Hello, my dear Grown-Ups Table artists.
It’s me, WendyMac, bursting through the door with a few announcements and a special post-residency post! HELLO, FRIENDS.
First, a quick reminder that I will be at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC on June 6 giving at fun, free talk on the power of drawing for connection and hosting our biggest DrawTogether Strangers event ever inside the museum (with 10 museum partners from around the USA participating)! JOIN ME!
Last weekend we shared a classic lesson on drawing with grids, inspired by a lovely little sketch made by Diego Rivera I saw at SFMOMA a while back. No surprise, the drawings GUT members made in response to our weekly drawing assignment were phenomenal. Check out the GUT gallery curated by Kyle Ranson-Walsh at the bottom of the dispatch for a few gold star selects, or head to the chat and check them all out—plus a ton of photos of Art Auntie Kathleen as she travels the world visiting GUT members! Artisthood of the traveling pencils. ✏️
FWIW, here is my twist on our grid assignment: I made this drawing while I was away at MacDowell (the topic of today’s piece). The world through a window screen.
Anyway, hiiiiiii. I miss you guys. I will be back full time soon. Meanwhile, I am popping back in from book-making land with a special report. That residency I just did was an unexpected, life-changing creative experience, and I want to share a little about it while it’s still fresh in my mind. I was skeptical about residencies before I went, and now I’m a convert and an evangelist.
I’m writing this dispatch with the hope that it will encourage YOU to apply to a residency. MacDowell is a biggie deep in the woods, but there are all different kinds of residencies to try. Some are free, and some you pay for. Some last for months, and some just a few days (like the wonderful North Coast). Or you can gather a few friends and create your own. What matters is a change of context, a shift in perspective, and the people you’re with. If you can nail those, it just might rewire your heart.
Let me explain….
Wendy goes to the woods
Friends, I’d never done this before. I didn’t think artist residencies were for me. It made sense for people with little kids, or someone who didn’t have a studio to work in. They could really use it, relish the quiet away from the demands of everyday life. But for me? Unnecessary. Greedy, even. I live alone, have a studio, and am generally in charge of my own schedule. What good would MORE solo time do? In the woods, no less! Surely there was nothing I could get out of a studio in rural New Hampshire that I couldn’t get in my own studio in Oakland, CA.
How wrong I was.
While I don’t have the kid responsibilities a lot of people have, I do juggle A LOT. As I get older, I’m finding I get distracted and overwhelmed easily. I thought going to the woods would be a good way to focus on ONE project only. Which is why I applied: to work on this big book I’m making. It was a long shot. I applied while I was recovering from a hip replacement, still slightly high on painkillers (probably what gave me the guts to press “send”). So I was delighted and a little shocked to hear I’d been accepted.
MacDowell is one of those things where if you get accepted, YOU GO. So I carved out the time, worked with the wonderful GUT team to prepare my sabbatical, packed up my art and some books and my computer—along with a very long list of things to do—and off I went.
I expected this residency would be good for one thing, and one thing only: being super duper productive. I was going to get through SO MUCH WORK.
A few days into my stay there, I was chatting with a seasoned performance artist. She had been there several times, and I was telling her how disorienting the whole thing was to me. I had so much work to do, so much to get done….She stared blankly at me, and said,
“So, are you here to make art, or run a business?”
My face flushed. “Well, part of the way I’m able to make art is through running a business. My business IS my art.”
She said, “But they are also very different. So what are you going to do while you’re HERE?”
In other words: You have a chance to step out of the river of productivity, expectations, and deadline, and focus on yourself as an artist and your art. What are you going to do with it?
I had never considered that I could do anything but the MOST. Nonstop DOING. And here I was in a space where time could feel different. Priorities could change. The thing that matters is making art. Being an artist. Nonstop BEING.
WEIRD.
It took a minute for me to settle in, but once I did, I got it: Turns out you can’t make art like you run a business. They are different creatures. They are in conversation, and they can even be close friends that encourage each other. But they come from different backgrounds, speak different languages, represent different cultures with different goals and needs and desires.
And it’s important to give them each the separate space they need to breathe.
That’s what a residency provides.
There is something keenly different between alone time in our homes or workplaces, with all its conveniences, distractions, and expectations, and alone time in the woods. In the woods of Peterborough, New Hampshire, where MacDowell is located, there was no internet. There was barely any cell service.
I repeat: I had no internet in my studio. And I could only occasionally text.
There was, however, a fireplace. This was good, because it was 17 degrees the first week I was there. And my studio was a mile away from the dining hall where I walked to eat dinner every night. I had no car. I had only a caterpillar coat and my feet to get me from the studio to dinner and back again. All this sounds miserable. And for a while it was.
And then, something changed.
There’s a poster tacked up all over MacDowell—in the halls, the library, on bookmarks, even. It’s a photo of Miriam MacDowell, one of the founders, and a quote of hers: “It will take a week to get used to it, after that the work will pour out.” I thought it was just a cute idea at first. But it’s true. Almost.
It took two weeks.
Maybe it was because of the dopamine withdrawal. (Remember: no internet.) Or the sudden lack of constant connection, which had been the norm back home. But the first week or so was HARD. I cried a lot. I thought, “Why am I even here? What is the point?” I wanted to leave. For the first time in decades I experienced a feeling I’d forgotten: homesickness. My body hurt. But after a while, my nervous system just…settled. And wow. One day I woke up and, for the first time in as long as I can remember, I didn’t feel like I was late, or behind, or rushing. I didn’t need to be anywhere, or talk to anyone. It was like I could be calm. Quiet. I could finally hear myself. There I was again.
I didn’t even know I’d been missing.
Every day I woke up in my little studio cabin, made myself a cup of coffee, and sat down at my window to draw for an hour or two.
I drew the same trees every morning.
Then I would start writing.
A couple hours later, a picnic basket would show up on my doorstep containing lunch.
I’d eat lunch, and go for a walk.
Sometimes I’d visit a friend at a cabin nearby, or meet up with another friend for a walk and chat. Then I’d come back and write until dinner, which was at 6:30 every night.
Dinner is the one thing everyone is required to attend. Everyone gathers family-style around the dinner tables, eats a delicious meal prepared by caring chefs, and talks about what they worked on that day. Some people are flying high after a day of successful work, and others had a day of bashing their heads against the wall and want to hurl themselves out the window. The creative process is what it is, even in the woods. (Maybe even more so.) What’s wonderful is that everyone at the table understands the journey, and encourages each other without competition. Just curiosity and care.
Making art is not a sprint. It is not a task. It is an epic marathon of the heart. There are some moments so challenging that they make us doubt ourselves as artists—and as human beings. We question if we deserve to make stuff. If we are worthy of taking up space. If we have the talent or skill or brains to make something we feel others will deem worthwhile. We fear judgment and failure all the freaking time. It would be so much easier not to put our hearts on the line. Sometimes we want to quit. And that may be the hardest part of all: You can quit. Nobody is stopping you from throwing down your pencils and walking away. This big, loud, brute of a world does not care if you make art. It wants you to have a corporate job, buy a big house, get a nice car, and make more money. It’s all set up for you to do that. But make art? No way. The only person who cares if you make art is YOU.
When making art is hard and tests our resolve, when we doubt ourselves and feel like crap and we want to quit, what keeps us going? I’ll tell you what. It’s not money, or a house, or a fancy studio, or a book deal, or a gallery show. It’s OTHER ARTISTS.
When we are cheered on by other people running their own creative marathon, making art feels possible. The hard parts make sense. The fun parts make sense. The magical parts make sense. The nonsense makes sense. And it all feels worth it.
Making art is often very lonely. The only way to keep going is to do with other artists. To draw together.
The residents were from all over the world, from Brooklyn to Berlin to Zimbabwe, and ranged in ages from 22-77. People stay from two weeks to two months. You get to choose how long you’d like to stay. I went for five weeks, and then begged for an extension (and was luckily, generously granted one). There were anywhere from around sixteen to thirty fellows at any given time, and they included: poets, painters, screenwriters, novelists, nonfiction writers, cartoonists, performance artists, composers, sculptors, playwrights, and weird interdisciplinary visual artist-writer hybrids like me. Everyone was brilliant. Kind. And different. So, so different. And that was the biggest surprise and gift of the residency: the community. What a gift.
An artist residency—this one, at least—is surreal. It exists completely outside of time and reality. It’s a pipe dream, really. Like any utopia it has problems of its own, and you can’t stay there forever. But what it offers is a glimpse of what’s possible.
MacDowell gave me a touchstone, a feeling, that I can call up anytime I feel overwhelmed, distracted, scared, small. I know what it’s like to be quiet. To focus. I know what lies inside. And I like it. And while I can’t always create the conditions to access it outside, at least I know it’s there. Where I want to go. And someday, I hope to return. Not only to MacDowell, but to that feeling, forever.
Thank you to MacDowell for the gift of time and space, and thanks to all my fellow fellows. Which is to say: my friends. What a journey.
INTERESTED IN APPLYING? GOOD. YOU SHOULD. Anyone can apply.
If you get in, you know the rule: You gotta go. And if you don’t, apply again. You can apply once every two years. So until 2028, you can find me sharpening my pencil and creating that space for myself as best I can, day by day, one offline day and long walk at a time.
For our assignment this week, let’s do a little artful figuring of our own creative respite, and what that might look like day by day…
