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."

Two more super-amazing artists, with less than one month to starting the season!

SARAH APPLEBAUM  :  aug 7 - aug 17
works with symbolic and metaphoric imagery, her work bridges the gap between the psychological and the psychedelic.  

JEFFREY KRIKSCIUN  :  aug 10 - sept 2
trys to bring to surface the absurdity in the mundane, highlighting ideas that make us who we are, good and bad.  Creation as coping mechanism.

We are excited to welcome two upcoming resident-artists from Canada:

AMBER PHELPS BONDAROFF : aug 21 - aug 30
is a multidisciplinary artist, musician and spatial navigator.  Her work engages people in shared acts of making and being.  She works with the medium that best suits the message, often including textiles, found objects, drawing, text, sound and super 8 film. 

GRANT HEAPS : aug 2 - aug 18
has 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, has taken over his life in the best possible way.

We are excited to be building a new team of amazing resident artists to activate Shared Space Studio this summer.  The residency season runs August 2nd to September 2nd this year, and will host eight residents, staying from 10-21 days, overlapping and collaborating as they will.  As confirmations roll in and travel is arranged, I'd like to introduce our new crew a few at a time:

SARAH HAAS : aug 2 - aug 14
desires to merge work and play, to navigate and record the body as a cultural landscape, and to become a self-sustained, eco-conscious, yet collaborative entity, while garnering a sense of freedom within a rapidly corporatized world.

www.sarahhaas-rawart.com

ROSE BEERHORST : aug 2 - aug 26
makes rugs, quilts, toys, and accessories, enjoys the process of making something new out of discarded items, and takes pride in creating both beautiful and functional objects.


Rosebeerhorst.wordpress.com

ALIYA BONAR : aug 23 - sept 2
makes interactive installations and events that are exaggerated versions of vaguely familiar worlds, inviting viewers to step outside of reality and share beyond normal limitations and rules.
www.aliyarosebonar.com

This is our last weekly recap for the season, and it is hard to sum up all that has happened.  Eight artists held residency here over four-and-a-half weeks, and they all ended up contributing not only their specific projects to the space, but a sense of the studio being well-used.  With classes, events, and residencies, our summer has really activated the studio and set a precedent for future greatness.  Thank you to all involved.

As we said goodbye to Amy, the two remaining residents, Paul and Mary, finished or extended their projects in graceful manner.  Paul's audio book, recordings of The Gardener of the Dunes by Swift Lathers, took form in a trio of handsomely executed CD cases.  He gifted one to the Pentwater Library and one to Shared Space.  I can't think of a better soundtrack to working in the studio than poems and musings reflecting on the Silver Lake Dunes by our local hero.

Mary constructed a new hoping machine on the meadow homestead, this one built with foraged branches to remain onsite, settling under the winter snow.  This A-frame construction acts as a meditative space and an entryway into the homestead, around which Mary piled walls of the same sticks.  The installation to be left behind is a functional space; with twin trails to camping platforms, a fire pit, and a picnic table to work at, eat at, or lay on top of and watch the clouds.

Mary and Paul left the residency mid-week, went on an upstate kite-flying adventure, and Paul returned to New York.  We were happy to welcome Mary back for one last Sunday, and she and I attended "A Pleasant Afternoon" at the Oceana County Historical & Genealogical Society.  We were greeted by a rainbow of pies and Mears community elders, and made sure to pick up several copies of Swift Lathers' Mears Newz.

For our last talk of the summer season, I stepped in as a visiting artist and gave a presentation on my traveling project Quilt Stories.  I shared the fabric collages, patchworks, and storytelling projects that led up to this ongoing body of work.  Quilt Stories began as a quilted tent, to collect stories in, and now exists as installation, video, songs, ceramics, and a white quilt covered with stitches from people across the country.

Our second speaker of the evening was the amazing Larry Krone.  Larry is from St Luis, now resides in New York, but has spent every summer of his life in a cabin with his family in Pentwater.  He opened his presentation with one of his signature country songs, played on ukulele, and led us through a progression of his sculptural works.  Utilizing and honoring folk art techniques, Larry has made latch-hook rugs, wisdom tooth dolls,  sequined embroideries, and text art with his own hair.  He incorporates his meticulously crafted objects and costumes into performances of his personal country-western song repertoire.  The crowd was happy to watch Larry strip from his ruffled baby costume down to his underpants of many colors, and connect his wide-ranging body of work to his personal experiences in Pentwater.

Reeling from the success of our first residency season, we are looking forward to next year with new artists and new plans.  I am closing this series of posts with this serene photograph Mary and Paul made of their geography lesson in the meadow.  If all of the residents have taken one common sentiment away from their time here, it is a reverence for and infatuation with our beautiful state.

    "Quilt Stories is a nomadic installation and participatory performance: From place to place, viewers are invited inside of a quilted tent to share their stories and anecdotes about quilts; while outside, a collaborative quilt, pieced in a white circle, creates a space for people to gather and contribute their own stitches in this ritual of skill. 
    Last summer and fall, I recorded over 100 quilt stories in twenty-five cities and towns; from Washington, to Massachusetts, to Texas, and back to Boise. I documented my route by photographing the tent in the varying landscapes I traveled through. 
    This project is part of an ongoing body of work that investigates the themes and history of quilt-making, as applied to a contemporary practice. Through fieldwork and examination, I am learning the social and aesthetic traditions of the craft, and conceptualizing my findings into an ongoing series of works. Working in a continuum of installation, performance, and sound, this project allows me to employ a wide range of methods, while researching a rich central theme. The project expresses many of my intentions as an artist and teacher; reusing discarded materials for art, empowering communities through teaching self-sustaining skills, creating socially engaging projects that demystify the practice of artists, and encouraging cross-media collaboration."

Larry Krone grew up in St. Louis, Missouri and now lives and works in New York City’s East Village. He has been exhibiting his drawings, sculptures, installations and videos since the early 1990s at galleries and museums including The Contemporary Baltimore, The Museum of Contemporary Craft in collaboration with Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (Portland, OR),  The Whitney Museum of American Art Philip Morris Branch (New York), The New Museum of Contemporary Art (New York), the Drawing Center (New York), and the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis who, in 2006 presented “Larry Krone: Artist/Entertainer,” a ten-year retrospective of Larry Krone’s visual and performance work. 
     Larry has incorporated performance in his work since 1996, performing his own brand of homespun country & western musical revues at music and art venues in New York and beyond. Larry’s intensely detailed, hand sewn and embroidered stage costumes have led to his creation of the House of Larréon, his line of custom gowns and stage costumes, outfitting many of Larry’s dynamic performing friends and collaborators including his fiancé, Jim Andralis. Larry is a 2011 and 2012 MacDowell Colony fellow and New York Foundation for the Arts 2009 fellow.
     Larry’s relationship with Pentwater has been lifelong, as he has been vacationing there with his family at the end of every summer since 1970, the year he was born.  Pentwater has been the site of the creation of many important pieces in Larry’s body of work, including his trio of “Love Can Build a Bridge” costumes, his “Then and Now (Latch Hook Hay Bales),” some of his “Wisdom Tooth Fool Dolls,” and many of his songs including “Take me Back,” “(I Couldn’t) Miss you More,” and “Never Afraid”.  While vacationing, Larry spends most of his time with his family in their rented cottage and on the beach, but can also be found thrift shopping in Ludington, singing karaoke at the Boathouse, and attending the Thursday night band concerts in the gazebo.  Once, when Larry was about 14, Larry brought his saxophone to the sidewalk in front of the gazebo and tried to make some money playing jazz standards for change, but we don’t like to talk about that.
     Larry will present his work and sing songs for us this Sunday, at 7pm, for our weekly artist slide talk season finale!
                                                                      www.larrykrone.com

We started another great week with our two new residents, Emily and Amy.  Amy Johnquest, our final resident to arrive, joined us for dinner on Monday and the following day set herself up to paint.  Amy's paintings are often portraits or tributes to everyday people, places, and things, depicted as oddities or novelties in the style of a carnival banner.  For her recent banners, she paints on found tablecloths and tapestries and incorporates the pre-existing embroidered motifs into the painting.  She set up a painting studio for herself with a tack board of homasote, and began sketches for two banners:  A tribute to her late dog Olivia, and a portrait of The Great Log of Pentwater, a local mystery that Amy has appreciated while visiting Pentwater over the last twenty years.

Emily Harris used her week in residence to read, write, and experiment with new ideas.  She began a new project in which she measured and photographs the other resident's hands.  After seeing Emily's artist talk on Sunday, local Pentwater musician Frank Galante offered to collaborative in a movement/music jam.  Frank set up his guitars and pedals at the studio to play while Emily made drawings and movements in response.  She set up a video camera pointing out of the sliding glass door towards the meadow, and filmed us hand-dancing to the sounds.  She played with space, perspective, and illusion as she moved closer or further from the door, entered the frame from all sides, and made contact with the glass.

Paul and Mary proved to be a power-team in the studio this week, with many late nights and early mornings.  Paul learned how to use a sewing machine as he and Mary made patchworks from tents, and divided them into pairs of kites that will fly with lights at night to make sky drawings.  The two had independently wanted to make a kite at some point in the past, and this was the opportunity for them to collaborate and make their kite dreams come true.  For the first pair of kites, they made patchworks from old tents, cut them up, mixed them up, and assembled two diamond-shaped kites, each as tall as they are (a height difference of 14 inches).  They then made one square patchwork together, and cut it in half to make two triangular kites.  This process was also a way for the two to communicate by working together, as they had until now only had contact through mail correspondence.  Outfitted with scalloped fringe and yarn tassels, when the kites were finally airborne in the meadow, it was a triumphant moment for us all.

As Mary finishes patch-worked wind socks to bring to her next Cabin Time residency on Rabbit Island, Paul continues to catalog the birds in the meadow with drawings and paintings.  His guide to the meadow birds will be accompanied in our library with Mary's Adventure Guide to outings in the Pentwater area; filling in future residents on all of the local places to go and see.  The two made yet another trip to the former home of Swift Lathers, at the Oceana Historical Park, so Paul may have the chance to record himself reading The Yearning Years, Swift's book of poetry that stays in the museum's archives.  Paul plans to put together his readings of Swift's writings on an audio CD, and gift it to the Pentwater Library.

Pentwater's annual Homecoming celebration was this weekend, and the four resident artists really bonded as a team when we entered the esteemed sand sculpture contest.  In a brainstorming session we agreed the key to building with sand was to keep it wet, and we were dubbed Team Keep It Wet.  After I crafted team spirit shirts, we were on the beach early, with shovel and spray bottles, to carve out and build up our take on the contest's theme "Year-Round Fun in Pentwater."  Our design was a quilt draped over a trio of friends in a bed:  Each square on the quilt depicted a fun Pentwater past-time.  We had the most fun possible, and won a sweet little trophy to show off at the studio.

We were sad to see Emily go back to New York on Saturday, but continued the Homecoming festivities by enjoying a parade, fireworks, karaoke, and a stellar meteor shower.  On Sunday, we welcomed another compelling artist to the space to give a talk with Amy.  Laura Milkins is a native of Pentwater, who has traveled extensively and now lives in Tucson Arizona, working as an artist and teacher.  She presented video and audio documents of two of her projects that involve walking and asking the people she encounters to talk with her and tell her stories.  For her project "Walking Home," Laura walked from her home in Tucson, 2000 miles to her mother's home in Grand Rapids.  She was a very interesting visiting artist, speaking on the idea of what can qualify as artwork, when you are not making objects, images, or performances.
Amy finished the evening by presenting a history of her paintings, from her early days through her transformation into The Banner Queen.  She showed classic side-show banners that influenced her, personal works, and humorous and clever commissions.  Diana really outdid herself on the reception snacks, and we had a great turnout with an engaged audience.  With only a few days left of the residency season, and the last talk in our lecture series this Sunday, we are feeling satiated with all of the experiences of this season, and already hungry for next year!

Laura Milkins is a multimedia, interactive performance artist, living in Tucson and teaching at Pima CC.  In 2008, she received an MFA at University of Arizona.  Since 1993, Laura has been organizing art shows, performances and festivals, and has received grants, awards and international recognition for her work. Her performances focus on community and social interactions, and the role that technology plays in both. 

For her most recent performance, “Walking Home: stories from the desert to the Great Lakes”, Laura walked 2,007 miles from Tucson to Michigan wearing a live webcam:

We started out our third week of the residency with a great beach day.  We said goodbye to our visiting artist, Michelle Murphy, after participating in her Second Skin video project, and suited up for the lake.  We put Elodie's epic knitted blanket to use, filling the knit-in koozie pockets with a 12-pack of Bud Light Lime, and by the end of sunset we were billowing the blanket in the air in a good-old game of parachute.

Amanda Matles left us mid-week, but not before she finished putting our new compost system in place.  She refaced two 5-gallon buckets that we will fill with our food scraps to be picked up by a local farm each week.  The brightly-colored buckets read: COMPOST FOR CHICKENS.  In the process she crafted herself an apron to paint in.  She also finished several small ceramic pieces to take back to Detroit and fire.  Her compost project is one of many that are giving directly to the studio and our residents.  As new systems are put in place we become more organized and solid, even as people continue to come and go.

Paul Richardson joined us Tuesday, on his first visit to Michigan, from a lifetime in Baltimore.  He has been Mary's diligent pen-pal for the last two years, and since they reside on opposite sides of the country, until now their interactions have been only through correspondence.  For the next two weeks, the pair will be collaborating together, finding a way to maintain the ritual of sending a letter everyday, while living in tents 20 feet away from each other.
Paul began working with Mary on the homestead, rearranging the space she has constructed with found twigs and logs.  His past drawing series suggest catalogs, so it is fitting that he is now drawing a guide to the wildlife in the meadow.  We are also looking forward to his narration of Swift Lathers' The Gardener of the Dunes, the audiobook edition.

With a little help from Paul, Mary erected her new Hoping Machine in the meadow.  Her last hoping machine sculptures were four-sided pyramids, based on the energy-gathering premise of Pyramid Power, a key text in her studies at Mystic Homeschool.  This new construction is an open-ended A-frame, a space that one may pass through or dwell in with an awareness of the outside.  She is also hoping that a meadow creature or two may spend time in the patch-worked meditative space.

Elodie also set up a private space near the homestead.  A forklift palette provided a base for her knitted tent, affixed to three trees with a system of buttons and button holes.  This space gave Elodie some woodland solace to take coffee breaks in, and reflect on her past three weeks in residence here, before heading home to San Francisco on Sunday.

Another highlight of the week was a visit to our neighboring town of Hart's Historic District.  The town has rescued and relocated several historically significant buildings to a single site, and some of them house a curious collection of collections.  We had no idea that we would encounter a six-room journey of old-timey animatronics, doll houses, and toys.  The fun didn't stop there, as the museum also offers two rooms entirely filled with furs and taxidermy animals anthropomorphized in open dioramas.  Moving on, you will find a couple-hundred tiny pianos, dozens of hand-cranked cherry pitters, a needlepoint farmhouse and barn, and other collections that have been donated in the name of historical preservation and education.  Our next stop was the Oceana County Historical and Genealogical Society Research & Library Headquarters.  Here we furthered our research on Swift Lathers, and found that hundreds of copies of his weekly newspaper, Mears Newz, are available to read or purchase.  The research librarian spent about an hour talking to us, and a visit to the local taqueria finished off another fruitful field trip.

As Elodie left, our newest resident Emily Harris arrived, just in time to give a talk on her work at our weekly Sunday evening slide lecture.  She used John Cage's method of random chance to present her work and the work she admires:  As the audience called out a number, she read a text, played a video, or showed a slide that correlated to this random number system.  After four summers at Maryland Institute of Contemporary Art's low-residency MFA program, Emily's work has evolved from product to process.  The rituals she was reciting while making objects became performance works in themselves, influenced by minimalist choreographers such as Yvonne Rainer.

Mary & Paul teamed up on their slide talk, presenting past work individually and talking about the projects they have and will make together.  Paul was presenting his work to an audience for the first time, and explained his process of drawing with repetitive marks, leading into repetitive drawings, leading into series with repeated themes.  Mary shared her site-responsive projects; noting several projects that involved a period of significant research, leading to a large-scale sculptural construction, that housed an interactive and extremely social element.  Both artists charmed the crowd with their humorous and straightforward work, and although their shared language of correspondence was difficult to translate for us, the story of how they got here was enough for one night.

We feature residents artists and long-time pen-pals Mary & Paul together this week.  Although Mary has been in residence since July 15th, Paul and she are working together as a collaborative team for the rest of their stay, through August 15th.  Their artist talk last night wowed us all, and they have been hard at work homesteading the meadow with a hoping machine and cataloging the wildlife that thrives there.

Mary Rothlisberger is a thinker, writer, conversationalist, and relationalist situated in the hinterland of North America. Mary has served as a Collaborative Director of LOOK AROUND, a pop-up artspace and creative playground intentionally located in the small town of Palouse, Washington. She is the founder and facilitator of multiple micro-residency programs, including the Upper Bunk in Palouse, Washington and Outbuilding Discourses in Grand Rapids, Michigan; she has also developed a model for collaborative mobile road-residencies that criss-cross the North American landscape. She serves as the Executive Archivist for the Bureau of Public Recollection, a mnemonic research-based institution and an Editor and Producer for Palouse Palouse Press, an editorial and independent publishing collective specializing in localized production of zines and artist books.  She collaborates as a producer and catalyst for Camp Little Hope and Cabin-Time. Mary Rothlisberger earned a BA in Religion from the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia, and an MFA in Sculpture from Washington State University in Pullman, Washington. Her experimental academic degrees include Honors in Mystic Homeschool Correspondence Courses with James and Janie Washington in Seattle, Washington, and a Masters of Philosophy in Mistakes with a BA (Hons) in Avant Garde from the University of Incidental Knowledge in Leeds, England.

Her creative work is community-specific and socially responsive and thusly takes many different forms. Projects have included building a neighborhood radio station, facilitating a social center on a frozen lake, developing creative living systems within a former thrift store, exploring microcosmic cultural production within interstitial spaces, mystic homeschool correspondence courses, and living intentionally in a small town. She believes in a rational optimism, a compassionate intellect, and unconditional love.  She has recently discovered the wonders of Michigan, where everything is on the way to the beach.

http://bangbangboomerang.com/

Paul Richardson, born and bred in Baltimore County, Maryland, works with a skewed ratio of accident and intention, and has only recently begun to understand how the former begets the latter.  He rides a bicycle, walks the railroad, and rambles, sometimes, in his run-on thinking. His creative practice involves writing letters, reading out-loud, swimming every day, being considerate, and making small marks, one at a time. These things take time.  His pace and method makes for many ongoing projects, which at present include an in-depth survey of the fifty state flags, an illustrative homage series to his favorite musicians, and a neverending penpalship that's part plainspeak and mostly metaphor.  He is also entering the thirteenth hour recording a Ulysses audiobook and very willing to accept any suggestions on how to manage that upcoming middle portion that's written as a play.  He is happiest in, underneath, or adrift on an oceanwave.  It is all, and will be, afterall, swell.  The tides are tugging at Michigan more than anywhere else that isn't an ocean. In engendering an inner finality, you buoy the boat you're afloat in.  
Paul earned a BA in Communications & Philosophy at Fordham University in the New York Bronx, and went on to study in Mary's Mystic Homeschool.  He has participated in collaborative projects and exhibited work in Pennsylvania, Idaho, Washington, California, Nebraska, and now Michigan.

http://www.paugey.com

Emily Harris, originally from Minneapolis, MN, is a Queens-based artist and a current MFA Candidate at Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore. She has exhibited her work in venues in New York; Ai Gallery and Bridge Art Fair, Chicago, IL; and internationally at 2B Gallery in Hungary; Bratislava, Slovak Republic and The Museum of Arts & Crafts, Itami-shi, Japan. She most recently participated in an exhibition at Roulette in Brooklyn, NY titled Musicircus II, an experimental multi-media event celebrating John Cage's centennial. She teamed with Paul Sadowski, an assistant of John Cage to recreate Cage's composition 47 Waltzes for 5 Boroughs. The completed piece will be presented at Cooper Union in New York City on September 8th, 2012. 
Emily will be a Shared Space resident artist from August 5th through 11th, and will be speaking about her work at the Sunday evening slide talk this weekend, August 5th

http://www.emilymharris.com

Our second week into the residency, and we have sure been busy!  Two new resident artists arrived, along with a special visitor for the weekend, Michelle Murphy who was our first resident artist back in November 2011.  
Our first official field-trip was a success, while new projects have been embarked on and in-progess pieces have been completed.
As our artists leave, we discuss the residency, what they thought they would do and what they did do, and how the space is run.  Constant improvement is the goal here, and we are feeling our growth.  We have celebrated so many small successes here, and I am anticipating more in the next two weeks.

Amanda Matles came to us from Brooklyn, by way of Detroit.  A Michigan native, born and raised in Traverse City, she now spends part of her year in the Motor City visiting family and working on her documentary video projects about urban agriculture in Detroit.  Her first few days at the studio were spent easing into life here and experimenting with materials.  We set up the ceramics studio and visited a local sculptor who does Raku and pit-firings and got some advice on burnishing.  With the idea of setting up a compost system for Shared Space, Amanda visited the Pentwater farmer's market and connected with the people at Vartian Farms, a small farm and bakery outfit that will take our compost and put it to good use-  feeding chickens.  Amanda began making a ceramic jar that we will collect compost in on the kitchen counter, and she will be repurposing and decorating two 5-gallon buckets to collect the compost for pickup by the farm.
On Sunday evening, Amanda spoke about this project within the context of her other work as a master composter and a geographer interested in food systems.  She shared her research on urban gardening, foraging, and the carbon footprint of imported foods.  We were all impressed by the excerpts she showed of her recent video, Rerouting the Motor City: Notes on a City in Transformation, which was screened at the Allied Media Conference in Detroit in July and will be released later this year.  Amanda also began experimenting with animation while in residence, and made a draft of an animated drawing that will never end, as it is a drawing of everything that could be composted.

Marlee Grace also arrived on Tuesday, and seeing as she just finished a BFA in dance, I convinced her and Amanda to join the evening movement class.  They learned a dance to a tune from Hairspray, dubbed themselves the 'Gemini Twins', and recited their moves for the rest of us.  Marlee is also a Michigan native, and current resident of Grand Rapids where she organizes her community to join in on DIY music and art events. She lives at and co-manages the Division Avenue Arts Collective, an all ages venue and art space.
Marlee got to work on crafting small books, redesigning vintage Michigan postcards, and beginning a new polaroid series considering where you stood / how you stand.  Marlee spoke on her work at the Sunday evening lecture, and posed the idea that instead of DIY being 'do-it-yourself', it may be even more about 'do-it-together'.  She shared a bit of Grand Rapids low-brow art culture with us, and reflected on the idea of her poster design being a meditative art of cutting, gluing, and stamping, much different than the process you would experience laying out the same imagery on a computer.

After Linda Kline's inspiring talk on Nuno silk felting last Sunday, she returned on Thursday to teach the process.  Students had a great time laying out their colorful patterns with wool on silk, and a dash of silk on wool.  They had to work hard to felt it all together, rolling their scarves back and forth on a dowel 400 times to laminate the fibers together and finish class with a thing of beauty.

Elodie Goupil and Mary Rothlisberger teamed up together on their second week in residency.  They finished knitting 35 feet of multicolored cord to construct a net for our bare basketball hoop.  Now we just need a ball to shoot. The pair spent more than one all-nighter together at the studio, spreading out in the workspace with sewing, knitting, and weaving projects.  Mary is constructing a new Hoping Machine, specifically for the meadow homestead she has been building here; The Hoping Machine is a portable textile sculpture that makes good cheer.   She has also managed to acquire scrap pieces of sailcloth from the wonderful makers at Teamwork, a Grand Rapids company that builds knapsacks and messenger bags from recycled Michigan sails.  She is laying out patchwork with the sails to construct a series of regulation-sized wind socks.  Mary's collaborator Paul Richardson shows up this week and we are looking forward to their artist talk this Sunday.
Elodie finished her Shared Space Blanket, just in time to test it out on the desert dunes of Silver Lake.  The blanket fits us all comfortably, and has enough drink pockets to snuggle in a 12-pack of cold ones.  The sand takes on a strangely soft doughy quality underneath this knitted coating; it's really a whole new beach blanket experience.

Josh Kermiet was hard at work this past week, with some assistance from his little brothers who came up from Lansing.  Josh connected with a local printing source and wrangled all of us at the studio into submitting to the paper by his deadline.  We contributed a postcard, a personal ad, a crossword puzzle, and a recipe, all deidicated to the wonders of Michigan.  The layout for the cover is a take on the book Michillaneous, a compilation of obscure facts about Michigan, published in 1982 (the content is both impressive and terrifying).  
Josh continued to be influenced by Swift Lathers, the local legend who published Mears Newz, a one-page paper whose content was entirely from the mouth of Swift and had a subscription list of over 2000 people.  Josh included several of Swift's poems, and he also drew advertisements for local businesses and a review of the sunset.
The resident artists organized a field trip to the Oceana Historical Museum, the former home of Swift and Celia Lathers, to learn more about their new idol who came from the next town over.  To commemorate his years spent roughing it in the dune forest, they climbed the Silver Lake Dunes and explored the strange sights of dune buggies and endless stretches of sand.
Josh shared his newfound knowledge on the history of Swift, along with images of his past work at the Sunday evening lecture.  We were excited to see his psychedelic animations of morphing paint droplets and a Lake Michigan sunset flashing back and forth with an eyeball in stop-motion time.  His youth as a zine-maker and critic has informed his current projects where he explores the possibilities of publications... What if a paper were only one page long?  What do artists make for a satire paper, where they are asked to emulate the trappings of horoscopes, puzzles, and advertisements?  What about a hand-drawn paper placemat, advertising local businesses, with a quirky twist?  How can a paper be distributed for free, and how can it be distributed in personal ways, far across the land?

The residents returned from their afternoon trip in time for the Sunday evening artist talk.  Marlee, Amanda, and Josh presented their work from their time at Shared Space and beyond.  We had a great turnout of engaging locals and out-of-towners for the event.  The talks were very interesting and a great conclusion to both Josh and Marlee's residencies, as they both returned home after the reception.  With our lovely guest photographer, Michelle, we were able to snap a group photo in front of the mural before the sun set and the crowd dispersed.

Amanda Matles is a New York City based artist, educator, and PhD student of Geography at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. There, she studies the geographies of social movements and food justice networks from a feminist point of view. Matles received a Bachelors Degree in Fine Art from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2004. Matles was born in Traverse City, MI and graduated from Interlochen Arts Academy in 2000. Matles was a fellow of the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program in 2011. She currently splits her time between Detroit and New York, and her video work and visual research practice focuses on exploring human geographies, memory, and the politics of social reproduction. Matles currently collaborates with art, media justice, and food justice groups in Detroit and Brooklyn, including Paper Tiger Television, Center for Urban Pedagogy, and the Brooklyn Food Coalition. Her work has been exhibited in London and Berlin, New York, Los Angeles, Baltimore, Detroit, and Washington DC. 

Amanda is a resident artist at shared space July 24th - 31st, and during her stay she is experimenting with materials and setting up a compost system for the studio.  She will be speaking on her work at 7pm, Sunday July 29th.


http://blip.tv/amanda-matles-videos    

Marlee Grace is a performance artist, community organizer, improviser, crafter, maker, and all around enthusiast of life. Born and raised in Grand Rapids, MI, Marlee returned after receiving her BFA in dance from the University of Michigan in June of 2010.  
As a part of Dance in the Annex Marlee has had the opportunity to perform at the GRAM, UICA, ArtPrize, Richard App Gallery and RAD dance festival, as well as help organize, teach, and promote classes and create new work for shows at Wealthy Theatre.  Marlee is a board member at the Division Avenue Arts Collective where she books shows, teaches the occasional yoga class, and curates the series ART GEOGRAPHIC with her partner/collaborator John Hanson.  Marlee’s work heavily emphasizes improvisation as a tool for performance, as it creates a platform for chance and risk taking, as well as honors the moment where we make choices and the bravery it takes to push through them.  Marlee also makes zines, cards, flyers, scarves, and other kitschy wares under the name BRAVE HABITS. 
      Marlee is a Shared Space artist-in-residence from July 24th through August 2nd, and will lecture on her work July 29th at 7pm.  During her stay she is creating zines and journals and improvising to the rhythm of everyday life in Pentwater.

marleegrace.com

Joshua Orion Kermiet was born in Lansing Michigan in 1980. He attended Michigan State University receiving a degree in Painting/Printmaking in 2004. 

Joshua moved to Portland Oregon in 2005, helping to establish the Suite B artists collective studio and experimental living space space. He has exhibited and performed at a variety of venues in the Midwest and Portland such as the Detroit Art Space, Fontanelle Gallery, Nationalle, PICA, Hall Gallery, Valentines, Palace, Worksound Gallery, Stumptown Coffee and others. His 2009 show at Fontanelle Gallery with Midori Hirose was voted Best Group Show by Portlandart.net. While living in Portland he has worked as an Residential Trainer as well as art instructor for adults with developmental disabilites. In 2011 he collaborated with homeless youth on a large scale mural project "Billions and Billions of People" designed by artists Chris Johanson & Jo Jackson. His illustrated work has appeared in a variety of publications, including Yeti Magazine, Tom Tom, and Punk Planet. He has published one book, several zines, and is currently the editor and chief of Free Spirit News, a free local community comic and joke paper. 

Joshua will be a Shared Space artist-in-residence from July 16-29, and will lecture on his work July 29th at 7pm.  During his residency he plans to compile and publish a local edition of Free Spirit News, and he is looking for submissions of all types:

"Free Spirit News: Michigan Edition, will be a short run edition of Free Spirit created entirely in Michigan in conjuction with my residency at Shared Space.  Michigan is my home, where I spent the first twenty three years of my life. Michigan has its own uniquely independent, vibrant and defiant culture and spirit, one which I feel has shaped much of my own approach to art and life.  It is my hope that in some way, Free Spirit: Michigan Edition can embody some of that spirit.  The paper will serve both as my personal drawing diary and travel log and well providing an opportunity for local artists, writers, doodlers, jokers, weirdos ect. from the Pentwater community and beyond to participate and find each other.  Free Spirit News: Michigan Edition, will be distributed around the state of Michigan, as well as in Portland, Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Zurich, Stockholm and beyond. "

www.freespiritnews.tumblr.com
www.joshorionkermiet.tumblr.com
www.meltedmountains.tumblr.com

One week into our month-long season of visiting artists, and so much has happened already.  The studio has been more active than ever, with resident artists utilizing the classroom, studios and outdoor spaces to work in day and night, and meeting in the evenings to make dinner together.

   Elodie Goupil arrived first from San Francisco, and saw Lake Michigan for the first time.  After an initiation of boating, beaching, and swimming, she got straight to work on her knitting machine.  During her travels here, she collected yarn from across the Midwest and is using it to knit an oversized blanket dedicated to Shared Space.  The blanket will be big enough for a small crowd to sit upon the beach, or take a communal power nap under at the studio.  She designed her first knittable cursive alphabet to spell out 'shared space' all around the edges of the blanket, and is knitting in pockets that will serve as drink koozies.  (If you don't know what a koozie is, please visit the Midwest.)   She spoke about her romantic yet practical artwork at the Sunday evening artist talk, and gave us an interactive knitting machine demo the next day, where we took turns adding rows to the blanket.
   Along with pitching in at Mary's homestead, Elodie also has plans to crochet a hammock with a boat hook, and weave a beach floatie out of old bird seed bags and pop bottles.  She will be an artist-in-residence through August 3rd, and we are excited to see what else she creates during her stay.

Mary Rothlisberger, from Palouse Washington was our next resident to arrive, just in time to catch our young artist's slide talk and celebrate Elodie's birthday with us.  Another newbie to Michigan and the Midwest, Mary has spent the last month in Grand Rapids working with artists from Cabin Time, a roving and rugged art residency.  She came to us with her cosmic-energy-gathering Hoping Machine, and plans to construct another during her stay.  Her main project this week has been homesteading in the meadow behind the studio.  We have three open acres of sweet peas and brambles, cornered by deciduous forest, where Mary is setting up camp.  Her first task was to repeatedly trudge through the rough grasses, forging a path back to the forest clearing that will become a home made of sticks, a meeting place, a library, a gathering of hoping machines and forts, and a sculpture park.  She has constructed two walls made entirely of sticks found on the forest floor, piled and woven together.  Always the earliest to rise, Mary truly is busy as a beaver.
There is much more site-specific fun to come, as Mary will be a resident artist for the entire season- until August 15th, and will be collaborating with her long-time pen-pal, Paul Richardson, who arrives on August 1st.

Josh Orion Kermiet joined us on Tuesday.  He is coming from his home in Portland OR, but is really from Lansing, our fair state's capitol city.  Upon his arrival we all took a field trip to the neighboring town of Hart to eat at the best taqueria, stock up on groceries, and tour the Shelby Gem Factory.  Josh is making a newspaper during his stay, and Larry at the gem factory gave us a great lead to follow- a local hero named Swift Lathers who published a weekly one-page paper, and homesteaded in the Silver Lake Dunes.  Josh's Michigan edition of Free Spirit News will include his own drawing diary, Michigan curiosities trivia, and submissions by artists and weirdos from around the state.
Along with his research on local towns and their folklore, he is also working on animations, and writing daily reviews of the sunset from Pentwater beach.  Josh will speak about his work at our Sunday evening artist talk this weekend, July 29th, and will be a resident artist through July 30th, when he will release his much-anticipated publication.

We wrapped up the week here with our Sunday evening artist talk, featuring resident artist Elodie Goupil and visiting artist Linda Kline.  
Linda was an excellent speaker, sharing her art-investigating travel stories, slides of her precious metal clay jewelry, and several of her silk-felted scarves in person.  
She will be teaching two workshops on Nuno Silk Felting this Thursday, in the morning and in the evening, and we expect a good turnout of students and the creation of some interesting scarves.  We were happy to see some new faces in the audience, and will keep working to connect local artists and appreciators with all of our amazing visiting artists.

Linda has been making wearable art since she was, "Old enough to run with scissors!."  Her life long passion for fiber, finery, and flashy findings have lead her to explore first fashion design, and then jewelry arts and metalsmithing. 

Discovering precious metal clay in 1998, her fascination and expertise with that medium earned her recognition as one of the foremost instructors in that field.  She became Director of Education for PMC Connection in 2010 and  is one of only 16 PMCC senior certifying instructors in the United States. 

Linda’s striking one-of-a-kind creations are strongly influenced by environmental issues and global concerns.  Her work will often incorporate a juxtaposition of “found objects” or organic components, in contrast to gold, fine silver and precious gemstones to convey a message or tell a story.  

It was on an artistic excursion to Turkey in 2011 that Linda discovered nuno silk felting and again altered her artistic course.   Laminating or marrying silk and wool fiber by hand, she transforms organic materials into amazingly beautiful works of wearable art.  Her one of a kind shawls and scarves are produced in a modernized version of a 5,000 year old process.

Linda will be lecturing on her work on July 22nd at 7pm, as well as teaching a special workshop on Nuno Silk Felting.  The workshop is offered in two sessions, 9am-1pm and 5:30-9:30pm on July 26th, all students will make their own silk-felted scarf.