Laura Turón is an active Mexican-American artist in the El Paso-Juárez US/Mex borderplex; her multidisciplinary art processes combine concepts of time, belongingness, and inclusion through collaborative work with the community, and non-objective designs that feature mark-making, ephemeral art, art with science, optical illusions, digital art, sculpture, immersive art, and community art installations.

The artist is also the creator of Paradox Traveling Art (2017), a traveling art installation project housed within a converted full-size school bus. The bus functions as an art gallery on wheels. Her most recent projects include a permanent public art sculpture in a roundabout for the city of El Paso, TX, and her project Paradox Immersive Art an immersive art gallery in El Paso, TX.

During her residency, she worked on photographing the Northern Lights and developing an interactive art installation inspired in The movement of the northern Lights.

Website: https://lt-artdesign.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/turonlaura/

Laurie Torres is a composer and musician based in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. She has spent the last decade working as a session musician, both live and in the studio. More recently, she recorded her first solo album of instrumental music centered around the piano (to be released in 2024).

At the Fish Factory, she worked in Studio Silo with an array of small electronic instruments as well as the piano. From there, she created numerous ambient soundscapes inspired by the view and the surrounding nature, and composed classically oriented pieces on the piano.

Instagram: instagram.com/laurietorres/ and https://www.instagram.com/soundstills/

Shayna Klee (Purple Palace) is a French-American multimedia Artist and musician. She lives and works in Paris, France.

In 2023 Shayna released her first full musical project under the pseudonym “Purple Palace”, giving homage to her early roots and online projects published under the same name. The EP entitled “Tower moments” is an experimentation in pop, spoken word and dark fairytales in French and English.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/_purple_palace/

Elia Lombardini is an finnish-italian composer, producer and violinist. Their music moves along the intersection of classical and electronic music creating worlds between maximalism and minimalism. The main tool of their practice is the violin although sometimes heavily effected and manipulated.

At the Fishfactory Elia worked on some new material with their friend Helmi Tikkanen a.k.a Von Pearl and spent time exploring and developing new sounds and compositions for their upcoming album. Also importantly spent considerable time petting Tummi, the dog, permanent resident at the fisfactory and drinking coffee in the delightful kitchen area of the residency.

https://linktr.ee/elialombardini

elialombardini.com

Emma Anne Johnson is an interdisciplinary artist who creates art focusing on valuing a “glitch” – a sudden, usually temporary, irregularity or malfunction of equipment. Glitches, with their inherent imperfections and digital anomalies, offer them a unique lens through which to explore the intersection of technology, human experience, and aesthetics. They experiment with combining trash, technology, and traditional art forms, resulting in a diverse range of creations that include music, sounds, paintings, drawings, videos, sculptures, fashion, and installations.

Their creative process is a continual reflection of their personal experiences. Through their creations, Johnson aims to highlight and challenge the societal structures rooted in our organization of emotions, identity, and social dynamics. Their art encourages both themselves and viewers to confront their biases and preconceptions and to engage in critical reflection and discussion about the subconscious associations on what we value and why. Value a glitch, be a glitch, embrace the glitch.

During my time at the residency, I was able to practice my live performance to prepare for some shows I had coming up. Also, I was able to complete the synth and guitar tracking for 5 new songs! woo! I also spent a lot of time in my sketchbook drawing the beautiful fjords :)

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/therealemmaj/

Morvern is an illustrator, storyteller and visual artist from Scotland. Her most recent work has seen her exploring her Scandinavian heritage, and diving into the world of folktales and mythology. Primarily working in traditional printmaking, Morvern’s work promotes the use of heritage crafts and manual methods.

I began my residency at the Fish Factory working on early development for a new book; taking inspiration from the surrounding landscape and the relationship between the wild seas and atmospheric skies of Stöðvarfjörður. Between time spent in the studio, I also spent many days hiking around the mountain areas, making field recordings, filling my sketchbook, collecting rocks and looking out for trolls!

In addition, I ended up undertaking a spontaneous ceramics project, after being inspired by the colours and textures of the mossy tussocks which cover the hills above the fjord; a collection of ceramic figures emerged, inspired by the folklore of the Huldufólk from Icelandic mythology.

I relished the sense of creative freedom I had whilst I was at the Factory, and it was wonderful to just explore all the avenues of random ideas I normally have to set aside in everyday life. It was a magical month of creative productivity, and I hope to be back one day!

Website: www.morverngraham.co.uk

Instagram: Instagram

Sarah’s approach to music is characterized by an insatiable curiosity and a fearless willingness to experiment. Her work in the Fish Factory serves as a creative crucible where her classical training and an unbridled passion for innovation converge. Here, she delves into the intricate dance between live music and music production, weaving together diverse genres into a cohesive, vibrant tapestry.

Thank you Sarah! :)

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sarahlisa_steiner/

I used my time at the Fish Factory to return to my design and ideation processes. Spending time in my sketchbook, making paper maquettes and experimenting in metal to explore germinating ideas. Time spent on process rather than product allowed me to explore, experiment and even try my hand at other media. Seeing and feeling the drama of the Icelandic landscape held me in a constant state of wonder and I reveled in the act of trying to interpret it.

Thank you Erica!

Instagram: ericasbailey

Linktree: https://linktr.ee/esbjewelry/

Joke Noordstrand, a Dutch historian and a visual artist, is redefining the narrative of history through her ceramic art, focusing on the often-overlooked stories of women. Her project, “Female History in Iceland,” undertaken at the AiR Fish Factory in Stöðvarfjörður, draws from her fascination with Iceland’s stark landscapes and the rich histories of Icelandic women across generations.

Through engaging conversations and questionnaires, Noordstrand captures the essence of women’s experiences, translating them into ceramics that highlight themes of connection, protection, and resilience. Her innovative techniques range from using common clay and balloon molds to spraying clay to create unique textures. To work more sustainably, she adds leftovers as coffee grounds to the clay and usually combines the bisque and the glaze in one single firing.

From the rugged beauty of the Icelandic landscape to the intimate stories shared by women, Joke’s work captures the essence of female history with sensitivity and insight. Her art invites viewers to ponder the hidden narratives and untold stories that shape our understanding of the past and present.

Joke Noordstrand

www.noordstrand.art

Instagram: jokenoordstrand

Alex M. Stein is an award winning writer and filmmaker living in Los Angeles. Alex stayed at the Fish Factory in November 2024. Alex wrote short stories and shared them at our exhibition at the end of the month in the green room upstairs. During the month, he delighted us with positive energy and good vibes. Pleasure to have you with us in Stöðvarfjörður.

He has devoted his entire adult life to stories and storytelling and is a mainstay of the Los Angeles storytelling community. He ran a weekly storytelling show for two years. He has won the Moth multiple times and is the author of the personal essay collection No, Mr. Bond, I Expect Your Dreams To Die and the short-story collection Tales From the Trail: Short Fiction About Dogs, Mushing, and Sled-Dog Races. He has worked extensively in film and television development and works as a story consultant for production companies, studios, individual writers, and more.

Alex enjoys writing about himself in the third-person and would love it if you connect with him on Twitter (while it still exists) or on Facebook, Post.News, or Mastodon.

Thank you, Alex! :)

Clio Berta is a Maine based performance artist, composer and event producer inspired by snakes, esoteric mysticism, constructed identity, cycles and nothingness. She works with movement, projected video, paint and the natural landscape to explore these ideas in an intimate, multi dimensional way.

Clio spent her time at the Fish Factory researching, writing about and visually investigating the ancient Celtic idea of thin places, simulating rainbows, writing and recording songs, dancing, looking for sparkly rocks and illustrating the elusive spirits that give life to the otherworldly landscape surrounding the Factory.

Visit Clio’s website for more! https://www.clioberta.com/

Thanks, Clio! :)

Thank you Jane!

Nancy is a Professor of Environmental History at Michigan Technological University. She is the author of five books on climate history, Great Lakes history, forest and wetland history, and toxics history.

Nancy spent the month of September with us while she worked on her paintings, watercolours, linocuts, prints and collages. She experimented with these different mediums, inspired by nature and our surroundings. Nancy took many paths up the fjord, looking for different birds and reindeer, and a big herd appeared at the base of the hill in the last week of September.

http://www.nancylangston.net/

Thank you, Nancy! :)

Lula Asplund is a Chicago based sound artist and musician who combines digital and analog sound synthesis with tape manipulation, field recordings, and vocal manipulation in her practice.

Lula’s time at Fish Factory consisted of going on long walks, taking photographs, field recordings, recording electro-magnetic sounds of the lighthouses, reading Clarice Lispector, and recording with sounds from the Juno synthesizer and piano in Studio Silo. She loved taking long bike rides along the coast and visiting the orange lighthouse and found the ethereal landscape and the fog in Stöðvarfjörður incredibly inspiring for her music.

Visit Lula’s bandcamp for more of her work!

https://lulaa.bandcamp.com/

And her instagram!

Thanks, Lula! :)

Madeleine Aleman is a visual artist from Malmö, Sweden. She stayed with us in the month of September 2023. Since 2012, her art practice focuses mainly on drawing, printmaking, and performance. Aleman is strongly influenced by psychology and spirituality. Hypnagogic states and dreams are important sources of inspiration.

“During my residency stay, I was totally overwhelmed by the mountains, the clouds, and the fjord. In the studio, I worked with printmaking and made monotypes.

I used a method in which I painted directly on the printing plate. The result from one print is what brought the process forward, as I kept painting on the same plate without cleaning it in between prints. What’s left of the old print has formed traces of the past in the ones that follow. Like memories. Like dreams. A way to search beyond and dare to get lost.”

Visit Madeleine’s website:

www.aleman.se

and her Instagram:

@madeleinealeman

Thank you, Madeleine! :)

Susan Singer is a writer and an artist. The first time she landed in Keflavik was in 2014. That inspired her to sign up for different residencies, where she worked with photography and with pastels. At the Fish Factory, she experimented with watercolour, and she worked plein air as much as possible, taking inspiration from beautiful surroundings.

“I arrived not knowing what I would do during my month at the Fish Factory, but, within hours, I was settling in creating art unlike anything I’d ever done before. I have always worked super-realistically, but at the Fish Factory this month, I moved towards abstraction.

I began to parse the complexities of Icelandic landscapes into lines and angles and compositions. I moved into a very meditative space and worked in the spirit of the stillness and silence of the Icelandic Nature. I’m so grateful for the time I had there to explore this new direction and for the beauty of the setting to give me so much more to paint!”

Visit her instagram and her facebook for more of her work!

Thank you, Susan! :)

Kathryn Mohr is an artist and a musician currently based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She spent the month August here at the Fish Factory, working on music. She set up a desk in our green room upstairs, with beautiful view over the opening of the fjord.

Kathryn liked to stroll near the sea, searching and collecting various objects that were washed ashore. She used them to build interesting sculptures and collections.

Visit her instagram kathryn__mohr

& check her bandcamp

https://kathrynmohr.bandcamp.com/album/holly

Thanks, Kathryn!

Eva is a graphic designer and illustrator based in Barcelona, Spain.

Her work during the residency, in August, was inspired by the local fauna and landscape with a layer of fantasy extracted from Icelandic folk tales mixed with witchy popular culture and personal anecdotes of her travels. She also took the opportunity given to focus on improving her watercolour skills, so the majority of her paintings were done using this medium.

“I found it particularly satisfying discovering how much the setting influenced my capacity to focus, be productive and creative, even when I came with no goals in mind”.

You can see more of her work on instagram: kitara22

and on her website: https://www.behance.net/caldas

Thanks, Eva!

Julia Hechtman is a visual artist who lives and works in Boston, USA. Julia makes works focusing on the balance of absence and presence, life and death, and real-time and memoried experience in her multi-faceted studio practice. The natural world features prominently in her works, which has allowed her to travel extensively and to contemplate the familiar in new ways. In 2019, she was a Fulbright Scholar in Reykjavik at Lístaháskolí Íslands, where she pursued her research into the roles of landscape and memory in identity production. In 2024, she will be going to Svalbard on a two-week residency on a tall ship.

Julia stayed with us in the month of August 2023, while she continued her project “Not Once,” a series of videos based on stories told by local icelanders regarding specific locations of significance. Julia travelled between fjords and interviewed locals who were willing to share their stories and memories from the past. At midday, she wandered along the beaches and docks, accompanied by Tumi, looking for and filming jellyfish. That’s how the project “Apparitions” came to life.

Julia also worked in our ceramics workshop, sculpting birds out of clay. “Spirit Birds,” they’re called, and they were an inspiration for fellow artist Gabriele Glang’s ceramis birds.

Julia also travelled to Reykjavik, where she had an audio-visual exhibition of her project.

Visit Julia’s website for more of her work: https://www.juliahechtman.com/

https://vimeo.com/juliahechtman

Thanks, Julia! :)