Good grief as a football that flips the body over and we laugh but our tailbone hurts and there’s probably a bruise that might last all summer. Our hearts hurt too with changing tides and shifts in who or what the future could be. We knew you were old and we knew I was sick but that doesn’t make it easy. We’ll think about the ground as a way to hold ourselves up but also burrow into for a while or for good. 

And how I’ll miss you and I miss me, but we’re moving forward because Ohio is a landlocked state and grief is the water aerobics that make our muscle tired, then strong, but our brains blurry. And if we keep waving our arms and dragging our one foot forward we could make it to the Great Lakes or even the ocean. Or make it to Dayton where we jump into a Wright Brothers’ plane to float (or crash) to a funky beat and changing sun.  

We saw you wave from a parking lot far below but when we looked back you were gone. But don’t worry. Some grief makes the air so thick that the chaotic landing is in slow motion, with time to cry, then laugh, then Google that song we can’t remember, then make some prints, then make a friend, then put on a show, then fix the motor, then find a big field, then move so fast, then try again. 

~

Morgan Strahorn and Chantal Wnuk are artists based in Ohio. Good Grief is an exhibition of solo work made while in residence at Columbus Printed Arts Center this spring.

CPAC Artist in Residence Program

In 2022, Columbus Printed Arts Center launched a new residency program for artists living in and around Central Ohio. The program invites a small group of transdisciplinary artists to utilize CPAC’s facilities and resources to develop an exhibition over the course of three months. This residency imagines the CPAC site as a laboratory; an experimental context that actively produces exhibitions rather than passively contains or represents them. Collaboration and working in response to members of the cohort is not a requirement, but a possibility, as we search for new modes of generation through the framework of this program.

Summer ‘24 Artists in Residence

More about CPAC’s AIR Program:

The purpose of this residency and its structure is twofold: it aims to create an innovative organizational model for generating urgent, responsive projects and maintaining inclusive space for artists at various levels of their careers. It also seeks to offer a unique, paid opportunity for local artists to work alongside peers in a new context - one in which the individual practice becomes momentarily relational, and the physical space within and potentially outside of CPAC’s walls becomes an additional collaborator in an evolving exhibition. 

This program asks…

In the process of creating a new project in dialogue with a cohort, how can new paths of experimentation unfold and reverberate within our practices? Can we build new strategies and ask different questions?   

Can we open potential spaces for collaboration that work against the conventional model for residencies?

What happens when we make work in direct response to a question, prompt, a collaborator, or a site?

We would like to thank the Greater Columbus Arts Council for providing generous support for this program and others.

Applications are closed for the Spring 2024 session and will reopen for Autumn, 2024 next year.

Autumn 2023 Artists in Residence

Autumn 2022 Artists in Residence

Summer 2022 Artists in Residence