Artist-In-Residence Program

claire rousay

December 1 – December 6, 2024

claire rousay is a singular artist, known for challenging conventions in experimental and ambient music forms. rousay masterfully incorporates textural found sounds, sumptuous drones, and candid field recordings into music that celebrates the beauty in life’s banalities. Her music is curatorial and granular in detail, deftly shaped into emotionally affecting pieces. sentiment is a meditation of the poignant emotional terrains of loneliness, nostalgia, sentimentality, guilt, and sex. Her recent album’s narrative arc is guided by delicate musical gestures and artistic vulnerability, audaciously synthesizing disparate and unexpected influences. rousay crafted the songs in various homes, bedrooms, hotels, and other private places, the feeling of time and energy spent alone radiating from each passage.

The album is a collection of heart-rending, incisive pop songs that explore universal feelings with subtlety and remarkable vision. rousay’s vocals and guitar take center stage on sentiment. Her intimate, diaristic lyrics contrast with her mechanical-inflected vocal effects, emphasizing a powerful desire for connection, a deep yearning and a lingering sense of separation. The spare guitar playing and laconic tempo both drive the songs and exude a sense of resignation. Her delicate mastery of nuance draws on her explorative musical past that she, with sincerity and admiration, seamlessly interweaves into her adventurous textures and distinctive compositions.

“I want to belong to the worlds and communities I look up to. Same as someone using a Fender guitar or dressing like Kurt Cobain. Emulate your heroes,” says rousay. From a sprawling math-rock duo, to an array of emo-inflected rock outfits to a hired hand in evangelical worship bands, rousay worked as a percussionist for over a decade before shifting her focus to the solo collage work she’s known for. sentiment folds those experiences into her compositions. rousay explains, “As the drummer in an evangelical rock band, it’s your job, with the singers, to manipulate the crowd. You start building on the drums and you know it’s one bigger chorus and then we’re out and you can see the tears, people just start crying. I still feel a version of that when playing my own shows now.” The album balances the poetic soul of her influences with a documentarian heart, rousay capturing moments of her life while living alone in houses across the country, learning to play guitar, and reconnecting with pop music. “I have been on a quest to communicate my feelings and ideas as clearly as possible lately. Pop seemed like the way to do that this time,” says rousay.

The confessional nature of sampled fragments of conversation give her pieces a specificity and sense of intimacy that is both immediate and curious. rousay’s innate ability to conjure pure feeling from sound derives from her delightful embrace of pop forms, the vulnerability found in field recordings, minimalistic arrangements and innovative sound choices. The resulting songs of sentiment are as anthemic as they are breathtakingly personal. sentiment is blissfully, achingly melancholic, and an undeniably sensual listening experience.

Rebekah Danae

October 23 – November 27, 2024

As a whimsical feminist from the vermillion Texas desert, Rebekah Danae’s worldview hasn’t shattered but surrealized. Danae’s interdisciplinary practice spans oil painting, leatherwork, physical & social sculpture—manifesting as a spiritual dialogue that creates culture and community for the new world, from the old world, about the space in between. Formed in the rugged landscapes of Oklahoma and West Texas, Danae’s artistic process is a passionate love affair and creative rebellion, both crucible and muse.

Based in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and raised in Midland, Texas, Danae holds a BFA from Baylor University and began her career in education and community organizing in North Tulsa. Through her work, Danae and A Creative House orchestrate a movement in the middle of the country, made up of a diverse creative choir. Far from a lone ranger, Danae works collaboratively across a curated network—from the punk underground, homegrown rappers and producers, luxury interior designers, rodeo cowboys, and rural bootmakers, to philanthropic, political, and educational leaders. Her approach has the intended impact of critical regional culture-shaping from the current white supremacy that is prevalent regionally today and toward a co-created futurist Oklahoma, the liberated West.

While in residence, Danae will explore the intersection of art and ritual with a site-specific installation of The Infinity Barn and through the development of Performance 02 for the Momentary’s INVERSE Festival. As a nomadic installation and performance art venue, each build of The Infinity Barn acts to catalyze personal evolution and collective community imagining. The barn sculpture is both a physical and metaphorical incubator for Danae’s artistic journey that transcends conventional boundaries between artist, artwork, and audience. During residency, Danae is eager to deepen the symbiotic relationship between her work and the Northwest Arkansas community through the reciprocal exchange of ideas and experiences while contributing meaningfully to the cultural landscape of a futurist Northwest Arkansas.