Our Daily Red is pleased to continue our artist-in-residence series titled Inside Out. Every month, a new guest artist will have access to the platform to publish images and jot down thoughts about inspiration, obsession, creative failures and insights. Unlike an 'Open Studio' format which is predicated on potential sales, BR&S wants to provide the artist-in-residence with an outlet to place their practice in a more public realm, offering an expanded look at the creative process and placing emphasis on the time ideas and works take to mature. It is not expected that the artist produce anything finished or specific to BR&S in this time, only that they candidly share their explorations. Each artist will then invite an artist to follow them. The rules of the game specify that the guest must 1. work in a different medium, 2. live elsewhere, 3. write often and not think too much about what they post, 4. be someone whose inside the host artist is curious to see out.
Introducing: Natalie Andrew
I discovered artist and scientist Natalie Andrew while checking out some of my Somerville Open Studios contemporaries this past Spring. I was immediately struck by her range of experience and interest in several different fields (art, creativity, cognitive-science, biology, and engineering, to name a few), and was drawn to how such rich influences inform the depth of her artwork.
Natalie has an impressive and diverse resume. She is currently working at Artisan’s Asylum and at Harvard University, has a Ph.D in Cell Biology from the University of Birmingham, U.K, and was a finalist in the 2013 round of Mass Cultural Council artist fellowships in sculpture. She has been published several times and participated in group shows at Axiom Gallery and the Boston Cyberarts Gallery. She has recently completed a residency at the McColl Center for Visual Arts, and is conducting a study on creativity, which anyone can participate in online.
More impressive than her list of accomplishments, however, is her artwork, which she sees as an "ongoing experiment to create an environment of wonder in which to contemplate," and "an exploration of the value we place in scientific discovery and what consequences such reverence might have for making progress." For many of us, our mediums of choice are painting, or plaster, or textile; I would argue that Natalie’s medium is (often) the ecosystem. She creates objects and places where the addition of water creates a habitat, which become a home to moss, mist, and strikingly beautiful fungi.
I don’t know about you, but I cant wait to learn more. Welcome to Inside Out, Natalie.
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- Wonderlust Evolution detail
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- Hidden Marriage 22″ x 50″ x 20″. Live mosses and lichens (cryptogams), hydroponics system, lichen sculptures, figurines, gilded and lacquered coffee table.
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- Hidden Marriage detail
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- Wonderlust 15″ x 15″ x 15″. Acrylic, mirrored data points, bioforms, foggers, figurines, pager motors, LEDs, passive infrared sensors, custom electronics.
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- Wonderlust detail showing an avatar contemplating its world.
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- Sacred Spaces I & II 17″ x 23″ x 15″ & 17″ x 17″ x 17″. Woven reeds, shellac, aspen shavings, oyster mushroom inoculum, beeswax, rope, water, living oyster mushrooms.
