Just Between Me and You

This post documents the thought process behind the third presentation format for the loose leaf journal I am creating during the MCP501 module of my First Year Project.  My First Year project is titled “Self Portrait of a Female with Epilepsy”.  A visual documentation of the process is not currently available, but will follow in the next weeks, and can then be found in the MCP501 Gallery.  The journal pages are the initial steps in a series of self portraits which will take non­-traditional approaches to the materials and techniques of painting, serve as a basis and archive of thoughts, images and resources which contribute to the various visual and written components of my First Year project, and are a key element in the presentation of the visual component of the project.

In my September-October 2014 Monthly Blog Post I described two presentation formats for the loose leaf journal pages and created two galleries documenting the process behind the creation of those pieces. So, why create a third presentation format and is it necessary?

I felt it necessary to create an additional, physical-experienced based presentation because the presentation of the pages in the piece “Wanderland”, which is meant as a way for the viewer to physically experience the pages, is very limited in who, how, when and where it can be experienced. It is a very site specific piece, therefore I am seeking with “Just Between Me and You” to create a piece with a more flexible mode of presentation.

I intend to bring the piece “Look In Glass” to the Winter Residency in New York City this January. While I find this particular presentation format has its own strengths in how it addresses both the issues raised in my project as well as how it visually presents the journal pages, I also believe it to be just one way of understanding and looking at the work and issues which are raised. The narrowness of its presentation is a part of what I am addressing in my project, which is the limitations in our understanding of the “truth” of something, limitations which we often place upon ourselves because we convince ourselves that the knowledge we have is all there is to know. I do not see “Look In Glass” as a stand alone piece. For it to reveal more of the “truth” it must exist in relation to the physical presentation and experiencing of the journal pages; therefore “Look In Glass” will be presented in New York City in conjunction with “Just Between Me and You”.

Like both “Wanderland” and “Look In Glass” the presentation of the journal pages in “Just Between Me and You” allude to the writings of Lewis Carroll in Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland and Through The Looking-Glass. Like both previously conceived pieces the emphasis on how the pages are presented in “Just Between Me and You” lies in the intimacy of the presentation. The pages are not presented in a way in which comfortably more than a single individual can experience them at a time. The experience is kept between the artist and a solitary viewer. Similar to the format of “Wanderland” the pages are made available to the viewer to grab hold of in his or her hands and examine. Unlike the experience of “Wanderland” which physically challenges the viewer by sending him or her on a journey through a space in which the pages have been randomly and chaotically hung so that accessing all the pages and examining them closely may or may not be possible for every viewer; “Just Between Me and You” is a quieter, less physically challenging presentation. It is a presentation that is accessible to every viewer as long as he or she is willing to take the time and make the effort to sit down, pick up, hold and closely examine each page of the journal.

“Just Between Me and You” is “Wanderland” in a box.

It is a box whose exterior is swathed in the black, glitter vinyl that covers the floor and forms the pathway the viewer follows through “Wanderland”. The interior of the box, its walls, are covered with the soft and silencing black felt which covered the walls of “Wanderland”. The box sits on a table in a slightly darkened room. A spotlight shines on the table so that the viewer is provided sufficient light by which to closely look at and examine each page. The viewer takes a seat at the table in front of the box. The box is closed, tied up like a gift package with the same Red "Classic 10" 100% Mercerized Cotton crochet thread used in “Wanderland” to connect and suspend the pages. Attached to the string is a note to the viewer “Open me”.

If the viewer chooses to follow his or her curiosity, he or she will untie the thread and remove the lid of the box. Inside the box he or she will then find the pages of the journal, wrapped in the black tulle from which the pages were suspended in “Wanderland”. Clipped to the bundle with a silver binder clip, like the clips used in “Wanderland” to connect the pages to the red thread, is another note. On the second note the viewer will read “Unwrap me”.

Should the viewer decide to continue on this journey and unwrap the bundle of pages, he or she will encounter a third note on top of the pile of pages. This note instructs the viewer to “Look at me”.

At this point the viewer has been given full access and permission by the artist to hold, look, closely encounter and physically interact with the pages on his or her own terms. Should he or she work his or her way completely through the ~100 pages, at the bottom of the bundle, between the last page and the tulle, he or she will find a fourth and final note: “Put me back together. Keep this just between me and you.”

Ideally the viewer has spent the time to look at all the pages and after reading the final note re-wraps the pages, places them and the notes back in the box, replaces the lid, re-ties the thread. But that is beyond my control. As the artist I only provide the instructions in the notes, it is up to the viewer to choose to follow them or not.

Concerning the order of the pages in the box: unlike the random hanging of the pages in the “Wanderland” installation, I intend to place the pages in the box in the order in which they were created. However once the piece is in the control of the viewers this order most likely will become disrupted. It will be interesting to see how “out of order” the pages become as multiple viewers interact with it.

It is my intention that the viewer encounter this piece prior to “Look In Glass”. I want to emphasize the value of the close, physical encounter with the artwork over the distanced, mental encounter the viewer has with the cropped, shifting and altered digital recording of the pages confined within the mirrored box. In addition, the physical encounter with the actual pages in “Just Between Me and You” challenges the viewer to make the effort, give his or her time and share a physical space with the pages. How willing is he or she to do this? How much is he or she willing to give of his or herself? How much of his or herself is he or she willing to invest to become a part of the art?

Then, after this experience, the viewer moves on to “Look in Glass”. Now the viewer is no longer given the option to choose how much or how far he or she wants to go on this journey. The light emanating from the box will draw the viewer closer to it. He or she will glance into the box. How long he or she looks is still up to the viewer. But even if it is only a split second, when he or she glances into the box he or she will see not only the pages but also his or her reflection on top of the pages, alongside the pages, inside the box. He or she has become a part of the piece. The self portrait has become a portrait.

Response to October 17, 2014 Skype call with studio advisor Laura Gonzalez

After the conversation Laura Gonzalez and I had this month I began to re-think once more my relationship to drawing and how I define myself as an artist. Am I a painter? Am I a drawer? And how does the 3D/sculptural fit into all of this? Laura recommended that I check out the journal TRACEY and the Drawing Research Network. I have begun exploring both websites and submitted a request to join DRN.

We discussed the two installations I have been working on for the journal pages, with emphasis on the use of mirrors, the illusion/doubling which occurs, the relationship of self portraiture-portraiture and ‘truth’ that are brought forth in the installations. Where does our knowledge of self, the truths we know about who we are, reside? How can I challenge the symbolic sensibilities to push the boundaries beyond representation to presentation? This begins to happen with the mirror box, at least it is more apparent than with the tunnel. This could be because it is much harder to present online at this stage as it is a piece where the physical experience is so important. I need to carefully consider how I document the actual installation so that it comes across in the online presentation. I plan to bring the mirrored box to the winter residency along with the pages of the journal; the form of the container in which they will be brought and presented is still under consideration.

Another part of our conversation dealt with further progression of the paintings, beyond the journal pages and sketchbook. I am planning, once the journal is ‘complete’, around 100 pages and the installations have been documented, to begin larger paintings on paper which I plan to bring to Berlin. These will take their cues from themes, images and approaches I have taken in the journal pages, but be a larger scale and thus worked over a longer period with more careful deliberation. Laura asked if I was considering how to challenge the edges, the rectilinear/squareness of the picture plane. I am not sure how exactly at this moment, but the thought has now been planted in my head. It may start to sprout this next month in the journal pages. This thought and surrounding discussion led to my presenting another project I am working on, conceived separately yet related to what I am doing for my Transart project.

June 2015 I will be taking part in a two-person show in the Main Gallery space of AS220 in Providence, Rhode Island. The work I plan to show in the space consists of an assortment of paintings from various series I created between 2010-2014, prior to beginning my studies with Transart Institute. As I have begun to think about the whiches, whats and hows of this exhibit I came to a solution much related to the two installations of the journal. And it also challenges the ‘edges’ of painting beyond the square/rectangle. As a result of this connection along with the fact that these paintings were created during a period of increasing and intense seizure activity I have decided to include this exhibition, and the process behind it, in my project blog. I will be adding more information and documentation of this in the next month.

September-October 2014 Monthly Blog Post

New images are posted in the MCP501 Gallery section of this website; bold titles link to the specific gallery page being referenced. Here is the link to my MCP501 Bibliography [in progress] .

Sketchbook

Continuing work in my sketchbook I saw a merging of visual language in relation to my first year project and the subsequent ideas about the journal presentation in the sketchbook and in the loose leaf journal pages.

My main thoughts concerning the sketchbook this month focused on the Skype conversation addressing the horizontal orientation of these images versus the vertical orientation of the loose leaf journal pages in the website galleries. The questions were raised how this occurred and if it was intentional?  I understood these to come from the assumption that the sketchbook pages were being worked and resolved in a landscape format. I hadn’t really thought about this, but realized that most of the pages were not created in landscape, rather were done as portraits, just as the loose leaf pages, though presented vertically are often worked and resolved horizontally. When I photograph and post them, I flip them, thus unifying the orientation for the website presentation.

Was I unknowingly [or knowingly, but unconsciously] presenting the work untruthfully? Why? Why do we assume that what we see presented to us is “the truth”? Should we assume that what we see online, or even in person, is true? Should the artist blatantly lie by presenting something as it is not while saying ‘this is how it is’? What does this say about what the viewer wants to believe is “the truth”?

How I have chosen to resolve this is by including in the Process Photos Journal and Sketchbook Gallery images of recent work at various stages -and I reveal the discrepancy of orientation and the choices I make. The Sketchbook Gallery remains presented in landscape, the September- October 2014 journal pages in portrait.  I reveal “the truth”,  just not within the page on which the work is displayed. If “the truth” is revealed as “untrue” does this make it a lie? Or does it simply reveal the nature of “the truth” as not absolute?

Process Photos Journal and Sketchbook

    In this gallery I also wanted to show how within the parameters I have set for myself for the ways I begin a page and the paths I take to its resolution are not a given. Even pieces which might have similar beginnings and endings may follow different paths; just as pieces which begin with very different approaches and follow different paths might end up with similar resolutions, or vice versa.

September- October 2014

    While I was making the pages my mind was often elsewhere; thinking about what I was reading, writing, talking about and the ideas that were developing around the journal’s presentation. I was not fully cognizant about what I was actually producing. I was aware of what I was doing and I felt so much of what was going on in my head was flowing so freely into the work, but I was not trying to ‘problem solve’ in the work itself. I remained open to using the work to respond to the thoughts,  so that as a page was resolved I quickly moved on to the next. I was not lingering over any single page or image; and in turn what I was thinking about seemed to resolve itself in a freer manner as well.

    After the Skype conversation on September 19 I was thinking about how I want to present the journal in relation to my first year project; how I viewed the pages as individual parts of a whole which needs to be presented as a single, whole piece; and how, if in anyway, I might want to incorporate digital media/technology into the work. What I found was that I was thinking more about what I did not want to do while not yet knowing what I did want to do.

    I knew I did not want to make a video; not make a bound book; not create digital paintings and print them out; not use digitized scans and photos to further the collage technique; and not reduce the experience of an epileptic seizure to the generalized seizure most people associate with Epilepsy-- the moment of falling down, foaming at the mouth, body cramp image that people have always used to define a very complex, multi-experiential disorder of the brain. Why did I not want to do these things?

First, I am just not that interested in devoting the time and energy required to working with digital media/technology to make the effort worthwhile in terms of what I want to achieve through my painting. I like the tactile qualities of the materials I work with. I believe it is the direct experience of that material and the human touch by which it has been worked and formed which reveals both to the viewer and to myself more about the human experience than most current applications of digital media/technology are able to offer.

Second, binding the images into a book constrains the pages in a way that I don’t really feel reflects the experience of Epilepsy, and specifically my experience with Temporal Lobe Epilepsy [TLE]. I want the pages to remain loose, free to be shuffled, thrown into disorder, and then experienced differently by each viewer. Binding would confine the pages to a single order. An alternative to a fixed binding would be a loose arrangement in a portfolio or box, and I have not ruled this out. But I do want to try taking the presentation to a grander scale in order to emphasize the experience of a seizure disorder.

Third, why not show the “cramp”? My problem with using the imagery associated with a generalized seizure in this project is that it is a “generalized” understanding of Epilepsy. And as a “generalization” it can cause people to make assumptions which are then inhibitive to the development of greater awareness and understanding. Epilepsy is a complex disorder with over 40 different varieties of seizures currently known. The generalized seizure that most people think of when they think of Epilepsy is in reality not that common. It is the simple seizure, the partial seizure, the complex partial seizure that are experienced more often by persons affected by seizure disorders; and often these seizure are invisible and very individualized in nature. The people around a person experiencing one of these seizures most likely will not realize it is happening, and often the person experiencing the seizure doesn’t even realize the seizure is happening. The “falling down” generalized seizure is easy to see and diagnose, the other seizures are much more difficult, more complex in all aspects. I would rather work on making visible something that is not, expanding the knowledge base people have of the disorder, than to try to change pre-existing definitions based on assumptions and generalizations that have been misused and abused for centuries. By consciously leaving the depiction of the “cramp” out of the picture I hope to raise awareness of the complexity of the disorder, the invisibilities associated with the disorder and the preconceived notions of what defines Epilepsy. People might wonder why the “cramp” is not depicted, thus opening the conversation to the other, more complex elements and questions of the “hidden disease”.

I want to relay the experience I personally had with the complex partial seizures from TLE. But how? TLE has often been associated with artists and other “creative” individuals.

A well known example of the experience of TLE and the seizure types associated with it can be found in Alice's Adventures In Wonderland and Through The Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll [Charles Dodgson], the author having himself lived with this seizure disorder. As part of my project I have been re-reading these two books. I have also begun tackling The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky, however I have found that I can relate personally more to Alice and her adventures than to the life and times of Prince Myshkin. As a young child I was already exposed to Alice and the characters of Wonderland and through the Looking-Glass by way of my most favorite ballet recital; by hearing the stories read to me; watching Walt Disney’s animated, musical composite of the two books; and most importantly, listening to the Walt Disney film soundtrack record album while putting on mine and my older sister’s costumes and re-creating all the dances I could remember from our recital in our garage and driveway for our neighborhood. At some point between then and my own diagnosis I learned about Dodgson’s Epilepsy and his use of the seizure experience in the stories. I began re-reading the books after my diagnosis, then I really understood how accurate his portrayal of those feelings was.

Using Lewis Carroll’s Alice stories as the starting point I hope to present the journal pages to the viewer as both a physical experience as well as a mental experience of the feelings induced by the complex partial seizures of TLE.

Process Photos Wanderland

    This is a physical journey through the journal, “down the rabbit hole”. A single viewer navigates her way through a narrow, dark corridor in which the pages of the journal are suspended at various heights and distances from a red thread which weaves and loops its way through the space- connecting each page to the others. The movement of the viewer causes the pages to spin and turn. The viewer can grab hold of some of the pages, hold them steady and take a closer look. But some pages might be out of reach, only viewable from a distance. Others the viewer might need to bend down, lay on the ground to view. The darkness of the black felt envelopes and silences the space. The black glitter vinyl reflects the light, as does the metallic and shiny surfaces of many of the pages. The tulle, through which the red thread is woven and the pages suspended, casts a mesh shadow on the pages; the pages cast shadows on each other. The viewer is free to make her way through the space, view the pages as she wishes to. It is up to the viewer to find the points at which she can gain control in a chaotic, highly stimulating environment.

Process Photos Look In Glass

    This is a mental journey through the journal, through the “looking glass”. The Look In Glass is a mirrored box containing an iPad hung flush on the wall. The exterior and interior sides of the box are covered in standard mirror, the front panel of the box is covered in a “see through” or “one way” mirror. The back panel of the box is the iPad screen on which a slideshow is running a standard theme of “Sliding Panels”. The viewer enters the slightly darkened room and approaches the box hung on a wall and emitting a faint glow through the front panel. Approaching the box she looks into and through the glass where she will see the slideshow of shifting images reflected throughout the interior space of the box as well as her face reflected faintly back into the box. The act of looking into the box places the viewer mentally and by way of her reflection into the world of the journal. Like Wanderland the world of the Look In Glass is chaotic and highly stimulating. Unlike the experience of Wanderland, which is a physical experience, Look In Glass is a mental experience.

In the next four weeks I will continue to work in my sketchbook; continue to create pages for the loose leaf journal in preparation for an installation of Wanderland and Look In Glass on December 6. The substructure of the mirrored box will be built and the mirror ordered from Rhode Island Glass. My crit group will begin posting and providing feedback, with my time scheduled for October 31-November 7.

Response to September 19, 2014 Skype call with studio advisor Laura Gonzalez

This conversation helped direct me to thinking more about where and how I could take the work I have been creating the past month, specifically: establishment of structures (ie. rules/score/ approach to language I choose to define what I am doing) and presentation. Questions of how I perceive the works, individual pieces or a single piece of various parts, arose. Another question was my willingness to work with digital media, and what in ways. After the call I went to New York City to look at, think about, and converse about art. I kept returning to these questions in regards to my own work, the artists’ whose work I was viewing, as well as in the conversations I had with others. Within the week I did have a revelatory moment of ‘ways’ in which I want to address these questions in the works as they relate to my project.

Berlin and Back: August-September 2014

I left Berlin 29 days ago today after a three week Kur in the world of Transart Institute. Although it is officially called “Summer Residency”, and was the first of three summer residencies I will be part of in my journey through this world.

What is a “Kur”?

Simply put, in English, it is a cure, a course of treatment intended to help a person recover from an illness. One often speaks of “taking” a cure. It can involve going to a special place, away from the everyday environment in which the illness occurred, drinking or bathing in special, mineral-rich, healing waters; receiving treatments involving exercises or massages; even psychotherapy has often been referred to as a “talking cure”. In non-Germanic culture the “Kur” has often been misunderstood, or misrepresented as a luxurious trip to a spa or resort paid for by the health insurance companies or the state. And for some, this could be the case. But really the emphasis culturally and historically is on the therapeutic nature of the Kur to heal both body and soul. It is considered a vital part of maintaining health and balance in life. It is not a vacation. It is work. Work to heal, gain strength, recover and progress.

This is how I felt the three weeks in Berlin were for me:  a Kur. I went to Berlin to work on healing both my body and soul from a long period of withdrawal into my life and my studio. I went to Berlin prepared for the work I know I needed to do there; work which I knew would continue long after I returned to my life and my studio. The preparation was a mental preparation for the changes which lay ahead of me; it was for the work I would be doing addressing my art and myself, and the relationship between these two.

So along with my clothes, toiletries, a few art supplies, iPhone and MacBook, I packed what would be the primary tool I knew I would need during my stay in Berlin and beyond:  openness. 

I went to Berlin open to whatever would come my way. Of the things I found that came my way much was not necessarily new or even unexpected, rather what came my way was often that which I had misplaced, forgotten about, knew and acknowledged knowing but no longer thought to apply to myself and my creative practice. Yes, I did acquire much that is new: information, reading suggestions, practical and technical suggestions and advice, and most importantly new friends and colleagues. But it is the tool of openness which enabled me to encounter the new and bring it with me back into myself and my studio along with those misplaced, forgotten and ignored things.

August-September 2014 Gallery

Before going back to Providence I want to address here two pieces I worked on while in Berlin.  The first piece I will call Berlin One. It is the piece that I began using the pieces of painted canvas I had brought with me to Berlin, wrapped in a piece of fabric an acquaintance had given me from a trip she had made in the winter to Ghana. The purpose of bringing these pieces of canvas to Berlin was in order to use them in the workshop I was signed up to take part in during the second week of the residency, “The World As Sculpture”. We were asked to bring a piece that we considered finished, but that could be added to. A piece which could be passed on to another workshop participant which could be subtracted from. In my studio I have many pieces, small canvases and works on paper, which I could have brought with me. And in the month leading up to my departure I did think about what I might bring. But it was really in the last hours before departing that I grabbed those small, unstretched canvases, wrapped them in that piece of cloth and threw them into my suitcase. Were they finished? Yes. But I also admit, if it is still in my studio it is fair game to go back to at a later date and be redeveloped. I was open to whatever these pieces might become. But I wasn’t really consciously thinking of what they could become, or of the Ghanaian cloth becoming more than just a wrapping to keep them together, clean and safe in the bottom of my suitcase.

Then I got to Berlin, and that first day was reminded of the Open Frame Exhibition the following Saturday. I hadn’t thought about it, don’t even recall seeing the email about it. But in the spirit of being open to whatever came my way I decided to create a piece out of those pieces for the exhibit. So I began by unrolling them, laying them out, taping them to the wall, adding the cloth to the mix. It took me about four days before I picked up a knife and began to cut them apart. Then I began adding some ink and watercolor paintings on paper which I had been working on into the mix. But still I had to think of how to hang the piece, how to hold it together. On Friday evening I went to OBI to pick up a hammer, packing tape and pin-nails. I knew the piece would be temporary, because it would still be the basis for the assignments in the workshop the following week. And this is how Berlin One was formed. It existed in this state for two days. The following week I spent a couple of hours adding a roll of film-tape with marker lines drawn onto it to the mix, while at the same time removing it from the wall and the felt pad nails by which it was hung. The piece moved onto another workshop participant who took it further, altering it by turning it into and onto itself, removing and reforming it in a way that I would have found hard to do myself...but it worked. And it showed me this is one of the ways I can, should and need to use that tool of openness in approaching my work if I really want to take it beyond the point I have been at. I began to rethink what can be paint, what can create a mark, a line, and how a painting could be read as a painting, yet not be bound by the traditional definition, the traditional material, yet still remain within the tradition.

I had done this before, about 20 years ago. I used materials such as candy as paint. I constructed paintings not out of single stretched canvas, but out of many pieces of different materials, sometimes in blurring the line which some use to distinguish painting from sculpture. But I had stopped. Why? I don’t know, but I did realize I needed to go back and find out. But I don’t believe in going back without the intent to move forward at the same time. Going back is not to the same materials, or even approach. Going back is to the openness of exploration and play.

In the final days of the Berlin residency I put together this piece which I call Berlin Two. It is a collage of various drawings and paintings on paper I did evenings during the residency in response to what I was thinking, hearing, seeing and discussing. Other bits and pieces of paper found their way into the collage which was then “glazed” together by packing tape. While it is less sculptural and more pictorial than Berlin One, what I was attempting to do with this piece was to paint a painting without paint. To paint a painting that despite its rectilinear picture plane was not on a single piece of paper or canvas, the rectangle has been created by the glazing together of many bits paper with the tape. And I was trying to do it responsively using drawings and paintings that I had created in a direct, automatic approach to what I was experiencing on a daily basis.

In the various presentations and discussions regarding my work during the residency what often came up were issues of control, working from a concept more than in response to a concept. One of the main questions I have in regards to my first year project is how to make the work I create around this idea readable to the viewer on a more emotional level. A big part of this for me is going to be by putting more of my own feelings and responses to myself into my work. Again, this goes back to using the tool of openness to reveal more of myself emotionally in my work.

In my final draft of my first year project proposal I changed the title to “Self Portrait of a Female with Epilepsy”. While thinking and walking around Berlin during the Sunday prior to the final week of the residency I began thinking about what I had been saying about the work I had been presenting throughout the residency. I came to the realization that much of the paintings I had been making over the past four years, the stories I had been trying to tell, were in a very traditional sense a form of portraiture. While some of these paintings were attempts at self portraiture I realized to make the idea, the feelings behind my project of the exploration of Epilepsy and Women, readable by the viewer, I would need to explore the subject by revealing myself as the subject/object of the work: I would need to make the studio portion of the project a self portrait.

And now finally back to Providence and my studio I continued on this journey by beginning a loose-leaf journal as well as working in my sketchbook. I also rediscovered my sewing machine. I am a horrible seamstress, but the repetitive mark of the needle piercing the paper, the line made by the threads, usually broken in my case, combined as a stand-alone component or a functional element holding together layers of a piece have been a welcome addition to my practical vocabulary.  In addition to the sewing element I continued using tape as a glaze. I focused more on paper, and how the mark can be embedded into the paper. Through velum and tracing paper, cloth and collaged papers I added additional layers to these pieces.

Searching through previous works I returned to images such as the labyrinth. The labyrinth calls forth the path which has a clear destination, but also recalls the structure of the brain.

I also found an envelope with words and letters I had cut out of magazines. I began playing with incorporating these into some of the pieces.

The second weekend I was back in Providence I left again. I went to view the exhibit “One Lump, or Two” of Amy Sillman’s paintings, drawing and video work at the Hessel Museum at Bard College. Prior to visiting the exhibit I had read the catalogue, along with additional writings and interviews with the artist on her website. I have seen various exhibits of her work over the years, but what I found fascinating about this particular exhibit was the way it revealed her ability to speak across multiple media and still have it be a single language.

In addition to the time of re-exploration in the studio, I have begun reading. I am not going to write about what I have been reading in this post, because I wanted to focus on the studio work and what is behind its development in relation to the residency. However I will bring the readings and their relation to the studio work’s development into my next blog post, as then I will have more to say about the relationship which is developing. Until then...