Jordan Delzell - Fall 2021 Resident
Jordan Delzell is a visual artist, researcher and recycler. Through foraging, collecting and scavenging material she reroutes items from the waste stream to sites of deep study and care. She creates objects, installations, images and interactions.
Born in Morning Sun, Iowa, she moved to New York City to study Integrated Design, a practice merging visual art, design and psychology. In 2017 she lived and worked at Elsewhere Museum, a museum and collective living experiment in a former thrift store in North Carolina. In 2019 she relocated to Kansas City, where she has continued work focused on paper-making with recycled paper. She has facilitated the collective recycling of paper through poetic workshops in unconventional spaces: garages turned schools and storefronts turned art galleries. She currently lives and works on an urban homestead where she grows food and fiber and is actively learning the art of seed-saving.
Jordan has presented work and facilitated workshops at Governor’s Island, the Watermill Center and The New School (New York); Front/Space and Open House (Kansas City); and Elsewhere Museum (North Carolina). In 2020 she was awarded a residency at Prairie Ronde in Michigan and in 2021 she will be an artist in residence at PlySpace in Indiana
While in residence at PlySpace Jordan will collaborate with the Muncie community through recycling workshops. Discarded paper that has been sourced around Muncie will be provided and participants will also be encouraged to bring their own paper materials to explore recycling together. These paper items will be torn up, soaked and manually shredded into a collective pulp. Participants will then explore forms that paper can take: both traditional two-dimensional sheets as well as more experimental and sculptural forms. The workshops will create space for taking collective action to rethink and reduce items in the waste stream while also learning creative skills in collaboration with others.
Jordan’s individual project will focus on creating sculptural tools and installations that support the facilitation of workshops. Objects for measuring, holding and presenting paper in its various forms of transition will be created as well as larger scale installations that illustrate the paper recycling process. By creating these objects and environments, Jordan looks forward to further exploring how her art practice can be pedagogical—a way of learning with paper, people and place.
Full List of Events:
First Thursday, December 2 - Drop-In Recycling Center Open Hours, 5:00 to 8:00 pm
Saturday, December 4 - “Recycling as a Creative Practice” Workshop, 3:00 to 6:00 pm
Monday, December 6 - Drop-In Recycling Center Open Hours, 5:00 to 8:00 pm
Thursday, December 9 - One Night Gallery Exhibition and Artist Talk, 6:00 to 8:00 pm
