Community

Artists, Apply!

If you’re like me and using the holiday downtime to catch up on applications, here are a few artists’ opportunities I’d like to share.

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I had a great time when I did this residency in 2013. I recommended it; read my wrap-up. The stipend is still one of the best I know of, and I’m sure this program has expanded since then. I’d especially encourage printmakers and artists whose work deals with water, tides, or natural light to look into this residency.

Tides Institute and Museum of Art StudioWorks Artist-in-Residence Program
Eastport, Maine
Four-to-eight-week residency in a private studio with access to a modest printshop, plus accommodations.
They pay you $2,000–4,000 as a stipend to cover all expenses including travel (Eastport is remote—the easternmost point of the United States, actually).
$25 application fee.
Deadline: February 1, 2018

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I had little prior paper-making experience, but I had a great time learning from Pulp & Deckle boss-lady Jenn Woodward, and making paper when I was a c3:resident in 2015.

c3: Papermaking Residency
Portland, Oregon
One-month paper-making residency, workshop, technical assistance, group exhibition.
They pay you $250 stipend, but accommodations or travel are not included.
Deadline: January 21, 2018

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I did a residency at Woodstock Byrdcliffe in 2011, back when its residency fee was only $300 (and before they let go of a really great, long-time residency manager; a position that is currently vacant, if you’re job-hunting). See photos.

I think it’s cool that, this year, they are offering fellowships for artists affected by natural disasters, though the application fee seems steep to me.

Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild Artist-in-Residency Program
Woodstock, New York
4-week residency: private studio or access to ceramics and weaving equipment, and accommodations.
Residency fee: $700. Fellowships and subsidies are available to “artists affected by natural disaster, including but not limited to the California wildfires, hurricanes in Puerto Rico, Florida and Texas, and the earthquakes in Mexico” as well as women and people of color.
Application Fee: $45–55 (early application discount)
Deadline: February 15, 2018

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Spread the word to NYC Teens aged 13–19 about this opportunity.

Museum of Moving Image’s Teen Film Fest Call for Submissions
Deadline: January 19, 2018

News

Masters on Main Street, Catskill, NY

I’m showing Unlimited Promise in a storefront in Catskill, NY, a small town in the Hudson River Valley. The opening is tomorrow. Perfect timing for leaf-peeping too.

Big thanks to Jessica Fitzgibbon for organizing us Woodstock Byrdcliffe artists, and Fawn Potash at Greene County Arts.

Other events in Catskill this weekend:

Saturday evening openings
Barker Studio, 462 Main Street
Catskill Galleria, 281 Main Street
Open Studio, 402 Main Street

Sunday afternoon
Thomas Cole National Historic Site, 218 Spring Street/Rt 385
Lecture at 2 PM by Franklin Kelly, Curator at the National Gallery of Art and the 2011 exhibition, Robert S. Duncanson: The Spiritual Striving of the Freedmen’s Sons.

Community

See: Paintings by Jane Corrigan

I like these paintings by Jane Corrigan, an NYC-based painter and fellow artist in residence at Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild.

Two Girls Reading (by day), 2011

Two Girls Reading (by night), 2011

You can see Jane’s work in person in Brooklyn now.

Through August 19
Goodbye, Space Shuttle
Curbs & Stoops Active Space
566 Johnson Ave, Brooklyn, NY
Tues—Sat 1—6pm

New works by a diverse group of contemporary artists, including: Taylor Baldwin, John Bianchi, Matthew Capezzuto, Jane Corrigan, Bill Donovan, Jen Durbin, Sue Havens, Alexis Knowlton, Andy Lane, Beth Livensperger, Sakura Maku, Brian Maller, Vasken Mardikian, Jason Mones, Wilfredo Ortega, Jen Schwarting, John Silvis, Lee Vanderpool, Peonia Vázquez-D’Amico and Letha Wilson.

Take the L train to Jefferson stop. Walk north by north west.

Community, News, Travelogue

Goodbye Byrdcliffe, Hello Positive Psychology!

I had a lovely time at the Woodstock Byrdcliffe residency. It was really an idyllic place to live and make art. A typical day for me:

Wake up to birdsong.
Run (including my first 10-mile).
Read and write in my sun-drenched studio—Mihaly Csiksentmihalyi’s thought-provoking Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (1990) and Alain de Botton’s beautiful The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work (1998).
Work on drawings, collages, mixed media, or photo projects.
Eat and socialize in the large communal kitchen with the other AIRs, including some amazing, health-minded cooks. They inspire me to eat more whole grains and less meat, and cook more. You’d be inspired too, if you’d had Dan’s homemade pita bread, Tryn’s key lime pie, and Bob’s chilled carrot-coconut milk soup.

Sights around Byrdcliffe: a brilliant meadow, backlit leaves, turkey vulture, black bear.

Chipmunks everywhere.

Julie, Mary, Robert, Tryn, and Dan hanging out in the kitchen after Mexican food night.

Outdoor sculpture show at White Pines. Really loved the architecture.

View from White Pines.

In addition I took a Machine Woodworking class with Paul Henderson, down at the Byrdcliffe Barn. Cutting dovetails, mortises, and tenons with Paul, we’d chat about tools and music (he’s a trumpeter in a funk band!). It was tons of fun, and it reminds me how nice it is to have access to a really nice woodshop….

Paul and Jessica in the woodshop. That day's lesson: using routers and jigs to machine dovetails.

The residency was very productive and re-energizing. I am so grateful I got to be part of the Byrdcliffe story, enjoy the amazing land, and meet the other AIRs and the hardworking Byrdcliffe staff. Thanks Byrdcliffe!

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Today
Artist in Residence Open Studios
Byrdcliffe Art Colony, Woodstock, NY
3:30–7pm

My 360º studio photo-collage was featured on Woodstock Byrdcliffe’s email announcement! The super smart and interesting Julie Perini will be screening her experimental film and video work in my studio. Photos of my projects are in the Villeta, however, I won’t be there because I’ll be at…

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July 23–26
The International Positive Psychology Association’s Second World Congress of Positive Psychology
Philadelphia, PA

Among the speakers are Martin Seligman and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, whose books inform my work, including, most directly, the Positive Signs series (a selection is now on view at Steven Wolf Fine Arts, San Francisco, CA). I’m really looking forward to hearing these authors speak, delving deeper into positive psychology, and thinking through how it relates to artmaking and art viewing experiences.

I am able to attend this gathering with the support of a Travel and Study Grant from the Jerome Foundation. I am so grateful to them for the support. Thank you Jerome Foundation!

Art & Development

Woodstock Byrdcliffe Studio

360º studio view at Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild, Woodstock, NY.

Art & Development, Travelogue

Printmaking in the Catskills

I’ve been in upstate NY for just over a week, and it’s been dreamy. In California, a NY artist once explained how many artists live in the Hudson River Valley, and how you can buy a house and convert a barn to a studio. I was skeptical that it would be worth being out of the city. But now, after noticing the sound of automobiles only between long stretches of rustling tree leaves and birdsong, I completely understand.

Today, I took a relaxing drive down county routes to Rosendale, NY. The address wouldn’t even register in my GPS. Navigating the old fashioned way, I took one wrong turn and was immediately happy that I did. The road circled the banks of a beautiful lake, with only a few white clapboard houses nestled among the wooded trees on the opposite bank. The light glistened off of the water; everything was either mossy green or platinum light. I felt so grateful to be there at that moment. It was as if the longing and nostalgia of a Thomas Kinkade painting were coupled with immediacy of accompanying sensations: clean mountain air, woodsy smells, a slight humidity hinting at the impending rain shower.

Women's Studio Workshop in Rosendale, NY.

I finally made it to Women’s Studio Workshop, a printmaking, bookmaking, and ceramics studio in Rosendale, NY. I had heard of WSW through their residency program, and thought that it would be a perfect place to pull a series of collagraphic monotypes that I had been scheming on.

Upon my arrival, I was invited to join a lunch of salad and crispy no-red-sauce veggie pizza (which touched this Californian transplant’s heart; in some ways, I may be a New Yorker, but not when it comes to pizza). There really is nothing like a home-cooked meal to make people feel welcomed.

While I have only screenprinted since my MFA degree, pulling the monotypes came back to me: setting up the press and the blankets, modifying the inks, finding the right balance of wet paper and releasing ink. I thought I would be rusty and have to humbly ask for technical help (much like the time a drummer who’d been playing on electric pads for so long he couldn’t set up a drum kit), but somewhere in me that printmaking experience remains. Though I used much of graduate experience to explore other media, I am happy to report that I can still call on my printmaking abilities. I even figured out the less-toxic clean-up oils (which were not used at my alma mater)—thankfully, since I’ve lost any tolerance for mineral spirits that I had built up in my inky woodcarving years.

Art & Development, Travelogue

Woodstock Byrdcliffe: Get excited and make stuff

View from Mount Guardian, Catskills, NY.

I’m in the Catskills for a short residency at the Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild. I’m so honored to be here. The land is beautiful, serene, and full of wildlife. I’m giddy; it’s such a contrast from New York City and yet it so strongly recalls the Sierras in California. The colony was founded by British Industrialists seeking to build a utopian Arts and Crafts creative community. The initial attempt didn’t last long, but the Guild lives on as a series of amazing historic buildings housing 17 residents in visual arts, media arts, creative writing, and music composition.

I’ve been here just about a week, and am pretty much settled in my quaint room and a detached studio with high ceilings and skylights. I’m two-thirds through with Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow; I started some new drawings and sculptures, and even dreamed up a staged photograph. The setting is literally invigorating—I’ve run further than I have ever before.

Inspired by a tradition I experienced as an Affiliate Artist at the Headlands Center for the Arts, I initiated a residents’ mutual presentation series. It’s basically a slide slam/listening party/clip screening/reading event, made possible with shared laptops and digital projectors and healthy doses of participation and positive intentions. I enjoyed everyone’s presentations tonight. I suspect my readers would be keen to learn more about Julie Perini’s videos. I also really liked Jane Corrigan’s paintings about sentimental landscape images. My highest hope for the series is that some parallels emerge and enliven our discourse, and it appears that some already have.

The only quandry I have now is that the event is gaining interest and we may need to add another night to accommodate fellow artists on the mountain. Seeing a little initiative returned with such participation is very gratifying.

Residencies are like slices of heaven, so that artists can envision making more of “regular” life more like residencies—to inject the space and time to create, think, breathe, stretch, learn, explore, and exchange into life more often and for longer periods.

R+D

On Be(com)ing an Artist, Citizen and Arts Community member, by Christine Wong Yap

Tag Archives: Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild