erica larsen-dockray
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
Threads and Trails are binding elements between our journeys of research, conceptualization, and enlightenment of our maternal familial lines. Cybele Moon dives into her Slovakian history through oral histories, traditions, and textiles. Erica Larsen-Dockray explores the texts from pioneer women on the Oregon Trail as they passed over the land where she grew up in Scottsbluff, Nebraska. This collaboration between Larsen-Dockray and Moon builds on their previous works exploring reproductive issues and sculptural costume which have combined installation, projection, moving image and live performance.
Development of this collaboration will shift between three phases of focus between each artist’s pursuit of her history and will culminate in a shared exploration of the connections between their studies.
Phase one, titled "A Modern Woman's Wit" was workshopped at Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT in the Spring of 2018. This performative installation, is inspired by the gender-based challenges and oral traditions as found in the Slovak folktale, "A Woman's Wit".
The folktale reflects similar struggles of upward mobility the artist experienced navigating her professional career in higher education and theater. The interactive event combined animated projections, audible storytelling, and textile elements which echoed the two stories.
Phase two will narrow in and further define the relationships to the content, its subversive narratives, and aesthetics of the space. Content focuses on Larsen-Dockray's relationship to the westward travels of the female pioneers to her own journey west.
Phase three is the final culmination of the two explorations into the artists’ introspective journeys into their histories and incorporate feedback from broader voices.
The shapes of covered wagons, Slovakian bridal headdresses, Nebraskan and Slovakian landscapes are some of the sculptural elements to be explored.
Viewers will walk under, through and around various soft structures containing visual elements conveying stories and connections to our specific journeys with those of women in days gone by.
Elements such as colors, pattern, shapes, and text from each culture and period will be translated into sound, projection, light, and space to form the installation.
RESEARCH IMAGES
Project Research Images
CREATIVE DIRECTORS + LEAD COLLABORATORS
BIOGRAPHIES
CYBELE MOON
PRONOUNS: SHE/HER/HERS
RESIDING/WORKING FROM: Lenni-Lenape lands
ARTIST BIO
Cybele Moon is a visual artist, costume designer and educator. As a visual artist, Moon works with textiles, cut-paper collage and multi-media Installations. Her work has been exhibited at galleries, public events, and with community organizations in California, Connecticut, Illinois, and Pennsylvania.
As a costume designer she has worked with theater and dance companies, as well as colleges and universities to design and create costumes for over 140 productions. Her work has been seen onstage in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, New Orleans and many other locations across the United States.
Moon has held full-time Academic appointments with Wesleyan University and East Carolina University, in addition to adjunct positions with CalArts, Temple University, the University of the Arts, and Austin Community College. She has given numerous guest lectures at higher education institutions in California, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, and Illinois.
Moon is the recipient of multiple grants from academic institutions, and arts organizations, including two Chicago CAAP grants, and a Creative Campus Initiative Grant from Wesleyan University.
She received her MFA from the California Institute of the Arts, her BFA from Ohio University, and was born, raised, and inspired to be an artist by her upbringing in Detroit.
CYBELE MOON (L)
Costume Designer, Textile Craft Artisan, Lecturer
Philadelphia, PA
ERICA LARSEN-DOCKRAY (R)
Media Artist and Animator, Teaching Artist and Entrepreneur
Los Angeles, CA
ERICA LARSEN-DOCKRAY
PRONOUNS: SHE/HER/HERS
RESIDING/WORKING FROM: Fernandeño Tataviam, Chumash Lands
ARTIST BIO
Erica Larsen-Dockray is an Animation and Media Artist, Educator, Playworker, and Activist. She is an occasional adjunct faculty at her alma mater, California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), in the Film/Video School’s Experimental Animation program. Erica’s class, The Animated Woman, was covered by the Associated Press and Agencia EFE, and featured in over 1,000 news outlets including the LA Times and the New York Times. In 2020, Erica finished a 9 year tenure as a teaching artist at Inner-City Arts in downtown Los Angeles where she ran the Saturday Middle School and High School Animation courses.
In 2013 she founded the Calibraska Arts Initiative, a cross-cultural summer program bringing artists from California to her hometown in Nebraska to teach multi-generational workshops in their métier. In 2017 the initiative received a $25,000 grant from the Johnny Carson Foundation which was used to purchase 5 animation backpacks allowing the program to expand into a statewide initiative. Erica also is a Co-Founder of SCV Adventure Play Foundation with her husband Jeremiah, creating play spaces for children and adults, which facilitate and support self-directed and unstructured play.
Her art practice includes hybrid installations consisting of varying elements such as painting, moving image, dance, theater, interactivity, and experimental projection. Her work has been shown domestically and internationally in cultural institutions such as the Los Angeles Municipal Gallery, The CalArts Expo, Thymele Arts, Future Studio Gallery, The New Children's Museum in San Diego, CA,and at the Art Festival Kesenian Indonesia.
You can see her work and more information here:
https://arts.unl.edu/carson-center
Phase One:
A Modern Woman's Wit
A Modern Woman's Wit Documentation from Wesleyan University
DOCUMENTATION OF PHASE ONE: A MODERN WOMAN'S WIT
Exhibited at Davison Arts Center - Wesleyan University
March 2018
Supported by Wesleyan University Creative Campus Initiative & Wesleyan University Theater Department