Gretchen Bennett and Yann Novak

Our Nature

April 5 – 29, 2007

Our Nature is a collaborative piece by artists Yann Novak and Gretchen Bennett.  Each artist's work involves a cataloging and documenting of their daily surroundings and a translation of the emotional and psychological impact their environments have on them. By removing these objects, images and sounds from their natural habitats, they produce distilled facsimiles of their experiences and, through further refinement, reflections of their personal experience.

In Our Nature, Bennett and Novak turn the lenses and mics on each other. Living in identical lofts in the Tashiro-Kaplan, one above the other, the artists filter their creative practices through the spaces they live in and explore the similarities and differences in both their experience of life in that particular building, as well as the surrounding neighborhood. Presenting this work at SOIL Art Gallery is an intricate part of the artists' vision. Located just four floors down from the artists' residences, SOIL embodies the cooperative aspects of the community in which they live and work.