A Walk in the Night | Savannah Tines

SooVAC’s Front Space Residency Presents:
Savannah Tines will be the first artist to participate in SooVAC's pilot program, the Front Space Residency. Throughout 2026, artists will create work both on-site and off-site during their exhibitions, allowing their projects to evolve and adapt over the course of the show. Tines will have a closing reception to showcase how the work has developed over the course of her exhibition, A Walk in the Night.

Savannah Tines is a multidisciplinary artist who creates speculative ecosystems where nature intersects with the remnants of technological collapse. Her work, grounded in sculpture and abstraction, combines materials such as glass, metals, and found objects with living systems, including fungi and aquatic plants. These immersive installations act as microclimates that breathe, decay, and regenerate, exploring themes of mortality, adaptation, and ecological grief.

A Walk in the Night is a rumination on how there are different rhythms when sunlight is scarce. Everything is slightly changed; in the way we observe and are observed, there is a hypervigilance in the darkness, but there is also freedom; nonhuman life erupts as humans settle into their enclosures, with glass much like aquariums, leaving points of passive observations for those outside.

Tines wants to draw attention to those secret lives, underwater or just slightly outside the human undertow of a “civilized society”, the worlds that exist around us and, at times, despite us. Highlighting the ways that decay is also fertile ground for rebirth, and that we all have our enclosures, our safe spaces, where people might be able to look in, but they may never truly understand the life unfolding before them. However, Tines is offering us an entry point, a place to rest, listen, and learn, to watch life unfold at its own pace. Objects we leave behind are developing ecologies of their own, alongside and in collaboration with mutated, adapted, and nonhuman species. Life finds a way even in the most unwelcoming of environments; everything deserves a place to thrive, and if left in peace, it can, even in the darkest places.

Savannah Tines holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Visual Fine Arts from the University of Minnesota, where she began developing her immersive installations, intricately intertwined with biological elements. Her artistic work has been showcased at various venues throughout the region, including the Northrup King Building, Public Functionary, the Katherine E. Nash Gallery, the Regis Center for Art, and the Paramount Center for the Arts. In 2024, she presented her inaugural solo exhibition, Biological Combinations, featuring a series of living sculptures that incorporate containers, organic materials, and technological remnants. Her artistic practice has received support from the Minnesota State Arts Board through the Creative Support for Individuals Grant and a multi-year Studio Incubator Residency at Public Functionary (2023–25). In 2024, Tines completed a glassblowing scholarship and residency under the guidance of visiting artist Cedric Mitchell at FOCI. In addition to her studio practice, she serves as an educator, teaching mixed-media art to students, and as the Studio and Cohort Manager at Public Functionary. In this role, she facilitates community-focused art programming and promotes interdisciplinary collaboration.