This proposal seeks to establish an Environmental Artist Residency at Drexel University. The program would engage Drexel’s strategic priorities to foster experiential learning, cross-disciplinary collaboration among faculty, develop community partnerships, and raise awareness about climate related issues.
A pilot project for the first year with an existing Drexel community member would establish an administrative framework and provide a test-case for developing a larger, ongoing artist residency program with nationally recognized artists.
For an applied arts and industry facing school such as Drexel, an artist residency program would provide unique opportunities for students, faculty, and the University at large. Artists have the unique ability to bring together a range of interdisciplinary approaches, facilitate creative thinking, and communicate problems and solutions to a broad and diverse audience.
The residency would build on existing models from a range of academic institutions including Pratt, Stanford, and Towson University. Each of these programs highlight goals which are also central to Drexel’s mission, including civic engagement initiatives and interdisciplinary collaboration.
The pilot residency would be led by interdisciplinary artist and educator Talia Greene and would focus on developing her current project: a river of woven wires salvaged from e-waste. The residency would enable Drexel faculty and students to work with Greene to develop this project at its inception, contributing historical, scientific, and design research, as well as working with Greene to develop a Philadelphia-based performance around the piece.
Greene has also been in conversation with Bay Area composer Anne Hege to incorporate the river of wires into Hege’s third opera (a story with many overlapping themes) and participation in this pilot program would give Drexel community members the opportunity to contribute to future stages of the project as it expands beyond Philadelphia and Drexel.
An existing community partner for the project is the social and environmental non-profit, People Advancing Reintegration - Recycle Works, which has been a resource for the collection of e-waste for the project. This project could help to establish a greater connection between this important organization, and other related Drexel initiatives.
Project oversight will be provided by faculty members Diana Nicholas (Director of MS Design Research, Coordinator for Sustainability in the Built Environment Minor), Mira Olson (Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering) and Steve Vásquez Dolph (Department of Global Studies and Modern Languages and Principal Investigator for the Climate Pedagogy Incubator)
The project could engage the following departments through consecutive studio-based co-ops or other integrated academic or civic engagement experiences:
Fashion/Product Design: Use of knitting machine, development of wearable sculptures from recycled wires
Music/Digital Media: Experimentation with developing playable, interactive sound component for wires
Dance: Development of movement/choreography around a set of themes
Environmental Science and Public Health: Contributing research around rivers related to toxicity/pollution and health impacts with a specific focus on women’s health
Gender Studies: Contributing research on stories of rivers, rivers as networks, rivers and women’s labor, cyborg bodies, and Feminist/Post-humanist connections to water
Writer’s Room: Developing related writing workshops around a set of related themes
Talia Greene is a project-based artist, curator, adjunct professor and participant in Drexel’s Climate Pedagogy Incubator. Greene has been an Adjunct Professor at Drexel since 2006 and has taught graduate and undergraduate courses at University of the Arts, Tyler School of Art, and University of Delaware. A student project from her recent graduate course, Research Based Exhibits, led to an exhibition at Drexel’s Pearlstein Gallery this Summer through the gallery’s call for entries exhibition program.
For the last decade, Greene’s artistic practice has focused on large-scale, research-based site responsive projects. She has been an artist in residence at several historic homes and at the biotech company Integral Molecular at the Science Center in Philadelphia. She received a Percent for Art commission to create and interactive mural and app, Charting a Path to Resistance, which is on permanent display at the Philadelphia City Archives.
In 2024, she received a number of grants, including from the California Council on the Arts, for a site-specific performance on an unprotected green space in East Los Angeles which she curated. Greene has also received grants from the Independence Foundation, Center for Emerging Visual Artists, and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and has shown her work in group shows across the country.
Mary Mattingly was a civic engagement fellow at Pratt from 2022-2024. The fellowship brings an established, community engaged artist to campus to create interdisciplinary collaborations at the school and develop connections with external communities and organizations. Responsibilities of the fellowship include teaching and developing programming. As part of her Fellowship, she created a Lending Library (left image below) composed of artifacts from her studio in a building on Governor’s Island.
https://www.pratt.edu/art/fine-arts/civic-engagement-fellowship/civic-engagement-series-2022-24/
The Stanford Visiting Artist Fund brings nationally renowned artists to campus for a full school year. Artists are hosted by specific departments at the University. Their opportunities and responsibilities are variable and can include teaching, creating programs, exhibitions of their work, and developing projects in collaboration with a Stanford researcher. In 2022-23, Jean Shin worked with a lab in the medical school and researchers in Kenya to create two sculptures composed of single-use plastics (sculpture in Kenya below). Shin also gave a guest lecture, led student workshops to prototype the sculpture, and participated in public events showcasing the work and process.
https://arts.stanford.edu/office-of-the-vice-president-for-the-arts/visiting-artist-fund/jean-shin/
Stacey Levy collaborated with an interdisciplinary group of researchers and students at Towson University for two years, creating a watershed map composed of recycled jars filled with water from Chesapeake Bay tributaries. Her project (image below) brought together biology and art history students who helped collect and test water for pollution and salinity. Participating students also learned to read USGS maps in order to locate tributaries.
https://www.towson.edu/news/2020/collected-watershed-exhibition-stacy-levy.html