kaze no e [installation view]
2025

Colby College Museum of Art | Waterville, ME

Acrylic, Japanese Indigo, Conté Crayon, Lacquer on Wood Panel
Archival Pigment Prints
Spray Paint and Varnish on Paper

kaze no e (or why the wind whispers among the leaves)
7 minutes 5 seconds, 2026

16mm film transferred to video
collaboration with four Colby College students during the Tippet Rise Art Center Project Residency through the Lyons Arts Lab in June 2025

Synopsis:
Four young researchers in Big Sky Country begin to wonder about the vastness of the world and greater cosmos. If non-human presences were capable of harboring intelligence and communicating, what information could they pass along? Using the trees and wind as messengers, the researchers record and decipher writings and recordings from the trees and wind, relating them back to the land and universe, before finding ways to embody them through sound and movement as a form of empathy and communion with a greater intelligence.

a burial like the sun
[work in progress, expected completion spring 2026]

Video
collaboration with four Colby College students during the Tippet Rise Art Center Project Residency through the Lyons Arts Lab in June 2025

Synopsis:
Two sisters engage in a conversation about the state of the world after one observes vultures sitting in their yard.

*the sound and color of this excerpt are not final

the tanabata project
[ongoing project]

Community contributed postcards

the tanabata project is a project carrying the same name as the Japanese festival, Tanabata, held every July 7th. The project references two Japanese artist, On Kawara and his I Got Up series, and Yoko Ono’s Wish Tree. Each postcard serves as a prompt for a small gesture or art project for me to create as a form of wish fulfillment.

The invitation to contribute can be found here.

the relative inconvenience store
[ongoing project]

Socially Engaged Project

the relative inconvenience store is an ongoing project started in the early stages of the pandemic when the world was spiraling into a dark comedy of mass consumption of milk, bread, and toilet paper. The global supply chain was disrupted, Amazon was making record profits. The GIF which is looping on the right, is the motto for the store/project, and perhaps the two phrases which might be the most provocative and aggressive are “stop killing for convenience” and “stop dying for convenience.” Those phrases are included in relation to the images of the smog lifting in Los Angeles during lockdown and the greater impact on the climate crisis that our daily rituals of convenience has on our long-term well being. The store is also a consideration of the idea of art as commodity and the record prices in which works of art are selling at auctions. So the relative inconvenience store also exists as a means to share or increase accessibility to art across the community. Store items can include various small projects and objects, surplus editions or older artworks, or tests for works in progress. These items were originally posted on Instagram’s story mode and those who respond via reply to the limited stock of items will be sent the item(s) (or dropped off if local). The “relative inconvenience” is that items are limited in stock, only available for 24 hours, and sporadic in the posting. There is no warning and no set timeline of when items will go up. Now, new items are still advertised via social media, but remain listed below until stock runs out, or if the need to circulate new items arise.

This is not a store intended to make profit or benefit “sales.” It will always stand as a way to share art with the community in an accessible manner. All items are free or with a suggested price to offset material costs or shipping. Details on optional payment are relayed in the email reply received for item inquiries.

SMASH Dance Marathon
5 minutes 15 seconds, 2011/2023

Audience Participatory Video

Synopsis:

Vanessa Alvarez submits an audition tape for SMASH Dance Marathon

aCinema
2016 - Present

Curatorial Project

aCinema is an experimental film and video screening series by Janelle VanderKelen and Takahiro Suzuki. Since 2016, aCinema has presented screenings at Woodland Pattern in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Over ten years, aCinema has presented over 70 programs of short films by close to 400 artists, all free of charge. View an archive of aCinema’s past programs here.

OTHERWORLD
3 minutes 50 seconds, 2025

16mm film transferred to video
shot on Allen Island, one of two islands off the coast of Maine stewarded by Colby College

Synopsis:
A short in-camera edit film shot on Allen Island off the coast of Maine. The film relates the island's history to considerations of the ecological and technological futures affecting society today.

*The voiceover for this film is written and performed by Artificial Intelligence

the shape of an unlit horizon
3 minutes 25 seconds, 2025

Video

Synopsis:
I asked ChatGPT to come up with a two to three minute abstract experimental film idea based on my work. The title, fonts, aspect ratio, imagery, and soundscape are all derivative of the AI's suggestions. All images and sound are created by the artist.

After running several iterations of the prompt, the following is the final instruction set:

**"The Shape of an Unlit Horizon"**

A meditative and enigmatic title focusing on potential and the yet-to-be-revealed.

AI Synopsis of Imagery

A luminous white screen gradually shifts into gradients of pale blue and silver.

Textures emerge and fade: shimmering light on rippling water, the faint outlines of veins, the shifting play of sunlight through leaves, all blending into a seamless, dreamlike flow.

Faint geometric outlines begin to emerge, flickering as though etched in light. These lines gently ripple, mimicking the rhythmic flow of a tide. A soft interplay of muted earth tones—ochre, moss green, and deep amber—flows across the screen like liquid.

A long take of what looks like stars reflected in rippling water fills the screen, shimmering as if on the edge of perception.

Toward the end, the liquid textures grow softer and more luminous, eventually dissipating into a glowing field of soft light that pulses faintly before fading to black.

accepting failure
[ongoing project]

Substack Publication

accepting failure is an ongoing Substack Publication in which I collaborate with AI to create posts which consider uses and views of AI. The first post was made in April 2025 and posts will not be frequent with the acknowledgement of the environmental impact of AI usage. View the first post here.

electric moonlight and the language within the leaves
7 minutes 55 seconds, 2023

Super8 film transferred to video

Synopsis:
a modern re-telling of the japanese tale of the bamboo cutter and the moon princess. the moon princess listens to the untold intelligence of the cosmos as observed by the trees to become closer with and eventually return home.

Yerkes Object 001
24” x 16”, 2023

Archival Pigment Print on Transparency Mounted on Mirror

Yerkes Object 007
24” x 16”, 2023

Archival Pigment Print on Transparency Mounted on Mirror

electric moonlight
16” x 24”, 2023

Archival Pigment Print on Transparency Mounted on Mirror

The Hungry Ghost & The Earthshaker
10 minutes 32 seconds, 2024

Video

Synopsis:
The Hungry Ghost & The Earthshaker is meditation on greed. The film pulls from the Buddhist figure of the Hungry Ghost, the Japanese myth of the Namazu, and various personal retellings and interpretations. As the film weaves through its narrative, we are left in pursuit of a gold coin, questioning its existence, while the giant fish further challenges the ideals in pursuit.

life, like water, flows to greater bodies
5 minutes 55 seconds, 2020

Video

Synopsis:
Using footage gathered over the last decade, the work is a mediation on nature and greater perspective. The extended isolation period brought along by the COVID-19 pandemic paired with the multitude of concerning headlines over the late spring and summer of 2020 have heightened anxieties over the future wellbeing of society. The investment in the self and empowerment of the self have been misguided or misused in a variety of ways and its force is becoming increasingly forefront. Through this work, modern society's chaos of stresses in control and information give way to the natural rhythm of the surrounding culture — an exhalation toward a power in collective cohabitation.

infinite horizon
2 minutes 27 seconds [loop], 2018

35mm Photographs to Video

Synopsis:
Pulling a passage from The Open Studio by Susan Stewart, the images pay homage to the Japanese photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto and serves as a contemplation on certainty and existence.

Schrödinger’s Cat Part I
7 minutes 49 seconds, 2017

Video

Synopsis:
A found VHS tape loaned from a physicist.

That Which Moves The Sun And Stars
8 minutes 33 seconds, 2013

Video

Synopsis:
Using passages from The Divine Comedy and an interview with someone who practices the Law of Attractions, the film questions the possibility of fate and predetermination.

9214
6 minutes 14 seconds, 2010

Video

Synopsis:
A flicker film of sorts. An homage to early cinema. A collaboration with a technological beast.