description
Residency Open House BBQ 25'
Free and open to the public!
Mask Making Workshop with Yuliya Tsukerman: 6-8pm
Food and talks: 3-6pm
Date: August 3, 2024
Location: Folly Tree Arboretum, 741 Springs Fireplace Road, East Hampton, NY
Folly Tree Arboretum invites you to an afternoon of creative making and conversation on August 3. Join us for Welcome to the Ancient Forest, a hands-on mask-making workshop led by Brooklyn-based puppeteer and mask-maker Yuliya Tsukerman, followed by a barbecue and short artist talks by Tsukerman and fellow artist-in-residence Nicole Banowetz.
Workshop: Welcome to the Ancient Forest (3-6, free, RSVP required)
In this improvisational workshop, Tsukerman will teach her sculptural cardboard mask-making technique, culminating in a wearable paper mache mask. As we build, we’ll reflect on our interactions with the more-than-human world—frogs, rabbits, squirrels—and consider how masking can serve as a portal to transformation. All ages welcome; no experience required.
About the Artists:
Yuliya Tsukerman is a Brooklyn-based puppeteer and mask-maker working in theater and film. She writes, directs, and builds cross-disciplinary works, often in collaboration with other artists. Her current project, Transmissions from the Ancient Forest, is a series of video poems and accompanying books in which a community of lesser gods tries to make sense of human suffering.
Nicole Banowetz is a Colorado sculptor known for her large-scale sewn inflatable forms. Drawing from the animal, plant, bacterial, and mineral worlds, Banowetz uses natural imagery to explore human relationships and vulnerabilities. Her installations have appeared in international exhibitions such as the Amsterdam Light Festival, PASSAGES INSOLITES (Québec City), and Bad Art’s Hot Air (London), and in major museums including the Denver Art Museum and Wonderspaces.
We’re also pleased to host artist-in-residence Krystal C. Mack, a visionary food designer and social practice artist whose work highlights food and nature’s roles in collective healing, empowerment, and decolonization. A self-taught artist and herbalist, Mack's sensory-based installations explore African diasporic foodways and her own neurodivergent experience. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, NPR, Food & Wine, and MOLD. While she will not be presenting at this event, her presence enriches the current season at Folly Tree Arboretum.
After the workshop, enjoy a casual outdoor barbecue and informal presentations by Yuliya Tsukerman and Nicole Banowetz, who will speak about their practices and their time at the Arboretum.
The Folly Tree Arboretum Residency was created to advance new bodies of work and serve as a research and development lab for individuals who engage with our contemporary relationship to the natural world. Artists in our residency program are nominated by curators, other artists, teachers, and administrators from diverse cultural, artistic and geographic backgrounds and institutions. The artists are chosen because their work exemplifies risk-taking, experimentation, and embodies the Arboretum's mission to develop novel forms of environmental storytelling. Artists receive a $2,000 stipend, as well as room and board in our historic 1894 farmhouse in East Hampton, NY.