Kent Island Residency and more
It is November now when I am writing this and it is hard to think back to early days of summer, to the unknown events to unfold ahead. These days I think about writing more than I actually pick up a pen, but accounting for this year here seems like an important milestone. The skeleton of this “blog” has been in place for a while, this year I did not send my usual newsy newsletters because things have been happening in ‘onion-like’ layers in my life. Work opportunities both splinter and dovetail into life, sometimes it is hard to make sense of it in a linear descriptive fashion when the present is whirling by.
This summer I did curate and co-curate the exhibitions at Zero Station’s gallery- there were highs and lows, a quiet sense of slowness and emptiness for all the effort that goes into each exhibition, but I expected this going into the season, hence my itinerant travels. That said we are always grateful when people do stop by the gallery to see the shows, because we feel our wealth is in the people we get to meet and interact with on a daily basis. Owning the gallery/frame shop for now 25 years we feel fortunate to have met both unknown & well known artists, patrons, inventors, collectors, designers etc. We have the best conversations and have a network of some amazingly smart and wonderful humans.
Much of my summer was accounted for as I moved from a list of commitments that had me travelling around the state of Maine and at one point to a remote island off Canada. Technically as the crow flies, Kent island is pretty close to Maine- but as they say - “You can’t get theyuh [there] from heryuh [here]”. For the sake of brevity, I will just focus on this one residency that was the most rewarding ten days getting to and staying on Kent Island . In brief (the link has the detailed info) or watch this which will summarize it efficiently.
My experience was focused on a couple things. For one it was thinking (and ideally writing ) about how scientists and artists/poets exisit in the world to extrapolate meaning from close observation of nature or phenomena. It is a powerful thing and a gift to be called to this work, because we know it is not economics that draws us to be artists (or poets or scientists for that matter). The second was to create work for an exhibition at Zero Station. Originally I wanted to dive deeper into some thinking about how sound might affect the shape of structure or more specifically seeds however, I also knew my time was pretty short there and I wanted to leave with physical work. Most of what I painted at Kent was shared in the gallery as part of Floating Worlds, however while it was a very productive short stay, my experience was more wonderful in that I got to explore the plants in a remote place that has been botanized before but so few people have inhabited this place it feels special and more like an island would have felt a century ago. The tides here are extreme, the Leach’s Storm Petrels make otherworldly sounds and the students are hard working and largely unplugged and therefore extremely thoughtful, cognizant of community and filled me with a lot of hope that with a little effort all is not lost to technology. The third thing was the gift of sharing how I work with the students, first in a presentation, then in a couple demonstrations. One was to paint, not scientific illustration rather to paint the life before you, to feel the vibrations of all the colors in the greens. They worked hard and had wonderful results. I no longer consider myself a teacher. I have had wonderful experiences over the years teaching metalsmithing, but of late I am less interested in that work, yet this was a lovely experience.
I will circle back to add some photos of Kent but for now I will leave you with this painting of an expired storm petrel- a small bird that can live almost 40 years and flies tens of thousands of miles a year. They are a tiny force.