For the first time in the history of SFMOMA’s biennial award program honoring Bay Area artists, the museum has commissioned the four recipients of the 2012 SECA Art Award to create work outside the traditional gallery context. Their site-responsive projects appear in a number of locations around the Bay Area; Josh Faught‘s work is at the Neptune Society Columbarium in San Francisco.

SFMOMA’s interpretive media team no longer has a building to host artist interviews, so setting up interviews with the SECA winners meant we had the opportunity to visit the artists where their projects were underway. Josh’s sunny, light-filled studio is filled with gorgeous hand-dyed fibers and the diverse and often very funny range of materials (fake snacks, anyone?) he uses to make his intricate sculptures.

“The process of collecting is like the idea of buying the prom dress when you don’t have a prom to go to right away,” Josh said in our interview. He regularly visits estate sales and thrift stores, often holding on to objects that inspire him for years before finding the right place to use them. Something I especially enjoyed about our interview with Josh was how inspired he was by the Columbarium, and how many parallels he drew between the objects there and those in his own studio.

Follow our SECA 2012 series here. See Josh Faught and the other SECA artists November 13 – November 17 as they talk with Michelle Tea at SFJAZZ. Faught will also be at his Columbarium site all day on November 16^th for a teacher institute, a series of talks on arts, AIDS and activism, and a musical performance by composer Luciano Chessa. Learn more at sfmoma.org/liveprojects