Picture yourself on a romantic getaway
Maggie Flynn
Artist residencies have become built into cycles of art production and funding and are one of the many ways that artists legitimize their work. As professional artists circulate between different residencies, conventions develop around how they interact with this system. While a DIY-art-farm-getaway summons a different set of associations than, for example, a museum-based residency in a major city, there are some patterns in the narratives that set the context for residencies in Canada. The Wild Bush Residency provided space and time to think through these recurring narratives, particularly in the Canadian context.
The initiator of the residency, Amber Berson, laid out the intentions in multiple documents. Her interests were sprawling and ambitious, so I can’t address them all here. But this bit provides a good synopsis of some of the points that I’ll expand on here:
“At once the action and reaction to historic and contemporary artist colonies, communal living exercises and good old fashioned art camps, The Wild Bush Residency prompts residents to think about the urbanization of the rural [and] the reality of the Canadian Wilderness”1
In the first three rounds of the Wild Bush, artists were asked to participate in daily plein-aire painting sessions. Artists went through the motions to interact with the site and scenery of Lac Paquin through painting. In Canada, this practice has a part in the colonial history: landscape painting in Canada was a tool of the crown used to write history, claiming land by representing it. “Topographical drawing and water colour rendering were a part of [British army officers’] cadet training”2. Later, the Canadian state decided it was better to let artists handle this task, and supported the Group of Seven with free train rides on the Canadian Pacific and Canadian National railways as a trade-off for their paintings being used to market the country’s scenic tourist hotspots to new settlers. 3 More broadly the Group’s depictions of consistently vacant landscapes supported the state’s attempt to ignore the presence and cultures of Indigenous peoples.4 Through these efforts, mountains, prairie plains, great lakes, and bending white pines became, and remain, signifiers of Canadian identity, as if Canada naturally grew out of this landscape, rather than being violently imposed on it.
Since the Group of Seven served as an archetype of mobile urban artists seeking romantic wildernesses scenes for painting, and since settler colonialism is ongoing in Canada, it’s relevant to keep these histories in mind as we look at the current models of artist mobility and their role in the places they take up short-term residencies. Berson’s call for the Wild Bush residency was hopeful for a critical engagement with this context. Based on the documentation of the residency projects, the artists participating in the Wild Bush seemed eager to navigate or respond to the complexities of the questions posed to them. Certainly, there were moments of realization and self-reflection. In a video of a group meeting from the first iteration of the residency, Walter Kaheró:ton Scott states:
“I came up here and was like 'I’m gonna come here, with all of this stuff, I’m just gonna work on some collage and it’ll be nice. Cuz it’s in you know, nature. And I can maybe concentrate more.' But then I suddenly realized that my whole practice, my whole idea, is about bringing signifiers into new environments.”
Walter had intended to make collages from a pre-selected set of personal photographs with a mix of signifiers – a photo of his mother at home paired with a photo of a drunk person at a club. He expands on his shift in thinking, deciding instead to place fragments of the physical photographs in the woods to be re-photographed in that context. This shift is slight, but it changes his work from something that could have happened anywhere, to something that sought a contextual relationship with his environment of creation. Since these were personal photographs, the gesture also became a way to visualize himself in juxtaposition with the particular stretch of bush at Lac Paquin.
Another first edition participant, Zeesy Powers, approached her relationship to Lac Paquin through the performance of a Victorian lady in love. Powers notes that she was, in fact, in a love spell during Wild Bush Residency, a state that had an impact on her perspective at the time. In one piece, she describes her place in her surroundings as follows:
“You see yourself reflected in the water and you feel that must be who you really are. When the moon is high and full you can see yourself then, too, but you feel that is a familiar stranger you can only meet when all circumstances have come into alignment.”5
Powers’ performance included watercolour painting, collecting flowers, and poetic meanderings on the connection between landscape and narratives of women in love or loneliness.
Beth Frey participated in the 3rd edition of Wild Bush. After joking about peeing in the lake with co-residents, she started practicing it, and decided to commit to peeing only in the lake for the whole residency. Eventually she created The Costume for Peeing in Lakes to embellish her performance. Frey described the practice as a
“release of fluids from the body as a transformation from self to not-self, … a moment when the boundary between landscape and environment became blurred.”6 Based on the residency documentation, she was simultaneously entirely serious about it, and also, having lots of fun.
Looking at these examples, some parts were starting to sound familiar, reminding me of my own experiences attending and facilitating residencies. Certainly I’d seen similar projects: at the 2010 Don Blanche residency I attended, Svava Thordis Juliusson created a dress for ladies to camouflage themselves while peeing in the bush.7 Kaheró:ton Scott first revealed a very common expectation that artists have prior to arrival at a residency, thinking of “nature” as an ideal working environment. Powers was heavily influenced by her surroundings, but only though through her lens of love-sickness, creating a seemingly autonomous zone of her own. In all three of these projects, the artists insert themselves into the landscape in which they were working. To be able to see more clearly what was familiar to me about their approaches, and how they might be related, I began sketching out some of the familiar refrains about residencies. I came up with three, that I’ll name as retreat, inspiration, and response.
For artists seeking retreat, a residency gives distance between the artist and their regular schedule in order to make room for creativity. In some cases, this time and space is understood as a blank slate or white cube: suspiciously neutral. In the case of rural residencies, this is reminiscent of the problem with the Group of Seven’s representations wilderness as vacant space. In the mode of retreat, it may be possible for artists to trick themselves into forgetting that the residency and its surroundings have a past, neighbours, an ecosystem, financial interests, etc. The idea of a no-strings-attached space providing an opportunity for frictionless creation is one of the fantasies that lay the basis for art residencies. Kaheró:ton Scott snapped himself out of this fantasy in his approach to the Wild Bush residency. For the less self-aware, mosquitos are pretty good at ruining the idea that the empty forest was waiting to receive you kindly.
For some artists/residencies, the focus is not on getting away, but instead on finding something: inspiration. This mode is particularly common in idyllic landscape scenarios. I imagine a voice from above: “Rest your weary artist bones at the foot of the Rockies and let the mountains speak to your soul.” The work produced may not be directly relevant to the landscape, but by breathing the same air as the ancient trees or the calm ocean, the land has injected its mystical presence into your work. The landscape is greater than the artist; it is outside of themselves, outside of what they know, and can elevate their work to a higher plane. Powers let herself run with these romantic notions, describing in her writing an assortment of mind states induced by a combination of love, the lake, and the moon.
Then there are the residencies that call for response. Rather than taking inspiration, artists contribute a gesture to their residency or context. As Berson requested of Wild Bush participants, residencies often ask artists to respond to a theme, the historic or geographic context, or experiences of collective living, (to name a few common focal points). A response can range from quick and dirty, to a long-term relationship. Frey’s contribution to the Wild Bush was indeed quick and – depending how you feel about peeing in a lake – maybe a bit dirty. But she was sincere and committed in her exploration of pissing as a way to relate to her surrounding. She was also up front about the limitations of her offering “I’d be lying if I said that my piss was contributing to livelihood of the lake”.8 Whether a meaningful relationship is possible in a contrived context is a constant debate in all kinds of artistic and/or social contexts. Within the framework of residencies, some artists find ways to respond that are sensitive and productive, while others act out responses that lack understanding: at best superficial, at worst breathing new life into old colonial ways.
These are the broad strokes of some of the recurring residency modes. They’re not distinct; rather they intermingle, one often relying on another, sometimes in ways that contradict. We can see the limitations of working as an artist-in-residence when the residence you're taking up is far from your day-to-day, or your personal experiences. Being in a new place, these artists searched for ways to reduce it to their own scope, to make it personal. Powers, Kaheró:ton Scott, and Frey fulfill the Wild Bush request to “respond to the notion of landscape painting” by placing themselves in the landscape. It's not a narcissistic gazing at their reflection, but something rather modest, realizing any desire to understand oneself happens in relation to our surroundings. Though imperfect, perhaps this is the best we can do when dropped into a new setting for an intense period of art production.
1 Berson, Amber. “Wild Bush Residency.” Accessed April 25, 2015.
http://www.amberberson.com/wild-bush-residency.
2 Canadian Art
3 Jessup, Lynda. "The Group of Seven and the Tourist Landscape in Western Canada, or The More Things Change..." The Journal for Canadian Studies 37, no. 1 (2002): 144-79.
4 Jessup, Lynda. "The Group of Seven and the Tourist Landscape in Western Canada, or The More Things Change..." The Journal for Canadian Studies 37, no. 1 (2002): 144-79.
5 Powers, Zeesy. October 2012. Accessed April 25, 2015. http://thewildbushresidency.tumblr.com/.
6 Frey, Beth. 2013. Accessed April 25, 2015.
http://thewildbushresidency.tumblr.com/.
7 Thordis Juliusson, Svava. "Homesteading." Accessed April 25, 2015. http://www.svavathordisjuliusson.com/residencies.html.
8 Frey, Beth. 2013. Accessed April 25, 2015.