| Title | PlantBot Genetics |
|---|---|
| Contributor | Wendy DesChene (author) |
| Jeff Schmuki (author) | |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.53288/0367.1.17 |
| Landing page | https://punctumbooks.com/titles/out-of-place-artists-pedagogy-and-purpose/ |
| License | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ |
| Copyright | Wendy DesChene; Jeff Schmuki |
| Publisher | punctum books |
| Published on | 2021-10-28 |
| Page range | pp. 179–188 |
| Print length | 10 pages |
| Language | English (Original) |
Wendy DesChene is a Canadian artist and graduated with an MFA in Painting from Tyler School of Art and immediately incorporated materials that would support her activist inspired works. Weary of the limitations placed on art by institutions, she began to invite audience participation into her installations. The outcome was a community collaborative exhibition titled wysiwyg that has toured eleven different communities, including the Art League of Houston, the Minnesota State University, the Art Academy of Cincinnati, and The Henry Street Settlement of New York. Other collaborative-based projects have been presented at the Soap Factory and the Tomio Koyama Gallery of Japan. Wendy is the recipient of several fellowships including being twice awarded a Canada Council Travel Grant. Her recent collaborative work, PlantBot Genetics, with artist Jeff Schmuki, has been awarded National Endowment for the Arts and Pulitzer Foundation Grants for exhibitions and/or programming at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, the Goethe Institute in Egypt, the Bach Modern in Austria, the New Gallery of Canada, and Marfa Dialogues in St. Louis.
Jeff Schmuki was raised in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona, an environment of extremes that nurtured a unique relationship to the fragile landscape and respect for our limited natural resources. Concerned with a broad range of environmental stressors and wasteful practices, a wide variety of sculptural processes and operations are connected to green issues. Traditional and contemporary sculpture techniques are frequently paired with various creative operations and tactics emphasizing audience participation in artworks’ physical or conceptual realization. Jeff has exhibited and completed projects at CRETA Rome Italy, Seoul Art Space South Korea, and Contemporary Craft PA. His recent collaborative work, PlantBot Genetics, has been awarded National Endowment for the Arts funding and Pulitzer Foundation Grants for exhibitions or programming, including the Carnegie Museum of Art, De Hortus Botanicus Netherlands, the Bach Modern Austria, the New Gallery Canada, and Marfa Dialogues St. Louis. In addition, Jeff is the recipient of several honors, including Pollock-Krasner and Joan Mitchell Foundation Grants.