In My Habitat
Living in the "Hudson Highlands", about an hour north of New York City, has incredible perks. There are musicians and visual artists everywhere. Often they meet at the crossroads and interesting things start to happen.
I got a great email from a talented visual artist and friend, Simon Draper, saying that he and fellow artists were creating small shack-sized "habitats", or artist studios, as an exhibit.
Simon's imagination, like much of his art, is multi-dimensional, and this project is an intersection of politics, aesthetics, the environment, and community building.
One of the defining questions for this project was, "How much space does an artist need to create their work?" and he posed that question to me.
I was so thrilled. I said I could do A LOT with the 4'x6' room of my own that he said he could build for me.
There will be more than my "habitat" at the exhibit, and it should be a thing of beauty; what they're building are no ordinary shacks!
One of the exhibit's inspirations came from a phone call Simon's mother-in-law received asking her to move her ice-fishing shack from the lake (in Minnesota, where she lives) before the spring thaw. She didn't know what the police were talking about until she realized that someone had made an ice-fishing shack from old paintings she'd thrown away (with her signature at the bottom). And so, the ideas of using reclaimed materials, old art housing new creations, and basically making only a small carbon footprint but with one extremely functional extraordinary shoe were also behind this habitat project, so the resulting space is a wonderful visual statement. His wife, Marnie Hillsley, is almost done with hers, and it's stunning.
And as for me...lucky me! No more clearing off the dining room table and hoping the phone doesn't ring (plus all writers and meditators know that their houses are full of competing gravitational pulls).
I get to keep my 4'x6' shack, built to accommodate my specific artistic needs, like a desk that folds up so I can pace and play guitar and a ledge outside the window for placing "contemplative objects".
To learn more about it, you can visit www.habitatforartists.blogspot.com, and for an actual, not virtual, reality, you can visit on May 17th at Spire Studios, 45 Beekman Street, in Beacon, New York. I'll be in and around my own little studio in the afternoon.
If you get to Beacon, I'd also recommend DIA: Beacon and the Homespun Café on Main Street.
The habitats will be there all summer. Simon is also planting a garden in the spaces between.
