We are very excited to announce
the Spring/Summer ON::View Artists-in-Residence of 2024!
Located in the heart of Savannah’s Starland District at Sulfur Studios, the ON::VIEW Artist Residency provides a free, high visibility studio space for an artist to complete a new project, to continue an in-progress endeavor, or to conduct research exploring conceptual, material, performative, and social practices. The studio’s large windows look out onto Bull Street, allowing the artists’ work to be on view to the community at all times. Sulfur Studios’ visitors and passersby on the sidewalk witness the artists’ process as it unfolds in real time, seeing all the steps involved from concept to final execution. Community events like workshops, performances, public art projects and artist talks, offer creative ways to interact with the public. The ON::View Residency supports artists from across the globe, working in all media.
See below for brief Project Descriptions and Artist Bios.
Check our Calendar of Events for details on Artist Talks, workshops, open studio days and more!
CAITLIN MCDONAGH
JANUARY, 2024
Victoria, BC
Caitlin McDonagh is a visual artist and muralist who creates intricate illustrative works inspired by folklore, symbolism, and the balancing of the human vs. natural world. The themes of connection, self-cultivation, growth, loss, and renewal are woven into the worlds that she creates. Her goal with her work is to build her own folklore; work that leaves doors open within it, allowing the viewer to add to the stories, create their own imagined landscapes, and find parts of themselves within this imagery.
You can find Caitlin’s mural work across Canada and the US. Her paintings are part of the City of Burnaby Permanent Art Collection at the Burnaby Art Gallery and part of numerous private collections worldwide.
During her time in Savannah, Caitlin will be creating a series of works on paper that are directly influenced by the local architectural and natural landscapes, as well as her time spent at the ON::View Residency. While in Residence, Caitlin will have open studio hours where members of the community can come by and contribute to a collaborative community art piece, which will be continually in process during the month-long Residency. The end of the Residency will culminate in an exhibition of the works and a mural installation at Cleo the Gallery.
LIBBI PONCE
FEBRUARY + MARCH, 2024
Ecuador/US
Libbi Ponce (they/them, she/her) is an Ecuadorian artist, born in 1997 to a family of musicians, making sculptures, 360-degree videos, installations, and performances. Ponce explores themes of Latinx-Futurism through a sculptural practice of world-building incorporating an ambitious range of materials including steel, bronze, resin, polyurethane, mortar, grout, terracotta, and glass. Inspired by the erotic and anthropomorphic motifs from ancient Andean ceramics, Ponce constructs tactile sculptural objects which probe discourse on grief, intimacy, and historic folklore.
They have attended the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Oxbow Artists' Residency, Yale Norfolk Undergraduate Residency, and ACRE. Exhibitions include terciopelo at Selenas Mountain, BASE REMOVED at the Museo Antropologico y de Arte Contemporaneo, and Skyway 20/21 at the Tampa Museum of Art. They hold a BFA in Studio Art and BA in Philosophy from the University of South Florida. In 2021, Ponce completed a Fulbright Creative Research Fellowship in Ecuador. In 2023, they completed an ArtTable research fellowship at the Chrysler Museum Of Art. Libbi is the founder/director of galeria juniin in Guayaquil, Ecuador and Co-Director of Coco Hunday Gallery in Tampa, FL. Libbi is currently based between Ecuador and the states.
During their 2 month Residency, Libbi will be editing 3 videos with footage shot in Ecuador from their personal archive and developing three dimensional presentations for the videos. Research will be conducted for the development of works based on the intersection and crossover of theoretical physics and interpersonal relationships with people past, present, and future.
KIARA GILBERT
APRIL, 2024
Atlanta, GA
Kiara Gilbert (they/them) explores how emotional landscapes are shaped and perceptions of history are misinformed by colonized narratives surrounding the past. Growing up black and queer in the South has given them a reverence for the culture and beliefs that enslaved people cultivated and the desire to center black diasporic perspectives in their life and work. Through the use of print media and sculptural installations, they create scenes that speak on feelings of frustration, love, listlessness, and ancestral loss.
Gilbert has been a recipient of the Six Creative Grant, the Janice Hartwell Award in Printmaking, a 2019 participant in the Humanity in Action Berlin Fellowship, a Mint Leap Year Fellow from 2022-2023, and are currently a South Fulton Arts Partner Program Participant.
JOHN PAUL KESLING
MAY, 2024
Nashville, TN
John Paul Kesling (b. 1980, USA) was born and raised in Northeastern Kentucky in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. He received his BFA in Arts from Morehead State University (Morehead, KY, 2003) and spent a summer in Europe studying art history (Summer 2002). He went on to receive his MFA in Painting from The Savannah College of Art and Design (Savannah, GA, 2010). He spent the next six years in Brooklyn, NY immersed in the NYC art scene. In March of 2016, while attending a month-long residency at The Vermont Studio Center he realized how integral time, space, and nature were to his studio practice and in 2016, relocated to Madison, TN, just outside of Nashville.
His work has been featured in various group exhibitions and in 2022 he was accepted to the White Columns Curated Online Artist Registry. His work is included in the permanent collections of The Savannah College of Art and Design, Vanderbilt University Medical Center Community Arts Initiative and Soho House Nashville. He has attended artist residencies at Vermont Studio Center, Art Residency Chattanooga, Azule, Jx Farms, and Mudhouse. He has had solo shows at Wheelhouse Arts (Louisville, KY), Oz Arts (Nashville, TN) and The Red Arrow Gallery (Nashville, TN).
Kesling is a member of the artist collective at Ground Floor Contemporary (Birmingham, AL) and is represented by The Red Arrow Gallery (Nashville, TN) and Wheelhouse Art (Louisville, KY).
LESLIE PUTNAM & DAVID BOBIER
JUNE, 2024
Ontario, Canada
David Bobier is a self-identified hard of hearing media artist with a mental health diagnosis and is the parent of 2 deaf children, now adults. His work has been exhibited internationally and has been the focus of prominent touring exhibitions in Ontario and the Atlantic provinces. Bobier has received grants from Canada Council for the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, Grand NCE, British Council, Ontario Arts Council and New Brunswick Arts Council.
He has partnered with Inclusive Media and Design Centre at Ryerson University, Toronto and Tactile Audio Displays Inc. in researching and employing vibrotactile technology as a creative medium. As an extension of this research Bobier has established and is Director of VibraFusionLab in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. The Lab emphasizes a holistic approach to considering vibration as a language of creation and exploration and to investigating broader and more inclusive applications of the sensory interpretation and emotionality of sound and vibration in art making practices. Through VibraFusionLab and in his own art practice Bobier aims at creating opportunities of greater accessibility in art making, art appreciation and in viewer experiences of art practices and presentations.
Using performance and interactive installation Bobier explores the bridging of methods of communication and language and ways of interpreting or transforming one modality to another. His work is engaged in a multi-sensory approach and experimentation that allows for the transitioning and re-interpreting of content and experience from one medium to another with particular emphasis on the tactile as a form of creative expression.
Leslie Putnam is a London Ontario based Artist and Educator. She earned her BFA from Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec with a Major in Studio Art and BEd from Western University in London, Ontario.
Putnam’s work includes exhibitions in Europe and now in Ontario, her work has been presented in solo and group exhibitions including Electric Eclectics, Toronto-(Nuit Blanche and Hard Twist), JNAAG, Museum London and the Canadian Clay and Glass Museum. She has received research, exhibition, and multi and inter arts projects grants from the Ontario Arts Council.
As a multi-disciplinary artist, Leslie creates multi-modal sculptures and installations on the premise that sculpture can and should include the ability of access though multiple senses, removing the barrier of “do not touch”created by the limitations of institutions.
In 2010 she and David Bobier formed the o’honey collective as a platform for research and creation relating to the natural world.
ARTS Southeast + Sulfur Studios invite the public to welcome each artist and engage in artistic and cultural exchange. Each artist will have regular open studio hours for members of the community to drop in, see their work, and have the opportunity for collaboration.
Follow along with the residents via Instagram @onviewresidency
The ON::View Residency is made possible with investment by The City of Savannah.
Thank you to our Program Sponsors:
Georgia Council for the Arts, National Endowment for the Arts, South Arts,
Starlandia Supply, Starland Yard and Green Truck Pub!
