Screen House Residency

So here it is, Day 2 of the Screen House Residency. And it is awesome! I get up in the morning, have a little coffee with Mom and my bro and then head down to the screen house by the lake. I hop up to the house proper for a little lunch and then head back down the hill and make some more work. Of course, if I want to, I take a little dip in the lake, like I did with Dad today. We had a light banter about the state of the water flow and how it's affecting the shape of the beach shore. And then I went to work again. And as if that weren't enough, I had a wonderful dinner at the house and then headed back to the screen house for round...4? What a day!

I was asked today what I think about while I'm making my work. Pretty good question I'd say, coming from a family who hasn't ever really seen me when I'm in work mode. I rattled off a list of things that pass through my mind: the future, my family, relationships, aesthetics, concepts, etc. One other thing I have been dwelling on is how familiar this is to grad school. Wake up, make art, eat, sleep... Rinse, repeat. Something I learned from one of my grad professors (John Balistreri) was setting up a studio that makes sense for the work being made at the time. For example, if you're making large scale sculpture, you wouldn't take up valuable working space with one foot shelving units. Right now I'm employing this tactic as I make a new body of work and dealing with a long forgotten working environment. When I was a resident at the St Petersburg Clay Company I worked in a mostly outdoor environment. (For those of you at NCECA this year, that was long before they made the sweet renovations that put everybody in the air conditioning. Look at me, I'm starting to sound like an ole timer. We also walked to the studio uphill both ways and had to drudge through a sand pit to get there...) Anyway, after that, most of the residency or school situations I've been in have been climate controlled.

Until now. I'm working in a 10 x 20 ft screen house. One wall has windows but the other three are all screen. And we get a little bit of wind coming off the lake. That doesn't dry things out too fast though because we've got about 99% humidity. Which reminds men, we just entered rainy season.

Why does none of this bother me? Well, because maybe while I was in graduate school I learned that I could adapt my studio and studio practice to match whatever situation in which I might find myself. That's not a skill I thought I needed to learn as I entered grad school. Hey, I thought I had most of the figured out by then. But it just goes to show that sometimes we learn things when we least expect it. I assume that the Screen House Residency will provide more things to learn, things I couldn't possibly foresee at the present time. If that happens, you'll be sure to see it here.

PS: Thanks, JB.