Cassilhaus

FOGO Island

Less than a year ago Ellen and I read an article in the New York Times about a tiny island off the northern coast of Newfoundland called FOGO and the extraordinary transformation of this sleepy economically depressed fishing community into a world class artist residency destination. Spearheaded by FOGO native and entrepreneur turned philanthropist Zita Cobb and her Shorefast Foundation, spectacular modern artists studios have been built or are in the process of being built in each of the six villages on the island and artists in all disciplines from across the world are being brought to live and work on FOGO. A high end luxury hotel is nearly complete. There is only one decent restaurant on the island but Zita believes if she builds it they will come and the transformation has begun.

It doesn't take much arm twisting to get my architect wife Ellen to go on a modern architecture road trip, even if the destination is on the other side of nowhere.  We discovered that FOGO has two seasons-August and Winter.  We opted for shoulder season and went in September and of course arrived the day before a once-in-five-decades direct hit from a hurricane--an auspicious beginning to a staggeringly wonderful trip.

(click on photos to enlarge)

On day one we were doing a miraculously good imitation of those guys on the Weather Channel reporting from where you don't want to be and nearly got ourselves blown off a hiking trail.

Just when you thought there were no other sentient beings out and about we pass by a pick- up truck with the bed completely filled with water that says "Frank the Boat Builder" on the side and the headlights are pointing to Frank himself building a "punt" in the garage just like his great grandfather did.  The people of FOGO are warm and wonderful.

Boy is the weather spectacular after a hurricane.  From day 2 on it was magic.

The Squish Studio in the village of Tilting

Dusk near Tilting

The Bridge Studio in Deep Bay.

The Tower Studio near Shoal Bay

The Long Studio in Joe Batt's Arm (no I did not make that up.)

Mid-town in Joe Batt's Arm.

The village of Fogo Island.

The new hotel under construction.

Waving Goodbye.

Pennies from Photo Heaven.

It is not a question of if we will return to FOGO, only when.

 

Rachel Perry

Our final artist of the 2012 season was Gloucester, MA based conceptual multi-media artist Rachel Perry. Born in 1962, in Tokyo, Japan, Perry holds a BA from Connecticut College and a Diploma and Fifth Year Certificate from the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. Since graduating from art school in 2001, Perry has participated in group shows at Kunstmuseum Bonn (Germany), The Drawing Center (New York) and at the Institute of Contemporary Art, (Boston, Massachusetts), where she was a Finalist for the Foster Prize and her work entered the permanent collection in 2006. Perry was awarded the Cathrine Boettcher Fellowship at the MacDowell Colony (2009-2010), and is a two-time winner of the Massachusetts Cultural Council Award for excellence in drawing and sculpture. Solo shows include “Lost in my Life” at Yancey Richardson Gallery (New York), “Same Difference” at Barbara Krakow Gallery (Boston) and her first solo museum show “Rachel Perry 24/7” traveled from the deCordova Museum (Massachusetts) to the Zimmerli Museum (New Jersey) in January 2012.

Lost in My Life (Price Tags) 2009 Courtesy Yancey Richardson Gallery

Inviting Rachel to the Cassilhaus Residency was an impulse (turns out a fantastic one).  I had seen her work only months before at Yancey Richardson's booth at an art fair. I didn't know her work and it wasn't like anything in our collection but hit a strong conceptual cord with me and I liked it instantly.  Her stay was the shortest 3 weeks ever. I feel like I should wax on about her work and her process but my overwhelming impression of her time here was that we had a BLAST.  Rachel is just game for anything and dove head first into all things Cassilhaus and Durham. I literally drove her from the airport on day 1 to the Kerry James Marshall lecture at the Nasher Museum and we didn't slow down until she headed home.  We definitely showed her the Triangle cultural extremes from the NC State Fair (her first ever state fair) where I have documentary evidence of her eating a deep fried Reese's Peanut Butter Cup AND the scariest Polish sausage thing I have ever seen,

with the requisite Elvis sighting (love the bag)

to the next day sipping wine with Dick Brodhead, the President of Duke University, at a Nasher gala reception and everything in between.

Rachel gave a fantastic artist talk covering an incredibly diverse range of work to an SRO crowd.

Ellen, Cici, and Bryant yuck it up.

Ron gets caught by surprise.

Esther and Jackie O!

Janet stole the show with the Pollack Crocs.

One of the amazing projects Rachel talked about was her bread tabs project where she drew from her collection of nearly a half milliion plastic bread tabs to make a sculptural piece called 208,896 loaves.

(photos courtesy of Rachel Perry)

 She had us all on the floor with her hilarious video of "Karaoke Wrong Number" where she did frighteningly spot on recreations of wrong number messages on her answering machine.

A lot of her time here was spent working on fruit sticker drawings.  She collects massive numbers of adhesive labels from fruit and slices them to make collage drawings.

 

 

Chiquita Delicata, 2012           

fruit stickers and archival adhesive on paper (with detail) Courtesy Rachel Perry

One of Rachel's favorite stops here (and now a required visit for all Cassilhaus Fellows) was Durham's Scrap Exchange. Talk about a kid in a candy store.  We gave her an assignment to make a project out of a random bag of stuff on offer and she just got started on an interesting piece.

We can't wait to see where she goes next.  We miss her terribly.  Thank you Rachel.

The excursion is the same when you go looking for your sorrow as when you go looking for your joy.      --Eudora Welty