Resident Artist: Lily Reeves

Spring 2020

Spirit Kin is meant to highlight the rapid loss of biodiversity in North America, and for this project specifically, the artist’s home state of Alabama, the Wiregrass region, and the Gulf of Mexico. Spirit Kin is intended to be a visual story that rewrites the lineage of human-centered divinity in the rural South to refocus our understanding of what defines a spiritual being, and what it means to have a transcendent experience.

The project will expand notions of martyrs, angels, and saints by illustrating critically endangered plants and animals in neon light, positioned as miraculous visions in landscapes that are part wild, part human-tempered. Idolized as messengers of God (who has many names), these ‘angel’ plants and animals become bearingers for a world that is more complete, understanding, and empathetic of non-human histories, and formulates an uncertain but hopeful prophecy.

The Wiregrass will be the launch site for Spirit Kin before traveling across the U.S.

Lily Reeves’ sculptural work encourages emotional and physical well-being through a holistic lens of personal, societal, and environmental healing. She uses light, space, immersive installations, and audience participation performance as tools to address contemporary culture. She earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts from Alfred University and her Masters of Fine Arts at Arizona State University in Phoenix, AZ. She currently lives and works in Birmingham, Alabama, where she runs her art and design studio full time.