Natalie Collette Wood is an artist living in New York City who joined us at Better Farm for two weeks as a betterArts artist-in-residence. During her time at Better Farm, Natalie experimented with sculpture and collage, using found objects, spray paint, foam, and metal to create abstract pieces that hang from the ceiling or wall and beg the viewer to engage with the work.
While at Better Farm, Natalie also participated in community outreach activities like the recent EFMP Wellness Expo, where she held mini-workshops with children and taught them how to make huge, 3-dimensional butterflies out of cardboard, masking tape, and paint. She also constructed large, pink flowers for our amazing parade float at Redwood Field Days.

Natalie grew up in Las Vegas, earned her BFA from School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and went on to earn her MFA from Herbert H. Leman College in the City University of New York. Her work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions across the world, including the Takt Gallery in Berlin, Germany, the Dallas Museum of Art, and the International School of Painting, Drawing, and Sculpture Gallery in Umbria, Italy.

-->Here's her artist's statement:
My current body of work, titled Something Told Me It Was Over, investigates the relationship between abstraction, identity, and the virtual age. In an age of rapidly growing technology, war, and natural disasters our environment and identity have begun to change before our eyes. I am interested in the sublime moment when things start to fall apart and structure and chaos dance. My collages use abstraction, the landscape, and personal experience to create a visual diary.

I work with synthetic materials as a symbol of American culture and my childhood growing up in Las Vegas. As a child I became fascinated with the fabrication and facades casinos create. I use a combination of materials such as fashion magazines, acrylic paint, spray-paint, enamel, glass beads, shredded tires, sand, mica, pumice, and glitter to create vividly colored worlds that are falling apart through their own facade. The collages have become a visual record that combines my personal experiences, abstraction, and the landscape together. The materials I choose have their own weight and collage becomes a way for me to manipulate them and deconstruct their properties.

The sculptures are made from found plastic objects, wire, sequins, and wood. They hang from the ceiling and reference floating biomorphic creatures created from their surroundings.

Inspired by systems, networks, and hybrid forms the paintings and sculptures have been a continuation of my exploration into the relationship between abstraction and the virtual age.

Here are some photos of Natalie and her finished pieces: