Once again the foundation has the pleasure of welcoming six remarkable artists for the Fall Creative Fusion residency. As chance would have it, we have two artists each from South Africa and Taiwan. But each is very different. In this diversely creative group, we have a puppeteer, a concert violinist, a documentary photographer, a video artist, a sculptor and a painter.

This is the second in a series of ongoing blogs introducing you to our new artists.

Meena Kayastha – Nepal

Hosted by Negative Space

Meena arrived at the residency a week early and has been working very hard ever since. She is a sculptor, and works with found and recycled materials – “junk” as she says. Meena communicated to her host, Gadi Zamir, resident artist at Negative Space – an artist meeting place and gallery in the heart of Asia Town – and he had arranged for piles of it to be assembled for her before she came. Gadi also uses used and discarded materials in his artwork and one of the first things he did was to take Meena to a garage sale – a new experience for her. She plans to take this idea back to Nepal!

Meena brought with her 13 ornately painted traditional Nepalese masks, which she and Gadi began right away to re-interpret as painted sculptures from the “junk” that had been assembled. The goal is to have an exhibition of 13 collaborative, contemporary sculptures alongside the traditional masks by the end of the residency. She and Gadi are keeping a diary of their work together as part of the residency documentation.

Negative Space also recently hosted an evening of traditional song and dance and wonderful food for the Nepalese and Burmese families that Meena found and who have relocated to Cleveland. More than 30 people, including many young children, filled the gallery. It was a joyous evening.