(instrumental music) - Art Omi is a sculpture and architecture park.

We exhibit works by architects who haven't made work to be exhibited outdoors.

So that's, it's incredibly exciting to commission those projects.

What Art Omi started with was a residency program for visual artists, that was 31 years ago in a barn.

And since then we've added four other residencies, writers, musicians, <b><font color=#AAAAAAFF>dancers, and architects, with houses to stay in, this beautiful park to be inspired by, and this visitor's center with a gallery.

So it's grown a lot.

One of the biggest things that's happened since 2018 is that during the pandemic the public really discovered us as a place of refuge and we had a literal explosion of visitors.

What's also changed since 2018 is that we are now a co-executive director team instead of just me.

So my co-executive director, Jeremy Adams has just brought an amazing, it's just an amazing partnership.

It's so nice to share.

I recommend it to every nonprofit.

- We're no relation.

People can get confused about that sometimes.

I joined Art Omi in 2019 in the development department, right before COVID hit.

Just last year I was fortunate enough to be able to step into this co-executive director position with Ruth.

- We get to be a little more gracious.

We get to take a breath.

I can say, "Jeremy, I need a minute."

You know?

And we get to kind of approach things more authentically.

I think it's just really, it's a great model.

Since 2018, we hired two curators, one for the architecture side of the park and the architecture residency, Julia van den Hout and also Sarah O'Keeffe.

(upbeat music) - The exhibition that we're in right now is Pippa Garner's, Sell Yourself.

It's an exhibition that I have wanted to do for some time.

Pippa is an artist who trained originally as a car designer.

Pippa is somebody who I think is so important for understanding West Coast conceptualism, taking up advertising culture, taking up masculinity, taking up car culture.

- I'm personally a big fan of Pippa's work because it has this, behind its seriousness and its social commentary, and it's dealing with the power of marketing and branding and the power of communication.

It's all done with this rise sense of humor.

- You'll see the work that she's making up until the present day, which is exciting.

We worked with her to commission her most recent conceptual car which is called "Haulin' Ass!

", exclamation mark.

(upbeat music) And what it is, is a return to the work that she made 50 years ago or conceived of 50 years ago, "Backwards Car".

She was perfecting this trick which is something that she's long been interested in and is still quite interested in, which is how do you follow the letter of the law while totally undermining it in spirit.

These days at 81 she's not able to flip cars in the way she used to.

So we enlisted the help of Arcana, which is a really <b><font color=#AAAAAAFF>wonderful fabrication shop.

We followed her instructions and worked with her every step of the way to take the Ford Ranger off of its chassis and rotated 180 degrees and weld it back together.

So it's fully functional.

And Pippa was very clear that the work needed to have super sized truck nuts.

We did ask her if she wanted us to make them in a bespoke way, and she wanted, you know in the way that a lot of her work engages mass produce icons, she wanted them to be the kind of mass produced variety, which there's a huge industry for it here.

It's a very American object actually.

So the trek nuts that we have have here they very proudly say "Made in the USA" and there's various bumper stickers which Pippa selected that are on the truck.

One of them, which is a sticker that Pippa has returned to a few times, it's from the seventies, it says, "Women should be free".

And then it says in <b><font color=#AAAAAAFF>parentheses, "no charge".

Which for Pippa, and I think this is something that is true of most of her work, she's both toying with the idea of liberation, but also pointing to the way that liberation, at least within America as we know it, is often commodified back to us.

(techno music) She's been working with t-shirts for a long time, but since 2005 she started a series which is called "Shirt Storm", which is a series that she started after she started to lose her vision.

She, when she was in Vietnam, was sprayed with Agent Orange, which led to glaucoma and it's part of why she's going blind right now.

And she used to produce these really carefully rendered graphite drawings.

But she started to produce these t-shirts a day.

It's a daily practice.

She uses iron on letters.

She's often tinkering with phrases that are familiar and making them into something strange, often with a kind of biting sense of humor.

(techno music continues) - We do have an exciting new project which is just starting up in Chatham.

It's going to end up being about 18 exhibition pavilions for contemporary artists and/or collectors of contemporary art.

These pavilions will be designed by internationally renowned architects under the auspices of the artist or the collector.

And what it's really gonna allow is either the artist or the collectors an opportunity to showcase their work in exactly the way that they envision it.

We are looking to break ground early 2024 with our goal of having the first pavilions and visitor center open sometime around about mid to late 2025.

- Every time you come here, you'll see something different.

Right now you can see the <b><font color=#AAAAAAFF>provocations from Pippa Garner, which I promise, do not disappoint.

But every time you come back here you'll encounter something different.

We're really trying to work with artists to stretch the bounds of what you might expect.

So come here and expect the unexpected.