Sunday, March 16, 2025 2PM- 5PM
Please join us for a special Open Studio event with our Artists in Residence Nelson Smith. Nelson is an artist based in central Kansas, originally from Detroit. He holds a Master of Fine Arts in painting from Cranbrook Academy of Art and a Bachelor’s from the College of Wooster, where he studied under mentors like Agnes Denes, George Ortman, and Charles McGee. His work, which explores the intersections of objects, images, language, and sound, is included in collections like the Museum of Modern Art’s Artist Book Archive and the Detroit Institute of Arts. Nelson has received numerous accolades, including four Michigan Council for the Arts Individual Artist Grants, the Art Matters grant, and residencies at places like the Ballinglen Arts Foundation in Ireland, Oregon College of Art and Craft, and Vermont Studio Center.
Over his 25-year career, Nelson has worked as an educator at various higher education institutions and has served as co-director of the Contemporary Art Institute of Detroit. He is currently the co-founder/directoer of the Mother’s Milk Art Residency in Newton, Kansas.
During his residency, Nelson has been focused on his sound art composition titled “Thank You For Having Me,” consisting of layered crowd-sourced voices speaking the title phrase accompanied by hacked toy keyboards and other sound elements. For the open studio event he will invite visitors to contribute their voices to the project, while sharing a current sample of the piece. In addition, Nelson has been working on two mixed media drawings, a sound piece composed from field recordings of HVAC systems (including Popps’ studio heater) and other infrastructural sounds with accordion.
If you are interested in participating in the “Thank You For Having Me” project follow this link and add your voice to the mix. https://www.nelsonsmithart.com/Thank-You-For-Having-Me.html
