Studio Days

I’m writing this on my way home to New York, and trying to mull over the incredible time that I have spent at Jentel. My work really ramped up to a whole new level, and I can’t recall ever enjoying the studio as much as I have this past month. When I looked at the pictures that one of my fellow artists took of me in the throes of work, I thought wow, I look really happy. There were so many things that fell into place at Jentel—the wide open spaces and vast skies of Wyoming (and lots of sun, great for a SAD sufferer like me), a place where artists are VALUED for what they do, a surprisingly varied and yet wonderfully compatible group of hard-working and inspiring fellow artists, a huge studio wall where I could watch a body of work evolve as I pinned it up, getting off the computer and my hands on physical material again—it’s hard to say what was most important. Whatever it was, I launched full tilt into making work, at first thinking that I might produce 20 or 30 mockups for final photo-encaustic pieces, but ultimately making a stunning 112! And I did not want to stop there. I ended up making lots of works that I would call drawings, ironic given that I never ever draw… But let me loose with stuff I can cut up and restructure into something new and I am happy as a clam (are clams happy?). These pieces grew out of photographs of Victorian dress patterns that I made 2 years ago while a Fellow at the American Antiquarian Society, and in the end I was creating collaged fragments of the patterns layered over the photos embedded in beeswax. Now I will begin the (long, I expect) process of making the finished pieces.

One of the challenges of residencies is that you go someplace far from the distractions of life and focus entirely on creative work. Much harder is the question about how to bring that experience home with you, where real life begins to intrude the minute you get off the plane. So… some things to try to hold onto:

• I need to clear some junk out of my studio! There is nothing like space to spread things out and see your work as it evolves, and empty space creates mental space. Over time my studio has also become my office, my TV room, and my living room, too much stuff…

• I need to set aside clearly defined studio days and not allow other things to encroach. I’ve gotten better at doing this, but still the email is open, the phone rings, etc.

• I want to work more with physical materials, and not solely digitally.

• I’ll try to make more opportunity for studio conversations with other artists. Everyone is so busy that this is hard to do, but important both for perspective and community.

• Get outside more (duh), the mind opens up when the body moves…

Thanks to my fellow artist Elizabeth for the photos...

happy artist

A wall o' art