Michelle Wilson

Instagram: @michellewilsonprojects

Website: http://www.michellewilsonprojects.com

Bio: "Michelle Wilson is interested in the intersections of ideas: the crossroads of colonialism and natural history, migration, vegetation, and the loss of diversity. She finds meaning in material and process, often starting directly with fibers or dye as the basis for her work, which takes the form of paper making, printmaking, artist books, installations, textiles, and social practice investigations. Her practice includes frequent collaborations with other artists; in particular her ongoing collaboration with Anne Beck as the Rhinoceros Project. Artist-in-Residence programs that she is an alumna of include the David and Julia White Colony in Ciudad Colon, Costa Rica, the Jentel Artist Residency Program, in Banner, Wyoming, the San José Museum of Quilts and Textiles, and LAB-8’s Riabitare con l'Arte program in Abruzzo, Italy. As a Community Artist, she served as a Teaching Artist for the NIAD Art Center, (Richmond, CA) and Southern Exposure’s program at the Oakland Juvenile Hall. She is a past hand-papermaking advisor to Signa-Haiti, a non-governmental organization developing a sustainable and bio-dynamic economy in Haiti. Grants and awards she has received include a a 2022 and 2023 ArtsCatalyst Award from Stanford University, 2021 Artistic Excellence in Programming Grant from San Jose State University, a 2013 Artist-Investigator Grant from the San Francisco’s Intersection for the Arts, and the 2007 Lenore Edelman Award for Book Arts. As a member of the Rhinoceros Project, she is a recipient of a 2020 Barbara Deming Foundation Grant, and a 2016 Puffin Foundation West Grant. Creative Capital designated her as an ""On Our Radar"" artist in 2015. "

Statement: "I am an interdisciplinary thinker whose work takes the form of handmade papers, installations, sculptures, prints, textiles artist books, collages, and social practice interventions. This practice is rooted in papermaking and textile traditions, and explores materials as a means of telling stories, understanding history, and building community. As a papermaker, the fibers with which I work come from waste products, plants I grow myself, or invasive plants I harvest, for which my studio practice becomes a means of clearing habitat space for native ecology. Paper is traditionally considered a substrate; however in my work the very fibers of it’s making transcend this to become signifier, content, documentation of history and place, and embodiments of site-specificity. My papers manifest records of seed migrations, weather patterns, soil conditions, climate change and interactions in a more-than-human world. Material research, history, social engagement, and collaboration galvanize my work. By finding intersecting narratives across these topics, I address a changing world, the the complexities of meaning, sentiment, and consequence. I analyze the crossroads of the human unconscious, the sociocultural milieu, the loss of diversity, ecological systems, and how social and environmental justice frequently go in unison. "