Search Results for: Artist Residency

I didn’t plan on beginning my self-imposed artist residency today, but when I woke up this morning, it felt like it had begun.

I don’t know how to explain it except that despite some voices in my head that said otherwise, my body was ready.  And it wasn’t going to do anything it didn’t want to.  So I got last week’s potholders that I sold over the weekend in the mail and went to my studio.

Once again I had a few ideas that ricocheted around in my head, but I wasn’t thinking about what to do, I just began doing it.

I pulled out a piece of cardboard that I saved to cover my desk so I won’t have to worry about keeping it clean for my sewing and dumped out the padded envelope of supplies that Emily sent me last week.  I got my big jar of matt medium, some markers and transparent hankies and turned the pages of the little 4″x5″ book that Emily made and gave to me.

I looked at the collages I started making a few weeks ago and for the next couple of hours, I tore and glued and cut and painted and drew and colored.  I pulled up some of the pieces I glued down two weeks ago, cut them up and moved them around.

When I stopped, I had three collages.

I’m not sure if they’re done or not.  I’ll give them a chance to be for a while and see if they need anything else.

One thing I notice about making these is that it’s so easy to make a mark, to cut and paste that I work quickly.  Too quickly I think.  I need to slow myself down, to let them speak to me like I do my other work.  It’s such a new medium for me, I’m just learning how to work with it.

I worked on all three at the same time never giving each one the time to dry.   They’re in a book  so it matters because the pages stick together and some of the edges don’t stick.

But that didn’t stop me. I don’t want to exert that much control over the materials.  I like that they sometimes do their own thing. And if I decide I don’t like it, I can always put something over it or just remove it.

So far, for me, these are all about freedom, intuition, and feeling.  Maybe that’s a good name for them.  They’re Freedom Collages in my Freedom Book.

I opened the woodstove door and jumped back, gasping, startled.

Inside the cold stove was a Bluebird, looking right at me.   The cerulean blue body and vermilion chest were glaringly beautiful against the dim gray of the ash-covered stove.  His wings were spread out as if in flight.

It was gorgeous.  It was dead.

I wanted to preserve it, to keep it forever.  I wanted it to go away, to never have to look at it again.

Jon took his picture, I buried him in the garden next to Gus.

Jon looked for the meaning of the bluebird coming to us.  He believed it brought prosperity.  Later that day we found out, that for the first time in our marriage, we’d be getting a tax refund.

But I was too disturbed by the whole incident to look for meaning in the Bluebird. Its death felt too awful to find something good in.

So I tried to forget about it.

The next day, as Jon and I discussed what we would do with the tax refund, Jon suggested, not for the first time, that I take some of the money for myself.  That I use it  to buy a certain amount of time, so I could focus on working on something that I wanted to do without having to worry about making money.

“Like an artist residency,” I said.

And without another thought about it, I agreed.

Jon has mentioned this idea before.  Because we have separate businesses we have separate bank accounts.  Jon has always made more money than me and on the occasions when he got a big check from his publisher he has made this offer before reminding me that it really is “our” money, not just his.

But I never felt comfortable doing that.  My independence is important to me and I need to know that I can run my own business without taking money from someone else.

I think there are two things that made me agree to the residency (as I think of it).  One is that I clearly see the tax refund as belonging to both of us.  The other is the time we’re in.  The coronavirus has made me hyperaware of what is really important to me, in terms of my relationships my work, and my life.

An artist residency is something I’ve wanted for a long time.

When I first heard the term I was in my twenties in art school. We had an artist come to the school and give a talk about her work. One of the things she described was how she had a  three week Artist Residency (I don’t remember her name or where it was) which she was thrilled about. But when she finally got to the place where all she had to do was work without being disturbed, she panicked and couldn’t do a thing.

The pressure came from inside of herself, believing she had to create something earth-shattering in three weeks.

I always remembered that because I could imagine that in those circumstances, I might feel the same and hoped I could learn from her experience (which is why, of course, she told us about it).

I gave up trying to live a traditional artist’s life a long time ago.   I never applied for grants or residencies and haven’t even tried to have an exhibit of my work in years.  I’m happy with the art world I created for myself in my School House Studio and on my blog.

It works for me and keeps me working.

When I said yes to my self-made artist residency, all the doubts and questions that made me refuse it in the past were gone.   It seemed like a good idea and I wanted it.

And this is where the Bluebird comes in.

Something had changed inside of me to allow me to so readily accept this thing I wanted without hesitation.

Perhaps a part of me felt that I had earned it.  I’ve been working hard at my art and business for over ten years.  Although I don’t make a lot of money, I still see it as a success.  Both my art and business continue to evolve in a positive way.

The other thing is that I’ve always thought of myself as not having enough money.  But I think I’m ready to let go of that idea. Because the idea of enough is subjective.  My whole life I  believed that I couldn’t make ends meet but in reality, I always have.

When I looked up the meaning of the Blue bird in Ted Andrews Animal Speak, I found that the Bluebird is “symbolic of a passage, a time of movement into another lever of being….it is connected to the transformation of a girl into a woman..,”If the Bluebird comes into your life, look for opportunities to touch the joyful and intrinsically native aspects of yourself that you may have lost touch with.“

I’m ready to move from that girl who always believes she never has enough so she can’t do what she really wants, to the woman who knows what she has, and is willing to own it.

I love the idea of taking a few weeks not having to think about making money and just working in my studio, making whatever I want.   I don’t even know what that might be.

Maybe getting back in touch with the “intrinsically native aspects of myself” as Bluebird advises.

Maybe I’ll discover something new about the way I work or the work itself. Or maybe I’ll find out that I’m already doing exactly what I want to be doing.

So when we get our tax refund, I’ll begin my first Artist’s Residency in the comfort of my own studio. I’m planning on taking a day off before I begin.  Maybe take a long hike in the woods to help my head adust and open up my thinking.

And, of course, I’ll be writing all about it on my blog. So I hope you’ll join me.

It began with the 2016 election.  I created a fiber painting that I called Show Your Soul after a quote from Clarissa Estes Pinkola.  She said at times like these the best we can do is “Show our souls.”

I loved her message and wanted to do something in reaction to having elected a  misogynist (among other things) into the WhiteHouse.  So  I made posters using the image from my fiber painting and Estes Pinkola’s words and hung them in my town.  I also gave them to people to hang in their towns.

This is where the idea came from for me to make more posters and postcards and eventually magnets using the images from my fiber paintings and their titles.

They all have to do with a sense of self-worth and being our true selves.  Even my Twin Healing Trees speaks to this message of understanding the worth of our natural world and how we are connected to it.

My lastest magnet, I Belong To Me, is an image from a collage that came out of my recent self-imposed Artist Residency.

My magnets are $5-$6 each and shipping is $1 for one or more.  You can buy them here, in my Etsy Shop. 

I knew the collage I was working on, using the imagery from the shadow photos that I took of me and the sheep, was really two separate pieces.

When I cut them apart, their meanings became clear to me.   In this collage, I see the integrated self.

There’s the younger more self-conscious me next to the older self.  There’s the ghost of growth and change.  And we are all surrounded by the sheep, the familiars who aid in the transformation.

A work in progress, we all reside in the same space.

I wrote on my blog about the other half of the collage called “I Belong To Me“.   I can see now they are both about transformation.   Maybe it’s the subliminal effect my artist residency is having on me made visible in the work I’m doing during it.

I rummaged through the fabric scraps that Karen sent me looking for just one that captured my attention.  It’s how I began making each potholder today, searching for the beginning.

I haven’t given up on making collage or my artist residency.  But today I just felt like doing some sewing.

I guess I wanted something familiar.

It made me think of the time I was in therapy and was remembering some difficult childhood events.  At one point I just stopped and instead told my therapist, Selma, about the big Victorian house that I sometimes went to in my mind.  “Ah”, she said,  “your safe place.  It’s good you have a place to go when you need to.”

My artist residency is by no means a trauma, but it felt grounding to design some potholders today.

I wondered if it would feel different if my potholders would look different after working for over a week on something I’d never done before.  But I can’t really tell if the collage has changed the way I sew in any way.

I do believe that whatever I do eeks its way into my work over time,  in one way or another.

The thing that I have noticed is that I feel less anxious about my work.  Less anxious about having enough time to get it done (often an issue with me) and less anxious about whether or not I’ll sell it.

I don’t know if that will last, but at least I know what it feels like and it’s possible to achieve.

When Jon suggested this morning, that since it’s a holiday, we take the day off, I wasn’t prepared.  “But I’m in my work head”, I told him.  As if taking off one hat and putting on another I considered changing my head from work to a day off.

But I was having a hard time with that.

My self imposed artist residency runs alongside the rest of my life.   I’m very happily still selling my magnets, pins and posters in my Etsy Shop.  So I planned on doing some shipping and other “business-related” work today.

As it turns out, I did a little of everything.

Jon and I slept late (missing out on my Monday Morning Video but not my Monday Afternoon video) and also took a drive into Bennington VT for Thai take-out.

But in between I took care of some business, Bellydanced via video with my teacher Julz and started working on a couple of collages.

So I guess when I look back on the day, I was successful at least in changing my head, and more than just once.

What! How did… Big News Maria’s Artist Residency Starts Next Week At Bedlam Farm...Become the title of our latest Podcast?

I must have been day dreaming when Jon posted this.  But I guess it’s true so I can’t really complain about it.  We do talk about other things in this podcast, but you’ll have to listen to it to find out what.  It’s Saturday and the sun is shining and I want to get outside and do some gardening (or maybe just some lay in the sun reading).

You can listen to our latest podcast here. 

I’m still working on the small collages in the book that my friend Emily made and gave to me.

I took Emily’s advice (she has a lot of experience making collages) and am slowly working on more than one at a time.  I’m still using more fabric than paper, mostly because it’s what I have, but also because I’m used to working with it.

I think this one is done, but I may go back to it again.  I’ll have to see.

Emily had some extra collage making supplies so she sent me some that I just got in the mail today.  I also got a big jar of matt medium for attaching paper and fabric.  It also makes it easy to draw or paint over. I haven’t used any of my new supplies yet.  It always takes me a day or two to use anything new.

I’m still working on my red quilt and contemplating my self-imposed artist residency.   Or maybe it’s already begun.

This morning I could feel myself slip into my self-imposed artist residency.

Today I realized that it’s not going to happen because I declare it.  The only difference between it and what I’m doing now is how I think about it.  For me that isn’t going to be like flipping a switch, it’s a gradual process of changing the way I think.

I saw it happen as I decided to make some potholders this morning.

I found myself thinking that I was going to forget about time and get lost in what I was doing.  For each potholder, I would put the colors, shapes, and patterns together to tell a little story.

But first I had to find the fabric.  Just one special piece of fabric to begin each potholder story with.  And as I searched my shelves I pulled out the old quilt top.

It was already cut up into a bunch of small chunks from the last few times I used it.  But those times I had been looking for something different than this time.  And today, every piece of fabric I wanted was there.

I designed ten potholders today, created ten little fabric stories.  And when the voice in my head broke in saying “no one’s going to buy that”.  I shrugged my shoulders and kept on working.  Either way, these were stories I needed to tell.