Artists in Place, Zoom Culture, and the Meaning of Art Orgs on Community

"How are you doing during quarantine?

It’s the question we are all asking each other over seemingly endless Zoom calls. In this episode we gather a few artist friends to talk about what life is like on their side of the screen, how their studio practice has changed (if at all), and the shifting thoughts around local arts organizations.

In a matter of weeks, Zoom has gone from being a corporate tool for virtual conference rooms to a verb describing our main way of connecting, getting work done, and even managing university and elementary school classrooms. We are all having a range of experiences with this platform - from gratitude to empty dread, sometimes in the space of the same call. Part of our conversation reflects on the nature of communicating, teaching, and staying connected over this now-ubiquitous platform.

Art practices have shifted and our guests share the ways quarantine has affected the way they are making work - from hardly noticing the change to moving out of a graduate studio and working on the living room floor. Many artists already work in solitary spaces, but it’s the mechanisms (the institutions and community organizations) that provide those spaces that are having the most impact on where and how artists practices are affected.

Lastly, we talk about the meaning of organizations and community in the lives of artists. What do they mean, how are we reflecting on them now that we are separated from the physical. Our group just launched a space in the fall, and had to close it right after our first exhibition and artist member gathering. Does not having a space mean the organization itself ceases to be important? Can artists keep helping locally?

This week our guests are artists Dana Buzzee, Michael Boonstra, and Jill Baker.

Dana Buzzee’s art creates offerings of resistance and pleasure as methods for revisioning deviance through an autobiographical exploration of queer-femme identity. Buzzee’s artistic outputs function as rituals, transforming spaces for empowered moments of dominance and submission, active and informed consent culture, and a profound understanding of power and control. Buzzee’s work has been exhibited extensively within Calgary, as well as throughout Canada. Their art has also been included in several international exhibitions in Finland, Germany, Iceland, and the USA. Currently, Buzzee is studying towards an MFA at The University of Oregon.

Michael Boonstra's creative practice shifts between drawing, photography, installation, and sculpture. He is a founding member of Gray Space, a group of Oregon artists based in the Corvallis, Eugene and Roseburg areas who came together in 2016 to develop site-based projects that foster connections between artists, places, histories, and communities. Recent awards include a Career Opportunity Grant from the Oregon Arts Commission, project funding from the Ford Family Foundation, and Ford Family Foundation sponsored residencies at Playa and the Djerassi Resident Artist Program. Boonstra received his BFA from the University of Michigan and his MFA from the University of Oregon and currently teaches at Oregon State University.

Jill Baker is a visual artist and educator based in Corvallis, Oregon whose work employs drawing, performance, and video to document interactions with landscape and the natural world. These interactions and performances, often raw and improvised on site, rely on chance and natural elements for mark making and image. Recent works explore soundscape, gesture, and intimate relationships with earth and environment. She has shown her work in galleries, museums, and screening venues across the US.

Technical note: This podcast session was recording using Zoom, and we experience some microphone issues, which affects the sound quality. Rest assured it’s not you, it’s us.

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