2022 Artists-in-Residence

Sam Nelson is a teacher and writer. He recently graduated from the University of Utah's Environmental Humanities graduate program where he studied the use of plants in children's literature and education. In the past, he wrote short stories, local news stories, and essays for adults. Now, he's focused on writing plant-centered informational fiction for children. Sam is from Richmond, Virginia but now lives in Salt Lake City.

Christopher Pavsek is a film scholar and filmmaker living in Vancouver, British Columbia, where he is an associate professor of film in the School for the Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University.

His recent filmmaking has focussed on the landscapes of the desert southwest and their representation in photography and experimental film. His recent video installation, "Scenes from Deseret" (2022), and a feature experimental documentary, "News from Deseret" (currently in post-production), are components of a project inspired by the structuralist filmmaking of James Benning, in particular his film Deseret (1995). His past filmmaking has examined the political legacies of the attacks of September 11 in the US, the AIDS epidemic in Vietnam, and his daughter's enthusiasm for food. His book, The Utopia of Film (2013), is a study of the utopian impulses in the cinema of Jean-Luc Godard, Alexander Kluge, and Kidlat Tahimik. Chris holds a PhD in Literature from Duke University and a Master's in Resource and Environmental Management from Simon Fraser University. In his creative work he strives to bring together the insights of critical theory, aesthetics, and the (social) science of conservation that he has gained through his diverse academic training.

Sara Tabbert is a print and wood artist from Fairbanks, Alaska. Her work appears in museums, commercial galleries, nonprofit spaces, and as permanent public art installations. Her recent work often explores the natural world and the man-made object, and their interactions within “lesser” yet still wild landscapes. She lives in this kind of landscape, sharing a large parcel of the finest Interior permafrost lowlands with her partner Brandon and a small pack of huskies.

Last summer, Tabbert attended the Center for Furniture Craftsmanship’s Furniture 12-week Furniture Intensive in Rockport, Maine, and continues to explore new ways of making work using wood. She is a 2019 Rasmuson Fellowship recipient, a 2021 Artist in Residence in Acadia National Park, and will be a Windgate fellow at the Center for Art in Wood in Philadelphia in the summer of 2023.

This summer she will be helping to rebuild her studio following a devastating fire in the fall of 2021, as well as continuing to explore new techniques and ideas in the wood shop in Fairbanks’ Folk School.

American artist Hope Tucker reconceptualizes what we know as a daily form of narrative through THE OBITUARY PROJECT. She has animated cyanotypes of downwinders; recorded mobile phone footage of the last public phone booths of Finland; written the text of a video out of paper clips, a Norwegian symbol of solidarity and nonviolent resistance; retraced the path of protest that closed the only nuclear power plant in Austria; and preserved reckonings made by travelers to the site of the first detonation of an atomic bomb.  www.theobituaryproject.org

Western Landscape Painter, Educator

Email: suetyler777@gmail.com
Website: suetyler.com
Artist Statement: “My work reflects the Western landscape: specifically, the heritage and inhabitants of the Mountain West. My subjects are landscapes, historical structures and wildlife. My acrylics and mixed media pieces are meant to inspire and appreciate a unique mountain environment. The goal is conservation and dialogue with the natural world.”