David Robertson Graduate Fellowship in the Arts

The David Robertson Graduate Residential Fellowship in the Arts provides an honorarium of $600 and one to two weeks lodging/residency at the McLaughlin Reserve (located at the intersection of Napa, Lake, and Yolo counties) for two graduate students in the creative arts (art, creative writing, music composition, theater and dance). It provides funding, time, and a serene location for a graduate student to focus on a creative project.After completing the residency and creative project, fellows will participate in two final presentations to showcase their creative work, one at the residence site and one at UC Davis. These are planned for Spring 2010.
The McLaughlin Reserve is located two hours northwest of Davis. The facility, located on 7,000 acres of natural land, sits on a grassy hillside that is surrounded by creeks, woodland, and serpentine terrain. Inviting hiking trails offer a chance to see deer, jackrabbits, bobcats, and birds among the diverse plant communities. For more information on the site see: http://nrs.ucdavis.edu/mclaughlin.html

2009-2010 Robertson Fellows

Johanna (Joby) Barron is a painter and sculptor who incorporates concepts of biology and material culture in her work. Barron received her B.A. from The Evergreen State College. Among her interests are intersections between artificial and natural environments, the boundaries of public and private spaces, and corporate imagery. Barron is also interested in investigating the cultural and biological functions of the accumulation of objects and the fluctuation of meaning of objects through time and space. To explore human’s increased disconnect with the natural world and the shifting aesthetic values towards the artificial, her project at the McLaughlin Reserve will create a temporary diaorama of a hotel room on a grassy, oak-dominated hill, documenting the “interaction” between the landscape and this built environment through photography and film.
Christopher Woodstock is an artist using large format photography. A graduate of the San Francisco Art Institute, he has shown work nationally and internationally. Bedroom Rockers: Where DJ’s Call Home is a monograph of his photos that display the private interior spaces of DJ subculture. His current work focuses on liminal spaces, places that unify a connection between past and future, seen and unseen, and permanence and change. During his residency at the McLaughlin Reserve he plans to research how the history of mining extraction is transforming into a future of preservation and to photograph the relationship between the area’s geology, its mining history, and the contrast between natural and altered landscapes.