studio

PLAYA Art/Sci Residency ✰ July, 2026

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I spent about two weeks at PLAYA Summer Lake, a residency for artists and scientists, in Oregon’s high desert. I relished the slowness, sunshine, and time to experiment in the studio. At PLAYA, I worked on lumen prints, using the sun to expose drawings, film negatives, and found images on gelatin silver paper. The prints collage imagery of holes, openings and circles: coke ovens, mine shafts, sink holes, craters, cysts, lumps and cavities to explore energy and mineral extraction, cycles of destruction, development, abandonment, booms and busts, and exchanges between body and environment. Prints will be combined with traditional gelatin silver, digital prints, and sculptural objects when I return to my home studio.

In addition to working in the studio, I enjoyed reading Camera Geologica, wandering the lake bed, swimming in Ana Reservoir, soaking in Summer Lake hot springs, star gazing, and visiting Paisley Caves – the oldest site of dated human DNA in North America.

 

Workshop + Studio ✰ Spring/Summer 2026

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In early May I took an organic casting workshop at Peter’s Valley School of Craft to learn vacuum casting. I cast grapevine tendrils in sterling silver (above), and look forward to honing my metalsmithing skills.

In addition, I’ve continued casting pewter at my home studio. Below are sticks made in June 2026 (left) and July 2025 (center and right) to be incorporated into larger sculptural work and installation.

In addition, I’ve been collecting objects, casting bio-plastics, beeswax, and abaca paper, setting up small LCD screens with original, found, and collaged video, and exploring material, formal, and conceptual resonances between slow works in progress (below).

 

Glass Center Residency ✰ Spring 2025

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I’ve been working at the Pittsburgh Glass Center starting in January 2025 to continue work I began in 2022 with the help of the Idea Furnace Residency. This winter I made nine new molds for casting and blowing glass and demolded them in March and April. I’m currently focused am now onto cleaning, finishing and polishing. I’m slowly conceptualizing the glass tumors/growths as they expand from Permissible Dose into new configurations and relationships.

 

every speck of dust illuminated ✰ March 14, 2025

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A new iteration of Condition Report will be on view as part of every speck of dust illuminated opening March 14, 2025 at the Tomayko Foundation juried by Patrick Bova & Lucas Regazzi of april april.

every speck of dust illuminated
March 14 – April 18, 2025

Alexandra Lakin
Karen Lue
Erin Mallea
Joseph Ryznar
Shori Sims

every speck of dust illuminated presents a tableau of the everyday. Inspired by Richard Siken’s poem “Visible World,” the exhibition sketches a feeling around quotidian notions of quietude, the banal, dreaming, and interiority (Siken, 2005). Assembled here is the work of five artists with ties to Allegheny County, each of whom have distinct material approaches to observing these notions and the memories inflected therein.

 

Glass Center Residency ✰ Winter 2025

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I’ve returned to the Pittsburgh Glass Center for a second Idea Furnace Residency. I am continuing work I began in 2023 (see below), and making nine new molds for casting and blowing glass.