2021 Hotbox Residency
Niqi Crump, Lydia Garcia, Elexus Pettigrew, Hannah Spector, and Mami Takahashi
MASS Gallery has selected 5 artists to participate in the HOTBOX Residency program for 2021. Each artist will receive a $500 honorarium to use as they see fit, and will be expected to engage through MASS’s virtual platforms in some form. This online presence will be staggered throughout the remainder of the year, beginning summer 2021. The HOTBOX Residency program supports and nurtures projects that could not be realized otherwise, offering an avenue for experimentation and opportunities to test new work with viewer engagement.
The 2021 Hotbox Residents were:
Niqi Crump
Niqi Crump is an Artist from McKinney, Texas. She is pursuing a BFA for Studio Art at Texas State University. Her work includes drawing, painting, metals and photography. Her goal in her art career is to collaborate with local artists to create an open studio for a future in Art Therapy. As an artist concentrating on drawing, she focuses on psychological illustration and establishing a visual conversation using contours and space. Her current focus is abstract illustrations of houses. She uses geometric forms as the core structure then builds up sections with patterns and calligraphic lines to give each house its personality. During this process she reflects on interpersonal emotional experiences using each drawing as a diary entry to verbalize her thoughts through symbols. She envisions her practice will influence others to break down thoughts and feelings in order to confront their own issues while making art. After finishing her BFA, Niqi plans to create an archive of drawings that solidify her style and collaborate in a studio where local artists can share their work in media such as paint, drawing, botanicals, and photography. She intends the studio to be an interactive space with a therapeutic atmosphere where each artist interprets how their craft brings them joy.
Lydia Garcia
Lydia Garcia is a Central Texas-based visual artist whose work explores the character of organic materials from local and sentimental landscapes. Creating raw pigments, handmade colors, and sculptures through a process of experimentation, Garcia is interested in temporal limitations on organic materials such as plants, geological forms, and natural chemicals.
Garcia participated in the year-long Crit Group program in 2020 through The Contemporary Austin that culminated in a group show at GrayDUCK Gallery. She also is the founder of Ochre & Iron, an evolving social practice in which we share and exchange knowledge and services through interactive workshops, process-based exchanges, and community involvement while generating working materials native to the Central Texas region.
Lydia was born in Austin, Texas, and received her BFA in Studio Art at the University of Texas at Austin.
Elexus Pettigrew
Elexus Pettigrew is an African-American artist who uses video and photos to speak about our relationship with media consumption. Her main focus of work plays on being a product of your environment and how media consumption programs the way we live our everyday lives. In her works, she uses stacked videos that show representation of black stereotypes and relationships we build through biased mediums. Elexus was born in Memphis, TN where her experience from racism influenced her to pursue her interest. She is currently working and practicing towards her BFA in Studio Arts with a concentration in Expanded Media at Texas State University.
See Elexus’s Hotbox 2021 Project Here →
Hannah Spector
Hannah Spector is an interdisciplinary visual artist and poet working out of Austin, TX. Spector thinks of language as a solid object—a concrete and spatial expression that can overturn limiting perceptions of the everyday. Spector has exhibited work at Artpace, The San Antonio Museum of Art, The Visual Arts Center (ATX), Transformer Gallery (DC), and Pyramid Atlantic (DC). They received their MFA from UT Austin and currently hold a Lecturer position at Texas State University and UT Austin.
Mami Takahashi
Mami Takahashi is an artist from Tokyo, currently based in Portland, Oregon. Using photography, performance, installation and urban intervention, her practice explores the complexities of being Asian and a woman struggling for US citizenship. Being the first immigrant of her family and a non-native English speaker, her visual practice incorporates her awkward experience in this new culture. As an immigrant applying for permanent resident status based on her artistic-skill, there is an on-going struggle with the complex meaning of being “American” and “foreigner” with the millions of immigrants that came before. As a nation historically struggling with the complex history of its diversity, the US offers a unique perspective on the relationship between its citizens and an increasing immigrant population.
Previous exhibitions and performances have taken place at Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Portland, OR; Center for Contemporary Art and Culture, Portland OR; San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco; DANK Haus, Chicago, IL; The International Museum of Art, El Paso, TX; Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Alberta, Canada; Gwangju Folk Art Museum, Korea; Instituto Municipal del Arte la Cultura, DG Mexico and Toriizaka Art Gallery, Tokyo, among other venues.
She holds an MFA from Portland State University, a BFA from Joshibi University of Art and Design.
See Mami’s Hotbox 2021 Project Here →
