ROWAN BATHURST - Extreme Heat Fellow
Rowan Bathurst is a painter living and working between Baltimore, MD, and São Paulo, Brazil. Her practice centers on portraiture, primarily depicting women, drawing from her own photographs of close friends and incorporating landscapes and visual elements inspired by her time in rural Brazil and travels across continents. Beyond her latest exhibition, Bathurst’s recent work explores the connection between present-day women and prehistoric artifacts, particularly Venus figurines and ceramic antiquities. Inspired by these archaeological pieces, women's history, and humanity’s intrinsic relationship with nature, her paintings radiate warmth, sisterhood, and a profound sense of lineage. They invite a reexamination of how figures are portrayed in art, one that conveys confidence and tranquility while embracing vulnerability. Nature and history are fundamental to the human experience, and her work encourages viewers to reflect on the narratives we inherit and carry forward.
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Bathurst earned her BFA in Painting and Art History from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2018. Her work has been exhibited and collected both locally and internationally in solo and group exhibitions. In 2022, she was nominated as a participating artist for The Rema Hort Mann Foundation. Alongside her studio practice, she engages in public art and mural work worldwide, contributing to projects such as the Walls off Washington Festival, Beira Festival, and Brush Mural Fest.
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​​ARTEMIS HERBER - Artist in Residence
Artemis Herber shows where we currently stand. Humans have made the world fragile and the collapse shows around each corner as human activities have transform our biosphere. The German-Greek US immigrant artist shows how deep time is transformed into fleeting moments caused by man made interventions. For this she primarily uses matter from geological time or materials that come out of the mining and extortion process of natural resources. In the wider context Herber explores how myths are revealed in the new human made top stratum through metabolic regimes and their tectonic intervention, exploitation, and the use of land.
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Enriched with incorporated geological materials, ancient natural myths, such as Gaia and their relatives, are displayed in her work as hybrid configurations in thematic spaces. These subjects open up a time-spanning look at the relevance of grand narratives in the face of man-made “Erdauflösung“ (Earth disappearance). Currently she works in her eponymous block “Danger Zones” which addresses the worldwide dwindling biosphere as an impact of the Anthropocene and creates a sculptural monument worth seeing.
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Kei Ito is an interdisciplinary artist whose work is centered around utilizing the conceptual framework of photography to visualize the invisible. Mainly employing camera-less photographic techniques, performance, and artifacts, Ito creates large-scale installations and a variety of photographic projects that excavate hidden histories. As a third-generation atomic bomb victim living in the US, Ito employs his generational history as a series of case studies that often applies the language of monuments and memorials, initiating a journey of healing and growth while inviting audiences to explore nuanced social issues and honor the memories of those lost to both historical and contemporary tragedies.
Ito's artistic contributions have been widely recognized and exhibited in both solo and group exhibitions. His pieces are held in institutional collections including the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Norton Museum of Art, Gregory Allicar Museum of Art, Eskenazi Museum of Art, and Georgia Museum of Art.
SOPHIE MAGUIRE - Artist in Residence
Sophie Maguire is an artist and landscape architect. Her practice focuses on storytelling, intimacy between the human & nonhuman, landscape as theater, and the meaning of resiliency. Sophie works through many mediums including, but not limited to, cooking, drawing, collage, embroidery, performance, writing and, most recently, small metal work.
As a designer, Sophie has worked on projects (built and unbuilt) for institutional campuses, public parks, residential sites & gardens, forest restoration, set design and public art installations. Sophie currently practices landscape architecture under the name Princess Pine with longtime friend and veteran gardener, Emily Drury. The studio's practice focuses on ecological horticulture and design of rural landscapes throughout New England.
Currently, Sophie teaches in the department of Landscape Architecture at Morgan State University. Sophie is currently at work on an experimental performance/installation about the cultural history of ‘invasive’ plants (coming in 2025).
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RACHEL STEIN - Extreme Heat Fellow
Rachel Stein is an interdisciplinary artist and educator based in Baltimore, Maryland, who aims to activate the mind and body through immersive installation that encompasses video, photography, soundscapes, and interactive sculpture. Her interest in the connection between tactile experiences and inner states of being has inspired her to consider ways of reframing the body in relation to everyday materials, particularly synthetics. Rather than trying to return to a pristine world, her work provides alternative ways of being-with the waste and pollution that we inherit. She invites viewers to question their own consumer reality and relationship with pleasure through sensory stimuli.
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Rachel received her MFA in Studio Art at Maryland Institute College of Art in 2024. Her work has recently been exhibited at Towson University, Maryland Hall, and DoodleHatch Interactive Art Museum. She is a recipient of the Leslie King Hammond Fellowship from Maryland Institute College of Art and the Secondary Art Educator Award from the Maryland Art Education Association. As an extension of her art practice, she teaches high school art and photography in Howard County. She enjoys hosting Slime Club every week with her sensory seeking students.