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.

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.