February 11, 2021 Michelle Ott Meet the artists featured in the exhibition America, I Sing You Back. Current Occupant Statement: When the COVID-19 pandemic began, I started reviewing my lived experiences in an attempt to find new ways to connect to strangers. Physical distancing, sheltering in place, and the necessity of confronting financial precariousness with my part-time jobs shuttered or cancelled provoked me into actively reminiscing and reflecting on the places I have lived and how each place affected my sense of stability. Perhaps I was simply missing places and people more acutely once I had no access to them. Although I certainly wished to see family and friends in person again, phone and video calls allowed me to connect with them meaningfully. What I realized was strikingly absent, was the opportunity for me to be a stranger to someone. My effort to recover (or replenish?) these encounters are called Current Occupant. The project began with hand drawing my memory of each residence I have lived in. This image and a letter was sent to the current occupant of each address, a complete stranger to me. The endeavor is an offering, an autobiography, a memory palace, and an ode to that which exists only in recollection. About Michelle Ott: Ott’s work has been shown nationally and internationally most recently at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Berkeley Art Museum, and the Cranbrook Academy of Art. Her illustrations have appeared in the New York Times T Magazine online and are featured throughout The Blue Bottle Craft of Coffee (2012) and Candy is Magic (2017), both published by Ten Speed Press. Ott has given visiting artist lectures at both UC Berkeley and Stanford University. She is the recipient of several awards including a residency at the Atlantic Center for the Arts (2013), an exhibition and grant from The Institute for the Future (2014), a travel grant and exhibition at the College Art Association Conference (2015), and the Eisner Prize in Art Practice with a post-graduate fellowship residency from UC Berkeley (2015). For her service over four summer seasons at McMurdo Station in Antarctica Ott has received the Antarctica Service Medal. She holds a BFA from MCAD and an MFA from the University of California, Berkeley. She is currently the artist-in-residence at Gateway Science Museum in Chico, CA. michelleott.com