Meet our Residents
2023 - 2022 - 2021 - (OG Walkaways 2017-2021)
2023
Inspired by sacred geometry, Jordann Wine draws on classical forms and patterns in her work to reference mathematical concepts that reflect the wonders of the universe. Working with the golden ratio, fractals, and gradients these geometric abstract paintings, drawings and murals connect to notions of deep space in time, as well as deep space found in meditation. Floating, falling, fading and unfolding patterns of triangles and circles mesmerize the viewer, evoking contemplation of the infinite. Seeking order out of chaos, and interrupting rigidity of order with slight imperfections in the repetition is central to the meditative nature of her practice and to the solace it intends to bring out in the hand-drawn imagery. Her art practice has been pivotal to her own healing and an important tool in bringing a sense of calm and purpose to her life.
Along with her work in drawings, paintings and murals, Jordann has evolved her practice by introducing glitter. Glitter, commonly dismissed as an ordinary craft material, is elevated to a painterly standard as she foregrounds the material’s inherent qualities of holding and releasing light. Making use of the medium’s full range of iridescent, opaque, and translucent color qualities, she transforms the childish or garish reputation of glitter into a reflective cosmic field. Reflective surfaces instinctually remind people of water, the element most critical to survival. Glitter’s shimmering surfaces, reminiscent of light hitting water, attracts the viewer into the work, evoking the appeal of both the movement of water as flow and the introspective quality of water as stillness.
2022
2021
Hamed Noori - July 2021
From the series "Impermanent Mountains" / 2020-21
Hamed Noori (b. 1979, IR) is a multidisciplinary artist based in Boston, MA. He received his B.A. in “Applied Art” from Kashan Art University (IR) in 2007 and attended as an M.A. student of “Art in Context” at the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK) in 2010. His work has been exhibited in various international festivals, exhibitions, and biennials such as Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, Scottsdale, AZ (US), Hillyer Art Space, Washington, D.C. (US), Passerelle Center for Contemporary Art, Brest (FR), 11th Iranian National Photo Biennial, Tehran (IR) and 4th MADATAC Festival, CentroCentro, Madrid (ES). His works have also been published in different books and magazines such as “Iranian Photography Now”, Published by Hatje Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern (DE) and “Iran: Iranomutomorphosis.net (Contemporary Artists from Iran)”, Imago Mundi – Luciano Benetton Collection, Published by Fabrica, Treviso (IT) and “Le Monde diplomatique” magazine, Paris (FR). Hamed has been selected for the BCA (Boston Center for the Arts) studio residency program and he has also received a Walkaway House Fellowship (North Adams, MA), MASS MoCA’s A4A grant, and Mass Cultural Council Artist Fellowships Award in 2021.
Gohar Dashti - July 2021
"Untitled" from the series “Land/s” / 2019 / © Gohar Dashti
Gohar Dashti received her M.A. in photography from the Tehran University of Art in 2005. For the past 16 years, she has been making large scale photography with a particular focus on social issues. Her work references history and contemporary culture, as well as the convergence of anthropological and sociological perspectives; employing a unique, quasi-theatrical aesthetic, she brings to bear a diverse intellectual and cultural experience to illuminate and elaborate upon her perception of the world around her.In her most recent works, Dashti has explored, through her highly stylized, densely poetic observations of human and plant-life, the innate kinship between the natural world and human migrations. Fascinated with human-geographical narratives and their interconnection to her own personal experiences, Gohar Dashti believes that nature is what connects her to the multiple meanings of ‘home’ and ‘displacement’, both as conceptual abstractions, and as concrete realities that delineate and contour our existence. The result is a series of quirky landscapes and portraits, as lush as they are arch, inciting questions about the immense, variegated, border-eschewing reach of nature – immune to cultural and political divisions – and the ways in which immigrants inevitably search out and reconstruct familiar topographies in a new, ostensibly foreign land.
2017-2021 (AKA the Original Walkaways)
Lena Schmid’s (b.1985) paintings explore how the poetics and physics of time function as a physical force. Using richly textured luminous surfaces, movement without discernible speed, and cleaving imagery, her work references the kind of slow, strange change experienced in a space long inhabited: be it a body, a well known landscape, or the cosmos. She holds an MFA from Hunter College and a BFA from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Lena has exhibited nationally, including at New Release Gallery and the SPRING/BREAK Art Fair. She has held multiple Artist in Residence positions, including at the Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, the TIDES Institute, and the Wassaic Project, where she was a 2018 Education Fellow. Her work has been featured in the New York Times, “What to See in New York Art Galleries This Week.” In 2020, Lena was awarded a Printmaking Fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts.
Sherwin Rio (b. Jacksonville, FL) is an interdisciplinary artist making site-specific and research-based metaphors addressing colonization, historical public amnesia, and intergenerational story-telling through a Filipinx/American lens in the fields of sculpture, installation, video, performance, and audio.
Sherwin stayed with us for a month while working as an independent preparator at MCLA’s Gallery 51. In his off time he made an entirely new series of 20 drawings with water-based ink on 30x40 inch Rives BFK. The series is loosely inspired by wind maps, an imaginative portrayal of adaptability amidst circumstantial changes, social distancing ground markers, pandemic-induced behavioral patterns, and from observing the snow fall and billow in the wind from the Walkaway House windows. All this marked a return to 2D after 5 years.
Ash Strazzinski is a multidisciplinary visual artist and creative placemaker who is deeply invested in playtime; wildly curious about bodies; mystified by femininity and masculinity; and confused about gender. They make photographs, zines, one-of-a-kind artist books, installations, and occasionally objects.
As a creative placemaker, they co-create comfortable and unassuming spaces where people can come together to explore their creativity and examine their world through productive and non-productive labor. They activate empty storefronts, occupy conference rooms after-hours, and infiltrate farmer’s markets as a means of meeting people where they’re at in order to strengthen existing communities through art, interventions, and conversations.
Max Spitzer is a sculptor and educator whose work explores the many ways which objects and language collaborate to create meaning, with projects dipping into the pedagogy of art school group critique, the semantics of exhibition wall labels, and most recently: the family histories and provenances which accompany gravestones. Max received his MFA from Carnegie Mellon University in 2021.
Max was the very first artist to come live at the Walkaway House in 2017 during our first year in North Adams. He was instrumental in helping us get renovations started, taking down seemingly endless square feet of floral wallpaper (thanks Max!) During his time in North Adams he cranked out sculptures in his studio, had a solo-show at the Gravity Gallery, taught art classes on the regular and successfully applied to graduate school.