School’s in at Sitka
Thousands flock every year to the Cascade Head area to enjoy its natural beauty, but only a lucky few are chosen to live and work at the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology, located a short walk from the Cascade Head Preserve.
Resident talks offer opportunities for the community to learn about the work done by the accomplished artists, writers, scientists, musicians and interdisciplinary creatives who are chosen for residencies.
On Tuesday, Oct. 12, the first virtual talks of the season will introduce five residents tackling ecological issues and working in a variety of visual arts.
Elizabeth Besozzi is a landscape ecologist interested in how species use, partition and move through geographic space. As a doctoral candidate in the University of Oklahoma’s program for Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, her research focuses on the volcano junco, a species of sparrow that occurs above the tree line in a unique montane grassland habitat found only in Costa Rica and western Panama. An avid birder and bird bander, Besozzi spends her free time photographing birds, practicing the identification of their calls and seeking out new species.
Jenene Nagy is a visual artist living and working in Portland. Recent solo venues include PDX Contemporary Art, the Iris Project in Los Angeles and Art on Paper in New York. Her work has been recognized with grants and awards from the Foundation of Contemporary Art, the Oregon Arts Commission, Colorado Creative Industries and the Ford Family Foundation. Her work is held in several permanent collections including the Portland Art Museum and Crow’s Shadow Institute of the Arts.
From 2011 to 2012, Nagy was the first curator-in-residence for Disjecta Contemporary Art Center in Portland.
Kelda Van Patten merges digital photography and collage to construct still life pictures that evoke a sense of surprise or contradiction. Kelda has recently exhibited her work at Blue Sky Gallery, Strange Paradise Gallery and Well Well Projects. In 2020, she was selected in the top 200 for Photolucida’s Critical Mass. She holds a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute, an MAT from Lewis and Clark College and an MFA from the Pacific Northwest College of Art.
Mike Vos is an artist, musician and large-format film photographer from Portland.
His work is presented as an interconnected series of photographic installations that revolve around a central theme: a world without humans and wildlife’s reclamation of the industrial landscape. Inspired by literary themes such as magical realism, alternate history and subtle horror, Vos uses traditional large format photographic techniques to craft complex visual narratives. His work carries a strong environmental message about the impact humans have on the natural world, and challenges individuals to consider the lingering effects of our choices once we are gone.
Ashley Eliza Williams is a painter, sculptor and amateur ecologist exploring new ways of interacting with nature and each other. She has shown nationally and internationally including at Hersbruck Museum in Germany, the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the University of Colorado Art Museum. Williams has taught at The University of Colorado, Colorado State University and Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. She is a member of the research-based art collective Sprechgesang Institute and currently lives in Western Massachusetts.
The Zoom-hosted presentations begin at 4 pm. For more information, go to sitkacenter.org.