German Artists Join Forces, Create Science-Informed Art
Heike Liss, the current Sylvia J. Smith ’73 Artist-in-Residence, and Barbara Karsch-Chaïeb, Max Kade Artist-in-Residence, address attendees at a recent exhibition opening at the Goodyear Gallery. Photo by Edward DeVos '28.
Through separate programs, they create impactful experiences on campus
by MaryAlice Bitts-Jackson
Two German artists, visiting campus through separate residencies, joined forces to create impactful and interdisciplinary experiences and work. Heike Liss is the current Sylvia J. Smith ’73 Artist-in-Residence, a program led by the Department of Art & Art History. Fellow artist Barbara Karsch-Chaïeb is the first non-writer to visit Dickinson through the Department of German’s Max Kade German Language residency.
The artists’ work is currently on view at Dickinson’s Goodyear Gallery, and they will discuss their artistic processes during a public lecture on Tuesday, April 14.
Converging perspectives
Karsch-Chaïeb is an artist, curator and educator in Stuttgart, Germany, and Liss is German-born and based in California. They bring complementary though distinct approaches to their work.
Widely exhibited in her home country and also beyond, Karsch-Chaïeb takes an ecological view. Her research-based work moves across mediums to explore geological time, environmental systems, the relationships between humans and the natural world and the ways time, place and memory shape us and our experiences. She positions natural materials, such as stone and soil, as carriers of history and transformation.
Liss sees the world through an anthropological lens, having studied anthropology as an undergrad in Germany before earning an MFA in the U.S. Also exhibited in the U.S., South America and Europe, her work, which spans a variety of visual mediums, installations, social practices and performances, focuses on lived experiences and how meaning can emerge through everyday human activity, such as rituals and repetitive work, and on universal themes such as displacement and belonging.
Last year, Karsch-Chaïeb and Liss collaborated during a monthlong residency in California. Their on-campus collaboration at Dickinson brings them together again to further develop their long-term project Encounters.
Waterways and a workshop
Two weeks ago, the artists braved the cold at the LeTort Spring Run to collect water samples with Jill Felker, visiting assistant professor of biology, who is testing local water samples for microplastics. The artists' aim: to collect microplastics in local waterways and incorporate those samples into handmade paper.
Teaching is central to both residencies. The artists have been working closely with students in the studio-art and German senior seminars, and classroom discussions with additional students are on the books.
In late March, Liss led a workshop for German and art & art history seniors. Built on Relational Gestalt Awareness exercises, the event highlighted strategies for working collaboratively. Anna Radigan ’26, an art-history major and Trout Gallery intern, attended the workshop and absorbed valuable tips on navigating creative disagreement.
“It felt new, kooky and uncomfortable at the start, but it turned into a great bonding exercise,” says Radigan. “It was extraordinarily fun, and I learned a lot in that hour and a half.”
Liss and Karsch-Chaïeb will discuss their creative processes and newest works, now on display at the Goodyear Gallery, Tuesday, April 14, at 7 p.m. in Weiss Hall, Room 235.
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Published April 9, 2026