I SWEAR I DIDN'T PUT THEM THERE!
Whoa who knew I would make it twenty weeks into this incredible journey! Thanks for coming along for the ride. Lordy I hope there are tapes! (I wonder how long it will be before people don't get the reference?) Actually there are--about 60 hours of recorded interviews and I am woefully behind on taking notes on them. More on that later.
My last two Western US stops were in Wyoming. It was my first time there and it is one of the most beautiful places I have ever been. It's pretty amazing that both of these programs are very well known and respected programs and one is in a town of 25 and the other a town of 142 and they are only 10 minutes from each other and they have no connection. What are the chances?
I started out at the Ucross Foundation in Ucross, WY. Started more than 30 years ago and situated on 20,000 acres of working ranch land (12,000 of which is protected by the Nature Conservancy), this amazing program welcomes more than 80 artists a year and has some household names amongst its alums. Pulitzer Prize-winning writers Annie Proulx and Doug Wright are past residents as are MacArthur Fellows Charles Wuorinen, Sarah Ruhl, and Colson Whitehead. National Book Award winners Ann Patchett, Jean Valentine and Ha Jin have also been through the residency program. I was particularly drawn to this program for a number of reasons-1st was that they had been mentioned multiple times in my travel by artists as one of their favorite residencies. 2nd they are one of the few residencies I visited that has an exhibition program and I really wanted to compare notes with someone about our exhibition program at Cassilhaus. Theirs has a focus on work of alumni and they try to integrate work from local artists into their exhibitions. Finally they have a number of very interesting partnerships, including with the Sundance Institute, the PEN/Hemingway award, and the Herb Alpert Award in the Arts. In my mind strategic partnerships are the way of the future for us if we want to increase our impact without stressing our already bandwidth limited space and resources.
I spoke with Tracey Kikut, their program director (pictured), and Sharon Dynak, their President, and they gave me a tour of the grounds and facilities. It was a very enlightening interview. In addition to the individual artist studios, the large space shown above on top of their gallery space is available for dancers or artists who are collaborating and need a larger space than their studio.
All of the books on these three shelves as well as two more out of frame were ALL written by Ucross residents!
I was staying in an airbnb in Buffalo, WY as there was really no place to stay in either of the two places I was meeting. This is what happens when you have a bad mattress at your airbnb and streetlights outside your windows.
2:41 am F4.5 for 30 sec.
3:03 am f7.1 for 10 sec.
3:21am f6.3 for 30 sec
The next day I was off to a spot just down the road in Clearmont-Jentel Arts. I found an immediate chemistry with Mary Jane Edwards, their ED, and Lynn Reeves their Residency Director. They had both been there since the beginning of the program-more than 15 years-and it was so clear that they worked together like a well oiled machine and really loved doing it.
They gave me the grand tour and I was there for more than 4 hours! Below is the main house where all six artists live and share meals.
This is one of the visual arts studios. Studios are discipline dependent. Notice there is a day bed in each studio so artists don't even have to go back to their apartment if they are in an intense working phase.
I got the extra special treat of seeing Mary Jane's private home and studio on site designed by the same architect that did the main house. Her tales of her travel and the art treasures she found around the world were spectacular. I could have spent days there.
This is one of Mary Jane's own pieces in her studio.
Other than two appointments I have set up at the end of July in VA, this was my last stop on my sabbatical and it was a bit of an emotional experience. It has been quite a journey over 5 months, 20 states, 19,000 miles, and more than 50 visits! I have learned so much and made an amazing new network of friends and colleagues which will bear fruit for years to come. I am so grateful to Mary Jane and Lynn for making my last stop such a memorable one and reminding me once again why I am doing all of this in the first place. When I commented that Jentel was in the middle of nowhere they corrected me and made it clear that Jentel is "at the center of someplace special." How right they are.
My work has only just begun. I still have over 60 hours of interviews that I have not taken notes on and over 6000 photos to sort through. This will be a long process to try and make some sense of all of this material I have collected. My sage wife Ellen suggested that rather than spend my last 7 days driving another 3000 miles across the country that I hole up in rural Montana at our friend Danielle's house and spend some time catching up, processing, and preparing for reentry so that is what I am doing! I am in a magical place near Roscoe, MT and completely off to myself with no interviews or meetings. I am shipping my car home. :)
There are years that ask questions and years that answer.
--Zore Neale Hurston