Artist Projects

John Craig Freeman

Jo-Anne Green

Lalie Schewadron Pascual

Lily Honglei 

John Craig Freeman

John Craig Freeman is an artist with over three decades of experience using emerging technologies to produce large-scale public work at sites where the forces of globalization are impacting the lives of individuals in local communities. With his work, Freeman expands the notion of ‘public’ by exploring how digital technology and mobile networks are transforming our sense of place. Freeman is a founding member of the international artists collective Manifest.AR and he has produced work and exhibited around the world. In 2016 he traveled to Wuhan China as part of the ZERO1 American Arts Incubator. In 2015, he was the recipient of a commission from LACMA’s Art+Technology Lab. He was also awarded an Individual Artist Fellowship by the NEA in 1992. Freeman is a Professor of New Media Art at Emerson College in Boston. Visit artist website for more info johncraigfreeman.net

A Boat for One: Incoming Tide, Fort Stark

Originally developed as a proposal for physical public art at Boston Common, A Boat for One: Fort Stark, is based on science developed at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and other governmental research agencies. Consisting of a virtual rowboat atop a 10 meter pylon, it offers an accurate prediction of sea level by the end of this century and beyond, using the most up-to-date climate change models available. The sea level gauge inscribed onto the pylon is based on scientific data published in Chapter 12: Sea Level Rise of the Climate Science Special Report, Fourth National Climate Assessment (NCA4), Volume I. This report is an authoritative assessment of the science of climate change, with a focus on the United States. It represents the first of two volumes of the Fourth National Climate Assessment, mandated by the Global Change Research Act of 1990.

A Boat for One: Fort Stark acts as a teleport portal to an immersive virtual experience. When the viewer approaches the pylon, she is transported to locations around New England and beyond which are vulnerable to sea level rise, starting at Fort Stark on the Sea Coast of New Hampshire. In the public art proposal, the viewer is transported via augmented reality technology, and here in virtual reality. The Fort Stark seascape was rendered on location using LiDAR scanning photogrammetry technology. 

Jo-Anne Green

Jo-Anne Green is an artist, designer, writer, curator, teacher and organizer. She has exhibited her artwork in the United States, South Africa, and online. From 2002 to 2016 Green was Co-director of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc., renowned for Turbulence.org and New American Radio. She curated Mixed Realities, an exhibition and symposium that explored the convergence — through cyberspace — of real and synthetic places made possible by computers and networks. Mixed Realities merged three spaces; the Huret & Spector Gallery (Boston), Turbulence.org and Ars Virtua (Second Life). Green also founded Upgrade! Boston, a monthly gathering of artists, curators and the public that sought to foster dialogue and create opportunities for collaboration within the new media community. For more info, visit artist website http://sympoietic.net/jo/possibilities/

Pursuing Reality: Possibilities, a photographic essay by Jo-Anne Green
Introduction by Jacki Apple

One of the greatest challenges for a contemporary artist in this time of environmental crisis is to open our minds and senses to a different way of perceiving and understanding the world we inhabit. Pursuing Reality: Possibilities by Jo-Anne Green is just such a unique series of multilayered digital photo collages that take us on a non-linear temporal journey through the living eco system we are a part of and dependent on for our own survival as a species. Green is a visual composer whose symphonic orchestration of images allows us to experience the natural world from a non-anthropocentric perspective in deep time. Her imagery speaks to the mortality and fragility of all living things, while simultaneously expressing the extraordinary resilience and cyclical life force of the organic world and all its botanical and sentient beings. Mapping the neural transmitters beneath the material forms, each image aligns the micro and macro patterns across living systems. The result is a poetic meditation on the interconnectedness of matter, energy, consciousness, perception, and memory on a multi-sensory level.

As both a painter and photographer Green uses digital technology as both a tool and a source for creating her montages, and as a structural analogy of physical reality. Perhaps ironically as intoxicatingly beautiful as the images on the screen are, they pale in comparison to the depth and richness of them in print. The photographic print on the wall has presence as a physical object that exists in real time, space and scale in relation to your body. The materiality and weight of this magnificent book held in hand invites another level of contemplation as each turn of the page opens to another world. It is an intimate exchange that requires time and attention to explore and reconsider the urgency of preserving and embracing nature. Green speaks to this turning point in history with eloquence, passion and grace. Pursuing Reality: Possibilities, is a revelatory and profound body of work that renews itself with each new viewing. It is both exhilarating and humbling in the subtle ways it invites us to rethink our place as humans in relation to the non-human world.

Explore Pursuing Reality: Possibilities on web browser here.

Lalie Schewadron Pascual

A new media artist, Lalie S. Pascual received her MA in Fine Art at Central St. Martins University of the Arts in London, following previous studies at Boston and Brandeis Universities. Her art practice is intended to explore ideas of growth and expansion in our scientific and natural worlds. Using video and digital imagery, she creates hybrid realities that are in a perpetual movement and flux. She received a Brandeis teaching fellowship award, was nominated for the New England Art Award, a finalist of the Celeste Art Prize, and won the Drawing Conclusion competition by ArtSEEN journal. She exhibited internationally including in London, Glasgow, Basel, Lausanne, New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Seoul. She lives and works in Lausanne Switzerland.

A Lightning Tale

The pyramid developed for the VR Art Village platform conveys the story of a pine tree that was hit by a lightning, giving it a new life and meaning. Images of the tree which was struck, dried branches and leaves, as well as fresh herbs and moss found in the tree’s surrounding, were digitally fragmented into small units in different shapes and scales. Inspired by Nature’s way of taking and giving back life to earth, these units were recomposed into new realities and models of representation that speak of growth and endless possibilities.

A fragile equilibrium is created. Its fragmented parts hold the past, but also create the present and the future, giving an ambivalence to its existence. As easily it can be formed, it can also break apart. A reminder that Nature has a beginning, and it will also have an end. And no force or strong construction such as the pyramid, a symbol of power and stability, can make it eternal.

Lily Honglei

An Asian American artist collaborative, Lily Honglei’s work often focuses on globalization, immigrant life, Asian American identity and the relationship between technology and cultural traditions. Their art practice takes a unique approach integrating traditional mediums such as oil painting with digital forms including animation, augmented reality and virtual reality, expanding the dimension of traditional art mediums and commenting on complex subjects through visual language belonging to the 21st century. Lily Honglei have received Creative Capital Awards in 2015, NYFA Fellowship 2015, NYSCA Individual Artist Grant in 2017 and 2019, Queens Art Council New Work Grant in 2016, 2018 and 2020. Their work has been exhibited at art museums, galleries across continents. Visit artist website for more info.

The Sunken Garden

Portraying endangered species in New York state and beyond, the Sunken Garden is an interdisciplinary art project integrating painting and emerging technology to reflect upon our relationship with nature. The project questions the dominating role that humanity has become accustomed to play in a ‘garden’ – the space assumed to be a refuge but often emblematic of cultural and political intricacies, which is undoubtedly emulated by artworks depicting gardens in mainstream visual traditions. As biodiversity has been gravely threatened by human activities today, it is pertinent to rethink our place in nature, to reassess the implications of cultural attitude towards nature. Through research on folk arts and decorative arts around the globe as well as comparable culture studies revolving around ‘gardens,’ we may be able to draw inspirations from marginal cultures such as indigenous communities or forgotten traditions; and through the journey rediscovering cultural diversity, we seek to preserve and restore biodiversity.

Digital technology may offer powerful tools for both research and visualization along this journey, which may also raise the question about the role of technology and related inquisitiveness has played in altering the natural world. The meaningful utilization of digital technologies, in this case, virtual reality and augmented reality, is another aspect of Sunken Garden, through which we intend to inspire.

SUPPORT Sunken Garden project receives support from New York Foundation on the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts and New York Queens Art Fund. The project is currently under NYFA Fiscal Sponsorship.

Gardens: Fairytales of Globalization

Gardens: Fairytales of Globalization (work in progress) is a large-scale new media artwork integrating oil paintings, animations and augmented reality on mobile phones. Based on in-depth research on Asian visual heritages and history of plant trade in the broad context of globalization, the project not only visualizes the “garden design and its evolution” as the result of East and West cultural exchange, but also examines their further implications to sustainability. While discussions on globalization are often centered around economic and geopolitical issues, this project explores the subject from a fresh angle – the globalization as “a plant story.” The work will playfully visualize how the plant exchanges between the East and West have reshaped gardens as well as culture and societies. Gardens: Fairytales of Globalization aims at responding to the pertinent questions about sustainability, the inclusiveness or setbacks of globalization, which have special implications to New York as one of the most prominent global cities.

SUPPORT Gardens: Fairytales of Globalization is supported by Queens Art Funds.