The Joshua Tree Highlands Artist Residency program will present a two-day exhibition of works of its artists in residence June 8 and 9. An opening reception for the show, entitled “Passing Through,” is set for Saturday, June 8, from 6 to 8 pm at the Joshua Tree Art Gallery in downtown Joshua Tree. The exhibition features the work of visual artist and designer Annika Bowker, writer Rae DelBiano, painter Ben Hamburger, and painter Serena Hazard. The art gallery is open Saturdays 10 to 3 and Sundays noon to 3.
Annika Bowker, Visual Artist & Designer
Annika’s practice is a combination of art, architecture, craft and research. During the residency she will produce two tapestries featuring different dried plant species. These tapestries will be part of a series of six, and the product of a project, Migration, that has been developing over the last 18 months. This work investigates and presents the plant life that exists along the US/Mexico border to tell a story of current social or environmental consequence. A selection of these dried plants will be woven into large format tapestries for exhibition alongside research material and photographs. In addition to her art practice, Annika is a designer and maker of custom furniture, consults as a designer and artist for New York architecture firm Leroy Street Studio and is a guest critic to Pratt Graduate School of Interior Design in Brooklyn, New York.
Rae DelBianco, Writer
As a former cattle farmer and a queer female writer, Rae is a member of two communities in opposition to each other. Her writing centers on identity, survival, and uncovering the darker corners of American life. Rae’s acclaimed debut novel, Rough Animals, was published in June 2018 is set in the Utah desert and centers on the human costs of rural isolation and the violence underlying everyday life. During this residency Rae will work on her second novel, Dope and Cattle. A connection to the open land is at the heart of her work. Rae DelBianco grew up in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, where she began competitively showing livestock at the age of eight and founded a beef cattle operation at fourteen. She now lives outside New York.
Ben Hamburger, Visual Artist
Ben is a painter, muralist, community artist, and educator that is interested in the potential of art to find meaning in complex situations. As people, cultures, and environments change, he paints moments of tension and fluctuation. His work is often informed by painting outdoors, rendering the world around him while immersed in it. The figurative work planned for this residency began as a series of paintings about his personal struggles with depression that was affected by a short trip exploring Joshua Tree National Park and becoming captivated by the rock formations. Ben is currently based in Carrboro, North Carolina maintaining his practice, teaching, and working on commissions with a design firm.
Serena Hazard, Painter
In the last 5 years Serena’s work has increasingly become both a record and response to what we are experiencing on the planet now. She primarily creates landscapes by constructing, painting, sanding, and scratching back, then a story emerges from the layered history of the painting. For this residency Serena wants to put herself outside of her comfort zone and familiar landscape of Sonoma County, CA to embed body and soul in a foreign environment. Serena will create new work inspired by the political, cultural, indigenous and geologic history of Joshua Tree and overlay the present environmental threats to the land, the organizations that are responding to these threats and the pulse of the present creative community.
