May 2 ,2024 - June 15, 2024

a spider weaving a web in space

Opening Reception: Thursday, May 2, 5-8PM Gallery Hours: By Appointment on Saturdays, 12-3PM

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Specialist presents a spider weaving a web in space, an exhibition of new multi-media works by Stephanie Simek informed by her research into workarounds, unexpected interconnections, and philosophies of emptiness.  The title, a spider weaving a web in space, originates from a (re/mis)interpretation of Anita and Arabella, two spiders deployed in a 1973 NASA experiment to understand gravity’s effect on web-building.

Using an array of materials, Stephanie Simek makes works in two dimensions, three dimensions, sound, and performance.  She has lived in the Pacific Northwest since 2007.  At that time, she began performing with instruments she built from deconstructed obsolete devices.  Continuing on the path of researching the inner workings of materials and systems with unique and exceptional properties, she was an artist in residence at Portland’s Museum of Contemporary Craft.  This engagement was titled Jewels/Joules, and led to a research residency at Signal Culture in New York, where she studied the magnetic recording potential of minerals.  Looking further into visualizing what is happening under the surface, Simek then worked as a physicist’s apprentice making ultrasonic sensors, a two-year partnership which allowed her to incorporate specialized skills into her practice and further develop her perspective on material relationships.  While developing a new body of work this past year, she has been an artist in residence at Mass MoCA, Tobichi Art Museum (Japan), and A.R.E. (Netherlands), as well as a recipient of the Oregon Arts Commission’s Individual Artist Fellowship.