Ocean Virtual Art Residency
The Ocean Virtual Art Residency program, in collaboration with MANGO, empowers artists to embark on a journey of developing new projects centered around the residency's thematic focus: OCEAN. This residency aims to provide dedicated time and space for artists interested in ocean science, whether emerging or established, and to cultivate a collaborative community where like-minded artists can connect and create together.
The OVAR residency creates a welcoming, empowering, and challenging virtual space for artists. Over 5 weeks, participants met weekly to discuss ideas, critique concepts, and share resources and knowledge, fostering mutual support and project enhancement.
We are thrilled to showcase the projects developed by each artist during the residency. Through the power of art and the brilliance of these artists, prepare to be transported, inspired, and spurred to ignite your passion for our Ocean and their future.
Why a map?
We intentionally chose to present the participating artists using a map format. This decision was driven by our desire to visually highlight the global interconnectedness symbolized by our oceans. By mapping the artists, we aim to emphasize how, regardless of location, we all share a deep love and concern for our planet's waters. This spatial representation underscores our planet's interconnectedness and the collective efforts of artists to draw inspiration from the ocean and, through their work, inspire others.
Ocean Virtual Art Residency has been endorsed as an Ocean Decade activity. This means that our virtual exhibition will be shared on the Ocean Decade Network, allowing the wonderful work created by the artists to reach a wider audience.
Ocean III Virtual Exhibition
We recommend viewing the map on a desktop. If you would like to see the map bigger, just click on the top right square. Every artist is placed on the map with a colored marker. When you click on the marker, you will see a window to the left of your screen with the name of the artist, their piece, the artist’s statement about their work, and a link to their website. Please click on the images so you can see the full image or video. If the artist has several pieces in the exhibition, you can scroll through them using the arrows.
Please use this FORM to give feedback and your thoughts to the artists.
Ocean III Open Studio
The Ocean II Virtual Art Residency will culminate in an Open Studio, where the artists will share insights into their creative process, reflect on their experience, and offer a glimpse of the work they developed during the residency. The public was also invited to ask the artists questions and engage in conversation. Because this is our first time welcoming musicians in the residency, there will be a Live Concert where Art Farm LK will perform from their new album live from South Korea.
The links will be uploaded after the events.
Participating Artists
Sara Parker is a ceramic artist, writer, and strategist based in Western Massachusetts. Her work explores the intersections of material memory, ecological grief, and porous systems—drawing from both biological forms and lived experience. Through hand-built ceramics, Sara investigates how filtration functions as both metaphor and survival mechanism: how bodies—organic, collective, institutional—filter information, toxicity, and grief. Her practice is informed by her background in environmental advocacy, storytelling, and justice. Sara lives and works on the ancestral homelands of the Mohican Nation’s Stockbridge–Munsee Band, near the polluted Housatonic River, where the legacy of industrial contamination has shaped both her creative and political commitments.
Jaechung KIM
(Director, Librettist)
He debuted in 2009, selected for the Next Generation Artist Support Program by Korea Arts & Culture Foundation (AYAF), receiving national support from the outset. Every work he has written and directed has been selected as a supported project by prestigious organizations such as the Seoul Foundation for Arts and Culture, Gyeonggi Cultural Foundation. His musical theater piece ECLIPS was selected as the only outstanding domestic work at the International National Theater Festival, and his dance film ‘Black Shadow’ won the Excellence Award at the Seongnam International Dance Festival. Kim has written and directed numerous works, including the musical theater piece MUNG, contemporary dance piece The Sea Does Not Exist, the plays Red Harbor, Six Rooms, the musical Consolation After 145 Years, the opera Time Cobweb, and the three-part opera Kalea, which have been featured at major theater.
As an art director and producer, he was involved in the feature art films Land of Scarecrows, The Last Dining table, July 32, and Eve's Temptation. These films have been invited to major international film festivals such as Cannes, Berlin, Rotterdam, Locarno, Sydney, Toronto, and Busan, almost top 20 film festivals in the world. As the general planner for the Zelkovar Music Festival at Seongnam Arts Center, he directed six large-scale outdoor performances. Kim has been selected as a theme writer for collaborations with the Arko Creative Academy, the National Ecology Institute, the Toji Foundation, and his works have been performed at prestigious venues.
Considered a creative force by her peers and community, Jakia Fuller is a multidisciplinary artist, designer, writer, and podcaster based in Albuquerque, NM. She was born and raised in Detroit, MI, until her parents and siblings moved to Rio Rancho, NM, in 2007. Jakia creates art, clothing, spaces, and experiences that bring a smile to people’s faces, spark joy, and welcome calm and stillness. Her interests include exploring various forms and concepts of landscapes, specifically, the intrapersonal and interpersonal relationships and experiences, expressions of self, environmental awareness, and evolving narratives of the Black diaspora. In her clothing design practice, she creates clothing that adds a sense of adventure to one’s everyday life. In her illustrative practice, she loves bringing attention to the everyday moments of life, awareness to nature and wildlife, and providing bit-sized educational moments.
For Sabine, the ocean is both subject and collaborator — a source of movement, mystery, and ecological dialogue. A German visual and textile artist based on the Portuguese coast, she collects marine debris like fishing rope and plastic fragments, transforming them into abstract compositions that blur the line between painting and assemblage.
During the Ocean Virtual Art Residency, she explored embroidery using ocean plastics — stitching with threads pulled from ropes, beads made from cotton swabs, and fishing gear. Her work is both intricate and accessible, inviting reflection on human impact through tactile craft.
Though trained in fine arts, Sabine now “paints” with discarded materials shaped by the sea. These weathered objects hold stories of use and loss, offering a poetic response to marine pollution. Her art speaks to transformation, resilience, and the beauty found in forgotten things — a meditative and caring practice rooted in place and purpose.
Kelly is a Colombian-born multidisciplinary artist based in Dallas, Texas. Her practice merges traditional techniques, such as oil painting, sculpture, and printmaking—with digital experimentation and interactive processes. She holds dual degrees in Sculpture and Jewelry from the University of North Texas and an Associate’s in Graphic Design.
Currently, she is expanding her creative scope through a program in animation. Kelly’s work explores themes of repetition, healing, and consciousness. Grounded in scientific research, her creative process often draws on studies in biology, neuroscience, and environmental science. She creates art that invites emotional connection and viewer participation, often through touch, color, or sensory engagement.
Her evolving artistic voice is grounded in the belief that art can bring people together to reflect, feel, and act.
Abby Moon is an artist and middle school art educator based in Massachusetts. She makes paintings, drawings, embroideries and now also comics. Most of her art is autobiographical. She studied at Clark University and Smith College.
Dawn Leigh is a San Francisco-based mixed media artist and founder of Dawn Leigh Creations and Joyous Mermaid Mercantile, a whimsical art kiosk in the heart of the city. With a heart rooted in coastal wonder and a practice grounded in sustainability, she transforms reclaimed paper, pigments, and stories into vibrant works that honor the delicate beauty of marine life. Inspired by tide pools, sea breezes, and the magic of everyday moments, her layered pieces invite viewers to pause, feel, and reconnect with the natural world.
Jieun LEE
(Composer, Music director)
She graduated from the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Leipzig, where she majored in composition (K.A., K.E.) and improvisation (Popular Music). She also completed a doctoral program in Film and Musical Theatre Studies at Myongji University. Her compositional language weaves lyrical melodies and flowing harmonies with the techniques of German contemporary music, music theatre, and opera. Since her debut in 2010 with Dialogic Baroque, Lee has expanded her musical voice beyond contemporary music to include art songs, chamber works, and cantatas. From 2015 to 2017, she composed and performed musical theatre pieces for multicultural concerts supported by Gyeonggi Province, exploring the psychological pain and social communication of diverse communities.
Her original crossover opera The Journey of Magistrate Park Moon-Soo premiered in 2018, followed by The Blazing Flame: Yu Gwan-sun in 2019, which commemorated the centennial of Korea's March 1st Independence Movement. These works expressed the importance of historical memory through operatic music.
Ruby Macnab
Ruby Macnab was born in London, England, but has spent most of her life in Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas. She is a high school art student and illustration artist working primarily with Prismacolor pencils on surrealist drawings of landscapes, animals and people. In college, she plans to major in art, and minor in biology. Her art portfolio explores the human relationship with Oceans, and how art imagines a better future for the flora and fauna of our World's waters. When she is not drawing, she enjoys tending to her windowsill plants, playing volleyball, baking sweet treats, going for boba with friends, traveling, browsing art festivals, and playing with her black cat, Lucky.
Candice Salyers is an artist and Associate Professor at The University of Southern Mississippi. Her performance work and dance films have been presented in the US, UK, Estonia, Spain, Morocco, Brazil, Bulgaria, Italy, Lithuania, Armenia, and the Czech Republic. Her work explores dance practices as humanitarian service and integrates performance, feminist theory, disability studies, and environmental philosophy, proposing that site-specific dance can contribute to unique ways of embodying ethical citizenship. Dr. Salyers has been honored with an Alma Bucovaz Award for Urban Service, Choreographic & Performance Fellowships from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and Mississippi Arts Commission, and a grant from the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund for feminist nonfiction writing.
Graduate of Glasgow School of Art and Wimbledon respectively I have worked as a Textiles and interior designer, broadcast journalist for BBC WS and VOA before becoming a mother and Art teacher. Never stopping my creativity, always collecting, thinking, lucky enough to travel a fair bit, my environmental roots run deep. My extensive collections of ‘detritus’ as some describe them have allowed me to take a deep dive and finally find my stride and my own creative voice. Using the skills, knowledge and passion I have for our planet I try to visually stimulate whilst encouraging discussions on the environment.