If you’ve spent any significant amount of time in downtown Spartanburg in the last decade, there’s a pretty good chance that you’ve encountered work created by one of the 33 artists brought to Spartanburg through HUB-BUB’s celebrated Artists-in-Residence program.
Over the years, the program’s artists have created lasting impacts that are both physical (like Sparkle City Mini Putt) and cultural.
Now, through a merger last year with Chapman Cultural Center, the former HUB-BUB Artists-in-Residence program is back, and the retooled 11-month residency recently welcomed two new artists to live and work in Spartanburg, Marisa Adesman and Ambrin Ling.
Adesman was born and raised on Long Island, New York. She recently graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design with a Masters of Fine Arts in Painting. Through her artistic practice, she examines the impact of femininity and modern culture in order to open up a conversation on gender politics with a strong emphasis on awakening the female self-hood.
Ling received her bachelor’s degree from Carleton College in Minnesota and a Masters of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. As a practitioner in the visual language of stains and traces, Ling uses painting, drawing, sculpture, and installation to explore ideas of absence, home, and belonging. Her work draws from her personal experiences moving across environments and as a mixed-race woman, as well as from her larger social, anthropological, and art historical research.
On this episode of the City of Spartanburg Podcast, the hosts are talking with the two new AiRs and with Chapman Cultural Center Creative Placemaking and HUB-BUB Director, Eric Kocher about their first impressions of Spartanburg and about some of what we can expect to see from them over the coming year. Listen below for more.
Want to listen to City of Spartanburg Podcast on your iOS device? Follow this link to subscribe through iTunes. Android user? Find it on the Google Play store here. Got Stitcher? Follow this link to listen. Podcast music provided by Spartanburg singer-songwriter, David Ezell.
Prepared by the City of Spartanburg.