I can’t recall if I mentioned this prior to yesterday, but beginning Sunday, January 3, I will be doing a four-week artist residency in sculpture at the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, VT. This is my first residency and I am both excited and nervous. As I often like to do, let’s breakdown both of these feelings.
Excited
- This is the first time that I will have an extended opportunity to pursue my work with complete focus and attention.
- I am going to pursue a new body of work as well as dabble in some of the things that I’ve been posting about lately. The new work will involve plywood (two types: Maple, Walnut), acrylic paint and lots of polyacrylic clear coating.
- I will be surrounded by many other artists from a wide variety of disciplines. Living in the suburbs does not afford me this opportunity very often.
Nervous
- Four weeks away from my beautiful wife… what more do I need to say? I will miss her terribly.
- Will my four weeks in residency be “worth it”? I feel some self-imposed pressure that my time spent at VSC has to be extremely fruitful. Not only must I make great work, but lots of it. Unreasonable, I know, but it’s how I feel.
- Tackling a new body of work. I think I know how it will work, but what if it doesn’t turn out as expected? What if something in the process just won’t work? I’ll have to adjust on the fly and move forward.
- January in Vermont? Yikes!
Overall I think I am more excited than nervous. I am prepping up to 40 panels to take with me as well as about 5-8 projects similar to my new work shown here. It’s probably way more than I will be able to finish, but I want plenty of material to work with.
From what I understand, there is limited internet availability at VSC so I’m not sure how much I will be able to post about my experiences. I will try to provide periodic updates as I can.
With any luck I hope to find a new place within myself as an artist. I hope to meet great people and see other interesting work. I hope to learn more about myself and my work, and I hope to come back with some interesting new pieces.
I’m eager to start this experience. Vermont, here I come!
I’m sure it will be a fantastic experience and I can’t wait to hear about it when you return.
Stay warm and good luck!
Cold, yes. January can get quite nippy and you won’t have much time to adjust. I find that there are really only two weeks a year (between mid-January and the first week of Feb) that are real bad (regular nightly temperatures around or below -20); once that passes anything above 0 feels pretty comfortable. Enjoy, regardless of the temperature, VT is beautiful all year long.
Don’t forget getting ripped by visiting artists! That could be on both lists;)
You ask, “Will my four weeks in residency be ‘worth it’? ” I wondered the same thing when I did the SVA summer residency. (Vermont in winter versus Manhattan in summer without air conditioning….) I was wondering if I’d be productive, if I’d spend my time well and get anything done. I’d never had solid studio time in my own space like that and didn’t know if I could really do anything that continuously.
Turned out I was fantastically productive. It was a great time. I saw one of the other residents a couple of weeks ago and we both admitted we missed that time. It was really great.
So I’m going to go ahead and say, yes, it will be worth it. You’ll learn about yourself and what you learn will be good.