About ISC @ SAW

Salem Art Works and the International Sculpture Center are pleased to announce the artists we have selected to design and create sculptures for display at the Cary Hill Sculpture Park.

Participating artists will receive housing, food, and studio space at Salem Art Works during the residency dates below and a generous stipend of $2,000 from the International Sculpture Center to help support the artists in creating new work. We hope you will visit SAW to meet these exceptional artists!

Selected Artists

Vadim Kondakov
Chelsea Southard

Residency Schedule

Residency Dates: Monday, May 6, 2024 to Tuesday, July 15, 2024
Open Studio: Friday, June 28th, 2024 tba
Group Exhibition: Friday, July 12th, 2024 tba

Vadim Kondakov
Staten Island, New York
www.vadimstudio.art
@kondakovvadim

Biography: Vadim Kondakov (b. 1990, Tatarstan) graduated from the Fechin Art College in Kazan, the Stieglitz Art Academy and the PRO ARTE Foundation’s School for Young Artists in St. Petersburg, Russia. Today the artist lives and works in Staten Island, New York. In his work with metal, Kondakov observes how, despite industrial processing of this element by humans, it cuts its way back to nature through corrosion and decay. In his sculptures, Kondakov uses water to inform metal constructions with new, expanded forms. This encounter further develops in his graphic art — by transferring the oxide film created by interaction of these components to other surfaces, such as paper or textile. Kondakov exhibited in group shows in Russia before 2022, with a major art residency at the 6th Ural Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art in 2021.

Artist Statement: Born and raised in a small industrial town Bugulma in Tatarstan, Vadim Kondakov now resides in Staten Island, New York, where rusty metal structures left ashore from the industrial activities nurture his ongoing artistic research of the transience of industrial age and human labor in the face of natural processes of decay. In his work with metal, the artist observes how, despite its industrial processing, it cuts its way back to nature through corrosion and decay.

Kondakov has been one of the few contemporary artists there who uses hydroforming technique to create metal objects. The artist uses water to inform metal constructions with new, expanded forms. Inflating metal forms with water is not just a purely technical means of achieving three-dimensionality, but an integral part of his artistic research of natural elements and process-driven creation.

This encounter further develops in his graphic art — by transferring the oxide film created by interaction of these components to other surfaces, such as paper or textile. Reminiscent of landscapes, these rusty prints tend to go beyond the limits of two-dimensional graphics, endued with sculptural qualities.

Metal, water, textile, all having different material qualities, share a common sense of flow, ultimately pointing to the flow of time that informs them with change. The artist sets the scene for the natural elements to perform the work and then quits hold of it, allowing water and metal come into play and create a sculptural form.

Ongoing processes of creation and disintegration in his work point to the artist’s concern with environmental destruction on the one hand and the transience of human labor in the face of geological time on the other.

Chelsea Southard
Bethlehem, PA
www.chelseasouthard.com
@unusmundusproject

Biography:

I am here to explore the music that arises from living and to translate those vibrations into compositions of space and time.

To create experiences and objects which navigate the enduring and the ephemeral, existing as a type of tool to strengthen our awareness and widen the dimensions of perception.

Through the alchemy of mixed metals and glass, combined with the spectrums of sound and light; I create works both large and small which interpret the properties of the human experience and its underlying structures.
 
We are each an instrument of the finest design. Strung with strings tuned to the precise oscillation of our infinity. My practice is an orchestration of elements intended to further one's ability to understand these frequencies and to give courage to those willing enough to play them.

Setting the stage for each of us to master the greatest instrument of all, ourselves.

Work Sample:

A permanent large-scale site specific sculpture built from 2,880ft of steel rods stretching, bending and curving 180ft through an historic abandoned Perlite factory in Allentown, PA.

It is made up of 24 steel lines, one for each hour of the day. 24 is a giant instrument, with the steel of the abandoned perlite factory as its sound box. Each of the rods in 24 has a sonic tone depending on the length of the steel, the time of the day and the temperature. The rods are welded straight to the building frame and so when you strum the lines the vibrations are carried through the bones of the abandoned structure, resonating through the steel.

If you put your head between the flanges of the I-beams you get a stereo experience of the sound, if you lay on the concrete it vibrates through your body, if you stand in the center of the building you can hear the building sing!