In Process | Open Studios @ The Watermill Center

Location: The Watermill Center

Address: 39 Watermill Towd Rd., Water Mill, NY 11976

Date: 11 Oct

ABOUT IN PROCESS

In Process @ The Watermill Center is our ongoing series of studio visits and open rehearsals that invite the community to gain unique insight into the creative process of our Artists-in-Residence, cultivating an understanding of how artists from across the globe develop new work.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

ELVIRA CLAYTON (She/Her), United States
Discipline: Multidisciplinary

Elvira Clayton’s art responds to the lives of people who lived under American slavery. She uncovers stories buried within slave auction notices, plantation records, and other slave-era documents to illuminate hidden historical memories. “Through this process, I am honoring my own enslaved ancestors,” Clayton says.

Working in installation, performance, assemblage sculpture, handcrafts, printmaking, and community-engaging projects, she considers her pieces ritualistic vessels holding stories of lost and forgotten people.

Her work has been exhibited in solo and group shows throughout the U.S. She is a 2023-2024 Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Workspace Resident, an A.I.R. Gallery Fellow, and Robert Blackburn Studio Immersion Fellow. Clayton has been an artist-in-residence at The Women’s Studio Workshop, Residency Unlimited, The Anderson Center, and Blue Mountain Center. 

Born in Lafayette, Louisiana, Clayton grew up in Houston, Texas, and currently lives in Harlem, New York City.

Project Description:
"Cotton and Rice"

The Cotton and Rice Project explores one of the largest recorded slave auctions in U.S. history by paying homage to the 436 people sold through the auction. Researching the project led me to a copy of one of the auction's original printed catalogs. It lists each person by name and numbers 1 through 436, the order they went onto the auction block. The listings included additional details such as their ages and assigned work (rice hand, cotton hand, house servant). This historical document has significantly informed my work.

Material language and process have been essential factors in creating the art pieces. Osnaburg, a fabric historically known as "slave cloth" and manufactured expressively for clothing enslaved people, is a primary medium I am using. Referencing the parallel histories between American quilting and slave labor, I am applying hand-quilting aesthetics. The pieces are embellished with hand-stitched and printed text taken directly from the auction catalog, images of enslaved people combined with images from my family history, and objects from the natural world.

ONE LANDSCAPE COLLECTIVE, United States
Discipline: Multidisciplinary

One LANDSCAPE is a not-for-profit conservation organization founded by landscape architect, Margie Ruddick in collaboration with composer and musicologist Martin Brody. ONE LANDSCAPE is a collective of performance and studio artists, scientists architects landscape architects, policy makers, entrepreneurs, and others working together with local communities to promote the conservation of wild landscapes and to shift the culture of conservation from one that objectifies nature to one that understands humans as integral to natural systems. 

To do this, ONE LANDSCAPE integrates science, art, policy and community to develop sustainable conservation road maps, both on the ground through the actual mapping of landscapes, and metaphorically reimagine conservation and preservation of wild landscapes all over the world. 

Our group residencies and workshops produce deep mapping that incorporate whole systems- ecologies, cultures, and economies, as well as visual sonic, and kinetic experiences.

We have begun to test these new ways of mapping in pilot projects in India and in the still unspoilt areas of Eastern Long Island.

Project Description:
The Napeague Collective

In our residency at the Watermill Center, the artists of the ONE LANDSCAPE collective will interpret the wild zones of Napeague in different media, giving expression to the regions ecological systems, culture, and history.  Landscape architect, Margie Ruddick, will make interpretive maps of the region. Tanya Marcuse will create photographs investigating the imperiled natural world in ornately constructed tableaux.  The sound artist, Callan Fish, will make an acoustic map and oral history of the region.  Choreographer Constantine Baecher will build new work inspired by the region’s waterways.  Julia Jänsh and Sutton Lynch will develop their collaboration on the impact of the regional fishing industry. The designer Cecil Howell will reimagine landscape maps in visual forms. The painter Vicky Colombet will create visual studies that explore the relationship of landscape and abstraction.  In this rich profusion of work, we aim to demonstrate ways to experience and sustain the ecology of Napeague’s wild landscapes.  Our work will be displayed in exhibitions and online, with the further aim of inspiring new conservation roadmaps.

SHELLEY NICOLE (She/Her), United States
Discipline: Music/Interdisciplinary

Shelley Nicole is a transformational healer using the power of love and the energetic magic of music to shift the world. She is a songwriter, vocalist, composer, actress and founder of Shelley Nicole’s blaKbüshe.  Shelley Nicole has released three albums, “she who bleeds…,” “The Quick & Dirty EP” and “I Am American.” Her music is forged from rock, funk and soul’s connective tissue, empowering women to reclaim their cultural identity and personal agency. 

Shelley Nicole has performed from London to Los Angeles and graced a myriad of stages including Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall and The Apollo Theater.  As a featured member/conductor of Burnt Sugar the Arkestra Chamber, founded by the late culture critic Greg Tate, Shelley has toured throughout Europe and the US.  Shelley recently presented “Punanny Politixxx: Hindsight is 2020” at the Tribeca Performing Arts Center, is a co-collaborator on “Priestess of Twerk: A Black Femme Star Temple + Wisdom School” premiering in 2024 and toured with “Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower Opera.”  Shelley is excited to bring her gifts to the fall artist-in-residence cohort at The Watermill Center.

Project Description:
The Tao of Abbey Lincoln

Through an Afrofuturist lens I will use never-before-seen writings of vocalist/songwriter Abbey Lincoln to create a musical, immersive, and ritualistic experience. The unique artistic path of Ms. Lincoln led me to her unpublished book of poetry and prose, “In A Circle Everything Is Up,” a collection of her unpublished writings, spanning from 1966-95.

I will infuse her uncovered words with my own voice (using a vocal looper and electric bass as root instruments) and ideas to create new works. I will also infuse Lawrence “Butch” Morris’ Art of Conduction into the compositions to expand the work in a live setting.  I am excited to share my vision of Ms. Lincoln’s words as they speak to a universal human experience and point a spotlight on the beauty and depth of Black women.

OMAR TATE (He/Him), United States
Discipline: Multidisciplinary/Food/Culinary

Omar Tate (he/him) is a chef, poet, visual artist, and cofounder of Honeysuckle Projects, a multifaceted food company that focuses on the nuanced cultures and cuisines of the Black 

diaspora. His work serves to engage us in deeper understanding of the contextual relationships between food, storying, emotion, and place. His integrated practices examine and imagine timetables that are simultaneously past, present, and future in the sharing of our collective human experience. He focuses on time and the context within those scapes to offer new perspectives on equitable outcomes for Black peoples in real time.

Omar has emerged as a visionary and a leading thinker on the restaurant industry’s cultural development. He specifically focuses on the interrogation of race and ethnicity to tear down structural barriers through his practices. In 2020, Omar was named chef of the year and Honeysuckle named pop up of the year by Esquire Magazine . In 2021 Time Magazine named Omar as one of the 100 innovators to watch as part of their Time100Next list.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Please note: The Watermill Center no longer requires visitors to wear face-coverings for indoor events. The use of masks is encouraged, and disposable masks will be provided by The Center upon request. We thank you for supporting our efforts to keep both our international and local community of artists and alumni safe and healthy during their stay at The Watermill Center.

Please arrive 10 minutes early to allow for the check-in process.

The Watermill Center is committed to providing accessible programs and services for all patrons and artists with disabilities. For further information about any accessibility needs, please email us at [email protected].

Image Credits: `1. Courtesy of the Artist Joana P. Cordozo 2. Katherine Profeta Courtesy of Ralph Lemon 3. Courtesy of the Artist Lindsay Morris 4. Sarah Stern Courtesy of the artist

Additional photos by: Lindsay Morris