We created the Prairie Ronde Artist Residency to bring artists to the community of Vicksburg—a creative and cultural hub. Art is a vital part of the revitalization of The Mill and has become a place of inspiration for those who visit.
We’ve had several talented artists come through the doors of Prairie Ronde over the course of this year. This program gives artists from around the world a chance to explore the village of Vicksburg, Michigan and become inspired to create pieces that fuse with their practice. This Spring and Summer, we’re excited to host a new lineup of residents. Learn more about what they do and follow along for a glimpse at their work!
MEET THE SUMMER 2021 ARTISTS
Joel Kuennen
Joel Kuennen is an artist, critic, curator and editor. They received an MA in Visual and Critical Studies from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2010). Their art practice investigates human relationships to the earth as a means of understanding the social dynamics that can interrupt the extractive and exploitative ways in which we engage with the earth. They use autochthonous clay to create artifacts of intervention, which are small anthromes that become platforms for micro-ecosystems. The clay forms and their celestial alignments urge consideration of deep time—a complex matrix of past, present, and future.
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Elyse-Krista Mische
Elyse-Krista Mische is a Certified Nursing Assistant, hospice volunteer and mixed-media artist who contemplates mortality, memory and time through her drawings, sculpture and performance pieces. She embraces make-believe and craft processes from her youth to address universal existential issues.
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S. Erin Batiste
S. Erin Batiste is an interdisciplinary poet, storyteller and author of the chapbook Glory to All Fleeting Things. She has received fellowships and support from numerous organizations including Cave Canem, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference-Rona Jaffe Foundation, PERIPLUS and Callaloo. S. Erin is a reader for The Rumpus and her own Pushcart-nominated poetry appears in wildness, Verse Daily and Puerto del Sol among others.
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Victoria Manganiello
Victoria Manganiello is a textile artist, historian and educator. Her work has been featured in Hyperallergic, The New York Times, Boulin ArtInfo, Forbes and Architectural Digest, among others. Exploring the intersections between materiality, technology, geography and storytelling, Victoria’s multi-disciplinary and installation work, abstract paintings and kinetic sculptures are made meticulously with hand-woven textiles using hand-spun yarn and hand-mixed natural and synthetic color dyes alongside mechanical alternatives and modern technologies.
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Joe Stratton
Joe Stratton is a musician, engineer and sound designer. While usually producing music to accompany video, his current focus is building an immersive listening environment where people can experience sound in unexpected ways through the use of “sonic holograms”—audio routed carefully through state-of-the-art software and multi-speaker arrays, moving through or suspended in space. He uses ambisonic recorders, Max/MSP and tools developed by Envelop for Ableton Live to make music meant to be heard on all sides, above and below the listener.
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Jean Shon
Jean Shon is an artist who explores concepts of identity, memory, il/legibility, loss and trauma through photography, text, installation and image-based works. Frequently employing family archival material for the basis of her work, she raises questions about the things we inherit: physical, mental and emotional. Rather than definitive or substantive resolutions, her work focuses on the ruptures and silences produced by broader histories, mediations of knowledge passed down through generations and partial memories that our pasts hold. Her work re-presents the way lineage functions, re-generates family archival documents and re-sees the past in order to move forward.
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Madelaine Corbin
Madelaine Corbin is a multi-disciplinary artist living in Detroit, Michigan. Her research-based practice moves fluidly between textiles, sculpture, drawing and writing. Corbin’s work is informed by her participation in the New York Arts Practicum, an immersive study in Athens, Greece, and as an artist-in-residence and research assistant in a chemistry lab where she helped to synthesize and characterize a new blue.
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Morgan Rose Free
Morgan Rose Free is a Canadian artist based in Columbus, Ohio predominantly working in sculptural assemblage. Her conceptual interests lie in human engagement with the outside world, often grappling with ideas around our current climate crisis, engagement with public spaces (both natural and human-made) and how the digital age has affected these relationships.
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COMING UP
Keep an eye on our social channels for in-depth interviews with our participating residents alongside some musical performances from our musicians!
June
S. Erin Batiste, Amaad Hardy, & Jordan Hamilton
July
Victoria Manganiello, Faith Quashie, Via Mardot, & Samuel Nalangira
August
Joe Stratton & Madeline Corbin
STAY TUNED FOR MORE UPDATES!
Follow along as we go in-depth with these artists and share their work with you on the Prairie Ronde Instagram and YouTube channels!
For more information, email us at info.prairieronde@gmail.com.
