Jade and Nick
I may have jumped the gun with yesterday’s entry. Mostly I needed to get my list out and done. One personal mission of this residency is to track my artistic process; understand it a bit more. This process discovery is followed by close analysis, mostly voiced here. I now know; I need lists. I need lists of small things to quickly get accomplished in order to sort out the individual parts of the piece. It is a way of really computing in my head the next step and keep me on track and clear headed. I thought before coming here that I simply acquired a material that inspired me and ran with that material. After having so many raw materials (not to mention, lots of found objects and loaded materials) at my disposal, I find that the acquiring, taking ownership, and then recreating is much more valid to the process and is a huge part. This elsewhere work is not a result of finding a material, but a space, and part of this space is the installation directly across from my little clean, newly shellaced walled room.
Across the hall is a piece by Nick Stedman, one of the first residences here. He started with an emptied space (due to the space being used by a local film shot in that space) that matched mine. He chose to fill it…fill it because he felt like most of the spaces here were inaccessible and dangerous. Under all of the clutter and piles, I discovered his hidden work. At first it blended and this, like so many other spaces at elsewhere, kept me at bay. After spending more time in my space and making the decision to work across and in opposition to Nick’s work, it made sense that my space would evolve as it is…soft, clean, comfortable, and inviting. As a reaction to Nick’s work, and also thinking of him as a kind of silent collaborator, I am imagining his intent. The only thing I have to confirm it is an artist box he left behind. There is such a mystery behind Sylvia (the store owner and Georges grandmother) but I feel like I am just as curious about this former elsewhere resident in the first round of people’s time here. As the space has evolved just in my week and a half, I can’t imagine how different our experiences are just in the short 3-year period.
