Jovan C. Speller & Andy DuCett: Conservatory
Photo by Fadumo Ali.
Jan 27–Feb 6, 3–7 pm
Free, open to the public
Please note: Groups of four from the same household will be allowed inside the structure at a time. Masks are required.
Support provided by The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and City of Saint Paul Cultural STAR.
Jovan C. Speller and Andy DuCett’s Conservatory provides a space of comfort and community in the depths of winter, but also a place to share the realities of the surrounding climate. Surrounded on all sides by solid ice, a thriving greenhouse garden wedged between two buildings in an alley in downtown Saint Paul will flourish with hundreds of deeply hued plants this winter. Black cone flowers, velvet petunias, mondo grass, coleus, and more will fill the space. Visitors inside will hear the amplified cracks and thuds of the otherwise imperceptibly shifting environment around them, thanks to contact microphones placed in the ice. This physically immersive and visually captivating experience is designed to center Black life. Speller and DuCett will invite artists from Minnesota who identify as Black to submit work created during the uprisings to further highlight methods of survival and show how innovation and creativity can thrive. Those pieces, as well as a virtual experience of the greenhouse, will be shared through an interactive WebXR component that will allow the work to live on long after the ice has melted. Listen to artists Jovan C. Speller and Andy DuCett discuss the work during its early development in this podcast episode.
Thank you to Street Factory Media for their work constructing Conservatory.
Jovan C. Speller is a multidisciplinary artist based in northern Minnesota. Her work—visual, textual and performative—interprets historic narratives through contemporary discourse. Her research-based practice is centered around elevating, complicating and inventing stories that explore ancestry, identity, and spatial memory. Speller holds a B.F.A. in Fine Art Photography from Columbia College Chicago. Speller's work has been exhibited at The Plains Art Museum, the Bockley Gallery, and Minneapolis College of Art and Design, with upcoming solo exhibitions at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. She is a recipient of multiple grants and fellowships including the McKnight Visual Artist Fellowship. She was awarded the Carolyn Glasoe Bailey Foundation Minnesota Art Prize in 2021. Speller is represented by ENGAGE Projects in Chicago.
Andy DuCett is from Winona, MN and received his M.F.A. from the University of Illinois. His work has been shown in galleries and museums around the country and is in the collections of The Minneapolis Institute of Art, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, and The Walker Art Center. He has been featured by Artforum, New American Paintings, The Washington Post, The Daily Beast, and The Huffington Post, as well as publications in Toronto, Berlin, Tokyo, and London. He was the recipient of a 2017 McKnight Visual Arts Fellowship and is listed on the curated registry of the Drawing Center in New York City. He is currently working on a commissioned wall drawing for Travail Kitchen and Amusements and recently completed a series of projects commissioned by SITE Santa Fe.
About the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
We are social investors who support democracy by funding free expression and journalism, arts and culture in community, research in areas of media and democracy, and in the success of American cities and towns where the Knight brothers once had newspapers. Learn more at kf.org and follow @knightfdn on social media.
This activity is supported, in part, by the City of Saint Paul Cultural Sales Tax Revitalization Program. In-kind support provided by Otten Bros.
Join us in the metaverse for a special REM5 VR LAB extended reality (XR) experience of Conservatory!
Curated in tandem with the physical installation, the virtual space features an art gallery of work by 15 local Black artists. Learn more, meet the artists, and enter here.
