Category Archives: Travel

Blog, International, Italy, La Macina, Live/Work, Residencies, Travel, ◆◆◆

Beltane/First Day of Greve

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Happy Beltane!

Finally I am able to blog! Things have been crazy with traveling and work in between. But I traveled through London and arrived in Italy OK. Everything in Italy is a lot more organized than I anticipated it to be – which is reassuring.

Tomorrow, I will be doing my first exposures in the studio here and to test out the device. I’ve found some really awesome flowers today on my first walk around the property.

The other Americana artist here is really nice. He’s acting in a film and asked to film my process which I think would be really cool.

I haven’t worked in the studio yet, I had some graphic design work to do today and intend on doing some exposures tomorrow hopefully. I’ve been working on my artist journal and finding inspirations.

Yesterday, was a really crazy day. I woke up at 4:45 am and left for the airport in London to fly to Florence. I met up with my driver/caretaker who drove me to Greve. This area is absolutely amazing and I’m excited to be here and make art. I definitely feel at home here. 🙂 I unpacked, went into Greve to pick up food and came back, got dressed and went into Florence for an art opening of one of the caretaker’s friends. Came back, had a bottle of wine and worked on some more graphic design stuff and skyped quickly with my client whose based in Dubai then went to bed around 2:30 am.

 

Blog, Excursions, Residencies, Travel, World, ◆◆◆

Bon Voyage!

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On Sunday evening, I will be leaving America to head to my first stop! London! I am so excited that this is finally happening! God bless the universe for being kind to me in terms of money, after working hard these past 6-9 months on my graphic design work, I’ve made enough to be able to attend this residency. And I definitely need a break! My last “vacation” was in September when I went to Canada for the week and I got sick… so it wasn’t really a vacation lol. Then I will be heading to Greve in Chianti for the month of May and Paris the first week of June to celebrate my parents’ anniversary.

I’m excited to be creating more artwork. The last time I created work was around this time last year when I was still in Longmeadow.

Blog, Excursions, Exhibitions, News, Travel, ◆◆◆

The Bees Knees – 42 Maple Contemporary Art Center

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This past Tuesday I drove 2.5 hours up to Bethlehem, NH to drop off my artwork in the mountains! My pieces, Pine Needles, Pine Needles #2 and Seaweed were accepted into a really cool exhibit called the Bees Knees. The exhibition was focused on bringing awareness to the Bee depopulation and supporting locally organic products and honey. I really wish I could attend the reception because it sounded really interesting, but it is on the first day I am going to be in Italy so I won’t be in the country.

The drive up to Bethlehem, NH was interesting – although long… – it was fun to drive through the Franconcia National Park and see the mountains and valleys and gorges, etc. I hope the weather would be a bit better for pickup day because I would be interested in stopping by some of the sites in that park – it was raining when I drove up to drop them off. I’m sure there will be a formal press release out next week.

Biophilia, Blog, Canada, International, Residencies, Travel, ◆◆◆

Arnie! (now Arnedette)

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photo by Alexis Williams
photo by Alexis Williams

Last Fall during my Biophilia residency in Wakefield, QC/Ottawa, CA I found an Imperial Moth on the ground during the last day of the residency. Apparently these are pretty uncommon so it was cool to see such a creature. 8 months later, just before I go on my next residency this wonderful creature turned into this gigantic moth! She is happily laying eggs. Perfect symbol for my life as well, as it too has been going under metamorphosis and is about to take flight.

photo by Alexis Williams
photo by Alexis Williams
Art, Blog, Excursions, Travel, ◆◆◆

A.I.R Gallery and NYC Experience

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10411141_943661512313819_5902822009080717149_nLast Wednesday my parents and I left Wellesley, MA and drove the 4.5 hours or so to NYC for my reception in Brookly, NY. This reception was one of the more humbling experiences. It mirrored the experience I felt when I exhibited my work in Provincetown, MA for the first time. NYC, has had a prominent place in my childhood. I started to come to NYC as a scout and continued throughout high school and ended up going to a college that placed an emphasis on going into NYC. By the time I had graduated college I had been to NYC 8 times. As an art major I had always admired the artists I saw exhibiting their work in Soho or Chelsea and kind of dreamed that that would happen to me!

In October, I received notification that my artwork, Bluebells will be making a trip to NYC to be exhibited at the 11th Biennial Exhibition at A.I.R Gallery. A.I.R Gallery is pretty cool as their mission is to support under appreciated women artists and has been in operation since the ’70s! The gallery ended up featuring my artwork as one of the two the were the ‘face’ of the exhibition. This biennial was centered around the theme of making and taking photos and reconsidering what the definition of photography is. Sometimes galleries submit calls for work centered around an already chosen theme, but sometimes that can be tricky to work with especially if your submissions may or may not always be centered around that theme and the exhibition can seem forced. This biennial just so happened to have many artists submit works of art centered around the photographic medium whether it may be painting or mix-media, or in my case traditional processing.

Wednesday we arrived at our hotel in Brooklyn and I knew Brooklyn was mostly of color, but I never expected to feel like I was in a minority and after a day of being there or so, the feeling went away. There were no altercations of our presence on the subways or walking around the neighborhood which was nice, because you never know these days… I was catcalled a few times, but after that catcalling video that was kinda expected. For dinner on Wednesday we went to Cent’Anni’s for dinner and had yummy spinach, pesto raviolis and chocolate cake for desert.

Thursday, we walked around the botanical garden in Brooklyn just to see a bit more of the neighborhood, and walked back to the hotel for to get ready for the reception. I had to really make sure to pace myself in terms of what I could do energetically so I wouldn’t be wiped for the reception. The reception itself was great! I got to meet the juror and see my work. I really had a feeling of, “I made it!” As exhibiting in a NYC gallery had been something I wanted to do for a LONG time. It helped me put my artwork into perspective.

Friday, I met up with my friend Jackie whom I met through the Biophillia residency in September. We had coffee and a pastry at Caffe Reggio. It was good to see her and we talked about future Ayatana opportunities and travel opportunities and caught up on life… then my parents and I walked to the 9/11 memorial to see the reflection pools and we ended up having lunch at Stage Door Pizza. After lunch, we walked a bit further and saw the Christmas tree at Rockefellar center. The following morning, Saturday, we drove home – exhausted and sore. Overall the experience was better than I imagined and I’m really glad I got to see my artwork in NYC!

Ayatana, Biophilia, Blog, Canada, Excursions, International, Travel, ◆◆◆

Realize: Biophilia – Activities – Thursday

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I’m skipping over Wednesday because most of Wednesday I was sick. I stayed at the ranch for the afternoon, took a bath and a couple of naps. By dinner I was feeling a lot better. Later that evening we had an artist talk from a local artist who scans moths and makes prints from them and I think I went to bed relatively early.

Thursday

I felt better on Thursday to continue the activities. We went on a hike through the property and gathered mushrooms to make spore prints later. You leave the mushrooms on a piece of bark or parchment and the mushrooms drop their spores leaving a print. Then you can fixate the print onto the paper with hairspray. Later we inoculated grain to grow bio luminescent mushrooms.

 1168814_362879110544395_917758908_nThe spore print once it is done

1208218_1538719706364258_1273357994_nMushrooms laying on top of the paper

10707101_555630657871960_1706793564_nThe supplies to inoculate grain

10732581_2612827280236_1374287644_oThen several weeks later, the grain starts to turn into mycelium!

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Art, Ayatana, Biophilia, Blog, Canada, Excursions, International, Reflections, Residencies, Travel, ◆◆◆

Biophilia – Activities – Monday

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Monday

1208325_707689345983817_1022789875_nThe following day we had our first hike. Before this hike we drove to a chairlift in the same park and got a look at the foliage. This was the first time of that I got lost! The group van had to be taken into Ottawa to be fixed so we couldn’t drive as a group. We were already running a bit late so we didn’t get to meetup with the arborist, which was a bit of a bummer, but we used the time during the hike to find plant material for the kirlian workshop that night!

Yes that’s right! I was able to do a kirlian workshop with the group. It was really fun to do because everyone was excited to do the workshop and was very enthusiastic about finding plant matter. I also was able to work with plants that I wouldn’t have otherwise had a chance to back home.

10641021_906844719328832_4699458129581248859_n
Moss

This day was very long and tiring at 1am I was very glad to be asleep!

 

 

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Art, Ayatana, Biophilia, Blog, Canada, Excursions, International, Realize, Reflections, Residencies, Travel, ◆◆◆

Writing: Biophilia – Ayatana Artist Researchers Group

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I recently went to Ottawa, CA and Wakefield, QC for an artist research group for the week. The residency was research based so we didn’t have to produce something.The research group is called Ayatana Artist Research Program.

From it’s website,

 “The Ayatana Artist Research Program is a Canadian, artist run, residency program dedicated to encouraging hands on research, adventure, experimentation and collaboration between visiting artists. Ayatana workshops focus on experience and encounters with the natural world. The residency facilitates field research and contact with scientists and experts in a diverse range of settings.”

I was really excited to have found a residency that spoke to artists who focus their work on science, art and spirituality. This community in the art world is very small, but exists. It’s hard to know what’s out there if you don’t go searching for it. For example, I recently applied for a conference in Bilbao, Spain to present my work in Kirlian Photography. It is a completely fully funded experience… but the conference is geared towards artists, technologists and bioartists!

To commemorate this residency, I will be doing a series much like my California Seventeen series.

I also took up the task of designing and completing the group’s publication for the week. It’s almost done, I just need to get everyone’s info for the book. So excited to debut it!

I was also assigned to do an Ottawa,CA feature on Jetsetter Gypsy through my internship and wrote about Pine and Birch Ranch where we stayed. This should be posted soon.

The next post in this series will list the table of contents.

Art, Blog, Excursions, Reflections, Travel, ◆◆◆

Biophilla Residency First Impressions

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I’ve been able to fit this blog post in because I came down with a cold! I vomited twice last night, have chills, a sore throat and vomiting. I decided to stay home to recover a bit and fight it off. With my fear of vomiting I decided to not go today. But it’s nice to have some ‘me’ time this week. It’s been difficult to do that – not that that is a bad thing, the group is fantastic, it’s just I miss my ‘me’ time.

This residency is better than I expected… which is always a good thing and has given me some fresh ideas and inspirations for new projects but at the same time I didn’t really know what to expect. I went in with an open mind and so glad I did. It is SO nice to be able to talk to like-minded individuals – talking about science and art.

The first two days we did a bit of hiking. The first one was down a mountain we climbed through a chairlift to see the foliage and the second we hiked through a forest in a national park. We were supposed to meet with an arborist to talk about the trees but I had to drive the group that day due to the group van breaking down the first night. The park didn’t have a specific address so I couldn’t plug it in the GPS and it was hard to orientate yourself. But we got there and focused the hike on finding things for the Kirlian workshop I did later that night! The kirlian workshop also came out really well and we got some cool negatives! So well, they want to do it again!

Yesterday, we went on a third hike into the forest to see the reptiles and amphibians with a specialist. We just happened to see a beaver, three types of tree frogs and a salamander. I’ve got some really cool photos.

I can’t wait to see how the rest of the week unfolds and to see where things go.