May 31, 2024—The Miller Art Museum is pleased to announce Jessica Harvey as its 2024 Dome House Al & Mickey Quinlan Artist in Residence. Harvey will be in residence in Door County from August 4 – September 29, 2024.
The residency, entering its fourth year in 2024, is administered jointly with the Quinlan/Wagner family and carries on the original intent of the Dome House, as visioned by Al Quinlan, to serve as a creative haven for living artists. The program advances the museum’s mission to expand its role in education and to shape and influence the artistic development and growth of artists in the area. The Milwaukee-based artist Jessica Harvey was selected from a pool of 38 applicants from 13 states across the Midwest by the program’s Artist Selection Committee. In addition to being awarded an unrestricted stipend, she will receive access to time, space, and resources to advance her work at the iconic Door County structure.
“A residency at the Dome House is truly a dream come true, and I am thrilled for the chance to be a part of the Door County arts community this summer,” Harvey says.
“At the start of the pandemic, I began a project titled ‘daybreak,’ where I made field recordings each morning at dawn as a grounding ritual in a time of uncertainty. People can call a phone number to hear the recordings each day. I have continued this practice and will continue to explore this during my time in residence. I will lead a series of deep listening experiments and work to turn this project into an immersive installation with multi-layered image projections, and a sound installation of the field recordings culminating in an immersive exhibition in the studio. My time at the Dome House will be crucial to developing the next stages of this body of work.”
Jessica Harvey is an artist and writer whose work explores the fractures of bodies, place, and history. Digging through public and private archives, she conducts long-term investigations of ruptures within natural, historical, and personal events, paying close attention to the interpretation of facts, which often changes based on the narrator. Using photography, video, sound, and archival resources, the images and installations she makes act as a catalyst for the exploration of the psychology that one attaches to memory and place, putting a particular emphasis on time and the labor of care. She often makes work using intimate aspects of physical bodies without revealing the actual human form in its entirety. Bone fragments, human hair, heartbeats, and the sounds of daybreak act as inspiration to illustrate the stories and rituals tied to death and living.
The Miller Art Museum’s artist residency program was first launched in 2021. The program has quickly solidified its place in the Peninsula’s cultural landscape and the impact has been deeply transformative for the four artists it has served during its infancy: Nicole Shaver (Milwaukee, WI) and Amy Usdin (Minneapolis, MN) in 2021, Ariana Vaeth (Milwaukee, WI) in 2022, and Christopher T Wood (Milwaukee, WI) in 2023.
“The Dome House Residency was the most unique and productive of the five international residencies I have attended,” says Christopher T Wood. “The house itself was designed to be an artist’s living and working space, and it certainly serves that purpose well. The setting was inspiring and allowed me to pause my anxious and distracted city brain and focus on my job as an artist in a way I have not been able to for years. My time in the Dome House was a gift and served to reinvigorate my practice and my psyche. Impressively, the program serves to give the artist ample solitude in the studio and the surrounding natural area, while simultaneously serving as what felt like a major hub of connection for the community. I had visitors from all over the county as well as travelers who were passing through the area.”
“The program continues to evolve and has cultivated and engaged a network of artists in such beautiful ways,” says Elizabeth Meissner-Gigstead, executive director of the Miller Art Museum. “Jessica’s exploration of photography, video, and sound will offer the community an exciting way to engage with the artist and her work, the structure, and surrounding landscape. I’m excited to share more details of the programming opportunities as they unfold in the coming weeks,” Meissner-Gigstead concluded. The art museum plans to host a free introductory program for the community to meet Harvey; the time and date of the event will be announced at a later date.
The application-based program invites early to mid-career-level Midwest artists to Wisconsin’s Door Peninsula to reside for 8 weeks at the 5,073-square-foot Dome House and allows artists to focus in the areas of creative development, fellowship, sense of place, learning, and community.
The Door County landscape has long inspired artists of all disciplines visiting or residing on the Peninsula. The Miller Art Museum’s permanent collection reflects this history with over 1,500 works it holds, comprised of many of Door County’s most celebrated artists, past and present. Its Dome House Al & Mickey Quinlan Artist Residency seeks to further broaden this scope and allow a new generation of artists to discover and immerse themselves in the amazing creative playground that is the Door Peninsula.