residency at can serrat -- studio

Laying out drawings, sewings and tracings in studio

residency at can serrat -- drawing shadows

Sat out on in the field behind the residency today and did some contour drawings of grass shadows and the mountain. It was an incredible day surrounded by wild rosemary, thyme and cicadas.

NEWS: Current Exhibitions and the Alber's Foundation

photo by Helen Wilks

I am excited and honored to have just been invited to participate in a residency at the Josef and Anni Alber's Foundation located in Bethany, CT! Please find more information about the foundation here:
http://www.albersfoundation.org/

The show, "Young, Emerging Artists of Mendocino County", has also just opened and will run until October 25th. I pleased to have three photographs included in it.

residency at can serrat -- sewn interpretations

Sewing is a drawn method of interpretation that I have been exploring in doing contour drawings as well. Where some mediums allow the viewer to escape into them, I enjoy that sewing as a medium is constantly reminding you of itself (thread, pace, number of marks/stitches). When I look at something that is hand-sewn, my mind associates it with the visual process the person underwent while producing the image of looking, touching, estimating where to puncture surface, how quickly to move, how tightly to pull...

residency at can serrat -- orange peels

Sitting down with an orange for a couple of hours and moving through different contours and different color combinations.

residency at can serrat -- arrival and blind contour drawings

Can Serrat Residency, El Bruc, Spain

It has always been difficult to prioritize art-making as part of a daily routine. Unlike things like brushing my teeth or checking my email, sometimes the idea of getting into a creative place where I can produce something, can feel like a negative pressure. With so much free time and a sort of hiatus from all of the normal parts of daily life that usually take priority, one of my goals during my stay here at Can Serrat has been to create a routine that involves art-making as part of what I do every morning, no different then having a cup of coffee or watering the plants. It doesn't have to be an in-depth assignment, and shouldn't be over-thought. But what it does need to involve is a relationship to or connection with my environment. While I am here, I have been walking every day, picking up something I see (leaves, old pill boxes, shards of slate, chestnuts...) and bringing it back to my studio.  

In addition to photographic projects, blind contour drawings are what have come out of this rhythm so far and I have been interested in the process of making them: they are all about looking and responding. And they happen quickly, in ink, unedited. It would be difficult to over-think them. Once they are done, the resulting shapes allude to the object they came from but in some instances only loosely.
It's a fun process