ARTIST STATEMENT

My work begins with what is already there.

I create installations and objects using materials gathered directly from the places I work—plants, branches, seeds, stones, and sometimes discarded elements. These materials are not neutral; they carry traces of time, use, and ecological context. By working with them, I am not adding to the world as much as I am responding to it.

Many of my installations are participatory. I invite visitors to contribute small gestures—placing, attaching, writing—allowing the work to evolve over time. These accumulations form shared spaces shaped by presence, attention, and care.

I am interested in how we perceive abundance. In a time marked by ecological instability and the growing awareness of limits, abundance can no longer be understood through accumulation. Instead, I look toward what already surrounds us—the overlooked, the seasonal, the local—as a different kind of richness.

Rather than proposing solutions, I approach making as a way to remain present within these conditions—to respond rather than resolve. Through slowness, repetition, and material attention, my work opens spaces where beauty and fragility coexist, and where small acts can shift perception.

BIO

Michele Guieu is an interdisciplinary environmental artist based in Bend, Oregon. Originally from Marseille, France, her practice has developed through years of movement across the United States, working between urban and rural environments, institutions and open landscapes.

With a background in graphic design, she creates site-specific installations and objects using materials gathered directly from the places she works. Many of her works are participatory, inviting visitors to contribute and shape evolving environments over time.

Around 2017, her practice shifted in response to a growing awareness of interconnected ecological and societal crises. Since then, her work has engaged with questions of resilience, limits, and regeneration—exploring how attention, care, and material awareness can open other ways of relating to the world.

She has also been involved in educational and collaborative initiatives, including her role as Art Editor with the Millennium Alliance for Humanity and the Biosphere (MAHB), where she invites artists to engage with themes of the Anthropocene.

In 2023, she co-founded Authentique Artfarm in Central Oregon with her husband. The farm serves as both a material source and a conceptual ground for her work, extending her practice into a daily engagement with land, seasonality, and community.

SELECTED HIGHLIGHTS

Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at venues including the de Saisset Museum (Santa Clara University), Oceanside Museum of Art, San Diego Art Institute, The Tech Interactive (San Jose), and MAC Paris.

She has participated in residencies including the Lucas Artist Program at Montalvo Arts Center and Desert Dairy in Twentynine Palms, California.

From 2012 to 2020, she was a Teaching Artist at Montalvo Arts Center, leading workshops and community-based projects focused on environmental awareness and creative engagement.