VCAM Philadelphia Artist-in-Residence Program

The VCAM Philadelphia Artist-in-Residence Program hosts Philadelphia and area artists for creative exchanges with the Haverford community.

Based in the College’s VCAM Artist Residency Studio, these artists will engage with the campus through curricular collaborations, workshops, exhibitions, trips to Philadelphia cultural sites, and other projects. The VCAM Philadelphia Artist-in-Residence Program is supported by the Malcolm Baldwin 1962 Fund.

Contact: mcallina [at] haverford.edu (Matthew Seamus Callinan), Associate Director, Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery and Campus Exhibitions Coordinator

Akeil Robertson-Jowers

2022-23

Akeil Robertson-Jowers is an artist, educator, curator, student, returning citizen, and active member of the reentry community. Akeil is an ambassador and a skilled communicator able to bridge the gap between disparate peoples.. His unique position as both an insider and critic gives him the ability to offer opinions and insights not previously gleaned. Akeil is an multimedia artist, able to extend those skills to all he comes in contact with and uses these skills to create maps, prose, and bridges toward new thoughts and practices in criminal justice thinking and solutions.

Akeil’s practice is based and steeped in an idea that critical thinking is central to the way forward. Shying away from easy answers or binaries that separate and divide our communities on opposite sides of a restorative justice framework, in his work and scholarship Akeil seeks to take an honest look the intersections we all share and help us form bonds that encourage the will remove barriers in our ability to find common ground.

Akeil has been a partner in several projects including the Inaugural Philadelphia District Attorney Office Artists in Residency, Reading Work and Art For Justice Led Collaborative Web Project to forward Abolition Studies, and Assistant Muralist of Several Years. He is currently Artist in Residence at the Haverford College Hurford Center Visual, Cultural, and Media Studies. Akeil's primary mode of artistry is photography and he uses his camera to focus on and exalt humanity in a vision that we all deserve to celebrate as the heroes we are in our own right.

Supported by The House Fund for Distinguished Visiting Artist and Critics..

Events

Project Hasan
VCAM Lower Create Space
September 13—October 6, 2023

Prison is purposely an idea that we are too afraid to think deeply about in the abstract and find increasingly more difficult to think about in the personal. Organized by Akeil Robertson, the exhibition Project Hasan, the story of Louis Stern, offered a guided tour into the psychological underpinnings of prison, the university system that attempts to educate men behind the wall, the toll prison takes on families, and the fight for freedom. The exhibition featured a panel discussion with Akeil Robertson and Saleem Holbrook, Don Jones, and John Pace for an in-depth conversation. Learn more.

Past Artists-in-Residence

Fall 2021: Sound Museum Collective

Sound Museum Collective (SMC) holds space to reconstruct our relationships to sound by creating a platform for women, nonbinary, and trans sound artists and engineers. Through accessible workshops and skill shares, creative team projects and community partnerships, SMC demystifies audio engineering while sharing in the resounding nature of sound.

Throughout October, 2021, Sound Museum Collective will be in residence in the VCAM 006 Create Space, building a playful interactive sound room that triggers exploration of corporeal reality and its engagement with nature. Look for SMC on campus every Wednesday in October.

Learn more at soundmuseumcollective.org

Info: jweissin [at] haverford.edu + dwatson1 [at] haverford.edu

Sponsored by VCAM and CRAFT.

Events

Intro to Arduino/Maxuino Workshop and Pressure Sensor Floor Build

Wednesday, October 20
7–8:30 p.m.
VCAM Maker Arts Space

Sound Room Student Viewing

Tuesday, October 26
7–8:30 p.m.
VCAM 006 Create Space

Students—come play in the space and uncover its mysteries. Followed by a Q&A with SMC artists.

Sound Room Public Viewing

Friday, October 29
7-9:30 p.m.
VCAM 006 Create Space

Open to the public! Come check out Sound Museum Collective’s Sound Room installation in VCAM.

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Fall 2020: Christopher Sean Powell; Sound Museum Collective; Steven Dailey; Justin Geller

Photo: Jessica Kourkounis

Christopher Sean Powell

Virtual Modular Synthesizer Music Performance + Conversation

About the Artist

Chris Powell (aka Pow Pow) is a self-taught rhythm scholar, producer, and electronic music-maker living in Philadelphia, PA. As a main contributor in the Philadelphia art and sound collective Need New Body, which fused improvisation with popular song structures, Powell began a career of international recording and performance, creating music at the nexus of art and entertainment. Since 1999, he has collaborated, recorded, and toured worldwide with a diverse spectrum of artists and musicians, including the Sun Ra Arkestra, Yoko Ono, and the Boredoms. Powell’s work in the eclectic and high energy Philadelphia band Man Man has helped focus his talent as a leader in the live performance context. Powell’s body of work has most recently expanded to creating instruments for NYC/Philly based synthesizer company Critter & Guitari’s Organelle keyboard.

@powserati

Sound Museum Collective

Virtual Conversation + Performance

More info: jweissin [at] haverford.edu.

Sound Museum Collective holds space to reconstruct our relationships to sound by creating a platform for women, nonbinary and trans sound artists and engineers. Through accessible workshops and skill shares, creative team projects and community partnerships, SMC demystifies audio engineering while sharing in the resounding nature of sound. Elissa Fredeen and Jackie Milestone will talk about how SMC got started, our past workshops, some current projects and our long term goals. Following, Gladys Harlow (Street Rat) will perform with their circuit bent theremins and the talk will wrap up with a Q & A.

About the Artists

The Sound Museum Collective (SMC) of Philadelphia is an evolving nonmember collective that holds space to reconstruct our relationships to sounds. Through accessible workshops and skill shares, creative team projects and community partnerships, SMC celebrates trans, nonbinary and women sound artists and technicians. We demystify audio engineering and share in the resounding nature of sound. Our goals are right in our name. Someday, we hope to have a space that will not only operate as a workshop and free library, but will also be a place where we can curate and hold sound artists. We are always in need of people who are interested in core leadership support and want to build and experiment with sounds. Read more.

Steven Dailey

More info: mcallina [at] haverford.edu.

About the Artist

Steven Dailey is an artist/craftsman whose work draws inspiration from his training as a fine artist as well as traditional wood and metal worker. Steven is a graduate of PAFA with a focus in sculpture and has worked professionally as an apprentice woodworker and as a foundry metalsmith. Combining disciplines, Steven works out of his West Philadelphia studio to produce unique pieces for the interior design and architectural fields. Steven’s work involves partnership with designers to develop concepts into bespoke furniture often using brass, bronze and steel as primary materials.

Justin Geller

Artist Justin Geller will be teaching a four-part Ableton Live workshop in the VCAM Maker Arts Space every Monday this October, open to students, staff, and faculty.

This four-part workshop is an introduction to the music production software Ableton Live. Participants will gain experience recording audio and learning the basics of editing, mixing, and sampling. We’ll also cover musical concepts like time signatures, basic composition strategies, and rhythm. We’ll make SONGS. Participants will also get an introduction to using MIDI keyboards and microphones. As each session builds on the previous one, participants are strongly encouraged to attend all four sessions.

About the Artist

Justin Geller is a Philadelphia-based music producer/engineer. Since the early 90s, he has been involved in a diverse group of projects and collaborations, producing music for film, video, and as well as sound and light installations. Most recently he has produced releases from R3DLTTR and Remote Places and in the past has worked with longtime collaborator, Julian Grefe, in the genre-hopping electronic music collective, Pink Skull. Geller is also the Music and Sound Director for Monument Lab, a public art and history project. As part of this, he helped create a 36 speaker audio installation (for Emeka Ogboh feat Ursula Rucker - Logan Squared), solar-powered outdoor listening stations, and an interactive drum machine interface in Franklin Square (Kara Crombie’s Sample Philly).

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Spring 2019: Mark Strandquist and Courtney Bowles

Artists Courtney Bowles and Mark Strandquist were in residence in VCAM in late March and early April 2019, during which time they hosted a People’s Paper Co-op Pop-Up Exhibit and Conversation with Members of the People's Paper Co-op and Reentry Think Tank, along with a Friday Crosslisted Conversation and open lunch.

Tuesday, March 26: People’s Paper Co-op Pop-Up Exhibit + Conversation with Members of the People's Paper Co-op and Reentry Think Tank. Their pop-up exhibition dealt with the creative solutions these organizations deploy in transforming the stereotypes, social services, and platforms that impact our lives and communities.

Friday, April 12: Crosslisted Conversation with Mark Strandquist and Courtney Bowles. Artists Mark Strandquist and Courtney Bowles held an informal lunchtime conversation on using art as a vehicle to connect diverse communities and to amplify, celebrate, and power social justice movements.

About the Artists

Mark Strandquist and Courtney Bowles have spent years using art as a vehicle to connect diverse communities and to amplify, celebrate, and power social justice movements, in particular criminal justice and incarceration reform. Their media campaigns and immersive exhibitions have reached tens of thousands of people, and have helped advocates close prisons, pass laws, and train an entire police force (Richmond, VA).

They have received multiple awards, fellowships, national residencies, and have reached wide audiences through the New York Times, NPR, the Guardian, the Washington Post, PBS NewsHour, and VICE. Their work has been exhibited at Project Row Houses, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Virginia Museum of Fine Art, and galleries across the country. Beyond traditional art spaces, their work has been seen and engaged with by tens of thousands of people through exhibits in legal clinics, parades, church basements, conferences, state legislatures, and city streets.

Mark Strandquist is the founder and creative director of the Performing Statistics project in Richmond, VA and they both co-direct the People’s Paper Co-op at the Village of Arts and Humanities, and founded and co-direct The Reentry Think Tank through fellowships from A Blade of Grass and Open Society foundations.

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Spring 2018: Mariel Capanna
Multidisciplinary artist Mariel Capanna was in residence in VCAM for the first three weeks of April 2018, during which time she visited courses, discussed her work in fresco and landscape, and hosted an open studio, creating an immersive three-walled painting. She also held a public workshop teaching the art of fresco on Saturday, April 7th.

Events

Project: Collaborative Painting in VCAM

Limited Space Event: Fresco Workshop with VCAM Philadelphia Artist in Residence Mariel Capanna

Mariel Capanna

Mariel Capanna lives and works in Philadelphia. She received her BFA and Certificate of Fine Art from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Recent solo and two-person exhibitions include the site-specific fresco Little Stone, Open Home at Good Weather gallery in North Little Rock, Arkansas; Left at Gross McCleaf Gallery in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and Con/Safos, a collaboration with artist Rafa Esparza at the Bowtie Project in Los Angeles, California. She is the recipient of an Independence Foundation Visual Arts Fellowship and a Kittredge Fund grant, and has attended residencies at Skowhegan School of Painting (Skowhegan, ME), Guapamacátaro Art and Ecology Residency (Michoacán, Mexico), the Mountain School of Art (Los Angeles, CA), and the Tacony LAB — a project collaboratively managed by MuralArts and the Free Library of Philadelphia.
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