ARTIST STATEMENT: Embodied Ecologies is a collaborative, group installation focused on disability, environmental health, and community care practices in Salt Lake City. Rooted in a partnership between Art Access and the Environmental Humanities graduate program at the University of Utah, Embodied Ecologies brings together the work of fourteen local artists working in a wide variety of mediums including sculpture, poetry, textile, paint, film, printmaking, and mixed media. The installation foregrounds accessible communication across ability, with the larger goal of sparking change-making conversations within the Salt Lake Community.
ARTIST BIO:
Evangaline Amadu is a Utah based fine artist, working with acrylic and watercolor mediums primarily of surreal landscapes. Themes of history, botany, philosophy and theology are their primary creative influences.
Stephanie Choi is a poet whose work appears or is forthcoming in Bellevue Literary Review, The Cortland Review, Electric Literature, Poetry Northwest and elsewhere. She’s received scholarships from the Bread Loaf Environmental Writers Conference and the Fine Arts Works Center. She is pursuing her Masters in Fine Arts at the University of Utah.
Mālia Malae-Godinet is a queer disabled Sāmoan interdisciplinary artist passionate about challenging how we approach, perceive, and intake art and how we define what an artist is. Mālia is eager to generate conversation and create counter-narratives surrounding what it is to be disabled, specifically within artistic space.
Victoria Meza is an indigenous artist with heritage from Peru, the Navajo Nation, and Assiniboine-Sioux tribe. Many of her influences come from her cultural heritage, and her work celebrates that heritage. In addition, her work explores the confusion of navigating different cultures and embracing what it means to grow on one's own terms. With her background in psychology and behavioral health, she is passionate about amplifying conversations about mental health and overcoming generational trauma. She is excited to continue to engage with challenging ideas and evolve her art practice through collaborating with others.
Michelle Wentling grew up in rural Northeast Ohio where her family has worked in the rail and steel industries. In 2018 she moved to Salt Lake City to study at the University of Utah. She has a background in Environmental Humanities and is interested in the connections between craft, ecology, and community. In addition to making art, she enjoys walking, baking, bike riding, and playing trumpet. Michelle currently works in Development at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art and is learning how to weave on a Macomber loom passed down from her late grandmother Maxine.
Contributing Artists:
Madeline Bavley is a queer ecologist currently residing in Salt Lake City, Utah. Through agricultural and artistic work, Madeleine co-creates with her human, faunal, floral, and fungal community. All of her work is aimed at advocacy and appreciation for these earthly delights.
Chanté Burch is a multidisciplinary artist and designer, born and raised in Salt Lake City. They are currently attending the University of Utah. Their practice mainly consists of digital or performance-based work in mediums such as web, sonics, motion graphics, and dance. Recently branching their practice to include physical making, they typically include technology in their work. Research and experimentation are the foundations of their practice. They seek to create simple yet impactful work from ephemeral or intangible phenomena.
Bryn Burningham is a printmaker, poet, book, and fiber artist based in Utah. She is trained as a fine artist and printmaker, first at Snow College then at Utah State University. The eldest of nine children, she volunteers at her town’s fire department along with three of her brothers, her dad, and one of her sisters. She spends much of her free time in the house she grew up in, though she dearly loves her own home with the pink-tiled kitchen and various plants growing in every window. She strives to do better by nature both in her life and artwork.
Laurie Larson is motivated by the fit and shape of designed objects with bodies. She is inspired to imagine small-scale worldings that reevaluate human needs and how we can fill these needs in ways that are not only neutral to the environment and other species but in ways that are additive. Aesthetically, Laurie is driven by her own biophilia/phobia and is interested in natural motifs and forms that express both the beauty of organisms and the self-organization of material, and the tremendous horror of organic matter. Laurie’s fixation on the biological is beginning to extend beyond aesthetics, and she is enticed by the thought of non-human collaborators and involving life’s self-organization in the creation of artwork. Currently pursuing her Master of Architecture at the University of Utah, Laurie has shifted focus from the animation and media arts she studied in her undergraduate career to focus on design. She aims to pull this education into her artistic practice and hopes to contribute to work being done in empathetic, resilient, sustainable, and humble design.
Erin Meager is ever-learning to live/love her identity as a disabled/human. In her storied life, art-making has been one of the few constants. When no one listens, art has heard. For Erin, art has given voice to all that feels unspeakable and unspoken. Consistently forced to reinvent how to sustain herself, Erin has often lived on the gratitude she feels creatively embodying the spirit we all carry tucked inside. Erin’s art mediums have shifted to encompass whatever resources and (in)stability allow her to access, and so in a sense, disability expands Erin’s artistic range even as it limits her other material choices.
Sylvia Ohara is a self-taught mixed media artist. Sylvia has always found interest and beauty in the overlooked objects of life. She repurposes found, recycled, and nature-made objects into art and jewelry. Her gather and curate approach began as a child in rural Utah, where she was free to explore and create with collected items. As an adult, her work is influenced by nature, industrial landscapes, and the details of everyday objects. Sylvia loves transforming reclaimed materials into something new and allowing for a different perspective of a familiar object. Her work began as an outlet to cope with physical and mental health challenges but grew to a means to communicate her perspectives about change and ability. She explores themes involving strength, vulnerability, metamorphosis, contradiction, and erosion. She works with various materials ranging from textiles, paper, stone, glass, and steel. Her work is minimal yet bold, creating strong statement pieces that yield permission to deviate from the normal.
Kristen Vardanega is an artist, illustrator, and cancer survivor living in Salt Lake City. Inspired by illustrated books and naturalist field guides, Kristen has kept a sketchbook of observational drawings since childhood. Her work lands in the intersection of nature and narrative: most recently a series of gouache paintings from photographs and memories of time spent outdoors. She is inspired by vintage scientific illustration, zines, tarot cards, graphic novels, block printing, bugs, birds, Swedish textiles, and ornate cowboy boots. One day she’d like to be a combination of John James Audubon, Carson Ellis, Eric Carle, Hilma Af Klint, and Mary Oliver. Kristen makes art under the moniker Little Tiny Egg, their work can be found at littletinyegg.com
Facilitators/ Filmmakers:
Stan Clawson is a Salt Lake City-based filmmaker with nearly 20 years of production experience. He owns his own freelance production company and is currently working on a documentary series. He is also an adjunct film instructor at Salt Lake Community College, with over 10 years of teaching experience. In addition to filmmaking, Stan is also heavily involved in the disability community as a speaker and consultant. He currently works as Community Education Facilitator at Art Access, which involves training cultural institutions on disability-related topics. As an individual with a spinal cord injury, Stan has 26 years of practical experience navigating the world of disability. He has worked as a disability consultant for The Salt Lake Organizing Committee and Sundance Film Festival. Stan’s other interests include hand-cycling, scuba diving, and creating art in the form of painting and illustration.
Natalie Slater is a graduate student in the Environmental Humanities program at the University of Utah and the primary coordinator of the Embodied Ecologies project. Natalie is an artist and filmmaker, cares deeply about environmental justice, and experiences ongoing back and spinal difficulties that shape the way she moves through the world and relates to natural spaces. When not working on art or school, you might find Natalie cooking with friends, watching old movies, or wrenching on a mechanics project at the SLC Bicycle Collective.
