VSC Exhibition and Special Summer Reading List

Near the end of my residency at Vermont Studio Center, my curatorial self was lured out of hibernation by the wealth and variety of work being created by the writers and artists sharing the experience with me. I decided to curate a selection of their work into this exhibition for my blog. Because logistics and space constraints dictate that I can only include a portion of the residency group, I plan to write another article of this kind in the near future.

The first image you see was not created by one of the residents, but I did find it in a shop in Burlington. It was created by “dug nap,” a self taught artist born and raised in Vermont. The remarkable ecosystem described in this text gives you a taste of how amazing the VSC artists and writers actually are, considering what they have to deal with! Yes, of course it’s exaggerated, but the erratic nature of the weather in Vermont is one of its hallmarks. We experienced all of the named conditions except a blizzard.

Although there were artists working in all media in the program, it unsurprising that I was particularly attracted to those working more conceptually. Among those artists is Danielle Julian-Norton, a sculptor whose sculpture and installation work often involves sensate experiences.

Ambrosia, a 40 ’passageway created with 20,000 bars of Neutrogena soap, suggests a very heady experience in this regard. The variation in the soap’s golden tones and translucency of the installation’s walls evoke magical childhood tales, a quality she also creates with Treading and Transport. In this installation Julian-Norton has suspended dozens of tiny rice paper boats in the gallery space, again carrying the viewer’s imagination to tales of enchanted transport. These qualities are enhanced by the human scale of the work, and her strong use of light and shadow.

In a very different way, Ailsa Staub has been experimenting with creating spaces and modes of escape and safety. With installations like Scout and Escape, she encourages the viewer to tangibly experience their feelings about these activities by partially hiding in a wall mounted box, or by climbing onto

a platform high on the wall. Although these works pose slightly ridiculous solutions to the question of what can provide a sense of escape or safety, the work also addresses the question

of whether these feelings or goals are ever really possible.

Michele Jaquis’ installations, videos, and performances explore the complexity of relationships. In some cases, the work addresses tensions and the dynamics of closeness, often focused on family and friends. During the residency, she investigated this through a photographic series that explored her own sense of cultural identity with 26 Passports (at left). Considering the complexities of immigration in our own time, her work Fake Passport 2 (at right) is a reminder that these issues are not new, and that many of us--born in the US--would not be here if our ancestors did not enter the country surreptitiously.

In 2008 Michele applied her personal identity interests to making the film Recovered – Journeys Through the Autism Spectrum and Back, a remarkable portrait of four children who have recovered from Autism Spectrum Disorder. This award winning film was screened at the ReelHeART International Film Festival in Toronto during our residency, and Michele did a screening for us when she returned from the festival.

Questions of identity are also central to Lewis Colburn's work, which he explores through reenactments and history, as we encounter it "fabricated, sanitized, and manipulated for consumption." Produced for the International Prize for Performance, 4th Edition, put on by the Galleria Civica, Trento, Italy, Colburn hired a local group of Napoleonic-era reenactors to perform drills and guard duty for an evening near the theater where the Performance took place.

Sometimes he recreates historical elements (like the blood spattered coat, appropriated from a 19th century painting) as means to investigate "how history's protagonists become an exercise in contextualizing myself in the 21st century, and an opportunity to interrogate our longing for a past that never was."

Lewis' works sometimes have a surreal quality, such as his Inspections Stations Project, based on an installation of empty guardhouses in Wendover, Utah. Originally part of the Hercules Aerospace plant in Magna, Utah, from 1988-2001 these buildings were occupied by groups of Russian weapons inspectors. As part of a residency at the Center for Land Use Interpretation, Lewis recreated a segment of one of the Soviet guardhouse buildings (at right), that were moved to Utah from Russia.

This work is a reminder that sometimes truth really is stranger than fiction--and that history does repeat itself. Writer and poet Tom Andes evokes this quality in his poignant vignette "Lechery."

Lechery

We bring them oysters, sautéed with butter and leeks. We pour their wine, propping the bottle in the ice bucket next to the table, and we withdraw, bowing with exaggerated flourishes, making the obvious jokes—one joke to him, and then another to ourselves. She looks like his granddaughter, we say, snorting, safely out of earshot, on the other side of the fountain. She’s so young, and yet we cannot stop ourselves from looking. We tally their check, watching with mingled horror and fascination through the French doors, while he leans across the table and cups her chin in his hand, feeding her a morsel of lamb.

-Tom Andes

The expression of desire, coupled with horror and fascination, is also wonderfully expressed in Emari DiGiorgio's "Head in a Hand Basket," published in Barn Own Review (below and at "Head in a Handbasket").

HEAD IN A HAND BASKET

When I get it
in the mail, priority
delivery, I’m expecting
the buy-one-get-one-free
panty offer. Box bigger
than I was expecting but
what do I know of shipping
panties across the country.
And when I open it
I’m not expecting my
ex’s head, swaddled
in bubble wrap, Styrofoam
peanuts littering the floor—why
would I be expecting his head?—
I just hold it in my hands a minute
or two and set it on the table.
What is this? I ask my cat.
She knows that face too.
But she’s hungry and she’s
a cat so she’s not worried
about an invoice or a return
address or how I’m going
to explain this to anyone.
I feed her. And I start
talking to him. What?
He doesn’t have anything
to say now. I wonder
if I should call his sister;
it’s definitely his head.

You would think I’d know
what to do with my ex’s head.
The same way I ought to know
what to do with my mother’s head
or that jackass who let his little
dachshund shit in my yard earlier.
I might bowl his bald head down the street.
But I don’t even know what I’d do
for sure with my mother’s head.
I think I’d like to shrink it and
wear it like a ring. But my ex?
I feel sort of bad just throwing it out
but I don’t really want to keep it
around. If I plant it in the backyard,
not bury it, plant it near the pumpkins,
I wonder if they’ll look like him.
I’m wishing it were October, not
August, I could just leave the head
on my front step with a bowl of candy:
Snickers and Kit-Kats and Gummi Worms.
Some kid dressed as Spiderman might
steal it and then, then I would be free
of this face, I know, I loved, staring at me.

—Emari DiGiorgio

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Check back in the next week for Part 2 of the VSC Exhibition and Special Summer Reading List.

Preview for Next Post

Today, July 14, marked one week since I returned home to San Francisco from Vermont via Montreal. Although still wistful about leaving VSC, I have retained the feeling of living a writer's life (not easily possible during the school year) and have done much writing during this time. At last, I am ready and able to do the small exhibition and essay focused on artists and writers from the program, which I planned before leaving Vermont Studio Center.

Before I do that, however, I want to mention that I began this portion of the project on Bastille Day. I wish we celebrated it here in the Western US, but unfortunately, we don't. But in honor of the wonderfully curious French sense of humor--evident in contemporary film--I want to first post an image shot in Montreal.

One Month Later--thoughts on residency's end

It's hard to take in that now I am one day away from the end of this residency. It's been an odyssey in many ways. The chance to be a writer for a month has provided a window into the value of unencumbered time to focus on one's creative life. I have been able to focus on a book length manuscript; to get feedback from the two Visiting Writers this month at Vermont Studio Center; to write some fiction; to revisit an old journal entry and turn it into a read aloud story; to collaborate with Alice Pedroletti, an amazing photographer from Milan, which included writing "Sentences for Pictures" (which turned out to be sort of like poetry) and creating a murder mystery for the last night's open studios; and to read part of my interview based manuscript aloud with one of the other writers. This has energized me and I feel I am leaving with a desire to go home and continue with the rhythms established here.

There has also been a great deal of socializing this week, including open studios, the last writers reading (where I did my own reading and slide presentation), and last night's bonfire. The bonfires are sort of a VSC tradition, and we lucked out with the only night of no rain in awhile. It has rained A LOT since I've been here, but it's not cold. It's been a reminder of how dry California is, and what it is like to live in a green state. My eyes don't burn or tear, the water tastes good, and my skin is perfect. Hmmm.

Some of the highlights of this past week are posted below.

The growing play among us. This was before one of the evening events. Alice (left) and Danielle, wearing tiaras.

I know, you had to be there...









The last resident reading: my approach was a departure from the other writers, as I chose to read one of the interviews with another writer, but had him be me and I read the part of the artist I interviewed. I wanted to see what the experience of being interviewed by me is like. It was interesting and fun, and the audience really really liked it.

It has been remarkable, though not entirely surprising, to find out how little people outside the Western US know about art in California. And, how little most artists and writers of all sorts know about Conceptual Art in general. The general enthusiasm about the art and the interview we read part of (in the allotted 10 minutes) has opened up a lot of conversation about it since that time. Stay tuned for more on this. (the person reading with me is writer Tom Andes).

Last night's open studios culminated in a huge party and bonfire. It was one of the only nights in the last month that it wasn't either boiling hot, or raining. It's rained close to every day we've been here. It is, however, what makes the state of Vermont very green.

I realize this picture doesn't seem to have much to do with the rain or the green state. But watching and listening to it is a kind of portrait of this place, at the end of 4 weeks. Social sculpture.

Here's a preview of a detail of the work of Charles Steckler, who has asked me to write about his work for a catalog. I'll be writing more soon about the artists and writers I'm met at VSC. It's been great to meet a new group of creative people, especially because I like their thinking and its outcomes.

Speaking of outcomes, in case you're wondering what happened to the road construction, here's the new road, which was laid yesterday. Because the new road that goes over the temporary bridge runs right in front of the writers building--about 20 yards away--it was amazing to get right next to it, even when it was still hot. There seemed to be no concern that we were all right at the edge of it, watching the street get laid down. Not like where I come from !

It is with some sadness that I must say goodbye to this place. Yet, as always in life, I also get to bring back those stories to share, and all the good creative energy and ideas.


This picture is to give you the "real" picture of how I spent my time here--or at least part of it!

And last, but not least, a studio self-portrait.