Our second week in action, and so much has happened.  Our four residents solidified as a group this week, beginning to  collaborate, exploring the town town of Pentwater, learning from each other, and preparing for our showcase event, A Pleasant Evening.
Each day we spent long hours in the studio, quietly working on projects, laughing really really loud, making plans and hashing out ideas, and sharing a meal together at dinner.
On Wednesday, we had our first weekly meeting of Drawing Club, where we all met in the classroom, and drew whatever the heck we wanted for a few hours.  We held a contest to draw the new banner for our website, and Mary was the big winner.  She is doing amazing work giving our website a makeover.

Natalie continued to spend long hours at the drawing desk, making good use of the times she broke away from it with trips to the beach and the thrift stores and the Pentwater library.  She has been through every book in our studio library, scouring it for interesting photographs to draw in her style of collaged-together imagery; with collected things coming together in one composition that tells us a story that is still kind of a mystery.  She also picks up objects from around the studio to draw and add to her sketchbook archive of illustrations.
Her contribution to A Pleasant Evening will be illustrations of each line of one of Eijah's meadow songs.  She was inspired by our field trip to the Shelby Gem Factory on Saturday, and has promised to draw a portrait of Larry, the gem scientist, and one of his man-made gemstones.  
Natalie also knocked our socks off at the impromptu pizza-eating contest during our field trip to local curiosity, Country Dairy, and their all-you-can-eat/drink pizza and chocolate milk buffet.

Amanda made several kiln-loads of work this week, finishing a stack of bowls to bisque fire and starting on glaze tests in the evenings while she threw more bowls in her outdoor studio during sunny hours.  Early on Saturday Amanda gave our group a lesson in pottery.  She taught us how to wedge our clay, center it on the wheel, and control and coax the wet clay into a hollow form.  We have two wheels at the studio, that have never been used there, so it was very empowering to have them both set up and everyone giving it a try.
Monday morning, Amanda visited the Pentwater farmer's market for the first time,  introducing herself to the local organic farmers and making plans for the dinner she will serve in her bowls at A Pleasant Evening.

This week, Elijah maintained his daily practices; keeping a dream journal, writing one song and one poem daily, and shooting 100 free throws in the late afternoons.  Tallying his misses and makes has shown that he shoots hoops like the pros.  With 55% on his very worst day, several days hovering around 70%, and 79% on his best day, Elijah steps up to the free throw line with a precise routine of bouncing and shooting and counting.  For a person with injuries and chronic pain, this is an endourance piece.  It is a meditation, repetitive and pointed, a daily challenge in which Elijah learns about himself and how me moves in the world.
With time-based and ephemeral works, Elijah documents his findings in three small journals; he is also leaving his mark on our space in permanent and visible ways.  He measured out and painted the lines on our parking lot asphalt, to turn it into a proper half-court.  And he began a new project in the meadow with two dying birch trees.  He has wrapped and braced them and is making a patchwork flag that will be hung from the brace he rigged up.  He has also set up a few more zones around the studio this week- a painting zone on the classroom wall, and a recording zone where he is working out the music for his Meadowtations songs.  He records the songs in the meadow, then again in the studio, and will make another more finished recording when he is back home.  We are hoping he will leave us with a CD for our zine library and are looking forward to his concert in the meadow.

Alexandra Difiglia was our exciting new arrival on Saturday afternoon, joining us from Grand Rapids, MI.  After her orientation tour, we spent the rest of the day field-tripping, so she had a chance to play before she got to work.  Her plans are to make a pie every other day; research postcard correspondence between Pentwater tourists and their friends and families back home; and make blankets for the resident bunks- just like summer camp.
This is our third summer residency, but it is the first time I have seen fruit on the trees and the brambles in the meadow.  It is serendipitous that we have a pie-maker in residence, and mulberries, thimbleberries, raspberries, blackberries, and chokecherries growing out back.

At our weekly slide talk on Sunday, Amanda and John presented their work to a receptive crowd.  We once again had guests come from Grand Rapids for the talk, three car-fulls this time, and visiting friends helped John bleach his hair for the special occasion.  John spent the week working on watercolor paintings, collages, a sculpture sketch with sticks and string, and piecing together playlists to share with the studio.  John also spent a lot of time making us giggle.  
In his slide talk John shared work from college, and more recent explorations in paint, drawing, collage, video, and sound.  He is always representing light and dark, the good and evil that are in everything;  and working intuitively, he doesn't feel pressed to over-explain his art.  We all got it.
For his community project, John DJ-ed a dance party for everyone after the slide talk.  Our friend Mike was in attendance and they had some time to jam on a keyboard.  John's freedom to work on whatever comes to him, day and night, is an inspiring force at the studio.  Our group of residents have been so studious that they forget to make dinner.  They have been flexible and engaged, and have brought out the best in our workspace.  With our first group leaving this week, there is so much more to do.

Our next slide talk is tomorrow, and we are so excited to present two of our resident artists, John and Amanda.


John Alexander Holland was born in Interlochen, MI, a small town in between two lakes.  He graduated from the Interlochen Arts Academy where his parents taught music and he studied drawing, painting and photography.  He went on to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where he studied Installation, sound, drawing, painting, mixed media collage and photography. 
In 2006 he formed the group, SALEM with Heather Pineda and Jack Donoghue.  The group was known for its innovative sound, combining trap style beats with dark droning guitars and keyboards.  SALEM toured Europe, the US, and played shows all over the world.
He is currently living in Traverse City, MI and is putting out a book under the name 2SPIRIT with Heather Pineda of their combined photography. _  John will share some of his earlier work, recent video work, and the paintings he has been making at Shared Space.

Amanda Jayne Kennedy studied sculpture at Kansas City Art institute, in Kansas City Missouri,  and received her BFA from the California College of the Arts and Crafts, in Oakland, California.   With experience as an assistant for many large-scale sculptural projects as well as meticulous projects in wood and clay, her work draws on the practice of fine craft.  Her careful and skilled hand meet a found-object DIY aesthetic, to make a unique combination in materials from fabric to driftwood to plastic refuse.
In the past year, Amanda has revived an interest in pottery, and is fine-tuning her throwing technique daily at the studio.  Part of her creative practice is teaching others, and we are looking forward to learning more from her talk.
    

Our 2014 Resident Artist Season is underway.  We have four resident artists that have brought the studio to life in the past few days, and we are looking forward to the fun increasing at an exponential rate.

After a long day for everyone, Mary and I welcomed three weary travelers to Pentwater, and their first dinner at Shared Space Studio.  With the Field Trip Field Guide in hand, they toured the building and the town and watched the sunset over Lake Michigan from the end of the pier. 

This is our first summer housing the resident artists at the studio, and it feels like an important step towards our future plans.  Residents can easily work day and night, and take responsibility for the space as their home.

Amanda Kennedy came to us from Oakland, California, and got right to work the first night, setting up her outdoor pottery studio.  With 200 lbs of clay to work with, Amanda has spent each day throwing pots on the wheel in the shade.  With two weeks at the studio, she plans to throw as many bowls as she can, fire and glaze fire them, and use them to serve guests at the community dinner party she will co-host at the studio next week.  A Pleasant Evening will be a social event showcasing our residents' work, including Amanda's pots, Elijah's songs, and Alex's pies.  Each guest will bring home their bowl to keep, and all of the food will be sourced from small local farms.  Amanda wants to celebrate the personal interactions that happen between vendors and shoppers at farm markets, and between strangers sharing a meal together.  The title of the event is in reference to A Pleasant Afternoon, an annual celebration of the infamous one-page newspaper, Mears Newz, in our neighboring town of Mears.  Our past residents have been fascinated and inspired by the author of this paper, local historical hero Swift Lathers, so it seems fitting to honor his influence once again at Shared Space.

Natalie Woodlock, originally Australian, but joining us from New Orleans, is using her residency time to go back to an illustration project that has been hibernating for the last year and a half.  She is drawing one drawing for every one or two sentences of a short story written by Elyza Touzeau, titled At World's End.  The black and white drawings are thick with imagery, as her interpretation of each sentence expands the written word; abstracting and embellishing the course of the story. 
She has settled in to her desk and spent the greater part of each day going over source material and the earlier drawings for the book, and mapping out new images.  Natalie also advocates for daily beach trips, nudging the other residents get out of the studio for a quick dip.

Elijah Jensen-Lindsey, from Nampa Idaho, has taken on a slew of projects, setting up work zones around the studio, inside and out.  We found him Saturday morning, playing a glockenspiel that he wedged between two trees in the meadow.  He offers the metallophone zone to anyone wishing to make a prayer or a song, or call out in bell tones to the rest of the meadow.  Elijah is writing one song each day, a series of 'Meadowtations' that he will perform for the guests at A Pleasant Evening.  He is also writing a poem each day, and a little desk and chair have popped up outside to serve as the poem zone.  In the little sew zone Elijah sews photographs to poems he types out by typewriter, and binds the handmade books he is writing in. 
Elijah is also spending time in the hoop zone, perfecting his free-throws. 

Each day he shoots 100 free-throws from the 3-point line, and tallies hits and misses.  Each tally is converted into a percentage score, and he is aiming for the 100% perfect day. 
On our trip to the hardware store, Elijah bought some supplies to paint the parking lot with yellow lines, mapping out a regulation-size basketball court (or at least half of one).  He also has begun accumulating wood and wooden objects to build a permanent percussion instrument between the two pines for future residents and meadow wanderers.

Our fourth resident, John Alexander Holland, joined us Sunday afternoon, just in time to help us set up for the weekly slide talk.  We are glad to have him here, working at a desk piled high with source materials for drawings and collage.  He rounds out our group as he and Natalie work at their desks and he and Elijah collaborate in the meadow.  A dedicated DJ and sound-maker, John has already made one mixed CD for our zine library, and we know there are more on the way.  A Northern Michigan native, John is ready to go swimming, day or night.

Sunday evening, we had our first slide talk of the summer season featuring a pair of resident artists.  Our Pentwater regulars showed up, as well as a few new faces and a full car-load of artist friends from Grand Rapids.
Elijah showed images of his paintings, installation, and photographs from his life.  He reminded us of the thin line between life and death, between meaning and meaningless.  He told us we are all here on earth with a chance to live a creative life, to make things.  He played a meadow song and projected plans for the new hoop court.
Natalie wowed the crowd with her video, combining stop-motion animation and Super 8 film.  She shared several collaborative and craft-intensive projects, including her Love Letters Anonymous project, where she has collected found and submitted love letters, in original, copied, and read-out-loud formats.  She set up a beautiful merch table with her screen-printed zines and posters, celebrating such cherished subjects as Dolly Parton, Twin Peaks, and gemstones.

After the talk, and another slow sunset, our residents got to know our guests from Grand Rapids.  As we gathered round the campfire, we felt the more the merrier, out in the dark meadow.  Rose Beerhorst, a resident artist from last summer, and Ryan Greaves, Mary's collaborator on the Cabin Time residency, were among the group, and we hope to have many returning guests this year.  This is truly a shared space.

Today is the big day!  Our first four resident artists arrive this evening, just in time for dinner, having traveled from Oakland CA, New Orleans LA, Boise ID, and Traverse City MI.  We have already had an epic weekend at the studio last week, with a sunny beach meeting, a total studio makeover, and our first slide talk of the season.

Karen West, a traveling nature photographer, has been "camping" at Shared Space this summer and last, in her little red trailer.  Her and her partner live out of the trailer, criss-crossing the country to document the splendors of our National Parks and National Monuments.  She mad us laugh, and made us gasp, with her presentation this past Sunday.  Her passion and knowledge of the American landscape is evident in her work, but hearing her funny stories and reflective writing really brought  her portfolio to life.  Learn more about her here: www.karenewestphotography.com

Once we get started, we just can't stop, so for the next five Sundays, we are hosting slide talks every week.  This Sunday, we present two resident artists, Elijah Jensen-Lindsey and Natalie Woodlock.

Natalie is currently working on a set of collector cards that showcase 50 North American and Australian-based circus, burlesque and sideshow performers, for which she received an Australia Council for the Arts Young and Emerging Skills and Arts Development grant. Referencing similar cards in circulation in the early 1900s that featured legendary freak acts from the worlds of sideshow and the midway, these swap cards aim to showcase the contemporary “freak” acts from the revived traditions of circus, burlesque and sideshow, whose acts transgress current notions of gender identity, ideals of physical beauty and critique notions of the ‘exotic’ and ‘other’.  In 2008 she completed the collaborative project 52 Pick Up, a deck of truck stop-themed playing cards that featured 54 roadside-themed pin-up photographs of Sydney-based burlesque, circus and performance artists.
She is also currently working on the forthcoming 70-page illustrated story At World's End. This story is set inside a mental institution in the 1940s and explores the real and imaginary worlds of one patient. It is a collaboration with writer Elyza Touzeau.

Elijah will be joining us at the end of his summer tour from Idaho to Michigan, performing as one of his many musical and artistic guises, With Child. 
As Elijah approaches a subject, his materials change drastically.  Each new installation, song, collage, and painting is another attempt at communication through yet another language.  Elijah has been a creative organizer of events in his community for years, and in the last few years has continually shown new work at exhibitions in his hometown and beyond,  received NEA funding for his projects, and taken on running a collective art space.  This will be his first residency and we are so excited to see what he does.

Amber Phelps Bondaroff  // Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada

Amber Phelps Bondaroff is a maker, a mover and spatial navigator. Digging deeply into small yet significant details of surrounding environments, she sculpts situations that enable acts of shared making and being. Working across various disciplines, Amber has strong inclinations towards found and re-used textiles; re-sewing and weaving them with equal parts performance, baking, map making, drawing, moving image and sound.

amberpb.weebly.com

Scott Slade Wagner // Oakland, CA and Roscommon, MI


Scotty Slade is a human artist. 

He Says:
"Making art is a practice that helps me connect with my ancient life blood and converse with other humans about our dissociation from the natural world. Performance and interactive installation art have been the most fruitful and rewarding manifestations of my practice. My work seeks to channel and expound upon the inherent meanings of or within the mediums through which the artwork is created. "


www.scottyslade.com

Nick Lally // Oakland, CA
Nick Lally is an artist and computer programmer interested in digital media, collaboration, participation, radical political theory, mathematics, education, space, and bicycles. He lives and works in Oakland, California.

www.nicklally.com

Alex Difiglia // Grand Rapids MI

alexandra difiglia is a student of the art of preservation. using jars, cameras, words, printing presses and butter to capture that floating on air full of gold feeling. to save it until midwinter. to crack open over a game of cribbage.

she wants to see you when you wake up in the morning. to hand you a cup of black coffee and listen to you tell stories until the sun has risen enough to go swimming.

she is a student of pattern and the magic that lies in its discovery. conducting sociological research and potlucks to discover how communities intersect and the ways in which strangers transform into soul mates. to sew it all into a quilt. to place over a freshly made bed.

she wants to pour it into a butter crust and bake it at 350 degrees for forty-five minutes. to see the juices blather over the lattice top and not allow it to cool so that the ice cream melts in pools as it touches the first slice.

                                                           www.sparrowcat.com