The Berwick Research Institute has announced the 2008 residents for their Artist In Research (AIR) program. AIR was created "to support artists involved in the early stages of projects that require investigation, dialogue, and support from an artistic community." AIR alumni include Pam Larson, Christy Georg, Maura Jasper, Vaughn Bell, Liz Nofziger, and the 2007 ICA Foster Prize winner Kelly Sherman, to name a few.
Laura Torres
4/08 - 6/08
Laura Torres is a Boston based conceptual artist whose work explores ideas of networks, interconnectivity, boundaries and paths. She will be working on a project about soccer and Ecuador's participation in the sport on a global scale. As both an insider and an outsider to both US and Ecuadorian culture, she has often felt herself in a unique position of constant negotiation of cultural boundaries. Never having been much of a sports fan, Laura was strangely riveted by Ecuador's part in the world cup and felt connected to a huge network of fans worldwide. Soccer's inherent minimalism allows for an in-depth appreciation of the network of plays and movement of the body. She hopes the weather will soon get warm enough to play fútbol with other Boston fans.Jesse Kaminsky
7/08 - 9/08
Jesse Kaminsky is a Boston-based artist who makes process-oriented sculpture and sculptural installations that create complex systems from simple materials. He plans to explore the way we understand and construct place using perception, memory and desire. With simple materials he will create environments that will alter your sense of space and time. Kaminsky seeks the threshold of perception where the familiar becomes unfamiliar, and the mind explores a variety of new, sometimes implausible, theories in order to make sense of the world again.Nathalie Miebach
10/08 - 12/08
Nathalie Miebach is an artist originally from Germany and France. Currently, she lives in Brookline and recently spent much time on Cape Cod doing research for her sculpture work. At the Berwick Miebach will work on "Weather Suits for Cities" which focuses on exploring human perspective and physical variability of weather within an urban environment. Miebach will build a portable weather station that is entirely constructed on her body. Like a 'weather suit', this weather station will record weather on a minute-by-minute basis - while walking through a park, riding the T or biking to work - to record the invisible meteorological changes within the urban landscape. The weather suit will also be a vehicle through which to address larger questions as to how the meaning and function of weather articulates itself and changes in an urban environment, particularly in an age of human-induced climate change.
"Weather Suits for Cities" is a continuation as well as a new stage in Miebach's ongoing project of building low-tech data-collecting devices that gather weather data from specific locations. This data is then translated into sculptures, using basket weaving as a grid through which to translate the information into 3D space.
