Art Residency at Kunstkollektivet 8B's

Hello! This fundraiser is to support the cost of my travel and stay at Kunstkollektivet 8B's artist residency. As a full-time artist on the rise, money can be tight, but I always value doing artist residencies above anything because I know the immense impact they have on my art practice and my trajectory forward. This residency is in Denmark, the cost of travel will be $950, my stay is $940 for the month, and shipping my artwork back home is undetermined. Below I have attached the letter I sent to Kunstkollektivet 8B's, explaining what I plan on creating during my stay. Thank you!

Experience has fueled my work more than any formal training or education. My work is observations of human behavior, and the more diversity of people and experiences I am able to have the more I will have to create. This is the main reason beyond access to facilities machinery or material I am attracted to residencies. I work most days in solitude in my studio, and I need a break from this routine and feed off of the world's energy to fuel me forwards and continue. My work is my thoughts, feelings and experiences turned outward. By focusing on the commonly understood staples of reality, such as humans, children, adults, homes, buildings, furniture, clothes, animals, etc., and abstracting them, blurring the line between where one begins and another ends, I am able to create a style which shares my perspective. I've always felt like an observer of life rather than a living being myself, so creating work has allowed me to place my mental landscape in the physical world, grounding me in reality.

This opportunity stood out to me as a multimedia artist with a strong focus in fibers looking to do more ceramics. Most of my work has many textile elements, and I am always excited to work in new spaces regardless of the facilities, as I know how much it can expand my practice and bring my work to unexpected places. However I have a very specific vision in mind which I want to work on in a residency, and Kunstkollektivet 8B seems to have exactly what I am looking for. During the month I would like to spend at Kunstkollektivet 8B, I would like to work on a series of hanging sculptures. I have included below an image which better illustrates what I want to accomplish during the residency. Most of my sculptures stand alone, unlike my 2D textile wall pieces which I often make in series. For this project I would like to make a series of ceramic human-like creatures, and houses which bleed the line between human animal and object. I want to create the structure of these forms out of ceramics as well as stuffed fabric, and layer over the surface of these forms details made of felt, such as facial features or small images, similar to scenes depicted on greek vases. The first photo shown below shows some creatures I would build out of ceramic and create scenes on, such as the one example in the lower left corner. For the Breaking Out of My House sculpture, the final photo shown below, I would create the red house form of ceramic, and the limbs coming out from inside of it would be a combination of stuffed fabric and felt pieces. I have never done a residency that focuses on textiles and would be overjoyed to experience creating in a facility catered towards fiber and ceramics. I use many different textiles in my work including but not limited to, felt, fabric, and yarn, for which I make a range of 2 and 3D forms. Over the last few months I have picked up ceramics and love working in this medium as well, though I am making smaller things right now because I am new to it, I know ceramics are going to be an amazing addition to my artwork and the range which it will open. I am in the process of welcoming a kiln into my studio space and am interested in getting to work in a ceramics facility not only to have a focused environment to create but to be able to take notice of the setup and apply this information to my workspace.