Yanely Rivas Maldonado

My Artist-in-Residence at the Salem Art Association served as a gentle incubator for my printmaking practice and allowed me to create artwork by activating the stories, ancestors, and lands that live within me to remember the sacred responsibilities and commitments I hold with the natural world. I explored themes of cultural wealth and spirituality as a way to uplift the need to integrate these essential practices in broader efforts to address environmental degradation. I centered my work around water. What can water teach us about who we are, where we come from, and where we are going? What waters gave life to my ancestors and what waters are allowing me to live? How are they doing now? Are they healthy? Are they alive? What is impacting their/ our ability to be well? How can we live in reciprocity and care? “Mujer del Lago” was born from the exploration of these questions, the different lakes in my ancestral lands in Mexico, and ancient iconography of the state of Michoacan.

LYLAC & Jessica Rehfield

QUEER NATURE

As a drag artist, Lylac is known for their custom creations in costumes and wigs that enhance their drag performance. When they were a child, Lylac learned about everything having to do with flowers from spending time with their grandmother in her garden, including roses, irises, and, of course, lilacs. Lylac brings this love for flowers and costuming into this work, which replicates a flower’s structure using the colors and fabric of the trans flag in reference to that some flowers naturally display multiple sex characteristics and are known as “perfect,” and that gender variance and the gender spectrum are as natural as variation in flowers.

Jessica, a non-binary artist and curator, uses the colors and fabric of the non-binary flag, to replicate the shape of a flower they found at the coast in Manzanita, OR: Kenilworth Ivy (Cymbalaria muralis), a flowering vine which naturally displays the colors of the non-binary flag: yellow, white, purple and black. Their work in curating queer artist projects is meant to uplift and increase visibility of queer artists’ work and to engage the public to learn more about gender and queer identity issues. They are also amazed by the variation in nature reflected in human experience.

Nature is wonderful, and Nature is Queer.

Meg Rowe

Meg Rowe uses reclaimed and repurposed textiles, fiber and objects to interrogate culture and meaning through materials. During her residency she will continue to build The Record, a hand-stitched material record of over 350 “unacceptable” words now functionally banned from use by federal agencies by the Trump administration. The complete series will contain more than 200 vintage textile pieces that archive words and phrases, from accessible to women and underrepresented, included on one or more federal agencies’ “unacceptable list.” * 1

* 1 As of March 2025, 350 words and phrases had been identified as unacceptable to the administration. The list is indexed on pen.org.

Sewists and stitchers with basic hand embroidery skills are invited to help embroider the unacceptable words on domestic linens; share their experiences of stitching and art making; and discuss hand craft as an act of reclamation and resistance. Public stitching sessions are scheduled throughout September and October at the Art Annex. To sign up or to donate vintage  decorative textiles, please contact the artist at TheRecord@icloud.com

Rachel Wood

This work was created during my time as the Salem Art Association Artist-in-Residence during spring 2026. The work I created was a reflection of my desire to explore concepts of scene building using simplified geometric shapes while holding any sense of landscape very loosely. My goal was to create work that could read mostly as abstract, but with structural elements of a landscape painting. In keeping with my usual practice of bright, well coordinated color palettes and leaning into the energy of clear skies sunsets on the beach, this body of work developed with a casual but strong design.