Meg Hahn
Jeffry Mitchell
Nicholas Nyland
Brendan Shea

Co-Organized by Elizabeth Spavento and Nina Nickel
With Contributions from detainees at the Mesa Verde ICE Processing Center

Dinner with Friends

July 01 – 31, 2021
Opening Reception / Thursday, July 01, 5–8pm

Spring/Covid-19 Gallery Hours:
Friday–Sunday, 12pm–5pm and by appointment

THE EXHIBITION

The exhibition highlights the detainees at Mesa Verde ICE Processing Center’s demands for better quality food. Though Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is responsible for maintaining nutritional food services in detention facilities, the residents have complained of receiving expired, low quality, sometimes moldy food and little access to fruits and vegetables. Residents do have access to a gas-station like commissary, but also make very little money working the available jobs.

The organizers of Dinner with Friends, Elizabeth Spavento and Nina Nickel, invited the artists to make work for use in a meal setting. Among the artist-made cups, plates, placemats are portraits of the detainees who shared their stories, as well as the recipes that they submitted, listing ingredients that can be purchased in commissary. The organizers hope these recipes will make it into the hands of other detainees and incarcerated folx.

Visitors are invited to submit their own recipes for meals that cost $10 or less by bringing them to Soil or email espavento@gmail.com. Recipes will be featured on Instagram throughout the exhibition and all submissions will be compiled for online viewing at the end of the exhibition. 

Because Covid protocols do not currently allow us to use the place settings for scheduled meals as was originally planned, the show will act as a collection for recipes and non-perishable food donations for the disadvantaged. If restrictions relax, a schedule of events for meals or recipe testing will be announced.

THE ARTISTS

Meg Hahn currently lives and works in Portland, Maine. She graduated from Maine College of Art with a BFA in painting. Meg is a co-director at Border Patrol (Portland,ME) and works out of the SPACE Studios building. 

Nicholas Nyland This recent work shows a dialogue among media where forms are translated from sculpture into painting and vice-versa. Ornament and surface design become the subjects of works that draw upon antique motifs from undervalued practices such as decorative painting or stained glass design and recall early Modern experiments with color and form. 

Jeffry Mitchell’s primary medium is ceramic and he is well versed in its traditions around the globe (references to Early American glazes, Pennsylvania Dutch pickle jars, asymmetrical Japanese aesthetic decisions and Chinese Foo Dogs abound).

Brendan Shea (b.1995 Massachusetts) Is an interdisciplinary artist working in Austin, Texas. Through the lens of painting Shea examines epistemology, queerness and materiality. Shea received his BFA in painting from Maine College of Art in 2018 and is an MFA candidate at University of Texas at Austin. 

THE ORGANIZERS

Elizabeth Spavento is a curator and artist living in Bakersfield, CA. Together with Jared Haug and Meg Hahn, she started Border Patrol, a curatorial collective that examines the relationship between contemporary art and corporate aesthetics. Border Patrol has staged exhibitions and events in a former dentist's office, burrito shop, shopping mall, and cemetery.

Nina Nickel is an 18-year-old high school senior currently living in Puyallup, WA. Her father, William Nickel, is currently housed inside of Mesa Verde ICE Detention Facility in Bakersfield, CA and was instrumental in organizing the detainees who are featured in the exhibition. 

“The opportunity presented to me to participate in this exhibit and spread awareness to others has made me feel much closer to my father than I have within the last 5 years,” Nickel said and brought her “closer to my community.” Dinner with Friends marks Nina Nickel’s curatorial debut.