Vermont Studio Centre Residency August 2008

From The Golden Treasury of Natural History by Bertha Harris

This work is exploring performance, narrative, mimicry, the power of thought….sort of. Recently I have done a number of acting courses and this has fed into my work and thinking. The processes and methods I have learnt and worked with are complimentary to existing working methods and they had directly opened up potentials for new visual work…

I took a book which was found on a stair. Dusty cover of a golden treasury, I began to emulate the drawings of natural history. I began with the dinosaurs…..

Appropriation of illustration….performance and all its potentials….what is the information in the visual image? How are we to read and understand it….would anyone know I were a Diplodocus if I had not been titled?…..

Return to Performance.

Days seem to have slipped by. I have looked in one journal I was keeping and saw that the last entry was ten days ago. TEN DAYS AGO. This alarm led me to shaking myself up a bit and returning to early mornings and putting in long days in the studio and then the evening. There are so many beautiful places to visit here and walks to waterfalls like ‘Journeys End’ and ‘The Soul Hole’ are revive and inspiration in themselves – but at some point the notion of holiday has to go and work needs to be given dedicated time and absolute priority.Two nights ago I gave a residents presentation. Residents can put their names down to present their work and show it to all the other residents. I thought briefly about not doing it at all, about silently just ‘hmm-ing’ when people asked if I was going to present and I was wondering why I had managed to work myself up into such a fever about it. This was the sort of thing I would court at home, welcome as a chance to celebrate and share work and gain experience in talking about your work. I had seen breathtaking work the previous weeks, a painter (Neil Berger) who’s work is breathing life and and hums with energy, I have seen a sculptor (Sebastian Vincent Martorana) who can make an life size ice cream scoop (sat atop a real wafer cone) out of marble, and different varieties of Haagen Daaz ice cream scooped out of the pot (actual) – greentea is limestone, strawberry is pink talk, sorbet is alabaster, coffee is limestone. There was also Carolyn Masons hilarious photography of fake Christmas couples and so, so much more – everything I have seen represents incredible skill, or craftsmanship, or humour, or humanity, or poetry, or passion…I suppose how could it not? But my point is my awe of everyone else work meant I felt pretty nervous, a classic, ‘I’m not sure why I am here’…..’I don’t belong here’….But the point is I am here and therefore I do belong here so I spent the best part of a morning sorting through slides and putting together what I hoped would be a fair representation of work I have done, recently and over the past few years. It was fine, I didn’t die, and one of the residents was bowled over that I had done work on Engles, she was beside herself, she had dedicated a research paper she had written to him…..so I’m going to pass on one of my photographs taken in Chethams Library, or one of where he once lived to her. I got a laugh too, so terror over and with the memory of a laugh I went to the bonfire that night and soaked and celebrated in red in wine.

Neil Bergerwww.neilberger.com

Sebastian V Martoranawww.sebastianworks.com

Carolyn Masonwww.carolynmason.com

18^th August 2008

It’s some happy accident (or sweetly orchestrated) that when my work grids to an inevitable halt , stuck in the mud, there's have writing to turn to. The drawing has been full pelt until now, the photographs too – photographs for recording, not art pieces in themselves, the drawings are masking taped to the wall waiting for the next step, the photographs are continuing, easier now, but I am more in need of research books, art references and visual stimulus to keep the motion going. Writing is a welcome alternative activity.

The sun is up and strong this morning and I was at the studio for 8am, its 5 minutes walk from the dining hall through Johnson town. Past the wooded houses, shops and halls painted yellows, blues, whites and reds. It’s a picture postcard and friendly town with shop signposts for ‘maple leaf syrup’, ‘woolens’, and restaurants ‘Plum and Main’ and ‘Lovin Cup’…after only a couple of days I was saying hello to the locals and chatting with the lady at Marvins, my chocolate stop shop.

There are beautiful things to do here outside of the studio and as my friend knowingly said whilst we were swimming in the lake, eagerly willing a moose to come out of the woods. ‘THIS is what it’s about (i.e. not just being in the studio)’. There’re waterfalls and rivers with many swimming holes, numerous lakes and reservoirs to swim in and a vast number of walks to go on. It’s the perfect revive to white walls and the self involvement that comes with studio practice. I look forward to the next walk, swim, or yoga session with a childlike glee.

Yesterday a few of us from the Centre went to see the Bread and Puppet theatre. A world renowned puppet theatre company, they have now, intentionally, scaled down from huge popularity in the 70’s when people would come as to a festival, the last count of attendees when they were at these heights was 20, 000. The founder Peter Schumann has taken the theatre back its roots and now they perform every Sunday throughout the Summer, still drawing people in their hundreds to a small town in Vermont. The display is made moving by huge papermache masks which create instinctual responses in the audience (like theatre masks present the exact emotion unfettered by additional character attributes) and satirical, wry dialogue and absurd scenes creates a lightness of touch coupled with sharp observations on American politics. Tigers suggested to be Gitmo (Gutanamo) prisoners are made to jump ropes, springboard onto tightropes to pedal across on bike and then land in a tea cup, ‘Mr Its All Fine’ and ‘Mr Do As I Say’ are opposing candidates for office and in true Vermont style, at one point there is a placard written with ‘Make Cheese Not War’ held aloft.

August 15^th, 2008.

It has taken two weeks and a prompt from an outside source to finally do the first instalment for this Blog. I have not consciously avoided putting finger to key pad, but have embraced the community and privileges here that enable radio silence responses (or non response) to be the norm. Someone said here that the time you have here is like filling up a jug of work, when you contact home, email people, etc its like pulling the plug. In some ways that does feel like the case and you throw yourself wholeheartedly into working, and getting to know people. In some ways this is not the case too. Too much involvement feels choking and self defeating, and my work now seems to be going backwards after 8 days straight. As always balance is the key. Necessary though, is setting yourself up in your space, locating yourself geographically and getting used to the patterns and rhythms of the Centre.

The timing of things here has been uncanny. Like the coincidences of travel, such as hearing the same word several times over when you’ve not heard it for years, seeing butterflies everywhere, and other Coelho-ian* signs….the visting artist to the Centre this week has pierced the problems I have been having in my work and expressed them with a clarity I was not able to find. I have been working intensively on drawings for 8 days, some I am happy with, but there’s something inherently wrong. And this is the nature of making work (of any form) riding out the internal arguing voices, the black holes, and the grey voids and coming up with a solution. I know this happens, but when the insecurities grow bigger than you and become a world themselves you know its time to seek more experienced counsel and that voice of clarity.

Nari Ward is an established sculpture/installation artist who has exhibited twice at the Whitney Biennale and his work is collected and shown across Europe and the U.S– he presented a talk of his work to the Centre this week. His work is monumental in scale and emotionally moving. The visiting artists here are an exceptionally beneficial feature of this residency and to have the contact with this level of experienced artist outside of a higher education course is rare. Nari Ward effortlessly summarised my problems (I knew they were there but had not been able to find vocabulary for it) and released me somewhat of my self imposed restrictions. I was able to step out of my pen and back into running around free. After the discussion I was back to work with renewed energy and it felt like the work was pouring out, that it was moving again, I was very, very grateful.

* Paulo Coehlo, see ‘The Alchemist’