EMERGE
The EMERGE AIR program aims to elevate and support artists who are in the emerging phase of their creative careers by providing 24/7 access to studio space, creative community, and related department tools and equipment, to thereby broaden and strengthen the greater creative community in Maine.
Application decisions will be made by a small panel of local professional artists with extensive knowledge in print or clay. The 2024-25 EMERGE Artist in Residence panelists include Martha Grover (ceramics), Jaime Wing (printmaking), and former EMERGE AIR in Clay Jenny Ibsen (ceramics and printmaking).
Important 2024 dates:
Application opens: March 1st
Info Session #1: March 6th
Info Session #2: March 21st
Deadline: April 30th
Notification: late May
Announcements: early June
There are two EMERGE sessions per year hosting a print and clay artist during each one.
Session 1: September 1, 2024 - January 31, 2025
Session 2: March 1, 2025 - July 31, 2025
EMERGE AIR have access to:
24/7 private studio space for five months
Department tools & equipment
Creative community
Members-only events
$250 stipend for materials
Professional photoshoot
Spotlight in the RWS newsletter
Opportunity to access additional departments
10% membership discount upon completion of the program
Photo; 2024 Session 2 Print AIR - Nori Jo Hilton,
Photo credit: Bret Woodard
Photo; 2024 Session 2 Clay AIR Grace Hagar,
Photo credit: Bret Woodard
2023 -24 Session 2 EMERGE Artists in Residence
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Grace Hagar
2023-24 EMERGE AIR; clay
Grace Hager is an artist who works in oil paint and ceramic with terra sigillata. She is the current RWS EMERGE Artist in Residence in Clay.
Grace received both her bachelor’s and master’s at Maine College of Art & Design. As an undergraduate student, Grace focused on painting while their graduate program was interdisciplinary. She came to oil painting relatively late as an undergraduate student while trying to decide between a concentration in painting and printmaking. She decided to focus on painting for the immediacy in the experience of color, “The faster I can get to a vibrant experience of color is my main motivation.” As a graduate student, they became interested in ceramics and in their last year began to use clay in their primary practice. They were introduced to terra sigillata as a Teaching Assistant and developed their process alongside teaching Foundations students about this material. They have been working in clay through the lens of painting for about two years now.
Pictured: campfire sculpture by Grace Hager.
Grace’s current research is focused on what color can do to create different feelings or sensations. Music is also important to Grace, and the way that color and sound relate creates a visual experience for her similar to synesthesia–the experience of connected sensory associations. This process is one way she orients herself around a new body of work.
The colors they use each season are also informed by the sky where the color of light can be most easily observed. They recently discovered the ‘blue hour”, just following the golden hour, when everything falls into silhouetted black and rich blues. Landscape is their primary subject and they see little differentiation between working with canvas or clay, “I’d say my whole entire artistic identity is landscape driven.” Unlike in the traditional landscape genre, their landscapes usually include a central figure. Moving into clay, the central figure becomes the ‘sculptural substrate’ that they then carve into and paint.
One of the things that first drew Grace to clay was the shimmer of glazed ceramic. They created a piece titled Shimmer Beach with organic, tile-like elements which were then nestled in sand on the floor. This emulation of beachcombing has been the most direct representation of landscape in her work. Grace grew up on the shoreline in Connecticut and beachcombing was–and still is–an important part of Grace’s practice as a meditative exercise in observation. She describes the activity of beachcombing, “You’re scanning the ground and it’s the same activity as recognition or watching in the studio, you see something and that’s what you’ll reach for and investigate.”
Pictured: Grace's materials in the EMERGE clay studio.
Pictured: Grace paints with terra sigillata.
An early moment in the transfer of landscape from paint to clay happened when Grace extruded some clay that reminded her of driftwood as part of Shimmer Beach. This process then informed her campfire series. During a school break, she took a trip to the White Mountains and the lodge she stayed at had a campfire. She had been thinking about color and light and wanted to build dimensionally in clay; the series was an organic transfer of observation to action.
As a color-forward painter, Grace works with terra sigillata to achieve vibrant colors in clay. She had previously discovered how difficult it is to achieve reliably bright colors with glaze in high-fired gas kilns and has learned to make terra sigillata herself, using different stains and chemicals to achieve the different colors. When she first made her campfire sculptures, she described them as test tiles for terra sigillata. The series has been a perfect confluence of color, light, and the illusion of heat, using contrast and color relationships to create a shimmering movement effect. This subject is still fun for Grace and she has been returning to it to try new techniques.
Pictured: Grace working on a campfire sculpture.
Grace has continued the momentum and excitement around the work they started as a graduate student by accepting invitations and participating in juried shows throughout this first year post-graduation. The experience has been both challenging and rewarding, and some of the learning from this transition has been to allow for and protect slow time in the studio. Grace hasn’t had continuous access to a clay studio and what they are learning as they step in and out of temporary clay spaces is to be strategic about setting one goal for the time that they have in each space. This includes responding to practical limitations, such as considering the shape of the kilns and the temperatures they fire to.
She’s also allowing for flexibility in letting the circumstances surprise her and guide her work. Clay is still new to Grace, and she welcomes the ‘beginner's mindset’ that is fresh, curious, and open to all possibilities. When she started working with clay she failed a lot, played a lot, and ultimately learned a lot. Clay keeps her in the researching phase and necessitates working things out with her hands instead of her head. She’s hoping that working in clay will change her relationship with paint in a way that lets her access it in a freer way, “I think what allows for such freedom for me in clay is almost everything is reusable or rehydratable and has that flexibility, whereas oil paint will dry to point that you can no longer manipulate it.” She hopes the energy of her clay practice will continually inform her painting practice over time.
Grace has just installed her work as part of the Wassaic Project’s Summer Exhibition: Tall Shadows in Short Order in Wassaic, NY. The opening reception will be held on May 18th, from 4 pm to 6 pm. To see more of Grace’s work or to get in touch with her, visit gracehager.com or follow @grace.makes on Instagram.
Images provided by Bret Woodard and the artist.
Nori Jo Hilton
2023-24 EMERGE AIR; print
Nori Jo is a printmaker who also works in fiber and textiles. They are working at the intersection of these media in a series of hand pressed relief prints from fabric objects. Nori Jo is the current RWS EMERGE Artist in Residence in print.
Nori Jo started printmaking as a student at Casco Bay High School. They recall an advanced art class in high school where they block-printed t-shirts and got to explore the medium. As an undergraduate, they went on to earn a degree in Printmaking and Restorative Justice at Bennington College. There they studied relief printing, etching, monotype, litho, and letterpress. They love the physicality of printmaking, especially carving; it makes sense to them in the creation of high and low points and what is revealed, “I really love the part of the process where you set everything up and ink and print and it becomes something totally different than you ever could have imagined. That feels magical to me.” Their senior thesis combined printmaking and textiles as an installation piece made from different prints on fabric that Nori constructed into a tent-like space in a quilt-like fashion that could be entered and viewed from the inside and out.
In their transition from student to practicing artist Nori Jo quickly realized they could not continue to produce prints like they had in school because they no longer had access to a studio with presses and materials and knowledgeable professors, “It’s hard to appreciate that while you’re there, so the transition is realizing that if I want to continue to do the same level of work I have to find studio space.” Without this kind of access, Nori Jo had been experimenting with rubbings and simplistic lino cuts that could be hand rubbed–both possible without a print shop–before joining the EMERGE program at RWS. The process led them to try things they wouldn’t have otherwise and they have discovered a few different avenues they want to explore.
The work they are currently making is very different from the work they made in school just a couple of years ago, and they feel really good about the direction in which they are headed. The themes Nori Jo is invested in have changed since graduation; they used to be very ‘maximalist’ in that they took advantage of everything available to them, “It is a lot, and that was possible when I was in school. I’ve taken a step back and simplified by almost taking color out completely and focusing more on exploring why I am making work.”
Nori Jo has been peeling back layers of abstraction and simplifying their process. They are currently taking pieces of fabric and inking them and making hand-rubbed prints from those pieces, which is an act of taking all of the intermediary steps out to focus on the fabric and the paper, “The texture is really beautiful and brings you closer to the object itself because you have removed those layers in between.” They feel more focused like they are getting at what really interests them. Despite the residency’s end date, Nori Jo feels like they have infinite time and space to take it slow and notice and be curious, instead of creating with a deadline like making an edition for an assignment, “If I make one print and I’m not interested in doing that, I can just stop.”
Pictured: rubbings hung in Nori Jo's EMERGE studio.
Pictured: Nori Jo preparing materials.
Their approach to their practice has shifted in other ways too. They used to oppose sitting down with a concept and would start with materials or colors and play around and see what happened. Now Nori Jo creates with an image or feeling in mind, and because they are more focused, they are better able to access the conceptual aspect of their work. Documentation is another interest they want to explore, which works well with their fabric to paper printmaking.
All of Nori’s creative work is tied to their politic, “Whether or not I like it, my work always ends up being or feeling political. That’s been coming through a lot more in my work recently.” In school they had felt it was forced and taking a step back has allowed the message to come through in a more genuine way. They are interested in making work that centers on community and interconnectedness and interdependence, which relates to the community organizing they do and, more personally, exploring gender and the politics of getting dressed. The aspects of their identity and queerness and their community and politics–as a leftist anarchist abolitionist–come through in their work because it is important to them. They envision creating a documentary project that investigates gender politics and textile and fashion.
Pictured: drawings and prints on Nori Jo's worktable.
Nori Jo has also been experimenting with shamanic journeying, an indigenous practice of self-reflection where you listen to drums and tune into your own mind and go on a journey and learn a lot about yourself, as a means to inform their art. They have a lino cut in their studio that is a text they wrote after one of those experiences. They are interested in the intersection of spirituality and organizing, and abolition and organizing as a spiritual practice. Investigating the idea of organizing is a process in which something that is yet to exist is possible, that there is a future where the oppressive structures we live under no longer exist and are replaced with community. “We can’t see it yet, but we have to act like it is inevitable. I am moved by what people have to say about how necessary imagination is in this work, in building something you cannot see.”
Nori’s work, the relief prints in particular, reveal what was not originally visible and printing has therefore become a faith-based practice for them; they apply the ink as a believer that something beautiful is about to be revealed.
Contact Nori Jo through Instagram @para_nori_a.
EMERGE AIR ALUMNI
Read past interviews with & see work from EMERGE Alumni