Laura Ahola-Young

Using precise research and study of plant physiology, Laura Ahola Young explores the scientific structures of plants. Her meticulous paintings often feature complex patterns and labored marks. During her residency, she created paintings that explore how an organism’s appearance is informed by its adaptations for survival.

About the Artist

Laura Ahola-Young develops work that incorporates scientific research, the Pacific Northwest and personal narrative. Originally from northern Minnesota, she has been influenced by landscapes, winters, ice and resilience. Ahola-Young received her MFA from San Jose State University in 2001 and currently resides in Pocatello, Idaho, where she is associate professor of art at Idaho State University. 

Laura Fantini

Laura Fantini’s hyper-realistic works inspire reconnection with nature through observation of the beauty and the astounding detail of the natural world. The artworks created for the Land Line residency were made using seedpods from Denver Botanic Gardens’ own living collections as reference. For Fantini, seeds are powerful symbols of optimism and the infinite possibility of new beginnings.

About the Artist

Laura Fantini is an artist working in a hyper-realistic minimalist manner, living and working in both Brooklyn, New York, and Bologna, Italy. She specializes in colored pencil still-life defined by strong contrast and dramatic lighting. She graduated from the Liceo Artistico and Academy of Fine Arts in her hometown of Bologna. Fantini's art has exhibited nationally and internationally in museums, galleries and art institutions and has been widely published and documented. She has won various awards, including The Canson Paper Award for Excellence and the Award for Exceptional Merit from the Colored Pencil Society of America. Her work is included in the permanent collections of the Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation in Pittsburgh and at the Queens Botanical Garden in New York. 

Lauren Camp

With an interest in ecology, Lauren Camp’s work focuses on the dangers plaguing the environment—shifting climate, increasing desertification and wildfires. During her Land Line residency, she searched for positive outcomes within our changing environment, looking at the plants most appropriate to our changing climate and ever-increasing aridity. The resulting poems reckon with the ways that nature recharges the land, and what has the courage to stretch and bloom. 

About the Artist

Lauren Camp is the author of five books, most recently “Took House” (Tupelo Press), winner of the American Fiction Award in Poetry and Distinguished Favorite for the Independent Press Award. Her poems have appeared in Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, Western Humanities Review, Ecotone, Poet Lore and “Ghost Fishing: An Eco-Justice Poetry Anthology,” and her work has been translated into Mandarin, Turkish, Spanish, Serbian and Arabic. She is a recipient of fellowships from Black Earth Institute and The Taft Nicholson Center for Environmental Humanities. Other honors include the Dorset Prize and finalist citations for the Arab American Book Award and North American Book Award. She lives in New Mexico, where she teaches creative writing to people of all ages.

Nathan Hall

Nathan Hall used the Land Line residency to construct a site-specific sound work, drawing on the day-to-day and behind-the-scenes sounds of the Gardens’ York Street location, including the herbarium and office spaces. Based on these locations and auditory experiences, he created a new audio artwork and accompanying musical performance, pointing ears to underappreciated aspects of Denver Botanic Gardens. 

About the Artist

Nathan Hall is a composer and artist who uses music and sound as tools to explore a variety of fields including science, nature, fine arts, history and sexuality. There is an emotional resonance present in all of Hall’s works, from his traditional classical pieces for chamber ensembles to experimental electronic pieces, sound sculptures and multimedia projects. Nathan Hall is a former Fulbright Fellow to Iceland, a McKnight Visiting Composer, and he holds a doctorate in musical arts (DMA) from University of Colorado, Boulder. He teaches music composition at the University of Denver. 

Paula Castillo

Paula Castillo used the Land Line residency to investigate the history and symbolism of corn, revealing the complex and malleable intersections between physical and cultural landscapes. What began as an inquiry into the divination practice of tirar maíz (throwing corn) and curanderismo (a Latin American folk medicine practice) transformed into a project exploring the key role of corn within human movement, conflict, and survival. The resulting artwork explores the often-unacknowledged role that plants have played in the complexities of human history.

About the Artist

A Latinx artist based in Belén, New Mexico, Paula Castillo creates intimate and large-scale sculptural installations using generative patterns and structures to draw parallels between the fluid and solid forms of life. Castillo attended Yale University and worked in an electronics factory where she forged her early career in contemporary sculpture. The complex and malleable intersections between the physical and cultural landscape are Castillo’s primary source. Her work has been reviewed by publications such as Hyperallergic, Washington Post, and The New York Times. She exhibits nationally and internationally, and her work is in collections such as the National Museum of Women in the Arts and the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts. 

Sarojini Jha Johnson

Sarojini Jha Johnson’s work incorporates native and invasive flora and fauna to explore how human settlement and migration have impacted our natural landscape. For this residency, Jha Johnson created an artist book inspired by water lilies, an important symbol in South Asian iconography, and a recurring personal motif in her work. The Gardens’ waterways and the waterlilies in the Monet Pool became resources for this endeavor, culminating in a hand-bound book of intaglio prints housed in a custom-designed box. 

About the Artist

Sarojini Jha Johnson grew up in Ohio and earned undergraduate degrees in French and drawing from the University of Cincinnati. She received an MFA in printmaking from Miami University where she began working with animal and plant forms in her prints. She teaches printmaking at Ball State University in Indiana. Johnson’s main medium is color intaglio printmaking, a medium that allows for great creativity and invention in terms of surface and color. Recently, she has been exploring memories and impressions of India, her country of origin, while retaining her usual animal and plant imagery. She also makes books that highlight the devastating effects of humankind’s tampering with nature by introducing invasive flora and fauna.