September Curated Artists in Residency Program

Pedro Ramirez

Visual artist and educator Pedro Ramirez, based in Brooklyn, NY, blends art and science with his vegetation-sprouting “living” pottery that explores the relationship between people and plants. He worked on several projects during his time at OSGF, including harvesting local clay for sculptures, asking legacy employees to create clay pieces of their own and reflect on what the land means to them, researching the medicinal uses of invasive weeds, and installing a fake grass landscape on OSGF’s landing strip.

Naseem Rahka

An Oregon-based journalist, geologist, and award-winning author, Naseem Rakha’s writing has appeared in NPR, The Guardian, and the Los Angeles Review, among other publications. During her residency, Rakha penned a fictional short story about Bunny Mellon during her final days, speaking with OSGF legacy employees in order to get a sense of Mellon’s reflections on her place in the world and the experience of losing her vision. She made this video about her two weeks at Oak Spring.

Nina Elder

Artist and arts administrator Nina Elder currently lives in New Mexico, where she co-founded an off-the-grid artist residency program called PLAND: Practice Liberating Art through Necessary Dislocation, as well as spent several years serving as as the Residency Program Director at the Santa Fe Art Institute. Her multidisciplinary work focuses on changing cultures and ecologies. While at OSGF, she went through archives, books, and the land in order to research ways in which natural objects had been described, creating a cyclical poem that listed her findings.

Ian Boyden

Visual artist, translator, and writer Ian Boyden, who lives in Washington State, creates work centered around ecology, with a focus on East Asian aesthetics. He has collaborated on projects with famed Chinese dissident artists and writers Ai Weiwei and Tsering Woeser, including serving as the curator for the exhibit “Ai Weiwei: Fault Line,” in 2016. Boyden spent his time at OSFG conducting research in the library for future projects.

Four artists from throughout the country traveled to the Oak Spring Garden Foundation last month, where they spent two weeks exploring issues of biodiversity through OSGF’s gardens, landscapes, and library.

Throughout the year, OSGF offers several such residency opportunities for artists and researchers whose work centers around plants and the environment, a major part of the foundation’s yearly programming. While applications are closed for most 2020 OSGF Residency programs, we are still accepting applications for our inaugural Botanical Artists in Residence program. To learn more about our Fellowships and Residency opportunities, visit osgf.org/fellowships-residencies.