A Conversation with Daniele Vickers
" My time as an Open AIR Artist-in-Residence was an incredibly positive experience. Being a fairly recent graduate from my MFA program, I was used to using a lot of my own money into my work, and this was the first time I had
been able to work on a project without financial limitations for materials."
- Daniele Vickers
Vickers assembling her kinetic sculpture at Home ReSource, 2019
Open AIR: What was your research process during this time?
Daniele: I had done quite a bit of preliminary research with these generative disintegration systems while in grad school, so I had a good sense of how the system would function, but I didn’t know the exact details. It leads me to need to do a lot of material research when I arrived. I wanted to primarily use the materials on site, so I spent a lot of time out in the yard at Home Resource looking at window screens and was really interested in their porosity. I also needed something that would catch the water at the bottom and funnel it safely back into the main water storage container. When I found the skylight with its rounded form, it became a perfect funnel.
Open AIR: How would you describe your work?
Daniele: My art practice weaves in and out of the religious institutions of my upbringing while seeking to propose other ways of looking, observing, and knowing. My work is interdisciplinary, existing in photographic, video, sculptural, bookmaking, and text-based mediums. My work as an artist in residence with Open Air was sculptural, continuing my experimentation with generative disintegration systems using saltwater as a medium. The best way I can describe these watery systems is that they are an evolving song, “an immense apparatus of accident and order,” a circular river, an animatronic water machine.
Above: Vickers talks about her display on view during Process (a prequel) a group exhibition at the Brunswick featuring works that highlight the role of process in artmaking during 2019's Summer Open AIRs Residencies.
Open AIR: What was your research process during this time?
Daniele: I had done quite a bit of preliminary research with these generative disintegration systems while in grad school, so I had a good sense of how the system would function, but I didn’t know the exact details. It lead me to needing to do a lot of material research when I arrived. I wanted to primarily use the materials onsite, so I spent a lot of time out in the yard at Home Resource looking at window screens, and was really interested in their porosity. I also needed something that would catch the water at the bottom and funnel it safely back in the main water storage container. When I found the skylight with its rounded form, it became a perfect funnel.
Open AIR: How would you describe your work?
Daniele: My art practice weaves in and out of the religious institutions of my upbringing, while seeking to propose other ways of looking, observing, and knowing. My work is interdisciplinary, existing in photographic, video, sculptural, bookmaking, and text based mediums. My work as an artist in residence with Open Air was sculptural, continuing my experimentation with generative disintegration systems using saltwater as a medium. The best way I can describe these watery systems is that they are an evolving song, “an immense apparatus of accident and order,” a circular river, an animatronic water machine.
Above: Onsite materials that Daniele selected for her sculpture.
Open AIR: Walk us through the choices you make in a single piece.
Daniele: Research is a really important part of any work that I make. Whether I’m doing archival research, working with appropriated images and texts or doing material research and trying to figure out how to safely pump water through a sculpture, the process of synthesizing information into a meaningful experience is huge for me.
Conversations, reading, and even every day life can play a role in my research. For example, when living in Chicago during grad school, my daily commute involved taking trains to and from downtown. As I’d wait for the train, looking up at the ceiling of these underground stations, I’d see cracks in the ceiling and watch drips of liquid, slowly forming stalactites in the cracks.
While I rushed in and out of trains, these stalactites took years to form. This constant reminder of a time scale different than my own became deeply grounding and served as a catalyst for thinking about the role of slowness in my own practice.
In terms of material choices, I think through which materials are best suited towards a certain project, based on my research. With these saltwater systems, I was most interested in facilitating an experience for a viewer, wherein there was some uncertainty about when the work was actually finished. The work needed to be sculptural, as I wanted it to have a very physical presence in relation to a viewer. I also wanted to facilitate a more slow, meditative experience, which I felt required using some kind of growth or build-up. I considered using plant materials, clay, other minerals, and even vermicomposting worms as possible actors in this systems, but
ultimately felt that salt held an especially potent role.
Creating prototypes and experiments was essential for me. With a prototype, I can then get feedback and ask myself the following questions: What about this do I think is working? What isn’t working? What is superfluous?
My project with Open Air was the 4th or 5th iteration, so I definitely had less
successful prototypes that came before.
Above: Vickers adjusts her installed sculpture at the Gallery of Visual Arts, University of Montana as part of the exhibition, Translating Place, a group exhibition featuring 2019 Open AIR Artists.
Open AIR: What are you up to now post-residency?
Daniele: I teach college classes at the Bitterroot College and I also teach K-2nd grade art, here in Hamilton, MT. I’m currently doing a distance residency at an art space based out of Chicago, called Annas. With Annas, I’ve been doing more creative writing and text-based experiments. Outside of that, I’ve continued to make plans for larger saltwater-based installations, but am still finding the space and the financial means to dedicate to that body of work.
An example of Vickers' current work for Chicago art space Annas, 2020.
This interview was conducted remotely. Thank you Daniele for sharing your experience with us.
Explore more of Vicker’s work at https://danielevickers.com/
This Open AIR Artist-in-Residency was made possible by a collaboration with Home ReSource: a nonprofit community sustainability center in Missoula, with a building materials reuse store & job training, education, and zero waste programs.
"We believe that an integrated approach to social change that addresses all aspects of sustainability – social, economic, and environmental – is essential to a truly vibrant future."