Your Turn/Bit by Bit
Your Turn was one of several art programs I developed in 2017 as the Artist in Residence for the Natural History Museum, San Diego. This program was inspired by their launch of a new permanent exhibit of specimens from all of the museum's research fields (botany, paleontology, mammalogy, ornithology, entomology, geology. Your Turn offered each visitor, over a period of several months, one of 100 prompts for sculpture, related to the natural history of their community. I engaged each visitor in conversation during their sculpting, often while sculpting something else alongside them.
In 2018 I fired their specimens, choosing colors based on my notes from the conversations we had, and in 2019 created a freestanding installation from a selection of the specimens, arrayed in plexiglass covered drawers that gallery visitors can open and view. A printed index allows gallery visitors to find the prompt for any specimen, and the museum visitor's name (if the visitor chose to give it to me.)
