PAST RESIDENTS
February 2020
Jordan Ramsey Ismaiel | Hastings, NE
Jordan Ramsey Ismaiel is a painter who paints paintings. They are a multi-ethnic, queer, student (at the time of the MakeRoom residency) from a small college town in rural Nebraska. Their work is a response to the minority struggles surrounding emotional safety, identity, race, and sexuality.
Motifs of painted hearts, conceptual “home”, self-reflection and self-portraiture build the foundation of their works in order to address issues they encountered growing up.
While in residency at MakeRoom Jordan spent significant time focused on the study and reflection of a single work which was completed in total, near the conclusion of their time here. Additionally, Jordan spent large amounts of time in analysis, exploration and critical thought on their own practice. As well as time discovering outside options in the city of Minneapolis including casual collaboration with other artists, museum visits and an arts festival. During the artist’s reception they participated in an in-depth conversational dialogue with guests who found Jordan to be thought-provoking, engaging, intelligent and humbly vulnerable.
Update: After residency Jordan returned to full time studies at Hastings College and has been facing the challenges of Covid-era education head-on. They continue to work on painting, developing an understanding of the conceptual idea of what painting is and focus on post graduate studies.
March 2019
Tyler Rai | Amherst, MA
Tyler Rai is an improviser, dancer, and collaborative artist whose work explores how movement, performance and improvisation can embody kinship and empathetic relations with the other/more-than-human world.
Her current body of work is research and experimentation which focuses on both grief and reverence for the glacial bodies of this earth. By exploring the implications of geological movements, urban infrastructure, collaborative assembly and glaciers she is creating a series of movement and dances which are site-responsive mediations.
Her time at MakeRoom focused primarily on writing and collaboration. Most notably attendees to her artist reception were invited to improvise and perform simple movement pieces by taking cues from the language of glaciers such as flow, cave, melt, retreat and push.
UPDATE: Tyler continues to perform, collaborate and improvise across the East Coast. Her work continues to focus on glacial transformation as it retreats from our earth. Additionally, she performed Glacial Erratics – Echo Dune at SPACE Gallery in Portland Maine.
February 2019
Lauren Sudbrink | Chicago IL
Lauren Sudbrink is an artist, composer and performer whose work is concerned with the possibilities of social engagement. She both examines and asserts the notion that art is never passive or static but instead a constellation of systems and processes. Accordingly, her work is concerned as much with process as it is with product.
Using materials as common place as matches, balloons and sting in unconventional and performative ways Lauren’s (most current) work focuses on the reinterpretation of late, avant-garde French composer Erik Satie’s Vexations - a body of work written by the late composer who declared the only true and successful way to perform his piece was to do so in succession 840 times. This declaration has been considered and is being investigated by Lauren who has in turn started to create, compose and perform variations on Vexations in 840 different ways.
While at MakeRoom she utilized 840 dominoes in a patient and meticulous performance, invited participants to make 840 marks in the fresh snow with their feet, dragged 840 printed scores of Vexations through the streets of Minneapolis, painstakingly removed notes from the printed page of 840 Vexations and many other focused, dedicated and fixated efforts. Additionally, she delighted, invited, collaborated and charmed so many of us during her stay at MakeRoom.
UPDATE: Since returning to her home in Chicago Lauren has been actively creating and collaborating. She has released the Hole Black Hole Catalog, shown and performed work at the Flatland Gallery and blown bubbles with the Chicago Artists Coalition.
March 2018
Jordan Jirschele | Menomonie WI
Jordan Jirschele focuses on work which often takes the form of autobiographical fables.
His complex narratives embody personal history and beliefs, and are manifested through hybrid interests in biology, science fiction, mythology, language and psychology. Subtle clues are often woven into and around his work, allowing for various levels of discovery. He highly values the experience of art and aims to immerse and engage audiences. Line variation and contrast, material explorations, observational drawings, and surface-level visual seduction are all utilized in his work.
UPDATE: During his time at MakeRoom Jirschele focused on a body of work that utilized a common material traditionally not seen in fine art, drywall. He fashioned geometric canvasses out of the material and focused daily on the evolution of their surfaces. Additionally, he was interviewed and prominently featured in an article about short term artist residencies in the Star Tribune. He is currently enrolled at the University of New Mexico at Albuquerque pursuing a masters of fine art in sculpture.
February 2018
Morgan Vessle & Keegan Van Gorder / Morgan Keegan Institute | Philadelphia PA
Morgan Vessle explores themes of tradition, memory, story, domestic ceremonies, and home.
She is interested in preserving and documenting stories that have been passed down in family & others lives. These ideas have been explored in automata as well as in zines and prints. The other side of her practice relates even more to a desire to make tangible work, through functional craft - as a weaver, seamstress and bag maker.
Keegan Van Gorder loves to bring attention to the sweetness of awkward moments and unflattering body shapes in illustrative work. She uses humor to talk about experiences and reminds us of the tender charm in forgotten and underrated happenings. Her illustrative work can freeze an important memory or event and hold for observation and reflection.
Morgan Keegan Institute / MKI is the combined work of Vessle and Van Gorder, through their work they explore Ceremony. By creating ceremony together they focus on valuing an experience for the sake of it without set up for consumer entertainment or the aim of documenting. Their ceremonies have included people watching ceremonies, beer drinking ceremonies, appreciation ceremonies, nail clipping ceremonies, abandoned pool laying ceremonies, weird movement ceremonies and food yelling ceremonies.
UPDATE: During their time at MakeRoom Vessle and Van Gorder focused on Ceremony - they created a frozen lake at midnight ceremony and conceived a ceremony subscription offering. Plus they baked lots of bread, were featured in a local newspaper and have since moved from Philadelphia to the city of Minneapolis MN.