STIGGYaRT

[2022] Projects with Unaccompanied Minors (refugees) in Cyprus. Before arriving in Cyprus, I reached out to a number of organizations serving refugee populations. In 2022 and the year immediately prior, immigration by asylum seekers and refugees was hitting among the highest numbers of any country accepting them in the European Union. I eventually made a relationship with a residential center in Paphos housing unaccompanied minors, who for a variety of reasons were seeking asylum in Cyprus, without the protection of a parental guardian. The residents were being housed in an old hotel complex, with multiple buildings and a courtyard featuring a pool. The children living there were from many different nationalities and ethnic backgrounds, mainly from regions including Northern and central Africa, the middle east, and Asia. The children living in the facility were not allowed to leave the grounds, not supposed to swim in the pool, and little to no education was being provided to them. I began attending the hotel everyday to host drawing workshops. Later I became a popular portaitist, and the kids would line up to have their portrait sketched to display in their room. During the last week, I brought my paints to work on site, and focused on creating a complex narrative painting called “Lord of the Fly”, which is my depiction of their life in the hotel. I had forged deeper relationships with a number of the kids at this point, so it was easy to work collaboratively with them to develop their unique pose to be featured somewhere in the painting.

According to the instructions of the Cyprus Social Welfare Office, and for the protection of the identities of the minors currently seeking asylum in Cyprus, I have edited all photographic and video documentation of this project to maintain anonymity of individual residents.

[2022] Projects with Agricultural Workers/Immigrants in Cyprus. For a month in June I arranged my own independent art residency in Paphos, Cyprus. I rented a modest farm house via airbnb across from a melon farm. I made a relationship with some of the field workers (mostly Egyptian immigrants). I approached showing them a few portfolio samples and asked permission to photograph them while working to use as reference for my paintings. Later when I arrived with my camera, they let me help them with their work, which involved throwing melons man to man, down a line until the last man would load them in the back of. a truck. I later brought juice for a break-time and we rolled cigarettes together. Later, I returned to show them the paintings I created at the end of the month. A detail in the first painting below “War of Seeds” are (what the men told me to be) two Israeli military helicopters that flew overhead frequently while we were in the field that week.

[2015] Violet is an anagram of Love it, storefront installation and community activation project, sharpie on cardboard, found objects, silk screen on metal signs, window marker on window, entire storefront.

Violet is an anagram of Love it (2015) was a multifaceted project that confronted socio-economic inequality and homelessness in Spokane, WA. I first explored this work with a series of sharpie drawings on cardboard featuring shopping carts of the homeless, and also made social commentary “pan-handling signs”. The work culminated in a month long window front exhibition in the downtown area, at which time I expanded to include found material installation with recycled trash sourced from the nearby rapidly gentrifying “west central” neighborhood. I recreated official authoritative signs discriminating against homeless populations by photographing the authoritative “NO” signs and screen printing their messages onto the backs of old signs I up-cycled from a local recycling center. During the course of the exhibit I coordinated community open houses where participants could make their own cardboard signs, and were invited to write on the windows and make anagrams of the “NO” signs. Participants cardboard signs were included in the left window, and on the right window the anagrams were written. Pictured in the center you will see that I fabricated two shopping carts into chairs. During the open houses, people were invited to sit as an act of political protest against the following Spokane Municipal Code specifically discriminatory against the homeless:

Title 10 Regulation of Activities

Division I. Penal Code

Chapter 10.10 Offenses Against Peace and Order

Section 10.10.026Sitting, Lying on Sidewalk in a Designated Zone

1. Prohibition.

1. No person may sit or lie down upon a public sidewalk, or upon a blanket, chair, stool, or any other object placed upon a public sidewalk, during the hours between six a.m. and midnight in the zone designated in this section.

1. At all times it is unlawful to sit or lie on any drinking fountain, trash container, planter, bicycle rack, or any other sidewalk fixture not designed primarily for the purpose of sitting.

1. At all times it is unlawful to sit or lie in any entrance to or exit from any building or parking lot, or on any loading dock.

Mobile Custom Pan Handling Sign Booth (2015) using a shopping cart converted into an otis spunkmeyer cookie oven (found) I did performances at three live art events where I made signs on commission at suggested donation levels. All proceeds were donated to local charities in Spokane.

Anamnesis Reel (2013) was my Master of Fine Arts thesis exhibition. It showcased works that explored fragments of narratives based on my immediate or “nuclear” family’s social relationships in a fictionalized manner. Illustrated essentially from the vantage point of me as a toddler, the work raises questions about the formulation of identity, basic childhood trauma, and the natural suppression of childhood memory. This work included the large mixed media drawings involving sculptural elements, watercolor “snapshots” that function as the album photographs they were painted from, and was accompanied with a written theses including short story fragments.