Caledonia Curry,

2023 Resident Artist

There’s something about the air and the light out there, in Boulder, and at Swoon Art House.

I asked the architect how they had made those gorgeous curved I-beam ceilings, and he told a story of the one place in the country that bends steel this way – how it takes three days without pause for each beam. Rebecca said how important it was to her, when designing the space, to keep the high ceilings open through the creation of those curved beams.  In my time at Swoon House I understood why. It’s the kind of space that thoughts and feelings can expand into. Dreaming feels deeply welcome.

On my second night in residence, as I dug in to my writing, I was hit with a long forgotten memory. In the spacious peace of that light and air, in the stillness that surrounds the house, all of the long shoved down emotions that I needed to feel came rushing up. I cried, I wrote, I snuggled into the various beds and couches and corners of the space and wrote some more. I let the largeness of my task enter that big room and stay. I was away from my life and ready to take this on. There’s always a certain amount of fear when we square off so fully with a project. And yet this is what I needed.

Luckily this wasn’t all though. I wasn’t squaring off alone. Rebecca and the Scintilla team created an amazing dinner and story night for me to share some of what I was creating, and through it I got to have an incredibly warm, supportive, attentive set of eyes and ears in the middle of the process, which helped lend me the courage to keep going. They introduced me to an audience in Boulder and in Denver and through that I got to feel the beautiful creative enthusiasm of their arts community.

It’s a truly special place because it’s built by artists for artists, brick by brick (and mud layer by lud layer), and that spirit runs through every part.

Sandra De Berduccy,

2022 Resident Artist

My residency at Swoon + BMoCA took place between April and May 2022. I consider this experience a wonderful human, creative, artistic moment, full of encounters and discoveries. I was fortunate to spend time with my magnificent hosts, with a schedule full of visits to artists’ studios, exhibitions, museums and events. I can highlight the visit to the ATLAS Institute of the University of Colorado and its laboratories, particularly the Unstable Design Lab, where researchers ask each other questions about the intersection of textiles and technology.

I was also fascinated and inspired by the artists Rebecca DiDomenico and Martha Russo, both with nature organically present in their works, remembering the shapes and textures of gemstones and crystals of the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. It was their works and the quartz found along the way, along with visits to the purified trees, which had the same quartz components, abundant around Boulder – that motivated me to experiment with crystal growing during my time at the study.

The result of these experiments were two small “prototype” works, the first I called “quartz composer” where I “connected” quartz found in the national parks of Colorado with a MIDI and when people touched the quartz they could hear the sound that was emitted when they touched the quartz, a very playful work that invited us to think about how energy circulates through materials and through our bodies. The second prototype work was the aging of crystals on fiber optics, based on the salts that are used for mordants in the dyeing processes with natural dyes, I bred a variety of crystals that are still growing!

Full of thanks to the people and institutions that supported this learning. Scintilla Foundation: Rebeca DiDomenico, Stephen Perry, Martha Russo, Helen Joffe, Stephen Joffe. Boulder Museum Of Contemporary Art to his amazing team especially David M Dadone, Kiah Butcher, Gwyneth Burak, Sage Ziemba. To the Ministry of Culture, Arts and Heritage of Chile, for the Fondart Nacional / International Circulation 2022 / Attendance at international artistic residency. To karla kracht with whom we took a road trip visiting Colorado National Parks and Museums, creating works and imagining a sunny future,

Senga Nengudi,

2020 Resident Artist

My residency at the Boulder Swoon Art House was simply WONDERFUL!

It was in-state and ideal for a much needed break during the Covid 19 Pandemic.

I came with a project in mind, but I needed technical knowledge to make it happen.  The exciting thing about the Swoon Residency was that it afforded me the opportunity to work with someone who could provide technical expertise.

The Swoon Residency provided me with amazing resources-technical assistance, a stipend for materials, living expenses, payment to an assistant-who in this case was the capable and amiable Jiffer Harriman, a place to work and lodging in the magnificent Swoon Art House

I have lamented lately over the uninspired architecture we see presently.  What a kick to actually live and work in this architectural marvel.  It was the biggest place I’ve ever lived and worked in simultaneously.  I cannot say enough about this structure.  It was like living inside a monumental  sculpture. It was a true 21^st century place with a bit of Star Trek features to boot.

Everyone was so helpful, kind and responsive to my every need and request.

It was a pleasure meeting Rebecca, her husband and son.  They were so very welcoming.  Rebecca is a fine artist and a person of vision. It would take an artist to know the perfect set up for an ideal work environment.  Her presences was positively felt with her art work gracing the walls of the Swoon. What a charge and surprise to find one of her substantial installations in the basement.

My performance/installation was called Wigs-B Suite.  Because I am a survivor and now have to wear wigs I wanted to do something with the collection I have amassed.  I wanted to animate them and bring a little light to the darkness.

I used robot cars, like large remote control cars to achieve this.  With Jiffer Harrison’s assistance we/he programmed a car to follow a track made of black tape and another set of cars were programmed to do their own thing and move improvisationally. After all, doing things improvisationally is how I roll.  Because I am a romantic at heart I chose songs by Diana Ross and the Supremes about finding love and new music expressing it in abstraction to make up the musical score. It turned out to be a curious piece of choreography.

What Fun! I so hope it brought a smile to those who viewed it.  It was a germ of an idea that I would like to develop. This was only a two week residency. It took a significant amount of time to figure out the programming. With this introduction though, I’m now willing to incorporate technology in future work that I might do.

Tim Atkins,

2019 Resident Artist

My time as BMoCA + SWOON International Artist 2019 was wonderful. I arrived with the aim of completing a manuscript that I had been working on for eighteen months and, by the end of my residency, it was done. The time and the space that I was given allowed me to get through thousands of editorial decisions with speed and clarity.

Of equal importance was the fact that I met a diverse and hugely-talented group of practitioners who were extremely generous with their time and their work, and who were hugely interested in, and supportive of mine. It was moving and exciting to present my work to a large and appreciative audience. The time that I spend here will be important to me—creatively and personally—for the rest of my life.

A collaboration with Tim Atkins’ Poems and Rebecca DiDomenico’s Drawings.

James Tapscott,

2018 Resident Artist

Project Description:

While I was in Boulder I wasn’t working on any single specific project, rather opening new doorways for projects into the future. A month is a short amount of time to get anything completed so it was just a great opportunity to focus my thoughts on new ideas and use the resources (mostly the minds of the professors and researchers at the universities) available to develop new concepts. I wanted to start something – or at least open a doorway, I could continue with at home. I ended up with 3 or 4 “workable” ideas to continue with and am currently evolving one of them into a collaborative project with a glass artist here in Melbourne. I spent a couple of days at the Ice Core Facility in Denver (the NSAICF) examining and photographing the Ice Core samples (drilled from Antarctica and around 400,000 years old) with some really interesting results. One kind of photographic process we were using had never been done before with the particular samples we were using and so it was a really valuable experience for everyone. We’re now trying to re-create the effects of the photography with glass on a larger scale, as sculptural works – still experimenting with the processes involved but will hopefully see some great results sometime in the next few months.

I also had some great learning experiences with a few of the more technologically minded professors at CU, a crash course in optics and laser building from one of the true pioneers in that field (Merrill Lessley) and an introduction to floatation tank therapy from MC Flux which I’m continuing to use as a creative tool.

Amalia Pica,

2017 Resident Artist

My time at the Swoon International Artist Residency was delightful. The perfect mix of solitude and support. I met so many interesting people both from the artistic community and the university which was not only interesting but also contributed enormously to my research. The meetings and conversations fueled years of work to come.
I think of my time there and the many walks with local artists, very fondly. Nature is ever present and beyond inspiring, with the best guides at hand. Could not have wished for a more supportive environment.

Artist updates from their time spent here at Swoon Art House:

You can find a part of Tomoko Sauvage’s project (recording session in the Anemone trail in Boulder with Ryan Wade Ruhlen and his fellow musicians), here. This project was mixed and release on his cassette label.

Sauvage is currently processing another piece out of another recording done in Colorado with other folks. There will be further information to come about this project.

The artist is still in touch with Colorado folks – she once organized a small event “Colorado love” at an alternative space – to show video works, live skype performance of the local artists she met during her time in Colorado.

[Crystal Radio] Introduced by a Denver-based artist, Adan De La Garza, I worked with a Dever-based engineer, Tom Dodds, who made a crystal radio, a primitive radio receiver using crystalline mineral (crystal detector) and I experimented with different minerals such as galena, stibnite and pyrite. Unfortunately it took me long to find the right engineer to work with and there was not so much time left to experiment with the radio in different places. In the Tom’s studio, the radio received very well the radio waves, then at Swoon in Boulder it was catching much less radio waves probably because there are less radio stations in Boulder than in Denver. The idea was to try this out in the nature which I did in the Anemone Hill in Boulder at night – of course very few radio waves. But the overall experiment was really interesting for the following reasons : – Working on very primitive electronics = the sensation of trying to catch the radio waves in the air with this primitive tool in today’s highly technological era was somewhat fresh and inspiring especially for me working on ‘electronic’ music using technology. – The ‘sensual’ manipulation of electronics = the manipulation of this crystal radio is about finding the right positions on the surface of raw minerals with cat whisker (crystal detector) and this sensual and fine manipulation of electronics with natural material is very close to the technique to play my instrument ‘waterbowls’ thus it felt like a starting point of a new material to develop. – The visual impact of the minerals used for this project and the combination of the raw natural material and electricity. – The fascination about the scientific facts on minerals (their electrical conductivity, the history of their formation)

Tomoko Sauvage,

2016 Resident Artist

Project Description:

During the artist residency at Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art + Swoon, I worked on several geological materials and the soundscape of Colorado including the “sound of erosion” with metamorphic rocks and acid, crystal radio and recording in the TANK, an old resonant water tank situated in west Colorado. Those projects were made possible by lots of collaborations with local artists, engineers and artisans and the inspirations also came from different meetings in the local art community.

[Recording in the nature at night – Anemone Hill (Boulder)] I invited a Boulder-based artist, Ryan Wade Ruhlen and his orchestra, Rumpilots to play music to the sound of crickets in the nature at night. A part of the recordings was played at the last presentation.[Metamorphic stones and acid] Introduced by Marda Kirn, I met Victor Creazzi, who practices the razor horns in experimenting with locally found stones. He told me about the metamorphic stones such as limestones that react to acid with effervescent effects. I have been working on effervescent sound in amplified water using porous ceramic. This time I used lemon juice as acid and locally found stones to listen to effervescent sound of metamorphic rocks. According to my research, the rock formations seen in the Colorado landscapes are often made by acid-containing ground water. So the produced sound was almost the sound of erosion. Victor also showed me the way he was working with razor horns and it was inspiring.[Recording at the TANK] The Denver-based artists, Adan De La Garza and Jenna Maurice brought me to the TANK in Rangely, Colorado, a once-abandoned 65′ tall 40′ wide steel water tank transformed into a place for sonic arts because of its unique acoustics (long reverberation). I made some improvisation-based compositions using locally found quartz, porcelain pieces and the voice. One of the compositions is about pronouncing words and texts related to mining with whispery voices that circulate in the room inspired by mining “ghost towns” I visited near Boulder. I invited Adan and Jenna to perform in those compositions. Some parts of the recordings were played during the last presentation at Swoon.

I think the residency was fruitful with so many new elements added to my artistic practice, which would be difficult to pursue without such opportunity that gave me the time, the space and the resources to make it happen. Thank you very much for giving me this opportunity. I will keep you updated about the on-going projects related to the residency.

______
Tomoko Sauvage August 17, 2016

Exhibit at Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art

Berndnaut Smilde,

2015 Resident Artist

Project Description:

During a 6 week residency at BMoCA + Swoon in Boulder, Berndnaut teamed up with scientist Steve Tomczyk from NCAR to build a prototype prism that would allow him to break light at a large scale in order to impose a natural appearance onto its surrounding as a temporary hack in the landscape. (Image: At Teresa’s, 2015, Boulder, Co)

The photograph illustrates the first test on a barn from a distance of 130 meters on May 30 in Boulder, Colorado