Laleh Mehran and Christopher Coleman

Laleh Mehran and Chris Coleman pursued a collaborative project for the Land Line residency, focusing on the natural world’s significance throughout history and across cultures. Their project resulted in a design inspired by carpets from Iran. The design combines plants from West Virginia (Coleman’s native home), Iran (Mehran’s native home) and Colorado (their current home), reflecting on the long history of migration of both people and plants. Combining old and new technologies, this work was created using 3-D recreations, photogrammetry, photography and lidar scanning, weaving a complex story of relationships and understanding.

About the Artists

Laleh Mehran was born in Iran and relocated to the U.S. at the start of the Iranian Islamic Revolution. She creates elaborate environments in digital and physical spaces focused on complex intersections between politics, religion and science. Mehran received her MFA from Carnegie Mellon University and has exhibited across North America and countries including Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, U.A.E., Bahrain, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Taiwan and China. She is a professor and the director of emergent digital practices at the University of Denver. 

Chris Coleman was born in West Virginia and received his MFA from SUNY Buffalo in New York. His work includes creative coding, videos, sculptures and interactive installations. Coleman has exhibited in more than 20 countries including Brazil, Argentina, Canada, Finland, the U.A.E., Germany, France, China, Latvia and across North America. He currently resides in Denver, Colorado, and is a professor and the graduate director of emergent digital practices at the University of Denver. 

Sarojini Jha Johnson

Sarojini Jha Johnson’s work incorporates native and invasive flora and fauna to explore how human settlement and migration have impacted our natural landscape. For this residency, Jha Johnson created an artist book inspired by water lilies, an important symbol in South Asian iconography, and a recurring personal motif in her work. The Gardens’ waterways and the waterlilies in the Monet Pool became resources for this endeavor, culminating in a hand-bound book of intaglio prints housed in a custom-designed box. 

About the Artist

Sarojini Jha Johnson grew up in Ohio and earned undergraduate degrees in French and drawing from the University of Cincinnati. She received an MFA in printmaking from Miami University where she began working with animal and plant forms in her prints. She teaches printmaking at Ball State University in Indiana. Johnson’s main medium is color intaglio printmaking, a medium that allows for great creativity and invention in terms of surface and color. Recently, she has been exploring memories and impressions of India, her country of origin, while retaining her usual animal and plant imagery. She also makes books that highlight the devastating effects of humankind’s tampering with nature by introducing invasive flora and fauna. 

Amy K. Wendland

Amy K. Wendland uses a combination of humor and unusual materials to tell stories about our relationship with the environment. During her residency at Denver Botanic Gardens, she will work with deaccessioned herbarium sheets, transforming them into modern "herbaria viva"—dried plant specimens augmented with drawing or painting to tell the story of the plant and its landscape. Wendland seeks to fuse creative symbolism with scientific knowledge to explore the varied ways we relate to the natural world. 

About the Artist 

Amy K. Wendland lives and works in Durango, Colorado, where she serves as a professor in the Art & Design Department and as Associate Dean of Arts & Sciences at Fort Lewis College. She received her BFA in illustration from the Rhode Island School of Design, an MA with a sculpture concentration and an MFA in graphics from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She has worked commercially as an artist and designer, and her drawings, sculptures and mixed media works have been exhibited nationally and internationally.

Irina Neacșu

Irina Neacșu focuses on endemic wild flora and is interested in research projects that raise awareness of natural habitats. During her residency at Denver Botanic Gardens, she created a body of botanical illustrations exploring her fascination with endemic flora, inspiring appreciation for the wild plant life surrounding us. 

About the Artist 

Irina Neacșu is a graduate from Ion Mincu University of Architecture and Urbanism in Bucharest, Romania, and a postgraduate from the Rome University of Fine Arts. She runs a private art school in Transylvania, Romania. She was awarded an art residency at the Oak Spring Garden Foundation and has exhibited at the Royal Horticultural Society Botanical Art and Photography Show in London. Her focus is on endemic wild flora and she is particularly interested in research projects that raise awareness of natural habitats. 

Jasmine Holmes

Jasmine Holmes uses depictions of staple food crops from her Creole upbringing to explore connections to her West African ancestry. She considers her work a love letter to her ancestors and their cultivation of the land, depicting and celebrating the knowledge and food traditions that have been passed down within her family for generations. Holmes used her Land Line residency to create paintings that explore the beauty of the botanical world and honor the sustenance it offers.  

About the Artist 

Jasmine Holmes is a mixed media artist living and working in Colorado. Born in Arizona, she received her BFA from the University of West Florida, and her MFA from Colorado State University. She has exhibited with Redline, IRL Art Gallery and has presented as a demonstrating artist at the Denver Art Museum. 

Eloisa Guanlao

Eloisa Guanlao’s versatile art practice explores nature’s complex relationship with humans. For the Land Line residency, Guanlao created works including a sewn replica of a woodpecker that kept her company at the Plains Conservation Center (PCC), and infrared photographs taken at Chatfield Farms and the PCC. These photographs are part of Guanlao’s Hearth Series, capturing places that contain resources for survival and represent hearth and home to the organisms that inhabit that area. 

About the Artist
 
Born in the Philippines, Eloisa Guanlao’s experiences as an immigrant and nomadic scholar-artist influence her versatile art practice and critical inquiries. With an interest in the natural world, history, art, languages and literature, she considers art making a social and cultural endeavor and pursues projects that are research intensive and relevant to current issues. Eloisa Guanlao attended the Los Angeles High School for the Arts, Carleton College in Minnesota, and received her MFA in Studio Art from the University of New Mexico. Guanlao practices and teaches art in California.

Jessi Harvey

Jessi Harvey inspires curiosity about nature through music incorporating humor, surprise and variation. The curiosity and joy expressed through their music offers listeners the opportunity to listen closely to the natural world around them. Their time at Denver Botanic Gardens was used to create Shades of Colorado, a string quartet that explores the lifecycles of local flora and natural phenomena in Colorado.  

About the Artist 

Jessi Harvey is a Montana-born composer and teacher. Their works are based in nature, social curiosity and humor. Harvey’s work "by the nature of our conversation" won first place at the 2020 Darkwater Womxn in Music Festival. They have worked with several music organizations including, Opera Elect, the Art Song Collaborative Project, and the performance group Strange Interlude. Their work has been featured nationally and they were a selected composer at Unheard-of//Ensemble’s Collaborative Composition Initiative and held a position as a resident artist at the Rensing Center, South Carolina.

Nathan Hall

Nathan Hall used the Land Line residency to construct a site-specific sound work, drawing on the day-to-day and behind-the-scenes sounds of the Gardens’ York Street location, including the herbarium and office spaces. Based on these locations and auditory experiences, he created a new audio artwork and accompanying musical performance, pointing ears to underappreciated aspects of Denver Botanic Gardens. 

About the Artist

Nathan Hall is a composer and artist who uses music and sound as tools to explore a variety of fields including science, nature, fine arts, history and sexuality. There is an emotional resonance present in all of Hall’s works, from his traditional classical pieces for chamber ensembles to experimental electronic pieces, sound sculptures and multimedia projects. Nathan Hall is a former Fulbright Fellow to Iceland, a McKnight Visiting Composer, and he holds a doctorate in musical arts (DMA) from University of Colorado, Boulder. He teaches music composition at the University of Denver. 

Raymundo Muñoz

Printmaker Raymundo Muñoz will spend his residency highlighting the awe-inspiring beauty, richness and diversity of native tree species. Using a variety of printmaking media including linocuts, monotypes, stencils and chine collé, Muñoz will create works seeking to bridge humankind’s inner nature with the natural world. 

About the Artist

Raymundo Muñoz was born and raised in El Paso, Texas, but Denver has been his home since 1999. He is a self-taught printmaker who finds endless inspiration in the natural world. He believes that art is a bridge, and that its greatest function is to connect people across time and space.

Cherish Marquez

Cherish Marquez creates imaginary worlds that bridge her upbringing in the desert landscape and her interest in emergent technology. By combining interactive animation and game design with objects made from desert plants and other materials, her work explores the cultural significance of the desert to the Latinx community and its role in providing sustenance, healing, and inspiration for ritual practices.

About the Artist

Cherish Marquez is a Latina and Queer-identifying artist who grew up in Sierra Blanca, TX and currently lives and works in Denver. She holds Bachelor's degrees in fine arts and creative writing from New Mexico State University and a Master’s degree in emergent digital practices from the University of Denver. She has exhibited at the Denver Art Museum and Museo De Las Americas, Denver, among others, and is a current Resident Artist at the RedLine Contemporary Art Center.

Marcia Stuermer

Using botanical materials within cast resin, Marcia Stuermer juxtaposes the wonder and beauty of the natural world with the systems of consumption that put it in jeopardy. Often featuring barcode-like striping that divide segments of plant matter, her works explore the fragile line between our natural habitat and its exploitation.

About the Artist 

Marcia Stuermer is a mixed-media artist based in San Francisco, CA. Originally from Ohio, Stuermer studied at the Cooper Union School of Art, the Cleveland Institute of Art and the Kansas City Art Institute where she received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in sculpture and drawing. Stuermer’s work has been exhibited at the 2017 Design Pavilion, NY, the Triton Museum of Art, CA, and the Verum Ultimum Gallery, OR among others. Her work is held in collections throughout the United States.