MAD’s Artist Studios are online!

Artist Studios residents Alex Dolores Salerno and Jacob Olmedo will host an informal, virtual studio visit via Zoom webinar. Learn about new directions in contemporary art and design while joining the artists in their homes and studios. Preview works in progress and chat with Alex and Jacob about their inspirations and creative practices.

Open Studio Hours take place on Fridays and welcome visitors of all ages, families, classes and camps, creative cohorts, aspiring artists, and more. Participants are invited to participate in the conversation via Zoom's chat function and will not be on-screen. Members of MAD’s Education team will be on hand to facilitate and help answer any questions.

Established in 2008, MAD’s Artist Studios program has served as an important platform for more than 180 artists and designers to advance their careers.

12:00–12:30 pm ET with Alex Dolores Salerno
12:30–1:00 pm ET with Jacob Olmedo

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Alex Dolores Salerno works to critique standards of productivity, notions of normative embodiment, and the commodification of rest. Their interdisciplinary practice embodies a multiplicity of support structures, and the accumulation of used medical ephemera and bedding collected from their own life and community. Drawing from the bed as a site of collectivity and protest, they argue that to celebrate diverse bodyminds requires an embrace of our interdependencies and a reconfiguration of value and time away from capitalist frameworks. During their residency with MAD, Salerno will intervene their current work with bedding materials by engaging coffee and the herbs of Ecuadorian Horchata for their rich histories and relationship to care. Salerno has exhibited at The Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation’s 8th Floor Gallery, the Ford Foundation Gallery, and Franklin Street Works, and has participated in Art Beyond Sight’s Art & Disability Residency Program. They earned their MFA from Parsons School of Design and their BS from Skidmore College.

Jacob Olmedo intertwines textiles, objects, wearables, and hydroponics to convey social and environmental commentary stemming from his own circumstances and identity as a queer artist, the son of a Mexican-immigrant father, and a climate activist. He uses nature as a symbol of a privilege in shortage created by the climate crisis, and the ultimate form of life and commonality that connects all people. His labor-intensive methods combine crocheting and knitting with electronic tufting and mold-making to create scenic installations of disembodied figures and topographical landscapes that relay ideas of privilege in the context of access to land and minority bodies. During his MAD residency, Olmedo will continue recent textile work exploring themes of heritage, social hierarchy, and activism. Olmedo received the 2020 International Talking Textiles Award and earned his MFA and BFA from the Parsons School of Design. He has recently exhibited at Mana Contemporary, Gregg Museum of Art and Design, and NYC Design Week.