Artist-in-residence

December Artist-in-Residence Genevieve Quick examines the history and wonder of telescopes, Victorian projectors, photography and space-age satellites. In The Lens Lab (on view through December 31, 2011, in the Kimball Education Gallery), Quick invites the public to interact with her hand-fabricated cameras. Participants are encouraged to use her modified cameras to photograph the museum and its grounds. The resulting photographs will be projected as a slide show in the gallery as the project evolves throughout the residency.

One of the many goals of the Artist-in-Residence program at the de Young Museum is to explore connections between the artists and the surrounding park environment. These connections enrich our museum visitors' experience through the guest artists' explorations and interpretations. Visiting artists from around the globe offer a unique experience to learn about natural materials found right here in Golden Gate Park.

Māori artist Glenda Hape uses flax to weave and create contemporary art. There are more than 7,500 exotic plant species surrounding the de Young in Golden Gate Park, including several types of ornamental flax. The species of flax Glenda needed to continue her weaving projects in the Kimball Gallery is called Phormium tenax, also known as New Zealand flax (or harakeke in the Māori language). Last week, Glenda explained how difficult it is to harvest the materials she uses in her artistic practice, but with the assistance of Andy Stone, gardner and park supervisor for the San Francisco Recreation and Parks, Glenda's harvesting trip around Stowe Lake was bountiful and she found just the right flax (harakeke).

Our April 2011 artist-in-residence is Carmen Lomas Garza, a local artist renowned for evocative depictions of her childhood in a South Texas Mexican-American community. Her pieces, filled with traditions, memories and anecdotes and reflective of daily life and a sense of communal identity and shared pride, are filled with a cultural joy and incredibly personal in their perspective. Viewers are able to engage with her art no matter his or her background and, as you become captivated by their warmth, the layered narratives, and the rich use of color, you will find yourself suddenly privy to a world of details that serve to educate and inform about the Mexican-American experience.  Her works are filled with traditions, memories, and anecdotes. 

Martin Morububuna and Purago Marabe completed their one-month-long residency in the Kimball Artist Studio on November 1, 2009.

Martin created a vibrant mural showing Papua New Guinea as a panoramic collective of plants, animals, houses, boats, people and their bilas. Bilas is a word in Melanesian Tok Pisin that refers to the array of headdresses, necklaces, belts, armbands, and aprons that people use to adorn themselves for dance and ceremony. The mural expresses Martin’s wish for all people to honor the past and keep traditional values strong.