MEET OUR COMMUNITY
E. Saffronia Downing Artist, Faculty & Ox-Bow Fellow
Tell us about yourself—where did you grow up, and where do you currently reside? I grew up on the outskirts of Baltimore, Maryland. I’ve lived pretty nomadically since 2016— bouncing between residencies, Chicago, Baltimore, and the Hudson Valley. Right now I live in a small postindustrial town in central Maine, where I am participating in a fellowship at the Lunder Institute for American Art. Briefly describe your practice. I’m curious about relationships between materiality, craft, industry, and the natural world. Lately, much of my practice has centered around foraging clay from wild deposits. I make site-specific ceramic sculpture and installation. Foraging clay allows me to develop embodied knowledge of place. You were a Fellow at Ox-Bow, but were you involved with Ox-Bow previously? If so, how did you first get involved? If not, how did you come to know about Ox-Bow? There was a buzz about Ox-Bow when I was an undergrad at Hampshire College. It seemed exciting to make art in a small community, in such proximity to the land and water. During my MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, it became a real dream of mine to spend a summer at Ox-Bow. I was inspired by the dune ecosystem of Ox-Bow’s campus and the clay cliffs nearby. I applied three times, and was happily accepted to the Ox-Bow Fellowship in 2020.
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Bradley Marshall
