Michelle Swinehart (she/her) is a multidisciplinary artist and an instructor in PSU’s interdisciplinary general education program and School of Art & Design. She has a background as a studio artist but has also worked as a facilitator at StoryCorps, a nonprofit oral history project that catalogs personal stories from the lives of Americans. These dual practices of art and conversation combined when Swinehart got an MFA in Social Practice, an artistic field where people and the collaborations between them is the medium.
While her work has taken many forms, there is a throughline of personal interviews, deep listening and collaboration, and visual manifestations of people’s everyday lives. Swinehart currently lives at Full Plate Farm in Ridgefield, Washington where she started an artist residency program that invites artists to engage with the land and the people who work on it.
During her PMRCCA residency, Swinehart will be joining scientist Jamie Cornelius and artist M. Michelle Illuminato in a collaborative project that explores the intersections of creative thinking for science and art. The goal of the project is to find new ways to bring these disparate seeming fields together. She heard about the residency program through Oregon Humanities and is looking forward to being in a place that encourages collaboration between people in different fields.
The Ranch’s residency theme for 2024 is transitions and migrations, both of which feel incredibly relevant to Swinehart in the modern world. She is curious to explore how slowing down in natural spaces could help humans intentionally imagine and transition to new ways of living.
Hear from Michelle Swinehart at an Open Studio event on September 19 from 4-6pm at Pine Meadow Ranch Center for Arts and Agriculture. Swinehart will be available along with Author Diane Wilson and Swinehart’s collaborators: M. Michelle Illuminato and Jamie Cornelius.
