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Artist Residency Program

The Mobile Medical Museum Artist Residency Program offers visual, literary and performing artists the opportunity to apply their creative work to the education of health care students and professionals, through a timely and resonant exploration of the past, present and future of health care. 

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Artists spend four to eight weeks in an extensive engagement with the Museum's collection to develop new work that addresses the history of health care in our region. At the end of the residency, the artist will present the new work in an exhibition, performance, or other public program coordinated by the Museum. Each artist-in-residence receives an honorarium and budget for project expenses. 

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2024 ARTIST RESIDENCY PROGRAM APPLICATION

 

Please submit the following materials by November 15, 2024. You may submit them electronically to admin@mobilemedicalmuseum.org or mail to:

 

Mobile Medical Museum

1664 Spring Hill Avenue

Mobile, AL 36604

 

  1. Artist name and contact information

  2. CV, résumé, or website URL

  3. Artist statement (250 words or less)

  4. Work samples, accompanied by numbered works list

    1. Visual images: 4-6 high-res images in .JPG, .TIFF or .PDF format

    2. Text: 1-6 sample texts, not to exceed 10 pages total

    3. Time-based media: 1-3 samples, not to exceed 10 minutes total, in .MP4 format or link(s) to website or streaming platform

  5. Project proposal: in 500 words or less, please describe your initial ideas for the proposed residency. What draws you to this opportunity? What work will be produced and how will it be presented to the community? How do you intend to work with the museum’s collection and resources?

 

Venue: The Mobile Medical Museum will be the primary venue for presenting this work. Other satellite venues may be considered if needed. Projects should be scaled and designed to be presented in the available programming space. We strongly encourage you to visit the Museum before submitting your application.   

 

Timeline:

September 16-November 15, 2024: applications are accepted.

December 2024: artist-in-residence is notified.

January-August 2025: Allotted time for research and development.

September 2025: public program is presented.

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This program has been made possible in part by a grant from the Alabama State Council on the Arts.

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Current and Past Artists in Residence

2024: Douglas Baulos 
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My 2024 residency at the Mobile Medical Museum allowed me to dive into new kinds of research questions about endemic medicinal plants of Baldwin and Mobile County, provide unorthodox visual and physical interpretations of my results, explore and articulate wide-ranging implications of my research into southeastern humble medical practices and sutures, and communicate and create artwork that combines my interests in mending, medicinal plant history, and natural dyes.” I made the paper, upcycled and foraged for cloth from dumpsters and thrift stores, made the dyes, emulsions, paints, and inks from plant material sustainably foraged in South Alabama for this body or work.

 

Blood Root-Sanguinaria Candensis     

Blackberry-Rubrus Argutus      

Dogwood-Cornus Florida

Dandelion-Teraxacum Erythrosperum    

Passionflower-Passiflora Incarnata     

Wild Yam - Discorea

Sumac-Rhus Glabra     

Elderberry-Sambucus Candensis

Skullcap-Scutellaria Glabriusunla     

Goldenrod-Solidago

Magnolia-Magnolia Grandiflora     

Yaupon Holly-Ilex Vomitoria

 

I consider the natural world not only as a source of inspiration or subject to represent, but also as a realm to influence directly—a sphere of action to transform and improve our lives through creative means - I make visual and conceptual links between the use, foraging and storage of medicinal plants with images like stars, snakes, and webs. My research lies at the intersection where scientific understanding, emotional experience and diverse realities and histories exist and it's physically and conceptually very grounded in place. As a queer person in Alabama, I want to assert how natural it is for my body,  community to occupy and commune with a landscape that is often associated with heteronormativity and a bifurcated understanding of identity. I hope to explode these ideas into an embodied visual and written narrative, an environment of shared inner life and concerns that showcases my intimate connection to the natural world and the deep south while also illuminating the diversity of who has been here all along. I am very interested in creating works that extend ontologies between things that are seemingly irrelevant to one another to create new theories, language, or artifacts to create a common ground of reflection and understanding, while fostering equitable and inclusive opportunities through public workshops and conversations. I’m most interested in creating situations where I am expanding our human experience of plants through education, dialogue, and creativity et al. Stories, cloth, and books are so important to me because they are universal, establish our place in the world, aid us in acting wisely, help us to understand others, and pass down knowledge. As an author and writer, I make work that hopes to instill joy and fragile exultation at the beauty of the world, which can for queer people be an act of resistance.

                                                                                   —Douglas Baulos

2023: PowerLines Poets 
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The PowerLines Poets are a Mobile, Alabama-based poetry troupe that has been performing together for over ten years. They use the spoken word art form to entertain, bridge gaps and bring community together. In recent years, they have developed community projects in collaboration with such organizations as the Boys and Girls Clubs of South Alabama, Family Haven/Salvation Army, the Mobile Museum of Art, and the Dora Franklin Finley African American Heritage Trail. 

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For their residency, they are creating new works for Our Time to Heal, a multi-media collaboration with artist April Livingston. Against a backdrop of video projections, their poems will vividly evoke the yellow fever epidemics and old grave sites of nineteenth-century Mobile and tell the story of how the community came together to rise above this pestilence. This work will be debuted at Dunbar Creative and Performing Arts Magnet School, former site of the Medical College of Alabama.

2021: Chris Lawson, Merrilee Challiss, Carey Fountain

Visual artists Chris Lawson, Merrilee Challiss and Carey Fountain created new multimedia works for a group exhibition guest-curated by elizabet elliott and co-presented by the Mobile Medical Museum and Alabama Contemporary Art Center. Titled Different/Fit: Eugenics in Alabama, 1919-1935, the exhibition featured the artists' personal responses to the eugenics movement and its abusive treatment of people who were considered socially unfit because of their intellectual disability, mental illness, addiction, racial minority status, sexual behavior and poverty. 

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VIEW A SHORT FILM ON THE MAKING OF THIS EXHIBITION:

2018: April Livingston
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Sculptor April Livingston made three bronze sculptures to commemorate the overlooked contributions of marginalized people to the history of health care in Alabama. Motherwork is a tribute to Alabama's midwives. Eight pairs of hands, modeled by real-life midwives, doulas and obstetric nurses, form the round shape of a swollen abdomen during pregnancy. Portrait of Bessie McGhee honors an early twentieth-century midwife and traditional healer of the Poarch Band of Creek Indians. Portrait of Dr. James A. Franklin represents one of Mobile's first and most successful African-American physicians. The artworks are a part of the Museum's collection and displayed in the foyer and garden.  

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