Welcoming our new Artist in Residence, David Nasca!
We are delighted to have a new artist in residence working in the studio from May 28th – July 5th! Please join us in giving a warm welcome to David Nasca!!
David brought many exciting materials and tools to work with in order to further explore fossil forms. While at Eastern Edge, David plans to visit Mistaken Point Ecological Reserve, as well as get involved with the community through sculptural workshops! Keep an eye out for upcoming workshops and open studio hours where you can meet and chat with David about his work!
Artist Statement
“Did you know that know that earthworms are hemaphrodites that exchange clitella to reproduce or that hydras of the Obelia genus have an asexually reproducing juvenile stage that produces the sexually active adults? These are the “facts of life” that I illustrate and interpret. Extinct and extant biology, especially the soft world of invertebrates, serve as metaphors for examining contemporary queerness and potential futures. In the studio, I delight in creating new organisms through an evolutionary making process of deep play and material experimentation. Formally, my work plays with double entendres. Bleached corals become non-threatening flaccid phalluses and gaping anuses tumescent with both humor and pathos. Ancient organisms become a new generation of club kids swarming the dance floor to confound our notions of biological and phylogenic certainties. My work with fossils explores how the ephemeral (life) settles into the archival (stone) and examines how queer communities adapt, fade, and are preserved. My installations with sound vacillate between the ocean floor and the dark room at a disco. Sculptural and 2D works anachronistically insert themselves into the traditions of 19th century natural-history illustration and model making and are invested in making information accessible. My works ask the question: what can we learn from these objects, from these animals? We must all be students of the animal kingdom and learn from our more diverse, evolved— and even extinct— invertebrate kin.”
Artist Bio
David Nasca is a Chicago-based visual artist working primarily in sculpture and ceramics. His work draws on living and extinct organisms as a lens for exploring queerness. He studied at Deep Springs College and received a BA from the University of Chicago (2012) and an MFA from Cornell University (2022). He has exhibited in the US and abroad at Watershed Art & Ecology (Chicago), the Centro Cultural del México Contemporáneo (Mexico City) Fuller Craft Museum (MA) and Gallatin Galleries at New York University (NY). Recent residencies include: the Corning Museum of Glass (NY), ACRE (WI), SOMA Mexico (CDMX), and The Banff Centre for The Arts and Culture (AB, Canada). An educator, David is Assistant Professor of Ceramics at College of DuPage.
