Another week of first-times and creative tangents at Shared Space Studio...
Our 2012 Resident Artist, master-composter / film-maker / radical geographer Amanda Matles, came to visit us for the weekend.  She got in some beach time and admired the compost system she set up for us last year, as it is running smoothly.  She also was reunited with our new resident Brian Perkins, whom she graduated from high school with at Interlochen Arts Academy, back in 2000.  On a sunny afternoon, the artists sat out on the knit blanket Elodie Goupil made us last year, and Jeff gave Amanda and Brian matching tattoos- the first and second bars of music from a Bauhaus composition by Heinrich Siegfried Bormann.

Aside from getting his first tattoo ever, Brian was a busy man this week.  Upon his arrival, he set out to write an outline for a new screenplay in ten days- he finished it in eight.  Brian used a set of Swedish film stills from the 60's and 70's as inspiration for a story about a missing dog.  He spent his mornings hand writing in a small book as the story came to him, and when he finished, he typed the text and formatted it into a small book.  Inspired by some very particular record cover art, Brian sponge-painted paper in red and yellow, and cut out images to paste to the grey cover.  The piece is called Musical Chairs, based on the idea that the actors in the beginning play a game of musical chairs to decide what part they will play- reflecting the roles we are given in life.   At his slide talk on Sunday, Brian explained in depth the process of shooting a film, and how the accesibility and cost of the medium has changed drastically in the relatively short time he has been working.  He showed us projects he has written, directed, and made animations for, and screened a rough cut of his current project- his first feature film.  Before he left to go home to Seattle, he made a big impression by bravely riding The Zipper at the county fair, and pouring his heart out on mic at our studio Karaoke party.

Jeffrey Kriksciun was hard at work in the studio this week, finishing the drawings for a zine that will be published in Glasgow, and a zine that he will publish himself here for the new Zine Library.  Between sessions of carefully drawing out illustrations in pencil, then just as carefully inking them in, Jeff played with clay in the ceramics room, making small sculptures of a face, a pair of pants, and a cinder block with an orange on it.  It seems that Jeff's facinations and sense of humor come through in every material he works with, and he will work with anything.

Rose Beerhorst continued quilting and crocheting  during her last week in residence.  She taught me how to cut up old shirts and crochet them into a rug, using Fair Isle patterning in an intuitive style.  I ended up with a crocheted basket and a whole list of new projects in my head.  She made a rug for Brian to take back to Seattle with him, in only black, white, and grey as he requested.  After staying with us for over three weeks, Rose left early Monday morning with Brian to go home to Grand Rapids.  We are lucky to have her come back this Saturday, to sell her rugs and other crafts at our fundraising event- Art, Goods, and Goodies. 

Power-resident Aliya Bonar arrived on Friday, just in time to get oriented and spend her first evening at the Oceana County Fair riding the ferris wheel.  This is Aliya's first time in Michigan, she comes to us from Queens, NY, where she is part of the art co-operative Flux Factory.  
As a Florida native, Aliya is on a beach mission, and it has been balmy enough to make a few trips.  She gave our audience a chance to interact with her slide talk on Sunday, asking us all to fill out a nametag describing our ideal selves.  She shared her work with Powersuits, the outfit you will wear to be your most powerful self.  As a buisiness lady, Aliya loves organizing communities and laying out elaborate spreadsheets, and she has recently been involved in youth programs in New York, teaching self-empowered sewing and radical fashion design.  

Aliya is a great edition to the studio, and will be our last arriving resident, as our planned eighth resident, Amber Phelps-Bondaroff had to cancel.  We hope Amber will join us next year.
With one week left, Jeff and Aliya are the big stars of the studio.  We are excited to see their projects come to fruition and collaborate with them on our upcoming fundraising event.

Once again, we are happy to introduce two stellar resident artists who will wow us with their work this Sunday, August 25th, at 6pm:
Brian Perkins is a filmmaker who finds himself living in Seattle, Washington after studying experimental film at School of Visual Arts in New York, and University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.  He has directed music videos, shorts, animations, and most recently his first feature film.  
His online project, The Watching Patch, is the moniker for projects influenced by 1920's Eastern European photo-montage and 1970's American children's books and television programming. His collaborators are in Seattle, Milwaukee, and New York City. Brian produces, writes, directs, and designs the artwork on the site; has hosted his web series here; and maintains a blog that chronicles his process and current projects.
Brian arrived on August 16th, and has already received his first ever tattoo, watched sunset at the beach, and written over half of the outline for a new screenplay.  He will be at Shared Space through August 26th.

Aliya Bonar is an artist, community organizer and event producer based in New York City. Her art engages individuals - their bodies, their stories, their memories, their human-ness - to explore how we interact and engage inside of an increasingly branded, technological, and orchestrated world. She has worked with Creative Time, Flux Factory, Elsewhere Collaborative, The Wassaic Project, the Laundromat Project, and the Eileen Fisher Leadership Institute to teach workshops and produce events that engage everyday people in making authentic connections.


Aliya's interactive installations and events are exaggerated versions of vaguely familiar worlds. They invite viewers to step outside of reality and share beyond normal limitations and rules. Her work mixes silly and serious, universal and individual, domestic and public to produce hot-pink and glitter-encrusted business meetings and power suits. With earnest juxtapositions of the personal and professional, she enables viewers to become participants and try on new ways of connecting – like trying on a sharply tailored, handmade suit.  Aliya's work asks what your most courageous self would do, say, and wear.  The “PowerSuit” your most courageous self wears is a personal talisman, relating to your body and history. It is a reminder of your biggest dreams.
Aliya arrives August 23rd and will be in residence with us through September 1st.

Another fun-filled, jam-packed week at the residency, beginning with an interactive event hosted by Sarah Haas on her traveling stage.  Sarah's community engagement project, titled Home Share, invited anyone to come on stage and tell stories about intimating domestic space.  The first session in the afternoon drew all of the resident artists out of the studio to read, relax, talk, and listen.  Local Frank Galante showed up and told us exciting tales of living in New York City for 58 years, before relocating to Pentwater three years ago.  He brought two of his 18 guitars and switched places with us, playing on the ground to an audience on stage.  The evening session of Home Share brought a group of female friends from Ludington, and as it got dark they got cozy inside of the trailer, laughing and talking in a loosely directed conversation about homes and memories.
Sarah left the next day, and we were sad to see her pull away with her trailer in tow, but happy for her to be on her way in the next episode in her touring adventure.  She is traveling with her project through the Midwest and into the Southwest this winter.  She is raising money for the trip on Indigogo, and will keep us up to date on her Raw Art blog.
While in residence, Sarah also completed a chapbook of writings and drawings made here and elsewhere, finished a glass mosaic to be installed in our meadow sculpture park, learned the useful basics of Photoshop, and of course she made friends.

Our west-coast Sarah, Sarah Applebaum, worked to finish her community project this week as well.  She found a stock-pile of white stones at one end of our property and decided to move them out to the meadow to improve on our homestead fire pit.  The stones are aesthetic as well as practical, creating a safely zone around the pit, snubbing any stray cinders that may float out.  She also made a series of small clay pieces to be installed among the stones in the pit. 
On a windy afternoon, Sarah and Rose and I ventured into the Silver Lake Dunes, to climb and tumble and shoot a video dramatizing a lone wanderer's plight in the desert.

Sarah was also the first to take advantage of our resident tattoo artist, Jeffrey Kriksciun.  As he shared in his slide talk on Sunday, he is new to tattooing, but it is something he wants to do for the rest of his life.  Relating to his illustrative work that explores taboo and rebellious subjects, the action of tattooing is also repetitive and rythmic, relating to the abstract side of his practice that relies on a meditative state of creation.

Jeff's tattoos permanently imprint his signature drawing style on friends and strangers, and for Sarah this little "XO" on her arm will be a mark of her time here.  We said farewell to Sarah on Friday, after eleven days in residency.

Jeff realized his community project this week as well, building a sculptural shelf from found wood to house our studio's collection of self-published materials.  The Zine Library is a new edition to our main room, and we already have limited edition publications on the shelf from former residents Paul Richardson, Mary Rothlisberger, Marlee Grace, Josh Kermiet, and of course Sarah Haas.  Jeff has added a couple of his own zines with comics, photography, and painting, and will be completing more while in residence.  He explained a bit of zine culture to us in his talk on Sunday, describing the collectable booklets as a type of currency, and as a container in which he can organize and distribute his own work in pencil, paint, sculpture, and collage.

Our favorite bow-tie wearing resident, Grant Heaps, left us this week as well.  In his last week in residence, Grant took up the habit of riding a bike into Pentwater to have coffee at our small-town cafe, Good Stuffs.  There is a tradition there of the over-50 crowd meeting to gossip in the mornings- the women at one table and the men at another.  Grant was able to integrate with the locals there as well as maintain his own daily tradition of working at a cafe in the morning.  
Along with stitching his ever-growing fabric mural, Grant took on a project for the local Bra Art fundraiser.  Artists are asked to decorate a plain bra to be auctioned off in an event that will benefit breast cancer research and awareness.  Grant integrated pine needles and scraps of fabric with tight stitching on a piece dedicated to those he las lost to cancer.  
Grant headed home to Toronto on Sunday morning, after DJing a studio dance party, starring in our impromptu Karaoke night, and throwing us a pizza party on his last night in town.

Rose Beerhorst wowed the crowd at our Sunday slide talk this week.  She shared her experience of being un-schooled in a family of eight, with strongly artistic temperaments.  She chronicled the beginning of her artistic career, from collaborating with her family to distinguishing work of her own.  Growing a small business with the singular goal of supporting herself with her creative work, Rose has made a place for herself in Grand Rapids and online as a unique maker of sustainable and comforting housewares.  With the rag rugs perfected, her next adventure is in quilting, and developing a way to efficiently produce and market patchwork quilts.  She finished her latest quilt this week, and started a new piece of patchwork, as well as completing two rag rugs and capturing her process in a time-lapse video.  Rose will be in residence with us for one more week of crafting and play.

It was a week of saying goodbye to three resident artists, but we were happy to say hello to new resident, Brian Perkins, who arrived from Seattle on Friday.  The landscape here is familiar to Brian, as he is a native of Wisconsin and went to arts high school in Northern Michigan.  He is taking a break from post-production on his first feature film, and came here with a plan to write the outline for a completely new screenplay in ten days.  In the first two days, Brian got to know the town and connected with Grant on obsessive interests in film and music.  In the studio he has found a niche, typing on his laptop in the big room, quietly writing while Rose crochets, and Jeff draws.  Brian is keeping a log of his time here on his own blog: thewatchingpatch.blogspot.com

Join us Sunday, August 18th at 6:00pm for a slide talk by our two featured artists:

Jeffrey Kriksciun was raised in various stops around the country; as an adult he was based out of San Francisco, then Portland Oregon, and for the last five years he has lived and worked in Stockholm, Sweden.  Working with any materials he comes across, Jeffrey is mostly self-taught, while taking art classes here and there along the way.  He is currently focusing on self-publishing drawing zines and tattooing.
Jeffrey arrived August 11th, and will be in residence until September 2nd.  Of his work he says:

"Life and everything that encompasses it, is weird.
Taboos, perversions, chaos, technology, simplicity, peace, love; it's hard to find an uninteresting subject.
Our thoughts are ancient. The way we process and interpret them remains a mystery. Primal instincts embedded in plastic.
Through my work, I try to bring to surface the absurdity in the mundane, highlighting ideas that make us who we are, good and bad. Creation as coping mechanism."

Rose Beerhorst was born and raised in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Rose's parents Rick & Brenda Beerhorst are both visual artists and unschooled Rose along with her five younger siblings. Rose was involved in the family business of making and selling art. She started selling her own work to high-end toy stores at the age of 14, when her family lived a year in Brooklyn NY in 2005.

Rose chose to skip Art School and has been supporting herself through her art and craft since 2011. Notable sales include six rugs sold to Urban Outfitters, and a series of custom puppets for the National Czech & Slovak Museum. Rose and table-mate Rachel Mckay, have been voted "Best In Show" at the UICA Holiday Art Market consecutively 2011- 2012.  Rose sells her work on Etsy and locally under the name "Brave Hand Textiles"

She arrived at Shared Space on August 2nd, and will be in residence through the 26th.

Sarah Applebaum joined us on Tuesday, coming from Oakland, California on her first trip ever to Michigan.  She got a chance to tour around Grand Rapids for most of her first day, visiting the studio of macrame master Sally England, and doing a little shopping at Have Company.
At the studio she started to experiment with clay, and after an evening of tending the fire pit at our homestead in the meadow, she decided to make new fire pit decor with her small ceramic sculptures and gathered stones.
On Sunday she graced us with what she called her best artist talk ever, and the crowd was smitten with her psychedelic and sensory installation work, influenced by her dreams and meditations.

Our other Sarah, Sarah Haas, was working studiously this week at writing, drawing, and compiling a chap book to add to our library of self-published goodies by resident artists.  With her charming dog Sugar, she has been walking the back trails of our surrounding woodlands, and discovering hidden places.  She also took the opportunity to learn how to sail a 28-foot sailboat, and admired the boat for it's efficient use of compact space. 
Sarah is hosting an interactive event on her mobile stage this week.  Home Share is an open forum for visitors to share their stories and anecdotes about home.  Inspired by The Poetics of Space and her own self-contained traveling home, she aims to start conversations about how we perceive domestic space and form ideas of home.

All four residents made a field trip to the small town of Hart, to visit the Hart Historic District.  After a two-hour tour of  animatronic dolls, taxidermied animals, tiny pianos, hundreds of tools and cultural artifacts, and historic buildings preserved and transferred to the site from all over town, our cameras were full of images and we were astonished at the dedication of the volunteers who have built and maintain the collections.
Rose Beerhorst diligently stitched on her quilt all week, and punctuated the monotony by making one of her signature rag rugs.  She uses old clothing and bedding, cut into strips and wound into balls, to crochet her durable designs.  We will be arranging a workshop where she teaches the technique.  We are also shooting a time-lapse video of her process in the meadow next week.

Among all other adventures, this week was Pentwater's 83rd Annual Homecoming Celebration, and for Shared Space, that meant participating in a sand sculpture contest and a parade.  Amy Johnquest, The Banner Queen, was here as a resident artist during homecoming last year, and decided to come back as our official Homecoming Director.  She painted an official Shared Space Studio banner to present in the parade, joining our work party at the studio and making friends with this year's crew of residents.

Eliza made signs to represent the triad of priorities at the studio, and we all worked on brainstorming ideas for the sand sculpture on Friday.  Amy lead us to glory in the contest, and we went home with a 3rd place trophy to join our 2nd place trophy from last year.  The next day we dressed up and joined family and friends in goofy hats to march in the Grand Parade- the biggest annual event in Pentwater.  Our first year participating in the parade, we set out to promote the studio, and we all had rather surreal and impressive experiences that will no doubt lead to more elaborate preparations next year....

Grant Heaps continued to add to his ever-growing fabric-mosaic mural this week, picking and choosing bits of fabric from the share pile to add to the sentimental pastiche of reclaimed fibers.
He wowed the crowd along with Sarah at our Sunday slide talk, giving us a peek at his obsessive collections, and explaining his oversized quilts, tedious yet hilarious Halloween costumes, and collaborative sewing relationship with his mother.

Our fifth resident artist, Jeffrey Kriksciun, missed the hub-bub at the parade, but got to town just in time to witness the spectacular fireworks at the beach on Saturday night.
He plans to make one or more drawing and painting zines during his stay, and has been busy reading books from our studio library and drawing in his sketchbook.

All and all, it was a very stimulating and exhausting week!

Our second week in the Visiting Artist Slide Talk series will feature two artists who make up their own rules and systems in art-making.  They are both inventive in technique, diverse in subject matter, and confident in their approach to everyday life as a creative being.   They reside on opposite sides of the continent, and we are so happy to bring them together here, at Shared Space Studio, 6pm Sunday August 11th.

Sarah Applebaum arrived in Michigan, for her first time ever, on Tuesday morning.  After an eating, shopping, art-seeing orientation in Grand Rapids, she has been soaking up the local scenery in Pentwater, playing with clay, and collecting flowers.  She is in residence through August 16th, and is planning a mind-altering Power Point presentation for Sunday.

 Applebaum lives and works in Oakland, California. Working with symbolic and metaphoric imagery, her work bridges the gap between the psychological and the psychedelic.  Internationally recognized, her work has been exhibited from Milan to Reykjavik and featured in numerous books and publications throughout China, North and South America and Europe. She is self-taught as an artist.

Grant Heaps was born in Toronto, where he studied fashion. After designing, producing, wholesaling and retailing a line of women's shirts for a couple of years he ventured into working at some of Toronto's large scale theatre productions. Eventually he found himself the assistant wardrobe co-odinator for The National Ballet Of Canada, which he has now been doing for about 20 years. When his mother made him a quilt for his new bed out of tie samples he had plucked from the trash his mind became overly excited by the idea of making quilts. Playing with simple patters he ventured into a large project of making a series of non-functional quilts which tell the story of the emotional life of a person watching a theatrical production. This never ending piece which grows slowly and will eventually form one huge picture collage of pop songs and emotional ups and downs and personal obsessions and has taken over his life in the best possible way. His friends, his collections, his home, his obsessions and his pup Fancy are his constant inspiration.
Grant arrived at Shared Space last Friday, and will be in residence through August 18th.  He has been hand-sewing day after day in the studio, and quietly planning out the rest of his time here in his head.  He will share works new and old with us this Sunday.

Just four days into our second summer season, our three resident artists have been hard at work in the studio, as well as taking the time to get to know each other, the locals, and the Pentwater scenery.
Rose Beerhorst, joining us from Grand Rapids MI, brought her sewing machine and got to work straight away on piecing a quilt top, then a back, then a middle layer made of sweatshirt scraps, and by the third day she was hand-quilting.  We were also joined this weekend by 2012 resident artist Marlee Grace, who joined the quilting party, working on basting and quilting her first quilt that she pieced last week.

Grant Heaps arrived from Toronto Canada, and has spent the majority of each day studiously working away at a massive work in progress.  He is piecing a 9 by 6 foot mural with pieces of fabric as small as his thumbprint, hand stitched onto single square foot panels.  This mural is only one in an ongoing series.  The series documents shifting emotional states through life in whimsical imagery, constructed by his technique of optical blending, using an array of personally sentimental fabrics.  He will be speaking about his work, which ranges from working wardrobe for the National Ballet of Canada to using plastic packaging and other found materials in his very inventive quilting work, this Sunday at our weekly slide talk.

Sarah Haas, a Michigan native who studied dance and improvisation in Illinois, and has since become a traveling artist, has graced our grounds with her traveling stage.  She can live inside of the custom trailer, and fold down three wall panels to create a stage for her own performance work, or open it up to anyone who has talents or opinions to share.  She presented her work at our first Visiting Artist Slide Talk of the season, and guided us through the evolution of her movement career from graduate school to her fairly recent life-altering commitment to living and working out of a traveling art space.  Sarah also works in carpentry, creative tile work, photography, and writing.

We paired Sarah Haas with Marlee Grace at the slide talk, and it was very interesting to see their similarities and contrasts, and to be able to watch video of both of the artists improvisational dance projects.  Marlee also owns a trailer that functions as a shop for handmade goods, and a temporary artist work/live space.  She showed us a little bit of all the things she does as a maker and organizer, including opening her storefront for Have Company in Grand rapids, just three weeks ago.

After the talk, visitors got the chance to tour both of the artists' trailers.  Marlee sold a few books and zines before she hooked up her camper and drove back to Grand Rapids.  We are now in the works of planning an event in and around Sarah's trailer; a story-sharing event open to anyone called Home Share.  On Tuesday August 13th, from 12-2pm and again from 6-8pm, the public is invited to drop in and share memories, dreams, imaginings, and stories about home.  Please join us to activate the stage in an event where you are participant, presenter, and audience.

We open the 2013 residency season with two multi-taking artists speaking at our first weekly Artist Slide Talk this Sunday.  They both originate from Michigan, both work in movement/dance, both organize public art happenings, and they both have amazing projects based out of wandering trailers:

Sarah Haas is a movement artist who lives, travels, and performs in a mobile stage built from mostly reclaimed materials. With over fourteen years of choreographic and performance experience, her process has expanded to involve writing, photography, mosaic tiling, and alternative carpentry. She is the co-founder of EcoDance, a grassroots organization that researches, designs, and builds mobile live/work spaces. She is also the artistic director of Raw Art, formed October 2010 to house a collaborative art/work lifestyle. Haas began touring in her mobile stage August 2011. While utilizing her stage as a gathering site for lectures, workshops, brainstorming sessions, rehearsals, and performances, she continues to build upon and investigate the multifarious possibilities inherent in a collaborative mobile lifestyle.  She has parked her trailer/stage behind Shared Space Studio, and will reside here with us through August 14th.

Marlee Grace is a dancer, maker, and community-organizing powerhouse.  She joined us last year as a resident artist and returns this year to talk about her new venture with Have Company- her creative project that began with DIY self-improvement zines, and recently evolved into a storefront of local handmade goods in downtown Grand Rapids.  She will have her camper-trailer at the studio:

"Have Company is a mobile shop & residency space in Grand Rapids, MI.  It serves as a one stop shop for all things DIY, specializing in vintage clothes, zines, books, & handmade goods...  We believe in making, doing, showing up, and getting together. 
At each of our events we open up our making space to a creative who is interested in working on a project.  While the shop is open, you will have the opportunity to bring in materials, use things in the space, and draw from the environment to create.  Whether it's rehatching an old project, harnessing feedback, or starting from scratch - the space is your to get to work // play // doing."