Session Two Update from Djerassi!

From left to right: Session 2 Artists, Sara Shelton Mann, Victor Yañez-Lazcano, Jacqueline Rush Lee, Danny Thanh Nguyen, Preeti Kaur Rajpal,Tori Lawrence

Residencies, Renewal, and Reconnection

Our second session of artists-in-residence have come and made Djerassi their own. The experience of meeting such remarkable individuals and witnessing them share their artistic visions with each other is electric.

Some examples of artist feedback provide a sense of the potential power residencies can have:

“...This time, space and communion with artists from different backgrounds and disciplines felt like artist rehab. The distance between my ideas and actualizing them had, prior to Djerassi, become too great. While here applications were completed, healthy habits restored, and the distance between generation of idea and creating the object were brought back to an acceptable state.”

Victor Yañez-Lazcano, Visual Artist, Session 2, 2022

“The ranch is beautiful and I enjoyed working outside and challenging myself to work on a larger scale with a medium that I do not normally work with. I have learned a great deal by pushing myself to discomfort with a new medium at a larger scale and it has given me new ideas in how I can move forward with other outside projects in the future, not only in wood but in other media--so for me that experience has been invaluable... I worked really hard here and feel a great sense of accomplishment and gratitude that I was able to create a site-specific work and have it sited on such a special property."

Jacqueline Rush Lee, Visual Artist, Session 2, 2022

"I worked on a training manual of my teaching - Moving Alchemy. I prepped for this residency by working the last year on editing - the time here was used to do the introduction, extra poetic writing and going through photos. [...] My hope is that it will be used in universities for teachers. [I will remember] love, love, love - trails, changes that happen over time, beauty, the mountain lion, fabulous people and food. Acceptance. I felt received and valued.”

Sara Shelton Mann, Choreographer, Session 2, 2022

It is a pleasure to introduce our second session of artists-in-residence this year:

Since 2009, Victor Yañez-Lazcano has been dedicated to creating an interdisciplinary body of work that chronicles his family’s history in the U.S. as it transitions from immigrants to first-, second-, and third-generation Mexican Americans. His photography and other work has been exhibited at numerous spaces nationwide. Victor has been an adjunct instructor and visiting lecturer at Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design and Stanford University, respectively.

Tori Lawrence is a New England-

based choreographer who creates site-specific multimedia performances and digital/analog dance films. Her environmentally-based work inspires an imaginative and sustainable way of looking at, thinking about, and using space. She is currently collaborating with fellow artist-resident Sara Shelton Mann on her book Moving Alchemy. Tori is an alumna of Djerassi as well as many other artist residencies.

Sara Shelton Mann has been a choreographer, performer, and teacher since 1967. She was a protégé of Alwin Nikolais and Murray Louis in New York City before moving to Canada where she met Andrew Harwood and fell in love with Contact Improvisation. In 1979 she moved to San Francisco to work with Mangrove, now Mixed Bag Productions, for which she serves as artistic director. Her Moving Alchemy training is an ongoing teaching project and is influenced by certifications and studies in the metaphysical and healing traditions.

Danny Thanh Nguyen’s short stories and personal essays have most recently appeared in The Offing, Entropy, The Journal, Foglifter, and elsewhere. His awards include fellowships and grants from Ragdale Foundation, Lambda Literary, Kundiman, San Francisco Arts Commission, and Indiana University. He writes a column on BDSM/kink and leather culture for Recon.

Preeti Kaur Rajpal is a poet and nonfiction writer. Her poems can be found at Tupelo Quarterly, Lantern Review, and Spook Mag, among other publications. Her debut poetry manuscript ‘membery’ has been accepted for publication by Tupelo Press who commented that Preeti’s work “forges a complex, multifaceted poetics of social justice.” Membery’s release is anticipated late next year.

Jacqueline Rush Lee is a mixed-media Artist who is recognized for her work with the book form. As an artist she is interested in creating conceptual objects and sites that question and re-contextualize materials, narrative and history.

New Site Specific Installations

We are also thrilled to announce new site-inspired installations by Victor Yañez-Lazcano and Jacqueline Rush Lee.

Victor's piece, we decide when, consists of a sign post filled with affirmations, thoughts, and questions pointing in every direction. This piece symbolizes that any move forward is a move in the right direction and offers a moment to reflect and begin anew.

^{Victor hard at work in his studio.}

^{we decide when}

Jacqueline's installation Villa Equus - In Pasture is based loosely on the former working ranch horses on the land. One could even picture this horse as Pamela Djerassi’s Amakua (protective spirit horse) in her next life that resides peacefully “in pasture” on and within the land. Jacqueline's second installation, Djerassi Whorl, can be found nestled in one of the Redwood tree crevices. This piece utilizes books donated through the program to create a sculpture that will be transformed by time and the environment and can later be exhumed to create a visual document related to the authors of the books.

^{Villa Equus - In Pasture}

^{Jacqueline displays the}^{Djerassi Whorl before installation.}

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