UArts Summer Fellows 2018

One of my favorite things about working with Kay was that we would vary our work, it wasn’t always stuffing and sewing. One week Kay and I worked on a personal project she had going on, screenprinting some tshirts for a friend. I have done screenprinting before but it has been a while, since junior year of high school (2009!). It was nice to see how DIY it can be, I had used a big expensive vacuum exposure table in school. The one they had at the studio was made with some tube lights, a table, plexiglass, a masonite cover, and with the help of some weights on top during exposure, you can burn your own screens! I was happy to have seen the process Kay used, because she uses screenprinting in her work a lot despite the fact that we didn’t do any more of it during our work together. Kay has a whole cabinet full of prints and positives for screens in a side room off the studio. She showed me how she would seal the room when she was prepping the screen with emulsion and again ...

Today was definitely a studio day.   Dot spoke to the director about what was needed to make the space work for the exhibition. The space is roughly a good size for a solo show with a giant window at the front of the room giving good natural light. It was great experience for me to see the process of an artist preparing for a solo show. The curator and Dot discussed what was necessary for the show and the ideal outcome of display. I've leaned that a lot of thought goes into the process of having a solo show, and the artist holds a lot of freedom to express themselves in one room. This excites me because throughout the process I could only imagine myself in the same situation, and one day being able to have a solo show somewhere. After helping Dot with her test piece (previous days) she decided to start working on the actual piece for her upcoming solo show at Allen's Lane Art Center. This piece is a completely different piece with metal wire and cement. First, I started by cu...

On Day 4 we took a trip to the Barnes Foundation on the Philadelphia Parkway. The current exhibition features the work of Jean Renoir. I watched a couple of his short films featured in the exhibit and looked at his paintings. Jean Renoir's films caught my attention the most. I enjoyed the black and white cinema, and its arbitrariness. His films were very "avant-garde" like, at moments I could understand and follow the characters but at times the structure of the film would change. I also had the chance of looking at the permanent collection at the Barnes. It wasn't my first time at the Barnes Foundation so the permanent collection was something I've seen before. Throughout my visit to the museum, I had opportunities to snap photos for reference for my future pieces.      

Working with Kay meant an understanding of sharing space. Not only was there shared equipment amongst the artists in the building, but the space she worked in daily was shared with her husband Greg Pizzoli, a Uarts alum and former educator, and their dog Eleanor. I talked with her about this. A certain element of working in a shared studio building is amazing because of the shared resources, but sometimes people do not keep things as clean or upkept as another would expect (Kay kept a spare power washer for reclaiming screens in the studio for this reason exactly). She expressed that sharing the studio with Greg is not very difficult since the nature of their work is rather different, and they go into individual mode mostly during their work hours. Greg and Kay are both full time artists and they stressed the importance of scheduling work time and factoring in that sometimes all of that time won't be the most productive or all spent on work- and that's okay. Generally they keep...

I was really excited to start work with Kay. We decided on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 11-6. We would get all of our time in before she left for her first residency in Sweden. I was excited to be around for her prepping for that, to see and hear about what all was involved in the process. Kay had also received a couple grants that I was grateful to learn about as well. I knew it would be very valuable for me to work with Kay and understand how she works, because I don't really know a lot about the connectivity and business side of living as an artist. I think understanding the really functional behind the scenes parts of being a visual artist like that can really make a huge difference in your success and ability to do work freely. My first day, Kay gave me a greater overview of the studio and where stuff is kept, where we'd be working mostly and what materials we would be using. Her studio is insanely well organized, she has an inventory spreadsheet of every box that ...

Another lesson on the loom After the first two weeks, I started feeling changes in my body from the repetitive work, positive for the most part. One of them was MUSCLE MEMORY, which I have experience it before but never this way. The same knots that were taking me a minute to make was taking me 3 seconds after so much practice, I got so much better at threading the tiny thread into the metal hook, my right arm feels so strong almost as if i'm gaining muscles from tying knots. It is crazy. I realise that positions MATTER so much after hours of working. I think this is applicable to any craft, or any practice that require physical work: take some minutes to figure out a way to transform your surroundings into a more comfortable space, it could be lowering the chair, turning a lamp on, use a better tool, or even put bandits on your fingers to prevent from hurting. This little lesson was key.  There needs to be a balance on how much your body is adapting to the craft and making the t...

Day 2-3 Dolores piece. On our second time meeting, I met Dolores. Dolores is an artist who has been living in the senior center for about a year. She was a master of weaving but couldn't weave anymore since there wasn't any loom where she lived. Finally she got a loom and she asked us to help thread it. It was chaotic. It made no sense to me what the problem was because I was a new weaver. I learnt the biggest lesson: to NEVER choose ONE COLOR. That is it. when you choose multiple colours of thread, is easier to thread a loom because you know what thread is next, but in her case they were all white so we had to almost guess. Of course by the end the threads were so tangled we had to redo so many of them. It was a great experience to live becouse I got to see the process in the most complicated case and Myra's loom seemed easyer compare to what we did on the second day. Dolores was also such a good contact because she is very knowledgeable  and we got to talk about art...