Curated by Sydney Ewerth and Paul Maloney.

Fern Shop Cinncinatti, Ohio
March 13th - March 18th, 2023

As humans have migrated to the interior space of safety in architecture, we have brought our plant and animal friends along with us, domesticated indoors. What does it say about our lust for beauty and greed to pluck something from nature and preserve it as our own in the comfort of our homes? How does it affect how we grow as humans to watch a plant flourish or die in front of us in our care? How can we use art and material to celebrate and understand these living organisms? Can these constructed vessels better aid nature, or create needed assistance to our symbiosis? This prompts the creation of more than a typical vase or planter.

Fern Shop ↗

A Collaboration with Karly Jean Kainz

⚲ CAV Window Gallery, Las Cruces, NM
August 5th, 2022 4-10pm

This project is a collaboration between Ashley Diane Saldana and Karly Jean Kainz as an investigation between human interaction and technology in relation to the sustainabiility of plant life. Searching to understand the complexities of how the role of technology plays in life, “Conditions of Control” tethers between the controlled and uncontrolled, as evidence to the ways awareness and human connection are crucial components in the care of biology. Ceramic vessels shelter and construct a landscape of study, experimenting with various interactions of care by choreographing light, water, and sound to simulate artificial and natural environments. Some rely on human interaction while others are created through automation with technology. Each of these environments determine the treatments numerous plants receive, while others solely represent life without care that then in turn become neglected.

Karly Jean Kainz ↗

The processes of growth and change inevitably instigates opportunities for collaboration, whether we recognize them or not. This exhibition is the result of seven artists working collaboratively at a critical juncture in their academic and professional careers. They challenge one another’s formative processes, exploring the shifting influences of time, place, ritual, and memory.

The exhibition will be held in two phases. Phase I begins with the end product—work made specifically for the exhibition. Phase II will shift the focus from the “objectness” of the finished works to consideration of the external forces and material transformations of each artist. Phase II, co-curated by Karly Jean Kainz and Lynne Maphies, will reveal the processes and materiality of making, evolving the project into a different exhibition altogether.

This exhibition is the result of the semester- long Graduate Seminar Course on Professional Practices with Leslie Moody Castro in the Department of Art at New Mexico State University, in collaboration with the Casa Otro Residency Project.