STONELEAF RETREAT

2021 ARTISTS-IN-RESIDENCE

STONELEAF RETREAT is excited to announce its 2021 artists-in-residence; Liz Collins, Megan Cotts, Joy Curtis, Dana Robinson, The Next Epoch Seed Library (Ellie Irons and Anne Percoco) and Betty Yu. Next month, we will also announce an additional 2021 family residency, an exciting partnership and further STONELEAF alumni programming.

Sonia Louise Davis, Nene Aïssatou Diallo, Liz Irkiko, Langdon Graves, Qinza Najm and Carolyn Salas have all chosen to defer their residencies to 2022. You can read more about them here and we can’t wait to finally welcome them to STONELEAF next year.

We are growing our womxn-focused artist residency program to include more artists with children. STONELEAF is a supportive and regenerative space that welcomes mothers/parents/caregivers/children/partners to be together, or alone, in the studio and in nature. 

Please save the dates for a solo show by Dana Robinson on Memorial Day weekend, and the second edition of UPSTATE ART WEEKEND, taking place August 27-29, 2021. More information coming shortly.

STONELEAF would like to extend a special thank you to Sarah Arison, Alyson Baker, Christopher Carter, Candice Madey, New York Foundation of the Arts (NYFA), Tracey Robertson Carter, River Valley Arts Collective and The Wege Foundation for their continued and much valued support. 

STONELEAF has provided a home, exhibition space and support for womxn artists since 2017. Please consider making a tax-deductible donation to STONELEAF, made possible by our fiscal sponsor NYFA, to strengthen our support of artists, especially those with children.

2021 Solo Residencies: Joy Curtis (in partnership with River Valley Arts Collective), Dana Robinson and Betty Yu.

2021 Family Residencies: Liz Collins (2018 STONELEAF Alum), Megan Cotts and The Next Epoch Seed Library (Ellie Irons and Anne Percoco).

2022 Residencies: Sonia Louise Davis, Nene Aïssatou Diallo, Liz Irkiko, Langdon Graves, Qinza Najm and Carolyn Salas.

2021 ARTISTS-IN-RESIDENCE BIOS & STATEMENTS (in alphabetical order)

LIZ COLLINS works fluidly between art and design, with emphasis and expertise in textile media. Liz’s solo exhibitions have been presented in New York City at Museum of Arts and Design, LMAK, Heller, and BGSQD, and at NADA, Collective, and Spring Break art fairs; and at the Tang Museum (Saratoga Springs, NY), AMP (Provincetown, MA), Knoxville Museum of Art (TN), Gallery DLUL (Ljubljana), and Rossana Orlandi (Milan); and has been included in group exhibitions in New York City at Leslie Lohman Museum, Museum of FIT, New Museum, MoMA, the Drawing Center, BRIC, Smackmellon, Asya Geisberg, Sargent’s Daughters, R & Company; as well as at September Gallery (Hudson, NY), NoLAB ( Istanbul), Kristin Hjellegjerde (Berlin), Luis de Jesus Los Angeles & LAMAG (LA), and Addison Gallery (Andover, MA). Collins’ honors include a USA Fellowship, a MacColl Johnson Fellowship, Foundation for Contemporary Arts & ArtistRelief grants, Drawing Center Open Sessions and residencies at Siena Art Institute, MacDowell, Yaddo, Haystack, Museum of Arts and Design, Stoneleaf, and currently at the Two Trees Cultural Subsidy Studio Program in Brooklyn. Collins is a Queer Art Mentor, and is on the Exhibitions Committee at Leslie Lohman Museum. In 2020, The Tang Museum released Liz Collins Energy Field, her first major publication.

I am an artist who uses textile and fiber in conjunction with hard materials (metal and wood) and other media (video, furniture ) to build artworks that range from small needlepoints to multi-room immersive installations that are containers for my multi faceted artworks, and function as social spaces. Collaboration, travel, and industrial production- one or all- are usually part of what I do to actualize the work, from working with Italian textile mills to fabricate my pieces to using the act of curation as a method of space transformation and community engagement. Dynamic pattern, vivid color and sensual materials are the primary ingredients with which I channel my very life force through my hands into this ongoing and ever evolving vision. My ideas are informed by historical art and design movements such as Op and Pop Art, Arte Povera, and Memphis Design, as well as nature and spirit, and infused with my own queer and feminist sensibilities. www.lizcollins.com | @lizzycollins7

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 

JOY CURTIS was born in Valparaiso, Indiana, and lives and works in Brooklyn, NY, since 2002. She received her MFA in sculpture from Ohio University in 2002. She is represented by Klaus von Nichtssagend, New York, NY, where she has had 5 solo shows. Recent exhibitions include: With Every Fiber, Pelham Art Center; Cult of the Crimson Queen, Ceysson and Bénétière; Found Outside at the Aldrich Museum (CT); Weight Over Time, T.S.A (Brooklyn); The Working Title, The Bronx River Art Center; Tensile Strength, ZieherSmith; Object ‘Hood, Leslie Heller; Eternal Return, Nurture Art; The Finishers, The Wassaic Project (NY); and Greater Brooklyn, CRG. Curtis is the recipient of fellowships from Socrates Sculpture Park and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and an award from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. Her work has been reviewed in the New Yorker, Hyperallergic, Artcritical, and Saatchi Online, and featured on Gorky’s Granddaughter and James Kalm’s Rough Cut video blogs.

One summer, I revived an old interest and made a giant batik on my roof. It was so fun and compelling I continued to follow the course of the cloth by exploring natural dyes, starting with indigo, along with resist techniques. I love to set the dying process into motion and see the color and pattern that is revealed. While I choose the dye color, it always has a way of being slightly illusive and subtly surprising.

Exploring cloth as a primary medium has opened a view into shared histories and differing values. Cloth can be a starting point for reflecting on the numinous and ironically, that which is beyond the material. It is a site of symbolic communications and colonial injustices. For me cloth becomes a site to examine history, to recalibrate ways of being and to imagine better ecologies. By continuing to express with cloth, I alter one strand of the course of its history and am instrumental in creating new meanings. www.joycurtisartist.com | @joyecurtis

DANA ROBINSON earned a BFA in Design from Florida State University in 2012 and her MFA in Fine Arts from the School of Visual Arts in New York in 2019. Robinson has exhibited her work in the US and  internationally and it has been featured in New York Magazine’s Vulture, VICE, and It's Nice That. Her work has been exhibited at Beverly’s, Field Projects Gallery, Gloria’s Project Space, The Ace Hotel and the Wassaic Project, all of which are in New York, and also at the Amsterdam Flag Project; Amsterdam, Co-Lab Projects; Texas, Material Art Fair; Mexico City and Untitled Art Fair; Miami. In 2021 solo shows are planned at Selenas Mountain; New York, Specialist Gallery; Seattle and Stoneleaf Retreat; New York. She will be an artist-in-residence at Stoneleaf Retreat in 2021 and at the Wassaic Project in 2022.

I am a multidisciplinary artist addressing the topics of youth, black female identity, ownership and nostalgia through combining, reproducing and destroying vintage Black media. 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.

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

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

Founded in January 2015 by artists Ellie Irons and Anne Percoco, the Next Epoch Seed Library (NESL) reimagines the conventional seed bank for an era defined by the massive ecological impacts of capitalism and resource extraction. Rather than focusing on utility or agricultural heritage, we champion adaptable, weedy plants who have co-evolved with dense human populations. These plants are our indispensable companions as we inhabit novel ecosystems and journey through climate chaos together. 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 move plants from the background to the foreground of 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 living and working on Mohican land in Troy, New York. Working across media, from watercolor to re-wilding experiments, her practice combines socially engaged art, ecology fieldwork, and embodied learning. Recent work involves collaborations focused on spontaneous urban plants (aka weeds), including co-founding the Next Epoch Seed Library and the Environmental Performance Agency. Irons received a BA from Scripps College in Los Angeles and an MFA from Hunter College, NY. She is currently a PhD candidate in arts practice Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, researching forms of artistic practice that cultivate multispecies solidarity and ecological justice. She has participated in recent exhibitions focused on environmental art and activism, including The Department of Human and Natural Services at NURTUREArt, Ecological Consciousness: Artist as Instigator at Wave Hill, and Unsettled Nature: Artists Reflect on the Age of Humans at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. Her work has been covered by publications ranging from Art in America to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. @elslaurel

ANNE PERCOCO: Jersey City based artist Anne Percocostudies 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 is a multimedia artist, photographer, filmmaker 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 of Chinatown Art Brigade, a cultural collective using art to advance anti-gentrification organizing. Ms. Yu has been awarded artist residencies and fellowships from the Laundromat Project, A Blade of Grass, International Studio & Curatorial Program, Intercultural Leadership Institute, Asian American Arts Alliance, and Santa Fe Art Institute. Her work has been presented at the Directors Guild of America, Brooklyn Museum, Margaret Mead Film and Video Festival, Tribeca Film Festival's Interactive Showcase, Queens Museum, the 2019 BRIC Biennial; Old Stone House, Squeaky Wheel Film and Media Art Center 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, a MFA in Integrated Media Arts from Hunter College and an International Center Photography New Media Narratives One Year Certificate. Ms. Yu teaches video, social practice, art and activism at Pratt Institute, John Jay College, and The New School, in addition she has over 20 years of community, media justice, and labor organizing work. In the Fall 2020, Betty had her curatorial debut as she presented Imagining De-Gentrified Futures, an exhibition that featured artists of color, activists and others along with her own work at Apex Art in Tribeca, NYC. Betty sits on the boards of Third World Newsreel and Working Films; and on the advisory board of More Art.

I am a socially engaged multimedia artist, filmmaker, photographer, educator and activist born and raised in NYC to Chinese immigrant parents. My interdisciplinary multimedia work integrates documentary film, photography, collage, installation,  large-scale projections, new media platforms and community-infused approaches into my practice. I approach art and social justice issues through my own personal lens, family narrative and community’s history. My artistic practice is rooted in my own identity as a Chinese-American woman who is a daughter of immigrant garment workers, driven by social justice principles. I draw inspiration from my family’s experience with immigration, displacement, labor exploitation and anti-Asian racism in the U.S. My work highlights personal stories that provide a portal into our collective narrative and our community’s search for justice, belonging and dignity. The themes of urban gentrification, the immigrant experience, racial injustice, labor rights, transgender equality and anti-militarism are interwoven throughout my work. www.bettyyu.net | @bettyyu21