The Creative Experience

SINCE 2019, ARTISTS have been invited for month-long residencies in Green Mountain Falls, Colorado, where, surrounded by nature, they can devote time to new projects. The year-round program from Green Box, the Colorado arts organization, embraces diverse disciplines, with this spring’s edition featuring two artists, Lynn Tomlinson and CoCo Ree Lemery, who experiment with materials in unexpected ways.

Tomlinson, an animator, makes short films on evocative themes such as the last house on an island disappearing into the sea and the life of the first circus elephant. These appear like living oil paintings, an effect that involves hours of delicately moving clay by hand on glass for each frame. At Towson University, where she is an associate professor in the Department of Electronic Media and Film, she regularly works with students on animated films for unconventional settings, including the dome of the college planetarium.

For her residency, Tomlinson plans to bring these ideas to a large-scale, panoramic, hemispheric projection piece, taking inspiration from the writings of conservationist Rachel Carson, as well as observations of the cycles of nature and how people have engaged with and radically disrupted them.

“I am looking forward to spending time in the Colorado mountains in the early spring, when many natural cycles are at a starting point: buds swelling, earth heaving, snow melting, wildflower sprouts breaking through the soil,” Tomlinson says. “I also imagine that the verticality of the mountain landscape will influence the immersive feeling of the imagery I compose and animate while at Green Box.”

Chicago-based designer Lemery is known for imaginative pieces with organic shapes that frequently involve materials like lamps reminiscent of gnarled branches made from lumber sourced from an old roof, and wood furniture with fluid textures formed from fallen ash.

She’s planning to expand on her previous reimaginings of design objects, particularly lamps as an “immersive forest of light.” Like Tomlinson, Lemery is an educator, currently as a visiting professor of industrial design at Purdue University, and is anticipating how the community engagement that is at the heart of Green Box’s residency program will inform this luminous work.

“What excites me most is the opportunity to engage with the community through workshops,” Lemery says. “These sessions will allow me to share my deep passion for education and design with people of all ages, fostering creativity and collaboration. My hope is that the workshops become an integral part of the installation’s development, allowing the community to actively contribute to its creation.” Photography by Alan Westman. – ALLISON MEIER