We recently had artist AnitaSpaeth on campus, participating in our Artist in Residence program.
Anita is an interdisciplinary artist whose creative process incorporates research, poetry, printmaking, photography, and book arts. Throughout their creative process Anita explores the magic of everyday encounters with the natural world in order to embrace curiosity, wonder, and uncertainty. Their work is concerned with challenging binaries as they arise in anthropocentric thinking and environmental philosophy, particularly in regards to notions of the human/nature divide. Anita is currently a graduate student in Environmental Arts & Humanities at Oregon State University, where they are also a fellow of the Art & Science Student Fellowship. Anita has also worked in an administrative and educational capacity with Whiteaker Printmakers (OR), OMSI (OR), and other non-profit organizations. Anita has been a recipient of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Arts grant via PICA Precipice Fund (2015-2016), and is a co-founder of Mad Aura Press (MAP).
She shares about her work with students attending our School Overnight Program in the Q&A below.
What art medium(s) do you specialize in?
I use a few mediums. Photography, printmaking and book arts are the main ones. But place based sensory engagement is kind of a medium that I’m trying to argue towards in a lot of ways, which is just like being on site, engaging with the space in a way that like ignites your curiosity. This feels like a medium to me.
What draws you to those mediums?
I really enjoy printmaking, book arts and photography because I really enjoy the history of the distribution of information. Like how do people, cities, communities, distribute or proliferate their ideas. And there have just been these really incredible points throughout human history where, due to oppressive structures, folks were illiterate and so those people did printmaking or photography. And those sorts of mediums were able to reach an intentionally oppressed body of people. And so I think it can be really important to continue to use those mediums for that same reason, both in celebrating their purpose before and what they can continue to do in the distribution of information and knowledge. And they can be so gorgeous and minimalist sometimes. That’s a style I really enjoy. And then in terms of place based, sensory engagement, I think that’s something like that I learned at IslandWood. It’s just really important to get to know a space through these haptic means (relating to a sense of touch). So you develop those connections, you touch the things that you ultimately are trying to enact care towards or stewardship towards. And I think importantly it also points to the necessity to slow down and care for the place that you’re at.
How does nature inspire your work?
With pressing contemporary environmental issues straining social relations, art holds special significance as means for both social collaboration and interdisciplinary problem solving. By bringing environmental philosophy and art into dialogue, my work holds necessary space for uncertainty and wonder.
What do you hope students in the School Overnight Program take away from their experience with art, and with you?
I hope that children take away feeling like their particular mode of engagement with a space is valuable. Not in the economic way, but that if they learn best or enjoy a space best by just listening quietly, that it is felt as important, or if they need to rip up leaves while they’re sitting on the ground, that that is also important. That’s my thought with the nature journal – presenting all these options for engagement with a space that can speak to them in all these ways that work for them. I’m thinking about having ADHD and fidgeting or drawing in class for so many years was really looked down upon. I want them to feel good about themselves in a space with however they need to engage with that space to ignite their curiosity and awe and wonder.
Nature journaling at Mac’s Pond!
Learn More
Want to know more about the Artist in Residence program? Check it out here.
Want to help support the program? Thank you and please reach out to [email protected]!
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