STONELEAF RETREAT

Update, May 4, 2020: Postponement of Residency Program to 2021 due to COVID-19

It's with a heavy heart that we announce due to ongoing concerns and uncertainty regarding the COVID-19 virus, we have made the difficult decision to postpone this year's residency to 2021. This final decision was made ultimately out of concern for everyone's health and safety.

We have invited all 2020 chosen artists and families to participate in the residency program next year and hope they will all be able to join us at STONELEAF when we are all able to travel and be together. In the meantime, please follow @stoneleafretreat to stay connected with these artists and the rest of our #stoneleafalumni.

Announcing 2020 STONELEAF RETREAT Artists-in-Residence & New Family Residency Participants

STONELEAF RETREAT is excited to announce its 2020 Artists-in-Residence; Megan Cotts, Sonia Louise Davis, Nene Aïssatou Diallo, Langdon Graves, Liz Ikiriko, Qinza Najm, Dana Robinson, Tiffany Saint-Bunny and Betty Yu. We are also proud to announce the participants of our two new family residencies’; Carolyn Salas and The Next Epoch Seed Library (Ellie Irons and Anne Percoco). 

This group of creative women, with diverse practices, explore a range of topics including growth, immigration, the body, restrictions, race, identity, mysticism and connectivity. 

We, at STONELEAF, have been thinking about the power of storytelling and the way it can unite us and enrich understanding through personal histories, which influenced our choice in this years’ artists. 

2020 ARTISTS-IN-RESIDENCE BIOS & STATEMENTS (in alphabetical order)

MEGAN COTTS earned an MFA from California Institute of the Arts in 2009 and an MA from Sarah Lawrence College in 2002.  She has exhibited her solo work at Klowden Mann, Dan Graham and Compact Space in Los Angeles, Junior Projects, False Flag, AIR Gallery, and New Release in New York, TSA in Brooklyn, I-A-M Gallery and Atelierhof Kreuzberg in Berlin, Germany, and SIA Gallery in Sheffield, England. She has participated in the Elizabeth Murray Artist Residency in New York, Terra Summer Residency in Giverny, France, the Vermont Studio Center, and the GlogauAIR Artist in Residence Program in Berlin, Germany. Cotts has also performed and exhibited with D3 at Machine Project and Human Resources in Los Angeles, and CCS Gallery at UC Santa Barbara.  She currently lives with her husband, two children and a one-eyed cat in Los Angeles, California.

The architecture of the body is a site of multi-generational consciousness.  My work seeks to provide a context for framing that space and to use surface and color to recall “lost memory,” nostalgia for a visited or “remembered” space.  Using sculpture and painting together, wooden architectures that are both obscured and enhanced by fabric, my work investigates how genetic recollection occupies the body.  I aligned my practice to physically recreate the objects and actions of my ancestors using a combination of historical and modern materials.  My work participates in the collective of time and space where knowledge lost and rediscovered and is always on a continuum.  I am reliant on those who came before, those who support me and those who I will affect with my practice. www.megancotts.com | @megan-cotts 

SONIA LOUISE DAVIS: Born and raised in New York City, Sonia Louise Davis engages improvisation across installation, performance and writing. She has performed at the Whitney Museum of American Art and published in Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory. Recent fellowships include the New York Community Trust Van Lier Residency at the International Studio & Curatorial Program in Brooklyn and Civitella Ranieri in Umbertide Italy. Currently, she is an LMCC Workspace artist in residence, with visiting artist status at Harvestworks. An honors graduate of Wesleyan University (BA, African American Studies, 2010) and an alumna of the Whitney Independent Study Program (2015-2016), Sonia lives in Harlem.  

My physical objects/environments, performances and experimental texts are grounded in Black studies and informed by my training as a jazz vocalist. I bring my sensibilities as an improviser to a range of material explorations, including works on paper, fabric and found objects, as well as durational live events that feature voice, breath, and gesture. Holding on to its vernacular meaning, improvising is a way of making do with what you’ve got, pulling from the resources of your past experiences to generate something fresh and unforeseen in the present moment. It’s about trust in self. It’s my methodology, and guides the way I listen in the studio as well as my active engagement with the outside world. www.sonialouisedavis.com | @sonia_louise_davis 

NENE AÏSSATOU DIALLO: Nene Aïssatou Diallo is an interdisciplinary artist based in Newark, NJ whose work is centered around photography, video, African textiles, and collage. As an immigrant to the United States, she works to define home, to address the politics that are inherent in her identity, and to resist legacies of erasure, silence, and violence. She has exhibited throughout the United States and holds a B.A. in Visual Media and Arts Practices, as well as Women, Gender, and Sexualities Studies from the University of Richmond.   

This March will mark the 14th year since I immigrated from Guinea to the United States with my family. As a Black woman, an immigrant, an american, my work deals with addressing the construction of these identities. With collage, photography, and video, I work through the tension and displacement that is inherent with immigration. I find it necessary to preserve the memories and imaginations of home by working primarily with images that reference those locations (Guinea, Senegal, Newark), my family archive, and media representations of blackness. Currently, I am collaging found items and photographs I’ve taken in Guinea with images of spaces in Newark, in an effort to layer the histories and locations that I call home, and that claim my blackness in their own ways. www.nenediallo.com | @neneaisha 

LANGDON GRAVES: Langdon Graves is a Virginia-born, New York-based artist who holds a BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in Painting and Printmaking and an MFA from Parsons School of Design.  She is adjunct faculty at Parsons School of Design, a Visiting Professor at Pratt Institute and works with teen artists across NYC’s public schools through Studio in a School.  Langdon is represented by Victori + Mo in New York and has had solo exhibitions in New York, Florida, Virginia, Arkansas, and Massachusetts and has participated in group shows throughout the United States, Europe and Australia.  Langdon has attended the Fountainhead Residency in Miami, the Kunstenaarsinitiatief Residency and Exhibition Program in the Netherlands, the Object Limited residency in Bisbee, Arizona and is a recipient of Canson & Beautiful Decay’s Wet Paint Grant.  Langdon’s work has been featured in Art in America, VICE, Juxtapoz, Art F City, Blouin Artinfo, Art News, Hyperallergic and Madeline Schwartzman’s See Yourself X. 

My drawings, sculptures and installations center around storytelling and belief. Over the last few years, I’ve been inspired to work from descriptions of supernatural experiences shared with me by my grandmother, partly for the details but more for the bond that forms when people - especially women - share a vulnerable, personal story. Ghost encounters, spiritual experiences and stories with aspects of mysticism and the occult tend to push us towards the edges of our perspective. They spark questions and fears about death and the unknown, whether our beliefs will be accepted by others, and test our understanding of our own beliefs. www.langdongraves.com | @laaang

LIZ IKIRIKO: Liz Ikiriko (Toronto) is a biracial Nigerian Canadian artist, independent curator, and photo editor. Her work as a researcher, teacher, maker and mother informs her practice which is focused on African and diasporic narratives. She is committed to the creation of embodied experiences that utilize accessible platforms to share moments of vulnerability and care for all of us on the margins. Ikiriko was a selected artist for the BUSH Gallery Summer Institute hosted at Plug In ICA in Winnipeg (2018), and her solo exhibition - Flags of Unsung Countries (2019) has shown at the Dunlop Art Gallery in Regina, SK and the Art Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba, Brandon. She has worked with the CONTACT Photography Festival, CAP Prize for Contemporary African Photography, Wedge Curatorial Projects and her writing has appeared in Public Journal, MICE Magazine, C Magazine and Akimbo. She holds an MFA in Criticism and Curatorial Practice from OCAD University (2019).  

My practice is anchored by thinking, making, writing and curating on lens-based media that explores migration and corporeal archives for marginalized and hybridized people. I am drawn to exploring and exposing hidden processes in order to create projects that draw from obscured histories that can be woven to new ceremonies of remembering. Motivated by the natural world I use tactile materials to actively bring bodies into relation with one another. www.lizikiriko.com | @lizikiriko 

QINZA NAJM: Qinza Najm is a Pakistani-American artist, based in New York. She has exhibited at venues including the Queens Museum (Queens, NY), Christie’s Art (Dubai), Art Basel (Miami, FL), Karachi Biennale (Pakistan), Western Exhibitions Gallery (Chicago) Museum of the Moving Image (Queens, NY), and the National Museum of Beijing (China). Her work has been featured in ArtNet News, the Huffington Post, the NY Daily News, International Business Week, Buzzfeed, and Upworthy. Najm pursued her fine arts studies at The Art Students League of New York, where she studied under the mentorship of Larry Poons. She completed her Psychology PhD at Tennessee State University. Her upbringing in Lahore, Pakistan, adulthood in the United States, and intense training in Psychology inform her paintings, performance and installation work related to gender, politics, and (em)-powerment.  

I am interested in the body as both medium and subject—the circumstances surrounding its physical occupation of space, the norms and laws that govern bodies as political subjects, and the uneven burden these norms often place on women and minorities. Drawing from my upbringing in Lahore, Pakistan, and adulthood in the United States, my sculptures, installations, and performances address gender, politics, and cultural power. I often use motifs of bodies stretched, deconstructed, distorted, and pushed beyond their limits. A manipulated body is a reflection of how power is exerted on our being. However, I am more interested in the depiction of human potential—an extended body claims space beyond its expected role, both physically and figuratively. In particular, I aim to raise questions about how we might transcend and combat cultural stereotypes, prejudice, Islamophobia, and racist and sexist norms. www.qinzanajm.com | @qinza1 

DANA ROBINSON: Robinson has exhibited her work in the US and abroad, most recently in Mexico City with Beverly’s and Material Art Fair, Miami at Untitled, and ‘My Country ‘Tis of Thee” at HERE Art Center in New York. Her work has been written about in VICE, Ain’t Bad, Queen Mobs Teahouse, Kolaj Magazine, and Sarah Lawrence College’s Lumina Journal to name a few.  Robinson graduated from the School of Visual Arts with an MFA in Fine Art and is currently living and working in Brooklyn.  

I am a visual artist who addresses black female identity, black love and blackness. My visual language uses 70’s Ebony magazines as a source material. I select stylized advertisement images that highlight the idea of upward mobility and a growing black middle class. Employing a language of humor and relaxation, the work puts viewers at ease with its accessibility. This opens up complex spaces of laughter and irony, while retaining an empathetic quality. The familiarity of the work creates a homelike and inviting environment, communicating to viewers regardless of background that they are welcomed here: we are your friends and we understand you. As I rearrange these images into an airy, atomized spread of abstract and dispersed parts, I strip them of their original power to promote the consumption of the products. I hack the tools given to us to achieve personal fulfillment and aim to use my new tools to envision and map a future that preserves and honors black life. www.danarobinsonstudio.com | @alphabet_party 

TIFFANY SAINT-BUNNY: Tiffany St. Bunny is an artist activist whose practice is primarily centered around photography, videography, and site-based installations. Her work is community-oriented, with a focus on creating a lasting queer and trans visual archive. She currently resides in Oakland, CA where she splits her time between working within the trans justice movement and creating a body of work drawing from her experiences growing up poor, queer, and trans in the rural South/Southwest. She is the founder and editor in chief of Trucksluts Magazine, and co-founder of Eternal Return, an Oakland-based artist collective. Her work has been featured and reviewed in Hyperallergic, Paper Magazine, Autostraddle, Kerrang!, and El Pato Feo. She has shown her work at Tempt Fest, Hit Gallery, Momentum OKC, and Save Art Space Los Angeles. She holds a BA from Oklahoma State, and an MA from Indiana University.  

My work is heavily influenced by my experiences growing up in the 80s & 90s in rural Oklahoma, where it was not ok to be queer, it was not ok to be trans. The “compassionate” stance at that time was to say “If you’re gonna do that gay shit, do it where I can’t see it,” which translates to “This is our world, and you can’t be yourself if you want to exist in it.” This is a type of trauma that never ends, and it has resulted in a generational void-- a significant erasure of our shared queer herstory. This is the place from which my work emerges, and my intention is to capture and broadcast queer joy, trans bodies, and unhinged homosexuality in the very places that we’ve always been excluded. My main thematic vehicle is the sabotage of traditional symbols of patriarchy, masculinity, and manhood. In the images that I create, landscapes, ideas, and brands monopolized and weaponized by the straight, white, all-american man are wrenched from the security of their hegemonic grasp by hypergender(ed)(less) homos. The “Sacred Rural Masculine” is forcibly perverted, and the resultant decadent divinity is (re)claimed, paving a path towards a place of healing and beauty. www.tiffanysaintbunny.com | @zima_warrior_princess + www.truckslutsmag.com | @truckslutsmag

CAROLYN SALAS: Carolyn Salas earned a BFA in sculpture from the College of Santa Fe, NM and an MFA from Hunter College, NY.  She has attended residencies at the Abrons Art Center A.I.R. Space Program, The NARS Foundation, Blue Mountain Center, New York, NY; the Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, VT, Santa Fe Art Institute, Santa Fe, NM; and was a Chashama Studio Space recipient, and received an Elizabeth Foundation Studio Program/Space award. Recent exhibitions include, Mrs., Maspeth, NY, SPRING/BREAK Art Show, Koenig & Clinton and Brookfield Arts, New York, NY; Terrault Contemporary and Towson University, Baltimore, MD; Páramo Gallery, Guadalajara, México; Parisian Laundry, Montreal, Canada.    

Oscillating between abstraction and figuration my sculptures and site-specific installations explore the relationship between the body, architecture and language. Using a wide array of materials, including plaster, cement, ceramics, steel, found objects and fabric, I combine personal history and the material’s associations as frameworks to create totemic sculptures, collage, tapestries, and cast objects. Engaging the relational and associative possibilities embedded in medium, architecture, our bodies, self-hood, place, balance the weight of these ideas touch both on formal and sociological issues. Whether abstracted or representational the work explores conflicting expectations of womanhood, presenting feminine identity as a balancing act, precarious and full of contrasting possibilities.   www.carolynsalas.com | @carolyn.salas

THE NEXT EPOCH SEED LIBRARY (ELLIE IRONS & ANNE PERCOCO) *Family Residency

Founded in January 2015 by artists Ellie Irons and Anne Percoco, the Next Epoch Seed Library (NESL) reimagines the conventional seedbank for an era defined by massive human impact on the environment. Rather than focusing on utility or agricultural heritage, we champion adaptable, weedy plants who live near humans and are likely to form the base of novel ecosystems as we move through the sixth mass extinction. NESL spearheads a series of indoor and outdoor installations, public workshops and walks, curriculum materials, deep time seed storage experiments, and maintains the collection, which travels between exhibitions and is accessible by mail. We believe that reciprocal networks of plants and people can provide a solid foundation for building ecologically just communities. We work to overcome plant blindness in contemporary urban life by raising awareness of these weedy species and encouraging participants to engage with their local habitats. www.nextepochseedlibrary.com | #nextepochseedlibrary

Ellie Irons is an artist and educator based in Brooklyn and Troy, New York. She works in a variety of media, from video to workshops to re-wilding experiments, to reveal how human and more-than-human lives intertwine with other earth systems. Her recent work focuses on plants, people and urban ecosystems in the so-called Anthropocene. She is a cofounder of the Next Epoch Seed Library and the Environmental Performance Agency. Irons received her BA from Scripps College in Los Angeles and her MFA from Hunter College, CUNY in New York. She is currently completing a practice-based PhD at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, researching the intersection of socially engaged art and urban ecology.  @elslaurel 

Jersey City based artist Anne Percoco studies the interface between nature and culture, re-contextualizing overlooked places, plants, and materials. For the past 12 years she has produced public artworks, gallery exhibitions, workshops, web-based projects, and publications, both nationally and internationally. In 2015, she co-founded the Next Epoch Seed Library, a nomadic collection of the seeds of urban weeds, with Ellie Irons. After earning her M.F.A. from Rutgers University in 2008, she completed a fellowship with the Asian Cultural for research and production of new work in India. She has presented solo shows at Chitrakala Parishath College of Art (Bangalore, India) as well as NURTUREart and A.I.R. Gallery (both in Brooklyn), ArtBloc and Casa Colombo (both in Jersey City). Awards include a public sculpture commission from the Randall’s Island Park Alliance in NYC, the Bronx Museum’s Artist-In-the-Marketplace Program, and the Foundation for Contemporary Art’s Emergency Grant. She has exhibited nationally at venues such as the Anchorage Museum (Alaska), Wave Hill (Bronx, NY), the Queens Museum (Queens, NY), and the U.S. Botanical Garden (Washington D.C.) and internationally in India, Italy, Germany, Chile, the Netherlands, and Estonia. @annepercoco   

BETTY YU: Betty Yu is a multimedia artist, filmmaker, educator, and activist born and raised in NYC to Chinese immigrant parents. Ms. Yu integrates documentary film, new media platforms, and community-infused approaches into her practice, and she is a co-founder Chinatown Art Brigade, a cultural collective using art to advance anti-gentrification organizing. Ms. Yu has been awarded artist residencies and Fellowships with institutions such as the Laundromat Project, International Studio & Curatorial Program, the Intercultural Leadership Institute, and SPACE at Ryder Farm. Her work has been presented at the Directors Guild of America, Brooklyn Museum, Queens Museum, Margaret Mead Film and Video Festival, Tribeca Film Festival's Interactive Showcase, The Eastman Kodak Museum, Apexart Gallery and the 2019 BRIC Biennial; and in 2018 she had a solo exhibition at Open Source Gallery in New York. In 2017 Ms. Yu won the Aronson Journalism for Social Justice Award for her film Three Tours about U.S. veterans returning home from war in Iraq, and their journey to overcome PTSD. She holds a BFA from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts and a MFA from Hunter College, and currently teaches video, social practice, art and activism at Pratt Institute, John Jay College, and The New School, in addition to 20 her years of community, media justice, and labor organizing work. 

I am a socially engaged multimedia artist integrating documentary film, new media platforms and community-infused approaches into my practice. My documentary and multi-media work is shaped and influenced by my direct experience as a daughter raised by garment worker immigrant parents in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. Upon arrival from Hong Kong over forty-five years ago, my parents toiled under sweatshop conditions. This upbringing undoubtedly formed who I am as an artist today. In my artwork, I approach social issues through my own personal lens, family narrative and community’s history. My work has explored issues ranging from housing equity, labor rights, immigrant justice, transgender equality and anti-militarism. In the last five years, I have developed personal and collectively driven cultural projects that address the displacement and gentrification in NYC through telling stories of those most impacted - immigrant, working class and communities of color. I have used a mix of creative approaches that include large scale projections, interactive mapping, story circles, video, photography, multimedia storytelling, placekeeping walks, augmented reality and other new media platforms. My site-specific multimedia art projects have addressed anti-gentrification in Manhattan’s Chinatown, Brooklyn’s Sunset Park and North Carolina’s Charlotte historically African American West End neighborhood. www.bettyyu.net | @bettyyu21