april 6 – may 24, 2025
Caroline Sirois will be an artist-in-residence at UVA’s Overlook Gallery. She has invited nine artists to collaborate during her six week residency – to take a deep dive into the concept of gardens/healing gardens integrated with experiences of ruins. These artists bring a mix of perspectives to their art practice and inquiries through their work as an archival librarian, environmental biologist, writing instructor, UX designer, therapist and studio art teacher. Collaborations during the course of the residency will unfold organically, in different configurations to ideally create unexpected, engaging work around gardens, roots and ruins.
Ruins have a haunting beauty in their decay. Sediments of the past are present. Materials erode, yet meaning remains. What might we say about the aesthetics of ruins? Ruins come in other forms besides the physical. Ruins to our human experiences may overwhelm. Every era brings loss, trauma, and the ruins of humanity. Every era also brings resilience, progress, innovation, kindness, humor and play. As we moved from the 20th Century to the 21st Century, destruction from war along with cultural, economic and environmental collapse leave many searching for narratives to hold onto.
Connecting to our natural world offers possible narratives and possible communities coming together around plants, new growth, healing and gardens. Gardens bloom in myriads of textures, colors, patterns; they decay and die. Gardens are not permanent. They are always changing — growing, wilting, rejuvenating. From wild and chaotic gardens to planned and curated, gardens may offer joy, solace and healing.
Such a collaborative residency aims to lift up reciprocity between humans and nature, between humans and humans. Care and community offer healing and ways forward. The process and goals of this residency seek to create a space of sharing through artist collaborations, community gatherings and cultural engagement. We will explore the cyclical nature of gardens/ruins; our relationship to ruins, to gardens, plants, soil and the earth. Questions at the core of the project: what are ruins to you? What lessons/insights do they bring to the here and now? What does a healing garden mean to each individual and to the collective?
A week-long exhibit at the end of the residency will present the outcome of such inquires, collaborations and community gatherings.
Biographies + Artist Collaborators:
An interdisciplinary artist, Caroline Sirois creates works on canvas, paper, makes objects and creates installations. Using a range of materials from altered books, to concrete, graphite, ink, assorted debris, wood, twine . . . she erases, embeds and reconfigures.
Sirois’s art practice and teaching practice (instructor of writing) inform each other. A long-time faculty member at Northeastern University, she has also taught at the SMFA (now SMFA at Tufts) Berklee College of Music, and the Boston Architectural College. She has exhibited throughout New England and has work in private collections (New England, Florida, Washington D. C., Ottawa, and Barcelona). Recent solo exhibitions include drifiting through debris & rain at the Gaslight Gallery in Frederick, MD (2022) and Remainders & Reminders / traces of time at Gallery RAG in Gloucester, MA (2023). Sirois has also worked on collaborative art projects and volunteered for Lee Mingwei’s Living Room Project and Mending Project at the Isabella Stuart Gardner Museum to connect community and art.
Prior to pursuits in studio art, Caroline received degrees in English, Political Science (BA) and English with a concentration in Contemporary Poetry, British Literature and Literary Theory (MA). She is a graduate of the SMFA (Diploma and Fifth Year). In 2019 she received her MFA in Visual Arts from Lesley University College of Art & Design.
website www.carolynsirois.com instagram @caro_siro
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Using cultural cues and collected ephemera absorbed from her world, Anne Barnes creates artworks that are process driven and that collaborate with chance. By combining a high-keyed color palette, expressive gesture, and symbolic mark-making, her multi-layered work is grounded in the informality of the unstructured painterly mark and the unadulterated visual language of graphic form. The result is the abstracted visualizations of memories, emotions, and varied perspectives. Her intention is to leave a trace of the artist in all that she creates and to connect with the viewer through the empathetic power of language, chroma, and vivid mark-making.
Anne lives and works in Washington, DC. She holds a BA in Cultural Anthropology from George Washington University; an MA in Publications Design from the University of Baltimore; and an MFA in Visual Arts from Lesley University, College of Art and Design in Cambridge, MA. She has recently worked as a Bookmaking Associate at Pyramid Atlantic Art Center in Hyattsville, MD, is a teaching artist, a graphic designer, and pursues her personal painting practice in the studio. Recent exhibitions include a two person show at Gallery RAG (Gloucester, MA), and group shows at The Hill Center (Washington, DC), The Helen C. Frederick Gallery (Hyattsville, MD), and The Athenaeum (Alexandrea, VA)
Website + Blog:
www.annebarnesstudio.com
Email: annebarnestudio@icloud.com
Instagram: @annebarnes_studio
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Meghan Bailey is a Boston-based artist whose work has been shown in galleries throughout the Northeast. She is an active member of the artist community in Somerville, MA where she maintains a studio at 11 Miller Street Studios. Meghan holds an MFA in Visual Arts from Lesley University, a BFA in painting from Massachusetts College of Art and Design, and an MS in Library Science and Archives Management from Simmons University.
She currently works as an archivist in the Healey Library at the UMass Boston archives where she introduces students to the research and use of historical collections for their studies. Her work with historical collections inspires her artwork and exploration of objects of personal relevance, their significance, inherent politics, and how art can enhance, challenge, or make new meaning.
meghanbaileyart.com
@meghanbaileyart
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Brianna de L’airre is a multidisciplinary artist whose work navigates the liminal spaces between the beautiful and the grotesque. A 2014 BFA graduate of Massachusetts College of Art and Design with a degree in Studio Education, de L’airre has developed a distinctive visual language that challenges conventional notions of beauty.
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Nancy Hart is an interdisciplinary artist who explores the expanded field of Post Modernism in her teaching and studio work. She has an MFA from the Art Institute of Boston and a BFA in painting from Tufts / School of the Museum of Fine Arts.
She has also studied the history of photography at Radcliffe Seminars, Art History at Harvard Extension School, and Massachusetts College of Art. Hart was an artist in residence at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum re-enacting Lee Ming Wei’s Mending Project and Living Room Project. They are a mentor to emerging artists, an ambassador for Lesley University, has been a portfolio reviewer for the College Art Association, as well as an academic advisor at SUNY New Paltz, NY. Hart currently teaches at the Museum of Fine Arts and has taught painting, drawing, and 3D courses at MIT and Visual Communications at Framingham State University.
www.nanchart.com
@nancy.anne.hart
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Dianne Pappas uses utilitarian materials to construct sculptural and installation experiments eliciting playful precariousness, acceptance to openness, understated beauty achieved through raw materiality, and often posing contradictory ideals. Her work was most recently featured at the Boston Sculptors Gallery’s LaunchPad, the Fitchburg Art Museum, Gallery RAG and the virtual AREACODE Art Fair in Boston. An adjunct faculty member in Art & Design at Northern Essex Community College since 2013, Pappas was also a visiting artist and lecturer at Keystone College in Pennsylvania, The Archer School for Girls in Los Angeles, and the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, where she served as Assistant Program Director of the MFA in Studio Arts program.
After receiving her BA in Mathematics from Smith College in 1987, Pappas worked in management consulting for more than a decade before pursuing art full-time. She received her MFA in Studio Art from Maryland Institute College of Art in 2012. Pappas lives in Sudbury, MA and maintains her studio at the Landing at Everett Mills in Lawrence, MA.
Website: www.diannepappas.com
Instagram: @diannepappas
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Elizabeth (Liz) Rennie is an emerging mixed media painter and UX designer based in her hometown Lawrence, Massachusetts. Focusing on the documentation of human experiences and emotions, her work allows her to explore the relationships between color, material, and physical environments.
Liz attended Suffolk University, receiving a BFA in Graphic Design, and recently received her MFA in Visual Arts at Lesley University. She currently exhibits her work in local galleries in the Greater Boston and Merrimack Valley area and actively participates in Lawrence’s artistic community. Her work is the recipient of awards in exhibitions including the 2021 ART Off the Wall by the Brookline Arts Center and the 2021 Emerging Artists Exhibition by the Cambridge Arts Association.
While art-making is the focal point of Liz’s interests, in her spare time she also enjoys collecting vinyls, listening to DIY punk bands, and overindulging in coffee and burritos.
www.elizabethrennie.com
@elizabeth.rennie.art
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Nicole Weber
As an artful scientist, my ambition is to create an invitation to explore the natural world around you, by seeing something as if it were for the first time. As fewer children incorporate plants, animals, or even outdoor places into their day as they grow up, a loss of local natural knowledge has occurred, especially within the wealthier communities and countries. I feel that within silence a sense of wonder sprouts. I work to provide moments of beauty within the observation and questioning of common everyday materials, like eggs. We may cook them every morning for breakfast, but do we take a moment to really see them, to consider the impact of our choices and the system that exists hidden within that choice? My hope is that viewers have access to the play of materials and symbolism in my work, and as a result have a deeper sense of place and environmental empowerment through wonder.
www.nicoleweberstudio.com
@nicoleweberstudio
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Born and raised in Taiwan, Wen-hao has been residing along the banks of the Charles River, Massachusetts, since 1996. As an interdisciplinary artist, her career includes teaching, speaking, and community services. Wen-hao’s practice is rooted in her curiosity about self-expression and civic engagement in multicultural societies. Her academic preparations span the fields of biomedical sciences, public health, humanities, and visual art.
Besides her studio practices, she is respected for her role in building interdisciplinary Asia Studies communities at Harvard University and Boston University. Her recent solo exhibitions Weed Out, Home on Our Backs, It Speaks for Itself, and I Love Your Grammatical Errors experiment on the interplay between art exhibitions, visual history, and public humanities.
Wen-hao teaches at the Art and Design Department of the University of Massachusetts at Lowell and at the Boston University Department of World Languages and Literatures. As the 2020 Artist-in-Residence at Boston’s Pao Art Center, she produced a body of work during a pivotal time in Asian American civic movements on Boston Chinatown local history. Her work is exhibited frequently in the Northeast, presented at the Boston Sculptors Gallery where she is a member, and supported by the generosity of grants. Wen-hao’s project, Weed Out, is featured in a new book, Crossing Boundaries & Confounding Identity: Chinese Women in Literature, Art, and Film, SUNY Press 2023.
www.wenhaotien.com
@wenhaotien
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Linda Forsythe is an interdisciplinary, multimedia artist whose work explores relationships as both subject and medium. Deeply influenced by the concept of relational art and the work of Lee Ming Wei, her practice engages audiences and participants in shared experiences, emphasizing connection, exchange, and transformation.
As a volunteer / participating artist at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Linda worked with Lee Ming Wei’s Living Room Project, facilitating intimate dialogues that bridged art and personal narratives. At Camp Ballibay for the Arts in Wyalusing, PA, Linda fully embraced the camp’s philosophy — “It’s the journey, not the product” — prioritizing relationships with fellow artists and the evolving nature of artistic process over final outcomes. She sees control as the opposite of relationship.
Forsythe holds a BA in philosophy (ethics and metaphysics) from Oberlin College and a medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania. Her clinical work as a child psychiatrist informs and intertwines with her artistic practice, where the art of the relationship becomes an active presence in therapeutic encounter and community-based projects.
As a Community Scholar with Massachusetts General Hospital’s Department of Medicine, she designed and led “Planting Seeds for a Healthier Charlestown,” a two-year initiative exploring the healing potential of gardens through her “Heal to Grow and Grow to Heal” programs. Her work has been exhibited in Seattle, WA, alongside other child psychiatrists in Art and Creative Innovation, highlighting the intersections of art, mental health, and community engagement.
Through her interdisciplinary approach, Forsythe continues to foster spaces where art is not only and object to be viewed, but also an experience to be lived and shared.