Working in our individual studios, we meet three times throughout the day. Here are our individual reflections and thoughts from the day’s actions, thinking and events.
Louisa Chambers:
Day 2: Shadows
It’s been a tough day (life getting in the way) and as such, has been difficult to focus.
I’ve been thinking about and trying to paint shadows – metaphorically and actually – on one of my paintings.
The day has bought about sad feelings, made me reflect on the challenging year so far and how unexpected life challenges crop up when you least expect (similar to what happened in the morning).
The lunch social took me out of my studio, from inside my head and into a supportive (virtual) space. Thank you, Clare and Traci, for listening and sharing.
I’m back to painting again and making the most of this long studio day.
…
Tomorrow is a new day.
Takeaway: and remember flexibility – to cope with the unexpected!
Julia Wenz-Delaminsky:
I do wonder what (as a group) we are. I am thinking about the character of the virtual residency itself all the time. The principle is new and exciting for me. My first idea was a network but I don’t think so. I tend to think of mushrooms (funny the ‚rooms’ in the fruit). Rooms within the art-mycelium, we inhabit and are all connected in different ways too. Even though we don’t know from each other. Suddenly we pop out and we are visible for the others. If we are cut off, the mycelium just nourishes the other heads (just thinking).
As a metaphor for this I just went out and bought some brown mushrooms to start a fermentation experiment. I sliced all the mushrooms very thin and put them in a pickling jar, added some water and salt. The bulk still resists to dip (after hours!) but the water is a nice color now. The timeframe for the residency is also a very peculiar thing for me. It makes me realize how much time my actions need, I wasn’t aware of this before. My practice is more familiar with process: one has to be patient and just wait. As in letting things sink in and don’t stress it.
Tamara Dubnyckyj:
Lots of thoughts and reflection after the group sharing sessions. The discussion pace is calm, honest and thoughtful, very much appreciated after a non-stop few months with fleeting opportunities for creative endeavour.
My intentions for the day are to be active, re-acquaint myself with the ephemera from yesterday. I put on my denim utility apron. Somehow time is being eaten Pacman style…I start speed reading, looking for the seed of the next set of work. There is too much.
Yesterday, there was arranging by surface, work on walls, work on the floor, and in the periphery. Diagrams and non-heard sounds described in words. Maybe I could extract those words, use those sounds? Veer off painting? Strange to think the need for these physical pieces of ephemera is obsolete – 2021 sound effect libraries and ladybird survey results would exist as zeros and ones.
Lots more thinking and clearing out to do!
I turn some existing paintings face to face and stack them away out of the periphery, leaving some space for wall arranging…
Traci Kelly:
Day Two: Skins & Membranes
Helium, only visible through the skins that contain it. Image making as a membrane between self and world. Ephemeral sculpture which exists and shapeshifts in short moments. Thoughts that exist in the same way. What do my materials do? How to attach one balloon unit to another and avoid a dissolve where one invisible gas would meet another and become something different. Perhaps that would be the most interesting. How long will ‘pearls’ of helium be on the ceiling before they lower to my head height. When do they become alive with their own unruliness. Herding cats. Drapery and release… shutters and escapes.
Reading a few words on haunting.
Danica Maier:
A wonderful focused day of drawing. Doing one thing all day. A revisiting and reflection on a series of drawings I thought finished a few months ago yet have come back to anew. I’ve been thinking a lot on the importance of time within creative practice. Not the time ‘doing’ but the time away, time between ‘doings’ – distance to come back afresh – perhaps it is the necessary fallow moments. Enabling new viewing and experience, letting go of previous and perhaps limiting (unknown) constraints. The reworking, redoing, reexperiencing and remaking – all an important part of the process.
fallow
adj. Plowed but left unseeded during a growing season.
adj. Characterized by inactivity.
n. Land left unseeded during a growing season.
Further thoughts on: Conversations on conversations, the bells of Stuttgart, maps that ‘map’ the edges of land show mostly water, fermentation, cabins with no electricity, metaphorical outdoor swims, the universe’s continuous reminder to let go and with the flow, connectivity though distanced, don’t think – embody, connect, be.
Clare Mitten:
The morning ‘screen’ watercolour suggests battery bars/energy levels (a little bit low). Floating shapes and fragments suggest a platform game. There’s space for things to move around and this chimes with the listening focus of the residency. I project myself into the drawing and imagine hitching a ride up and along on a flat salmon-coloured cylinder to reach the rounded orange zoom camera square, now suggestive of a goldfish, among green spikes of aquatic screensaver plants. I need air and go for a walk before meeting online for lunch.
I papier-maché over some cardboard shapes. There’s not enough of them. The start of a slow accumulation.
I begin a drawing; abandon it to begin a collage. Frustration at my stop-starting becomes beneficial as tentativeness gives way, and shackles to remaining truthful to the object are finally loosened.
The evening check-in catches me in a kind of chaos. I’m eager for the community, perspectives and insights of fellow Bee Eaters.
Key takeaway from today: remember that the process won’t be rushed!
