Visit to Headlands

So I was home for a couple of months, except for a week visiting family in California. My visit there happened to coincide with Open House at Headlands Center for the Arts, so... residency junkie that I've turned out to be... I had to go check it out. It's on a former military base in the Marin Headlands just north of San Francisco, and a stunning location! Of course, it being San Francisco, it was foggy. The buildings are a little military-strange and very funky. Lots of peeling paint and old army stuff, but man, what space! Headlands has residents who come for a month or two like other residencies, but they also provide studios to local artists who are accepted for their Affiliate Artists program. And they grant a year-long residency to 4 grad students graduating from the SF area art schools. So it is a big group in a big space. If you wanted to work on installation projects, this would be the place!

The studio buildings

Some of the larger studios (some are quite small too)

A full wood shop

An installation piece in the former gym

Residents' housing

And look what's just down the hill...

But look what's right next door—a former nuclear missile site. It is now a historic site run by the park service, and one can go down in the launching elevator and look at the missile (warheads removed long ago...). So we did, of course. Everything looked so old and old-fashioned, It's hard to believe the things would have worked. I have to say that going from artist's studios to listening to retired missile crewmen talk about missiles as a nuclear deterrent was jarring to say the least. At least the rest of the old base has been put to better use.

Oops, blogging slacker...

Is it really the end of May? Have I really not posted since February? Well, it looks like a quick transition, but it really was not—I've just arrived in Iceland again. More on that later.

I meant to post some more photos of Virginia and kind of tie up that experience. It was really a different kind of place for me, with 24 people at meals, lots of readings, etc., much more social than the small-group things I'd been going to. Residents were leaving and new ones coming all the time, a dynamic that has both good and bad things about it. Jerry, who'd been at Caldera with me showed up the last week I was there.

And I had a car for once, so I could drive down with 50 encaustic panels and all my tools in the back. It was really great to actually finish things there since I'd been making so many mockups at other residencies. It was an incredibly productive month and I finished as astonishing 50 encaustic pieces. (there are 100 in the group that I want to do, so 50 more to go). Having an uncluttered, ventilated space to do that in was really fabulous, and I could see so much more of what was evolving by working on the whole group at once. That tells me it may be time to restructure my home studio.

During the last week in Virginia I could see that the work was going to get done, so I took a couple of day off and went hiking with some other residents. VCCA is close to the Blue Ridge Mountains, so there are plenty of places to go and taking a break was a good idea.

Crabtree Falls

Lots of evidence of artists in the woods...

I added my name on the edge of the studio door...

And went back to the real world.

Spri-winter-ing in Virginia

It has been so nice to be someplace a little warmer this month, Last week encompassed all extremes, from 6 inches of snow (no snowplows here, but I brought boots...) to 78 degrees (need some t-shirts!). Daffodils are up and blooming, as is this beautiful (cherry?) tree by the office. Spring is coming!

Greetings from Virginia!

After another four-flight trip home from Oregon, I spent a day at home and then got in the car to drive 10 hours to the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts near Lynchburg. I was soooooo tired when I got here, but when one of these fabulous places offers you a residency, you go when they say to go. So it has taken me a few days to settle in and get rested, but I am at work in the studio and thoroughly enjoying it here. It's warmer, hooray! Not spring by any means and it's sometimes quite cold, but there have been warm, sunny afternoons that are lovely (and no snow...). VCCA is close to the Blue Ridge Mountains, which I can just see from the hills on the property. The center is on a large farm, with cattle and horses, but the large barn complex has been turned into studios for artists, writers, and composers. This is the largest residency that I've been to so far with about 20 residents. Everyone has a room in the Fellows Residence—a bit like a dormitory, but with big living room and library spaces. And best of all, they cook for you! Breakfast and dinner are in the residence and they bring lunch out to the barn so that you will not interrupt your studio work too much. What a life. The food is quite good, too.

My studio space is large and comfortable, with a big window, skylight and lots of light. I am already fully ensconced there, working on the photo-encaustic pieces that I started in Wyoming. Yesterday I went to a poetry reading in the art gallery at Sweetbriar College, which is just across the road, and tomorrow will go back to the campus to walk and explore.

Fellows' Residence

my room

studio barn

my studio on the first day

lots of sculpture on the grounds...

I'm guessing this was a corn crib, now a writer's studio, cute...

A walk in the Virginia woods.

Meet and greet/winding down

Today was Open Studios at Caldera. The weather was perfect and lots of folks came for performances, readings and studio visits. Last day in the studio tomorrow, then packing and cleaning for departure before dawn on Tuesday morning...

Caldera's director opens the event in the Grand Room

dance performance

in the studio...

In the studio...

I have just about a week left here, and so much has happened in the studio that I can hardly believe it. I came here with 3 projects that I really wanted to work on, not realizing that each was just at the most difficult point. So getting started was difficult, but now all 3 are roaring along...

I spent the first 2 weeks working on a new artist's book called "Mansion of Happiness", based on Victorian board games that I photographed several years ago at the American Antiquarian society. Most of them deal with vagaries of fate and fortune, and as I worked with the images I realized I was thinking a lot about our economy, unemployed friends, and people who have lost their homes and that proverbial American Dream.

Working on this meant days and days on the computer, so last week as that first draft started to come together I stepped away to work on collages based on Victorian wallpaper (there's a theme here...). This work stems directly from what I was doing in Wyoming, but moving into more abstraction (abstraction! I thought it was dead...) and color. In the end they are just plain fun to make, and that alone is enough right now. There are lots of pleasures in studio work, but not too many times that it is straight-out fun! I will make layered encaustic pieces out of these in the end, so everything is in sketch form so far.

My collage work has slowed radically in the last few days, as a combination of too much shoveling and too much paper cutting has made an old carpal tunnel problem flare up again. So I'm turning my focus this week to writing and my third project (not in any way Victorian in genesis), an artist's book that I started in Ireland last summer about my mother's illness and death from Alzheimer's. With all the images done, it has been waiting for a text, and at last that is beginning to happen. I've been working my way through the library's poetry collection, reading and writing every day.

As we go into the last week, I'm realizing that the solitude here has really helped my focus, keeping me in the "zone" through the day. Later this week we will all prepare for Open Studios on Saturday, which sometimes attracts a very large crowd. And one of our dancer's troupe will arrive to work with her, and the Caldera staff will be convening for a weekend retreat, so the vibe will change a lot in a few days. Then it will be time to pack (again??) and head out.

This morning, more snow, now rain... snow/rain/rain/snow, the sun was out yesterday!

The Mansion of Happiness

Starting to use all that studio space—

Let it snow!

I came here expecting a lot of snow, and for the first week and a half there wasn't any... but things have certainly changed! It started snowing on Saturday afternoon and has not really stopped since. In total I'd say we've gotten 2 feet, and this morning it had changed to rain and sleet. We are expected to shovel the walks (yesterday I did that 4 times!), so I'm getting my exercise that way, since walks in the woods are over, I'd guess. When I could see the storm coming in on Saturday, I dashed out for a walk around Suttle Lake. It was ferociously windy, but beautiful—the wind had pushed all the ice that was starting to form to the far end of the lake, piling it up on the shore and swelling in waves against itself. The sound was unearthly, like a million shells rattling.

News from the studio soon, lots happening there (what else is there to do besides shovel???)...

Before the snow...

A high peak (Washington?) glimpsed from a hike up the hills

path around Suttle Lake

Ice on Suttle Lake

The last time I saw the sun (Sunday)

Out and About: The Three Sisters (and Sisters, OR)

On Saturday we ventured into town (Sisters), about 20 minutes from Caldera, to do errands and get oriented to the area. The town is cute, very touristy, as it caters to visitors to summer and winter resorts in and around the Cascades. The biggest employers are the resorts and the Forest Service, followed closely by the school system. We found everything we needed there (hardware store, used books, and good coffee, all the essentials for artists). There's a wild west theme here, with some authentically old west buildings, and many new ones that mimic that style. Sisters is named for the Three Sisters, high peaks in the Cascade range. The other thing that Sisters seems to be known for is a huge summer quilt festival, with many avid quilters both locally and nationally coming to town to display quilts all over town.

The former Sisters Hotel, one of the oldest buildings in town

outside the health food store...

mural

The Cascades from Sisters—the ones in the middle are the Three Sisters