Celestial Real Estate
ORGANIZED BY LAUREN SIMPSON
MARCH 12TH - APRIL 11TH, 2021
Celestial Real Estate deals in the proprietorship of intangible services such as ultraviolet, visible, and infrared portions of the electromagnetic radiation spectrum or the feeling of heat in your body.
Organized by Lauren Simpson, the evolution of Celestial Real Estate Agency from installation to performance over a four-week period investigates visual, felt, and sound-based interpretations of sunlight. The five exhibition artists respond to one another’s work in a cumulative sequence of prompts and responses that redirect heat, light, and movement, culminating in a series of live performances.
As a point of departure, Nick Miller’s installation work traces the movement of sunlight within the gallery space using materials that investigate the absorptive and reflective qualities of the visible light spectrum like fabric, tape, and paint. Celeste Butler then responds to Miller’s work by designing soft, wearable pieces that capture and reflect light as they move on the clothed body. Next, Dereck Higgins takes cues from both Miller and Butler to more deeply consider the relationship of light and sound waves in a musical composition. Finally, choreographers Lauren Simpson and Galen Rogers experiment with light as felt radiant heat, guided by Higgins’ composition, wearing Butler’s designs, and housed in Miller’s installation during a series of performances in April that will mark the closing of Celestial Real Estate.
Celestial Real Estate’s holdings are nothing and nowhere--a collective non-ownership of the light we see, the heat we feel, and the movement we make.
Virtual Generator Grant programming is presented with generous support from the Nebraska Arts Council and the Nebraska Cultural Endowment.
Installation Images
About the Artists
Celeste Butler is a fiber and textile artist, Quiltologist, and storyteller based in Omaha, NE. Butler has worked on several community engagement art projects, celebrating the pride and culture of North Omaha and collaborating with mothers who have lost their children to violence, developing set design for 2019 Union Fellow Liz Gre’s opera Whispered Like the Wind, and more. Butler has participated in in-school artist-in-residences, working with children at Nelson Mandela and Saratoga Elementary Schools, teaching the next generation the art of quilting and storytelling. Her work has been widely exhibited, including the 2020 Citylight Arts Project, the Durham Western Heritage Museum, the 2018-2019 Thread exhibition at the Museum of Nebraska Arts, and the Film Streams (Dundee, Omaha) permanent gallery collection. In 2018 Butler presented a solo quilt exhibition at the Burgwin Wright House Museum (Wilmington, North Carolina). Her work was featured in the group exhibitions Yours For Race and Country: Reflections on the Life of Colonel Charles Young (National Afro-American Museum, 2019) and Visioning Human Rights: Quilting in the New Millennium (Fitton Center for Creative Arts, 2018).
Dereck Higgins has been active in music since the 70's. He is known for his bass playing skills and diverse musical interests. He has played many styles from punk to jazz to blues to electronic to Cajun. Dereck's music projects include membership in the bands RAF and InDreama, as well as solo and guest appearances.
Nick Miller is an artist and educator working and teaching in Omaha, NE. Specializing in geometric abstraction, he is a painter, sculpture and installation artist who also has created dozens of murals across the United States —in Buffalo, San Francisco, Austin, Memphis, Philadelphia ,Kansas City and Omaha. With an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2010, and a BFA from Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania 2006 and a year at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava, Slovakia, Miller has exhibited his work at Burchfield Penney Art Center, Benjamin’s Gallery, Buffalo;; Artpark, Lewiston, NY; Tower Fine Art Gallery at SUNY Brockport; Cultural Center in Niagara Falls; Co-Lab Projects, Austin,TX; The Contemporary Austin; the Diego Rivera Gallery, San Francisco;Project Project Gallery, Omaha; University of Nebraska Gallery, Omaha. His work is permanently installed at the University at Buffalo Anderson Gallery and in the collection of Fidelity Investments amongst others. He has received awards for his work including a Spark Award for DEC Program of the Year from ASI(Art Services Initiative) of Western NY in 2017 and Best New Public Art from Austin Monthly in 2013.
Galen Rogers grew up in San Francisco studying taiko, aikido, capoeira, gamelan, and tablas. These forms provide the foundation of his physicality and musicality and cultivated curiosity, sensitivity, and an expansive vocabulary from an early age. At Oberlin College he earned his BA in ethnomusicology and founded Oberlin College Taiko. After graduating from Oberlin College in '12 he joined Jiten Daiko, a taiko ensemble based in San Francisco that focuses on pioneering new expressive territory for taiko arts. He has been the director of this ensemble since 2014. In 2013 he also began studying Gaga with James Graham. He performed professionally and toured with James Graham Dance Theater in 2016 and 2017, and has continued to dance professionally ever since. He teaches taiko at Rosa Parks Elementary, John Muir Elementary, and Marin Academy. Heteaches taiko, capoeira, gamelan, and ethnomusicology at Ruth Asawa School of the Arts.
Lauren Simpson is an Omaha-based choreographer. Her recent project Moving Truck was performed on front lawns throughout Omaha and featured in the Kennedy Center’s Arts Across America program. From 2014-2019 she and collaborator Jenny Stulberg created Still Life Dances, a series of movement studies based on still life paintings. These works were nominated for two Izzie Awards in 2016 and received generous support from foundations and an award from San Francisco Arts Commission. Lauren is currently an artist in residence at ODC Theater in San Francisco through 2021 and a recipient of the 2020 Drew Billings Artist Support Grant through Amplify Arts. She held residencies at CounterPulse Theater, Shawl-Anderson Dance Center, and the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company through its CHIME Program. Lauren danced for choreographers Liz Lerman and Risa Jaroslow. She was on faculty at Harvard College, University of San Francisco and the Cambridge Rindge and Latin School. She completed an M.F.A. at University of Colorado-Boulder, Ed.M. at Harvard University, B.A. at Carleton College.