Wild Anima is a musician from France who lives in Berlin and who joined us here at the Fish Factory in June 2018. She makes vocal ambient& downtempo electronic music.
While she was in the residency, she worked on her album project which she had already started to develop. The heart is the main core of her album project. When she searched about “healing process of broken hearts” she found out there is a connection between healing heart and electromagnetic waves. So, she uses her music as a medicine for all the broken hearts.
Beatrice is an artist from Melbourne, Australia who joined us here at the Fish Factory in May and June 2018. She is an interdisciplinary artist but mostly focuses on sculptures.
During her stay, Beatrice created numerous wax castings from reindeer antlers which she combined into figurative sculptures. The wax sculptures Beatrice will transfer into bronze castings once she is back in Australia. Beatrice was inspired by Norse mythology, f.x. Valkyries, as well as different shapes in nature, which she modifies and plays with. Beatrice also made printed artworks from her embroidered landscape images of the magical mountains.
Audra Hubbell is a graphic designer from the United States, who joined us here at the Fish Factory in June 2018. Mostly she finds inspiration in places&memory and their relation between each other in her creations. While she was in residency, she collected objects and turn those found objects into artworks. In her artworks she uses different kind of materials like found objects, pictures and she mixes all together, sometimes she paints on them with colors, or draws on them with chalk to create her visuals.
Amy Caterina is a photographer from Southern California, who joined us here at the Fish Factory for her second visit in June 2018. Amy came to the Fish Factory for a first time in January 2017 and as a photographer, she wanted to experience the exact opposite light situation.
On Saturday 9th of June, we hosted a jazz concert by saxophonist Garðar Eðvaldsson and his band here at the Fish Factory. The band was touring around Iceland and we were fortunate to host their fascinating concert in our concert hall.
The band plays original music that has been composed specifically for them. Icelandic Garðar has been studying in Basel for the past three years and will be finishing his BMus degree this summer. He has been studying under the great musicians of the New York scene today. Other members in the band are Swiss Tapiva Svosve and Xaver Rüegg playing alto saxophone and double-bass, and Phelan Burgoyne from the UK on drums.
Thank you Garðar and friends for a beautiful night!
Monica is a performer, activist, and creative direct action teacher among many other things. She is based in New York, United States and joined us here at the Fish Factory for a month of May 2018 to focus on developing her new solo play.
Monica took over our concert hall for the month where she wrote and rehearsed her new play in which she weaves together events in her personal family history – particularly from her mother’s point of view – turns and twists of US politics since the 80’s and imaginary alternative life trajectories. The fantastical story includes espionage, dark humor, friendship and second chances and is filled with music from punk to Elvis and hip-hop, Monica wrote especially for the play.
At the end of her residency, Monica organized an open dress rehearsal and we at the Creative Centre got to enjoy her touching and funny story. Also, another artist in residence, Clint, was making his debut in the play as he collaborated with Monica as a technician, musician, and videomaker.
Photos from the dress rehearsal of Monica’s play performed in our concert hall. // All photographs by Jana Charl, May 2018.
Clint Sleeper is an artist from Tallahassee, Florida, who joined us here at the Fish Factory for the month of May 2018. His work includes mostly a variety of different digital mediums and music, and the themes of his art revolve around the humor and tragedy of our political and economic systems.
While in the residency, Clint was working on a couple of his video works. One of them is a humorous series of videos where he performs a role of an economics educator teaching capitalism to nature by reading Adam Smith’s Wealth of the Nations to parts of nature, thus making an absurd joke that it would be more likely that “inanimate objects might learn about our economic systems, than our economists might learn about the environment.” The other work he was developing in the residency is a series of critical video essays titled “255, 255, 255” which investigates the language of digital technology and the ways we have learned to talk about the climate change, natural phenomena, digital environments, and moving image. Clint will continue to work on this project in Iceland for another month in another residency.
A one video and stills from the series “Teaching Capitalism to Nature” and stills from the new work “255, 255, 255” created while in the residency // Photos by Clint Sleeper May 2018.
Miriam is a singer-songwriter from Dublin, Ireland, who joined us here at the Fish Factory Creative Centre for May of 2018. Miriam made her first album two years ago and decided that it was about the time to compose a second one.
She came to Iceland open-minded, ready to get inspired by the country and the dramatic landscapes. This led to her collaborating with another artist-in-residence and she wrote a song about Iceland’s forgotten fisherwomen to accompany Jana Charl’s installation about the same subject. Miriam was happy about her productive time in here, and she made six songs just within two weeks she spent at the Creative Centre. We at the Factory got to enjoy her talent and beautiful voice on a mini-concert she played while in the residency.
The video documentation of the Forgotten Fisherwomen, the song by Miriam Donohue, installation and video by Jana Charl. // May 2018.
Jana Charl is an artist from Los Angeles, California, who joined us here at the Fish Factory for the month of May 2018. She has just recently moved from Los Angeles to a large ranch in central Oregon and was happy to come to a residency to another rural place and have the time to focus on the creative work without the big city stress and distractions.
Jana uses a variety of different mediums and materials. She makes paintings, installations, and sculptures out of recycled salvaged materials and objects. She has developed a distinct style of representing the female form and is playing joyfully with it. She considers herself as a feminist artist, but in a gentle and cheerful way.
While in the residency Jana made a large installation piece to the attic of the Creative Centre inspired by the stories of forgotten fisherwomen of the late 19th century. She was delighted to find our vast collection of recycled materials and gave them a new life as a part of her installation. Another residency artist, Miriam, in turn, got inspired by Jana’s research on the fisherwomen and composed a song about them to accompany the installation. Both artists were particularly pleased with this fruitful collaboration.
Stories of Forgotten Fisherwomen – installation by Jana Charl, music by Miriam Donohue // May 2018.
Stories of Forgotten Fisherwomen – installation and photographs by Jana Charl // May 2018.
Sybil Paulson is a nomad artist, who joined us here at the Fish Factory for the month of May 2018. She was born in Canada and has been more or less on the road ever since she turned 14. As her lifestyle also Sybil’s art is an organically swirling process and she moves smoothly from a medium to another. She is mostly based in drawing but also takes photographs, makes paintings and performative acts for a camera.
Coming to a residency in Iceland was an important cyclical finish for Sybil, as she was living in Iceland four years earlier trying to study art, but back then decided to do something else. Now that phase of doing something else has come to a sort of an end, and she will start at an art school later this year.
This is how Sybil writes about her art and process:
Sybil Paulson has learned many things. Some of them are about the wilderness, others about women and men. Very little about birds despite the time spent watching them.
She is Canadian and American. Sybil attended competitive ice hockey schools throughout her formative years and once shed a tear while flying over the state of Louisiana (following the last election) which unfolded on a motel television in Cuba, reported by an anchor wearing an eye patch and a fine suit. She has a strong love for the endless states of Mississippi and Lousiana.
A couple of artworks Sybil created while in the residency. // Photographs by Sybil Paulson May 2018.
Melissa McGrath is a visual artist and educator from Kansas City, Missouri, The United States. She joined us here at the Fish Factory for the month of April 2018 to focus on her drawing practice.
Melissa makes drawings by burning holes to the paper with a smoldering incense stick. The method of drawing this way is an irreversible process and the drawings are usually dealing with the transformation and the ways people move through traumas. The drawings and the meditative process of making them is her way to depict traumas, both the ones we have as individuals and those of different communities. The process of drawing with a smoldering incense stick is very laborious practice and for Melissa, also this tedious labor is an important part of the artwork itself.
While in the residency, Melissa started working on the biggest drawing she has made so far. The paper being bigger than the artist has special meaning to her and is fitting as the things she is going through at the moment are also bigger than her. Melissa spent countless hours working on the drawing and was particularly interested in feeling the effects of the physical labor in her body as she spent the working hours making the drawing on various positions from being on tiptoes to lying on the ground.
The piece Melissa created while in the residency // April 2018.
Jerry Jacuzio is an artist and musician from the United States, who joined us here at the Fish Factory for the month of April 2018. Jerry came to the residency to continue to make his magical felted hats and fish masks.
Jerry considers himself as a maker of things and art as a means of magic. For him, art doesn’t come from the logical side of the brain, but from somewhere more mystical and unexplainable side of his being. Initially, Jerry started making the felted hats with twigs and bones as a help for people who had lost their hair, and their magic, during the cancer treatments. This was how he had felt too.
Masks, instead, come from a different place. Jerry got tired of the changes happening in the music venues and saw that the only possible place to continue playing was on the streets. But, he needed to have a mask on to blur the identity of the musician, as a shield, so he started making the mystical masks with angelic writing and other symbols. Jerry is excited planning on a future performance to play music in a fish market in Asia wearing the fish masks he created during the residency.
Some work Jerry completed while in the residency in April 2018.
Silvija Juozelskyte is a textile designer and art therapist from Lithuania, who joined us here at the Fish Factory for the month of April 2018. For a Lithuanian, Iceland is an especially important country because it was the first country to recognize the independence of Lithuania back in 1991. And as an homage to that, Lithuanians have an annual festival in Vilnius called Takk Island / Thank you Iceland. The festival is also the reason why Silvija came to the residency to work on a new body of work that she is going to exhibit at the festival.
In general, Silvija’s work finds its inspiration from nature and she uses only natural materials such as linen and wool. In the residency, she was inspired by the Icelandic nature, especially the mountains and the sea. Being at the Fish Factory she was pondering on the history of the place and also, the similarities between the two countries and their fishing trades. Eventually, this led to her making artworks weaving the landscape of Stöðvafjörður on the found fishing net. During her time in the residency, Silvija was also doing a lot of hiking in the mountains and dedicating time to knit a pullover with traditional patterns using Icelandic wool. She was interested in photographing the ropes the fishermen left at the harbor – she saw them as interesting coincidental drawings.
Some artworks Silvija made while in the residency // Silvija Juozelskyte 2018.
Natalie Goulet is a Canadian photographer from Northern Ontario, who joined us here at the Fish Factory for the month of April 2018. This was her third time in Iceland within a year, and this time she came to work on her ongoing photography projects in the landscapes of East Iceland.
Natalie’s photography work is revolving around the concepts of home, whether it’s a physical space or a sense of belonging somewhere. Usually, she works taking photos of herself in different types of settings in abandoned, forgotten buildings or out in nature. The landscapes and the spaces become the extension of the inner landscapes of the artist. Also, as Natalie likes to work with the physical materiality of the images, she uses instant film and then modifies the images in irreversible ways, usually by burning them. Besides driving around the fjords and finding the perfect locations, this experimentation was what she was working on during her time in the residency.
Some of the photographs Natalie took around East Iceland while she in the residency in April 2018. // Natalie Goulet 2018.
Valentin Russo is a French photographer who joined us here at the Fish Factory for three months from February to April 2018. Valentin came to Stöðvarfjörður to make an extended photography project about the hidden and not overly photographed sides of Iceland.
The final piece of the three-month-long project was a photography book called While You Are Sleeping. The title of the book came from a local who considers the village being a sleeping town. Valentin found his inspiration in that and thinks that the nights in here are not solely dedicated to sleep.
So while in the residency, Valentin was mostly walking around the village and taking photos of the activities happening in the night time. He was especially interested in playing with flashlights and an infrared camera during the dark hours of the night. He wanted to disclose the things hiding in the darkness, blur the line between the real and imaginary.
Photographs from the series Valentin was working on in the residency // Valentin Russo 2018.
Rebeca Bonjour is a photographer from Lisbon, Portugal who joined us here at the Fish Factory for March 2018. Rebeca has studied both, journalism and photography and although most of her work being photographs, also the background in journalism has a big influence on her ways of working. She tends to do pervasive research about the topics she’s working with, and likes to work with people interviewing and photographing them.
In general, Rebeca works with identity related issues. She is interested in making photographic series about the identities of different places, of groups of people or individuals. Rebeca came to Iceland to make a project about the hidden people of Icelandic folklore. She did a lot of research on the stories and myths before coming to the country. And before coming to finish the project at the Fish Factory, she visited the elf town Hafnarfjörður and even attended the elf school for a day.
Photographs from Rebeca’s project, taken in Stöðvarfjörður and Hafnarfjörður. // March 2018.
Rose Hatcher is an artist, a photographer and a curator from Cornwall, England. She joined us here at the Fish Factory for March of 2018 two projects in her mind – to focus on making her art works and to learn about the residency program we are running here. This is because, Rose is a founder and the manager of a similar project in Cornwall, called Fish Factory.
Initially, the two Fish Factories were connected when Rose found out about the Fish Factory in Iceland when looking for a domain name for her project. Rose and her team visited Iceland in 2016 and since then the projects have kept in contact. Now, Rose came to learn about the residency program as they are about to establish one in Cornwall as well. She was also enjoying the serene atmosphere in Stöðvarfjörður, and she spent the time in here reflecting the rapid improvements happening at the Factory in Cornwall and just recuperating from the busy months.
Rose Hatcher’s collage works and photographs made in the residency. // March 2018.
While in the residency, Rose was also happy to be able to make her own art works and experiment with different materials. During the time in here, she made many collage works on paper, took photos and used the dark room to develop some films.
Holly is an oil painter from Montreal, Canada, who joined us here at the Fish Factory for the month of March 2018. Her work is mainly oil paintings on canvas and usually a combination of figures and landscapes. She spent the time in the residency working hard at the studio and making many paintings about the landscape and people.
The Icelandic landscapes, in fact, were Holly’s main motif for coming to the Fish Factory. It is beneficial for her as a landscape painter to be in a new environment and in a place with different visual imagery to what she is used to seeing at home. She was inspired and amazed by the wondrous mountains here in Stöðvarfjörður, and ended up making a lot of paintings about them. Also, Holly was interested in the night sky and was particularly pleased to experience the northern lights, and these too were incorporated to her work.
Holly MacKinnon’s oil paintings made in the residency. // March 2018.
Jemila is an interdisciplinary artist who was born in Scotland, grew up in Australia and is currently living and working in New York city. She joined us here at the Fish Factory for the month of March 2018 to work on a sculpture-based video performance piece. Jemila spent her time in the residency making large teeth/glacier sculptures out of paper mache and then filming a performance with her interacting with them.
Jemila’s work has been greatly affected by her upbringing in Australia, where scientific, mythological and spiritual ways of learning from the land are intertwined. She continues to draw connections between people and place; material and culture; spirituality and experience. Her work seeks out an empathetic approach to humanities destructive impulses, and recently she has focused on making art works as a way to understand what it is to be human in the age of the Holocene Extinction.
Photos of Jemila’s process of making the sculptures and shooting the performance. // March 2018.
On a beautiful Saturday night, the last day of March 2018, we were lucky to host a wonderful EP Launch concert here at the Creative Centre.
Indie folk singer-songwriter Con Murphy came all the way from Ireland back to Stöðvarfjörður to play the first, exclusive launch concert of his debut EP “The Fjord”. On the stage, he was accompanied by his partner Gráinne Glavey playing the piano. The title song “The Fjord” was written in here in 2015 and by Con’s words the track is “full of love and admiration for his dear friend and the life he and his partner have carved out for themselves in the Eastern Fjords of Iceland.”
Thank you Con and Gráinne for a lovely concert and evening!
Owen Dixon is a sculptor and a metal worker from Peterborough, Canada, who joined us here at the Fish Factory for January and February of 2018. Owen’s practice is making sculptures out of old, rusty metal objects by cutting holes in intricate patterns to the metal with a plasma cutter. Before studying Fine Arts and sculpting in NSCAD Halifax, Nova Scotia, Owen attended a welding school.
While in residency, he visited several recycling depots and walked along the harbour to collect abandoned rusty steel objects and turn them into artworks that deal with the questions of the past and layered histories of those objects. The cutting patterns also have historical references – most of them are made according to the designs by William Morris of the late 19th century Arts and Crafts Movement.
Photographs of Owen’s metal works and drawings. 2018.
Besides making his metal work, Owen spent the time in Stöðvarfjörður planning the future projects, making a variety of other artworks and engaging in interesting conversations with others at the Creative Centre.
Sebastian Koukkides is a visual artist from Cyprus who joined us here at the Fish Factory Creative Centre for the month of February 2018. He received his BA in Fine Arts from the University of the West of England in Bristol.
Sebastian usually works with found materials joining them together in different and unusual ways. The artworks are average person sized and often accompanied with small phrases informing the work. His practice revolves around concepts and ideas that are mainly from philosophy.
During the time in Stöðvarfjörður, Sebastian explored and went through the mounds of recycled and salvaged materials we have here at the Creative Centre and made some experiments using those materials. Also, he took advantage of the serenity of the village to focus on making applications for future studies.
Susan Wood is an artist from Scotland who joined us at the Fish Factory for the third time this February. She has a recurring project to spend a month in each of the four seasons in here at Stöðvarfjöður. At the end of her fourth visit, she will make an art project about all her visits and based on the experiences of different seasons in East Iceland.
This February was her winter visit and she spent the time walking around in nature, taking photos of the rapidly changing sky and making artworks inspired by the winter nature. She was especially interested in contrasting the darkness and lack of living beings of the winter with the opposite. While in the residency Susan made a body of work titled “Winter Flowers” exploring this contrast in a surreal manner. Her endless interest and the main material for her artworks is the seaweed she collects on her walks along the beach.
Susan’s notebook and photos of some of her sculptures // February 2018.
Also, as she uses a variety of different mediums, Susan spent time in here making some linoleum cuts, drawings and other sculptures with found objects.
//More of Susan’s Work//
Check out the interview here:
Thank you and see you again in Autumn time, Susan!
Julia DePinto is a visual artist from Ohio, United States and she stayed here at the Fish Factory for January 2018. Her background as an artist is in printmaking but she doesn’t consider herself as a traditional printmaker, and in fact, she is rather working against the stereotypes of the medium. Julia’s work has a heavy focus on the process of printmaking, she doesn’t work in editions, and materiality/immateriality and control/lack of control play important roles in her prints.
Most of her artworks and prints are photo-based and they stem from performances she makes for the camera. Her body and politics of female body are present in her works. She uses her body as a conduit for contextualizing social and political dialogue, autobiographical experiences, collective injustices, and the societal structures placed on women.
At Fish Factory Julia wanted to challenge herself and not work in a familiarity of a print shop. She worked on a series of digital photographs and drawings, made an installation to the Factory’s attic, and made her first performance with an audience.
Julia DePinto’s selected drawings and photos of her installation and performance work done while at the residency.
