What an amazing 2 weeks at Pikes Falls Chamber Music Festival this year. It is so inspiring to be surrounded by musicians--watching their process (chamber music is the ultimate collaboration!) and living in a house full of artistic energy and professionalism.
I started with kind of a discomfort in my gut, though. Not really sure what my purpose was at the festival. Andy was only coming for a weekend this year, and I knew collaborating with him wasn't really what I should be doing (for myself, as an artist) anyway. I just sat with the discomfort and anxiety for a few days, and eventually it clicked. I had been thinking I should try to make some "merch" -- something sale-able for the festival to use for fundraising. It seems obvious in hind-sight, but it was painful to discover. I decided to make a poster. Something beautiful and striking and bringing in the element of the name-sake falls.
Trouble is, by the time I figured this out it was 3 days before the first performance, and only 2 business days if I wanted to have them printed. Luckily our supportive printers, Express Copy in Manchester could turn around the prints in one business day. So I scurried off to the falls to sketch.
It'd been a particularly hot week, and the falls were PACKED with tourist families. This is always a bummer when we are used to this being a quiet retreat to nature, where you lose your sense of humanity all together, and feel one with the rushing water. As I approached the top, I heard kids saying "eww" "gross" "he's naked" and saw the familiar elder 'naked guy' that enjoys a daily dip in the falls, and likely has for decades, maybe his family has for generations like Su's has. I appreciate that he exercises his right (thanks Vermont for keeping it legal!), so when this dad started saying "outrageous. with all these kids around..." I decided I needed to do my part too. So I took off my clothes, and started sketching.
The nice thing, was that because we were naked, the families avoided coming up to the top, and he and I had the whole top of the falls to ourselves. The sound of the water mostly washed out their obnoxious voices and I sketched in peace for 3 hours. Eventually some teens who didn't care that we were naked came and shared it with us and ...it was lovely.
Sitting there naked, perched on a rock I realized...it's HARD to draw organic things. rocks. moving water. sheesh. but I just kept at it, and despite feeling kind of overwhelmed and discouraged, at some point I looked down and saw that I was actually doing something! There was a graphic pattern evolving in my representation of the water that I rather liked.
So I went home (to my house-full of musicians) and started figuring out how to make it into a poster.
I was hoping to turn it into a linoleum cut to print my own limited edition of posters, but the closest art supply store (over an hour away) didn't end up carrying linoleum so I bought a stencil kit. Unfortunately, when I got it home and started cutting and painting, I quickly realized this was not gonna work. So--without time to have the supplies I needed shipped, I decided to just go ahead and paint it by hand. (I guess this was actually the point that I determined how quickly Express Copy could turn the print around)
So...2 nights with 4 hours of sleep later, this is the image that I came up with. I have to say, I'm quite proud of it. I was channeling the beautifully retro National Park posters of recent years.
We did a limited edition of 40 prints, which I signed and numbered.
I felt like I had carved out some kind of purpose for my "residency" and relaxed through the first weekend of the festival.
I decided that for the second week I would just focus on creating a body of landscapes to display the final weekend. I don't think that such a short period of creation is ideal. And in the future, my goal will be to bring a body of completed works to the festival, but this was what I accomplished in 2015.
I made each of these on site, as I have been practicing lately. And I used a new medium- cassein- which was interesting. Its very matte. and a bit more blendable than acrylic. I'm not sure that I'll continue using it, I'm still searching for my ideal medium. But it was a great chance to experiment with a new medium.
I displayed 8 paintings for the final weekend's performance. Sold 4 of them and gave the rest away. Made some people very happy to have a one of a kind momento from the festival. Yay. Art.
