This spring, the Watermill Center is inviting the public to discover the works of Artists-in-Residence Lexy Ho-Tai, Lotte Nielsen and Carrie Mae Weems during In Process @ The Watermill Center. On Saturday, April 22 at 2 p.m., the creative geniuses will share their process as part of the engaging event.
Costume designer Lexy Ho-Tai will spend her time at the Center working on her multi-disciplinary and interactive thesis collection KOOKERVILLE – a project that earned her a “Designer of the Year” nomination upon graduating from Parsons School of Design.
“Being at the Watermill Center is helping me recharge my creative spirit; I’m usually so busy in New York City, so having time and space to focus on my personal work is an incredible gift,” said Ho-Tai. “I’m taking a lot of inspiration from the surrounding nature, and the center itself.”
She plans to create three new “Kookers” that explore performative aspects based on input from fellow artist residents.
“I’ve been thinking about objects, environments, and work/ play, starting to translate ideas into interactive soft sculptures,” Ho-Tai added.
Lotte Nielsen will expand her video project YAOI with footage of LGBT Youth in Copenhagen as well as the local LGBT community in Water Mill. She will “give a sense of the youth’s emotional life in the context of The Watermill Center’s character” by piecing together atmospheric footage with sound recordings, and will also use her newly documented footage from The Center to create a new concept for a film.
Renowned visual artist Carrie Mae Weems was awarded the Center’s 2017 Inga Maren Otto Fellow. She will use her time at the Center fine-tuning her song cycle/performance titled Grace Notes: Reflections for Now, which takes a look at the role of grace in the quest for democracy. Grace Notes premiered at the Spoleto Festival in June 2016, and was produced at Yale later in the year.
Weems was inspired to establish the project after listening to President Obama singing Amazing Grace at the funeral of the Reverend Clementa Pinckney, senior pastor at Emanuel A.M.E., who was tragically killed in the June 2015 shooting.
“Events that were the original impetus to bring this project into being continue to occur with infuriating frequency,” Weems wrote in the production’s Yale program. “The wider issues they raise make up the uneasy center of our national conversation as we approach a historic turning point as a country.”
Admission to In Process @ The Watermill Center is free.
The Watermill Center is located at 39 Water Mill Towd Road in Water Mill. For more information, call 631-726-4628 or visit www.watermillcenter.org.