319 AIR – Grizzly Grizzly Artist-in-Residence / July 10 – August 8th, 2021

Maisie O’Brien

Grizzly Grizzly is excited to announce our July 319 AIR resident, Philadelphia-based artist Maisie O’Brien. During their residency, O’Brien will use the gallery as a studio to develop shadow animations using an overhead projector and handmade objects. They will use their time at Grizzly Grizzly to experiment with shadows for The Conditions, a collaboration with Canadian dance artist Lucy M. May and to film a shadow sequence for True Nature’s Child, a film by Hamburg filmmaker Dion Schulman.

O’Brien’s practice is grounded in their training in printmaking, puppetry, and stop motion animation. Through the use of hidden analog mechanisms and original music, the everyday materials O’Brien uses in their work transcend the status of objects and exist as the characters and set in an ethereal performance. 

O’Brien’s work draws on the often-spiritual tradition of shadow puppetry. Their storytelling is a conduit for other’s experiences and a deeply personal mythology. O’Brien’s stories explore the moments of vulnerability during rites of passage and metamorphoses. Their characters navigate themes of belonging, injustice, and escape as both agents and products of their environment. O’Brien’s narratives inhabit space in the material routines of the lived and the intangible territory of the unreal. 

About 319 AIR: Since January 2021, the five artist-run galleries on the 319 Building’s 2nd floor are hosting artists-in-residence in their spaces. The pandemic has made it difficult to safely present exhibitions in our spaces, and, at the same time, many artists have been displaced from their studios due to the pandemic’s economic effects. In a time of isolation, we hope that making these spaces available offers inspiration and opportunity to realize new work, ideas, and (virtual) connections. 

2020/21 Grizzly Grizzly programming and residencies are supported by Added Velocity which is administered by Temple Contemporary at Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Temple University and funded by the William Penn Foundation.

Artist Bio

Maisie O’Brien is a Philadelphia transplant from Dallas, and a Chinese-American adoptee. Growing out of their visual arts background in printmaking, their work desires storytelling at the crossroads of shadow puppetry, original cello music, paper cut outs, and stop motion animation.  Digging deeper into shadow theater's capacity to translate experience and personal mythology, they have since had the pleasure of performing at (virtual) puppet 

slams since 2020 and pursuing further studies in puppetry with Bread & Puppet Theater, the University of Connecticut, the Chicago International Puppet Festival, and the O’Neill Puppetry Conference. Maisie is also an arts educator in Philadelphia, working to help uplift the importance of art in the community through Spiral Q, Asian Arts Initiative, Fleisher Art Memorial, and STEAM. They look forward to their time at Grizzly Grizzly as a gestational space for increasing the scale of ongoing international collaborations and miscellaneous improvisations.