VISITING ARTIST IN RESIDENCE
The Visiting Artist In Residence creates an opportunity for accomplished artists from outside the region to conduct research, meet St. Louis community members, and explore issues of importance to this region. During the year of residency, the chosen artist engages the community through lectures, group discussion, art activities, and/or volunteer work. It culminates in an exhibition or special project that is shaped or conceived by this research and time spent in the community.
The Visiting Artist In Residence program showcases foreign-born artists based in the United States. This commitment allows Laumeier to present a globally-inflected program and highlight the many cultural contributions of immigrant artists.
2023 Visiting artistS in residence
Lenka Clayton (b. United Kingdom)
Phillip Andrew Lewis
Laumeier’s 2023 Visiting Artists In Residence are Pittsburgh-based artists Lenka Clayton and Phillip Andrew Lewis. This collaborative duo utilize innovative approaches to conceptualism and minimalism to realize their work in sculpture, performance, and multi-media installation. With playfulness and humor, they explore interconnectivity and tension within the human-nature relationship, often with a focus of the balance between the individual and the collective.
For Laumeier, they will create a new work titled A Number of Tragedies (working title), a series of aluminum kite shaped sculptures embedded into a grove of trees in Laumeier’s Way Field. Kites are objects of creative play and wonder, a type of kinetic sculpture that ties the user directly to nature. Clayton and Lewis’s colorful, sculptural kites, while “stuck” in the trees, still suggests the remnants of a collective, celebratory event. The tangled web of color, shape and string imparts a sense of humor central to their practice and expresses the amusement, creativity and the intersection between us and the natural world.
During their residency, Clayton and Lewis will develop several programs inspired by their installation, including a collaborative kite fly open to all Park visitors.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS:
Lenka Clayton and Phillip Andrew Lewis are featured artists in the 2022 FRONT International: Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art. Other recent collaborative exhibitions include Darkhouse, Lighthouse, a permanent public artwork in Pittsburgh and Plaque, a permanent public artwork at Black Cube Nomadic Museum in Pittsburgh. Clayton received her MA in Documentary Direction from the National Film & Television School, Beaconsfield, United Kingdom. She received her BA in 1999 from Central St. Martins School of Art, London. Her recent selected exhibitions include Blanton Museum of Art, Austin; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the Columbus Museum of Art. Clayton is the founder of An Artist Residency in Motherhood, an open-source artist residency program. Lewis earned his MFA in Photography from the Memphis College of Art in 2000 and his BA in Psychology from the University of Memphis in 1996. His recent selected exhibitions include The Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, East Lansing, Michigan; Atlanta Contemporary Art Center; Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, Omaha and 21C Museum, Louisville.
Past Visiting Artists in Residence:
2022 - Jean Shin (b. South Korea)
2021 – Aida Šehović (b. Bosnia and Herzegovina)
2020 – Odili Donald Odita (b. Nigeria)