Wesley Fawcett Creigh

Wesley Fawcett Creigh’s “Love in the Time of Migra” is a multi-phase and multi-disciplinary examination of romantic love and border politics presented in a series of short animated videos and site-specific installations. At the center of the project are the personal stories of binational couples whose relationships “straddle the line” of the US/Mexico border from a legal and/or ideological standpoint. These interviews will become the basis for a series of 5 short (3-5 minutes long) animated videos. Creigh then will the project these videos onto three-dimensional surfaces specially designed and constructed by the artist. Using projection mapping technology, the video imagery will interact with the built installation pieces and surrounding environments. These site-specific installations will take place in locales symbolically relevant to the interview and video content and will occur initially throughout the Southwest.

Grant funds will be applied to the animation and installation phases of this work, including Creigh’s research and exploration of projection mapping technology and techniques. The project builds on Creigh’s previous work as a socially-engaged artist and will expand her creative tool kit. Additionally, the project merges the practices of Creigh’s personal work with those of her professional work as a scenic designer and large-scale fabricator. Upon completion of the planned phases of “Love in the Time of Migra,” Creigh has hopes of working with theater artists to develop a performance-based component.

Work Samples

“Prototype”
November 2017

“Prototype” is the result of an interdisciplinary, conceptual arts collaboration among local artists, educators, and youth groups that explored in-depth the themes of MOCA Tucson’s fall exhibit entitled Nothing to Declare: Transnational Narratives. The museum’s weekly after school program of 8-11 year olds collaborated with a Pima Community College Border Cultures class and a Tucson High School Art Appreciation class in the creation of an animated video work exploring the themes of borders, identity, and cross-cultural pollination. The youth and student participants contributed the visual, audio, and textual elements to this project. This project is an experiment in collaboration across age groups that tackles the complex topics of border culture and politics.

Wesley Fawcett Creigh lives and works in Tucson, Arizona. In 2008 she completed her Bachelor’s Degree at Prescott College in the self-designed major of Public Art with an Emphasis on Social Impact. Since this time she has produced artworks as an individual, as a member of artist collectives, and as a scenic designer for performance collaborations. Her work aims to bring the arts into community spaces, foster a sense of creative place making, and bring overlooked issues into the forefront of a broader community dialogue.

Most recently, she has employed animation and multi-media installation for her artwork and received numerous grant awards in 2016 for an animation and installation project that examines the complexity of violence on the US/Mexico border. This project, entitled “Of Rocks and Bullets: An Animated Discourse” has been included in exhibitions at Exploded View MicroCinema, Museo de Arte Nogales, MOCA Tucson, and Yavapai College. Her experimental video work, “Prototype”, was screened at MOCA Tucson in November 2017. “Prototype” also received an official selection into the WomenCinemakers Biennale in 2018 and the Sharjah Film Platform in 2019. She has been awarded grants and residencies from organizations such as the Arts Foundation for Tucson and Southern Arizona, The Puffin Foundation, Arizona Commission on the Arts, Springboard for the Arts, and Santa Fe Art Institute.