Davenport leading a driftwood painting workshop during The Driftwood Festival. (52) The ladies of Robert’s Lafitte in the GAR courtyard during Qfest. (53) TALA talk in the gallery, with the Grand Opening exhibition by the First Year residents on display. (54) Magic Spell photo. (55) Magic Spell photo. (56) The Driftwood Festival by Bill Davenport.

(57) Magic Spell photo. (58) From the opening of Mapping Galveston. (59) The first artwork at GAR: found in the building when we arrived. Survived Ike. (60) Magic Spell photo. (61) Sallie Barbee gardening in the back courtyard. (62) The sign for The Driftwood Festival by Bill Davenport. (63) Eric Taylor playing a concert in the GAR Gallery. (64) Tomato hornworms plucked off our plants in the back courtyard.

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Hills Become the Sun III (For R.F.), 2015 Graphite on paper All works courtesy of the artist Bill Davenport Best of the Beach, 2012 Found objects Courtesy of Bill’s Old Junk Art Center, Houston

Nick Barbee February 14th, 2012, ii, 2015 Latex, poplar, and motor Courtesy of the artist Josh Bernstein Mosquito King, 2013 Ash wood, steel, epoxy resin, tent parts, dyed paper, driftwood, chain, string Courtesy of the artist Jesse Bransford Hills Become the Sun (Three Into Four), 2015 Tempera paint on floor, three brass bowls containing water, sand, and soil from Galveston Island

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Alexandra Irvine Untitled, ca. 1980– Present Beach glass collected along the Texas Coast Courtesy of the artist Jonah Groeneboer 43-01 21st St., 2015 Single-channel (color, no sound) video, 2:28 hours Diffractive Acts, 2015 25 Fiber-based silver gelatin prints All works courtesy of the artist Eric Heist Greenhouse, 2014 Gouache on paper Courtesy of the artist John Hodany Conversion Levels High, 2013 Acrylic on paper Courtesy of the artist

Nsenga Knight Other Stars Don’t Behave So, 2013 Ink and wax on paper Courtesy of the artist

The Harbor in Alignment, 2014 Acrylic on paper Courtesy of the artist Colin Hunt From the series “The Spiral is a Spiritualized Circle” All works are oil on linen and courtesy the artist unless otherwise noted

Grace Ndiritu An Idealized History, 2007 Double-channel video (color, sound), 7:47 minutes Courtesy of the artist

Willa’s Room, 2012 Night Sky 3.23.08, 2014

Las Chicas Postcard, 2015 Paper, postcard, tape, glue, acrylic paint, and watercolor inks Courtesy of the artist and Klowden Mann Gallery, Los Angeles

A Corner of the Room, 2013 I.V. Pole, 2013 Curtain, Pulled Back, 2013 Crib, 2013 The North Facing Window, 2013 Toys, 2013 They Would Come to Her Window, 2013 Collection of Robert Longo

Island Time: Galveston Artist Residency: The First Four Years

Checklist

Dresses, 2013 Collection of Barbara Sukowa Autumn Knight WALL, 2015 Performance, mixed media installation Courtesy of the artist

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Joe Joe Orangias with Léuli Eshraghi Spaceship Earth (Portal 29.330247°N 94.735097°W), 2015 Aluminum, carpet, glitter, HD videos, iron, paint, plexiglass, polyurethane and repurposed wood Courtesy of the artists William Powhida & Jade Townsend Map of the NevADA Art Fair in New New Berlin, 2014 Mixed media Courtesy of the artists and Galveston Artist Residency

George Rush Interior for Anders, 2012 Acrylic and gouache on laser printed paper Courtesy of the Galveston Artist Residency Victoria Sambunaris Untitled (Jetty), Galveston, Texas, 2015 Chromogenic print mounted on dibond Courtesy of the artist and Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York Davide Savorani From the series “Notes for a Stressed Environment” Untitled (No Souvenir), 2015 Print on fabric Untitled (Stressed 27), 2015 Print on fabric Untitled (Stressed 14), 2015 Print on fabric Untitled (Mask), 2015 PVC All courtesy of the artist Dan Schmahl Sunset Cycle, 2015 HD video loop, meditation pillow, inkjet print, sex wax Courtesy of the artist Untitled I–VI, 2015 Four archival pigment prints Courtesy of the artist

Kelly Sears A tone halfway between lightness and darkness, 2015 HD video, 7:30 minutes Courtesy of the artist Zahar Vaks Searching Against the Thing, 2015 Water based pigment, lavender glitter, oil, balsam, alpaca thread, and organza on canvas Inflamed Eco, 2015 Pigment, oil, balsam, fine glitter on paper, and vinyl Post Arctic, 2015 Pigment, oil, balsam, fine glitter on paper, and vinyl All courtesy of the artist Hilary Wilder Avenue K, 2015 Oil, acrylic, spray paint, and flashe on canvas Black and Brown Chair (After Rietveld), 2015 Hand-painted paper (acrylic on Yupo) All works courtesy of the artist and Devin Borden Gallery, Houston

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(65) A monarch chrysalis found in the amaranth in the back courtyard. (66) Magic Spell photo. (67) Magic Spell photo. (68) Bird visitor. (69) Magic Spell photo. (70) Starfruit from the GARden. (71) Posters from Matthew Brannon’s The Undending Horrible. (72) From Autumn Knight’s performance WALL.

(73) Thomas Hulten’s Hot Viking Dixiland Jazz Band playing during the opening for the Residency Show Year 3.

(74) Installation view of the N(ev)ADA Art Fair by Jade Townsend and William Powhida. (75) Night view of the GAR front courtyard. (76) Night view of the GAR front courtyard during The Driftwood Festival by Bill Davenport.

(77) Installation view of The Dislocated Center of the Material World by Jonah Groeneboer. (78) Screening Before You Know It by PJ Raval during Qfest. (79) Plant babies. (80) The Galveston Parks Department delivering a load of driftwood for The Driftwood Festival by Bill Davenport.

Galveston is great for self-reflection; this is an important part of the GAR experience. You end up spending a lot of time staring at the water and the billowy, dramatic clouds...The proximity of

the beach is nice, you can get around on a bicycle, you can watch as the layers of sad history peel themselves away in front of you, and you never run out of paper-thin layers of weird, subtle shit.

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(81) Driftwood creation from The Driftwood Festival. (82) Bill Davenport’s handmade t-shirts for The Driftwood Festival. (83) Starfruit from the GARden. (84) Snake handling out at Mountain GAR. (85) Fishing with John Hodany. (86) Freshly caught fish on the grill. (87) Carrots from the GARden. (88) – Winter Root vegetables from the GARden for a traditional GAR lunch

(89) Soccer on the beach. (90) Texas boules. (91) The Dream Machine. (92) Lucy Sparrow in the driftwood pile. (93) Invitation for Mapping Galveston hand printed by Eric Avery. (94) Playing pool at the Wizzard. (95) A rainbow over GAR during the opening for Mapping Galveston. (96) The front gates of GAR.

Contents

Foreword 13 Director’s Essay

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Artists 24 Installation 51 Checklist 61

Galveston Artist Residency 2521 Ships Mechanic St, Galveston, TX 77550