Mary Mattingly is a visual artist. She founded Swale, an edible landscape on a barge in New York City. Docked at public piers but following waterways common laws, Swale circumnavigates New York's public land laws, allowing anyone to pick free fresh food. Swale instigated and co-created the "foodway" in Concrete Plant Park, the Bronx in 2017. The "foodway" is the first time New York City Parks is allowing people to publicly forage in over 100 years. It's currently considered a pilot project. Mattingly recently launched Public Water with More Art and completed a two-part sculpture “Pull” with the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de la Habana and the Bronx Museum of the Arts, two spherical ecosystems that were pulled across Habana to Parque Central and the museum. In 2018 she received a commission from BRIC Arts Media to build "What Happens After" which involved dismantling a military vehicle (LMTV) that had been to Afghanistan and deconstructing its mineral supply chain. A group of artists including performance artists, veterans, and public space activists re-envisioned the vehicle for BRIC. In 2016 Mattingly facilitated a similar project with teens at the Museum of Modern Art. In 2014, an artist residency on the water called WetLand launched in Philadelphia and traveled to the Parrish Museum. It was utilized by the University of Pennsylvania’s Environmental Humanities program until 2017. Read more on her website at: https://marymattingly.com

I am a migrant artist with a soul moved by many cultures, I explore places where roots and belongings come together and merge.

Biography Born 1978 in Manchester, Connecticut; lives in Littleton and works in Denver, Colorado Katie Caron is presently Head of Ceramics and 3D Design at Arapahoe Community College. Caron graduated from Boston University in 2000 with a Bachelor of Science in English Education and minor in Theater Arts. After graduation, she decided to pursue her art fulltime and moved to Colorado. In 2007, Caron was accepted to the graduate program at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan and graduated with a MFA in Ceramics. In 2011, Caron created Apoptosis in collaboration with Martha Russo for the Denver Art Museum’s exhibition Overthrown: Clay Without Limits. She has completed numerous site-specific installations for Project Miami, Santa Fe Art Institute, University of Michigan, University of Northern Colorado, Redline Art Space and Republic Plaza in Denver. She was reviewed for Drosscapes, an immersive environment, in Sculpture Magazine’s June 2013 issue and is profiled in Boulder Magazine in January 2017 issue for her body of work Autonomic Healing exhibited at Naropa University. Caron recently collaborated with the renowned Santa Fe art collective Meow Wolf, and is represented by William Havu Gallery. Katie Caron resides in Littleton, CO with her family. Artist Statement I am fascinated by escapism: how and why our senses transport us to imaginary worlds, how electronic media change the way we feel the present moment and how it can mediate our lives. Through integrated media and installation objects, I immerse viewers in the experience of an illusion—what’s real and what’s fabrication? These new worlds become psychological spaces, where unconscious reactions shape emotion, where certain sounds, lighting and objects may provoke fear or incite wonder. These worlds often address environmental points of crisis, and the materials used reference the environments they conversely impact. In my work I raise questions of contemporary society: how technology and consumption affects our daily lives, impacting our environment, mediating our experiences, and alienating our instincts. By personifying inanimate forms with agency and creating fictional spaces, I hope to surprise my viewers with their own internal worlds and see their community through a new lens.

Strijdom van der Merwe (b. 1961) is a full-time artist who lives in Stellenbosch, South Africa.. He studied art at the University of Stellenbosch (South Africa), Hooge School voor de Kunste (Utrecht, the Netherlands), the Academy of Art and Architecture (Prague, the Czech Republic) and the Kent Institute of Art and Design (Canterbury, England). Among the many decorations he received are the Jackson Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant, a medal of honour from the South African Academy of Arts and Science, the Prince Claus grant in Amsterdam. He was nominated for the Daimler Chrysler award for sculpture in public spaces, was a finalist for the International Award for Public Art, established to increase visibility for public art internationally, and won the It's LIQUID International Contest, First Edition 2012, in Italy for sculpture and installation. The Kanna award at the Oudtshoorn Arts Festival for best visual art projection in a musical collaboration. In 2015 he collaborated to win the ATKV Aartvark award for most innovative work at the Aardklop Arts Festival in Potchefstroom. He has held numerous solo and group exhibitions over the past years and his work has been bought by private and public collectors locally and abroad. Commissioned work / Residency’s on invitation where done in Korea x 5, Japan x 3, Belgium x 2, France, USA (Smithsonian Institute), Turkey, Kenya, Australia, Lithuania, Denmark, Sweden, Norway. Switzerland and Germany. In 2013 he was asked to be the festival artist at both the Aardklop Arts Festival and the Fjellfestival in Andelsnes, Norway. Van der Merwe was a member of the curatorial panel for World Design Capital Cape Town 2014 and is a founding member of Site Specific South Africa. He was co-curator of the Exhibition of 30 Nature Artists in the World (2015) and the Global Nomadic Art Project (2015‒2016) in South Korea.

The biology of skin color, in a profound manner, has always captured my imagination - why it matters that my skin is dark or my hair is dark and kinky, for instance. These questions became pressing when I moved from Haiti to the US, and experienced racial discriminationfor the first time. I began researching neuromelanin, the pineal gland, consciousness, and expressed my findings in paintings. Thisinvestigation led me to examine many facets of my identity, spirituality and the realm of thought form. This fascination with neuromelanin springs from a desire to understand the profound nature of my identity. Neuromelanin is a dark pigment secreted by the pineal gland, found in the center of the brain. René Descartes theorized that the pineal gland is, “the principal seat of the soul, and the place in which all our thoughts are formed.” Dr. Richard King posited, “On a philosophical plane, the pineal gland is the biological doorway through which the life force of African spirituality passes in moving from the spirit to the material realm.” My paintings are quasi-figurative, by turns humorous and grotesque, and bring together ideas, people and incidents central to modern debates about neuromelanin. I use a blend of traditional art media, and a wide range of unconventional organic materials - coffee, chocolate, ginger, tea and flour among them - to convey the rich layers of neuromelanin. My pictures, objects, and environments are a surreal fantasia on loosely linked themes such as under-recognized African-American inventors, the politics of sexual desire, and the complex aesthetics, narratives and metaphors attached to neuromelanin. Painting felt limited for conveying these complex ideas. A need for fuller expression led me towards multi-sensory, interactive art installations. Through this medium, I could invite the viewer to participate. My most recent installation, “The Philosopher’s Stone,” is a collaboration with Patty Suau (Designer), Nicole Combeau (performance artist), Adrienne Tabet (body painter), and Itzel Manon (Cellist), exploring this ancient myth. The Philosopher’s Stone is often described as a magical elixir which is impossible to find; metaphysically, the concept is a reference to the search for one’s soul. The installation consists of a helium sculpture, king-sized bed, binaural recording headphones, cacti, cello, aromas, black licorice, and performance. To immerse in the work, audiences lie on the bed while viewing an ambiguous sculpture, floating within arm’s-reach. Participants wear a pair of 3-D sound headphones and listen to a non-linear conversation in English, Spanish, French, and Creole, while experiencing thirteen different aromas and interacting with a disguised female deity. Meanwhile, live melodies on the cello fill the space. My work seeks to stimulate questions about the self, reality, and imagination through a surreal experience that engages the senses. I encourage participants to tap into a hidden side of themselves, to activate their essence through rest and meditation. The spiritual nature of neuromelanin has the capacity to link us to a higher state - a universal consciousness that connects us as human beings. This new interdisciplinary work has expanded my own consciousness, socially and spiritually. Participants describe the impact of the installations as magical and transformative.

Fred Ivar Utsi Klemetsen is an award-winning Norwegian Photographer working in Norway as a Photojournalist and artist. He has had serval exhibitions in the US. Fred has documented the life of the Sami people who live close to nature since the 1990s until today.

 The Sami are the indigenous people of northern Scandinavia. Their language and culture is unique to the region. In Norway, the Sami numbers about 45,000 people. There are two main types of Sami – the nomadic people and the sea people. My mother belongs to a family of nomadic Sami who have herded reindeers on the northern mountain plains for centuries. My father belongs to the sea Sami, who lived off farming and fisheries. 

The nomadic Sami have traditionally moved throughout the region with their reindeer herds. They follow the reindeers across wide expanses of land in northern Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia. The reindeer has been essential to the survival of the Sami, who have lived in northern Scandinavia for thousands of years. Their culture is one of hardship, driven by the extreme survival skills needed to get through the long grueling winters on the arctic plains, where the temperature can dip below –50 degrees Fahrenheit. The reindeer has been absolutely essential to their existence, providing the Sami with food, clothing, shelter and tools.

 Today, some are still herding reindeers. But many have moved to different parts of the country, or lead “ordinary” modern lives. As they abandon their traditional way of life, the Sami culture is also rapidly disappearing.

 This is the subject of this project, which consists of photographs shot between 1990 and the present. As with many indigenous cultures, the increasingly aggressive onset of modernity and technology quickly supplants the old way of life. Therefore, I want to document this culture before it is completely gone. Many of the reindeer herders are worried about the future. Several encourage their children to go have an education and another job at the bottom. The winter of 2020 and 2022 has been very hard for many of the reindeer owners. In late autumn and early winter the there was mild weather and rain. Days after it froze again and a thick layer of ice at the bottom towards the ground, which remained. In large areas, the animals were unable to dig down for food. This resulted in feeding the animals. A rather absurd situation when there are hundreds and thousands to be fed. Due to the grazing crisis last winter, many used trucks to transport the animals to summer pasture. "It must be the climate that is now changing", says Mathis Somby.