Gratitude for Artist Residencies

After more than 20 years I recently revisited the Thoreson Farmstead in the Port Oneida historic district north of Glen Arbor in Michigan’s Leelanau County, where I had the pleasure as a recent college graduate in 2004 to be selected by the Glen Arbor Art Association as an artist-in-residence and given one month of uninterrupted time to work. This is an area of unsurpassed natural beauty famous for towering dunes, sandy, clear-water beaches, extensive orchards and vineyards, dense old forests, excellent fishing and hunting, and deep, snowy winters. My work back then focused on playing with spatial perception using optical illusions, which manifested on Thoreson Farm in works that also investigated landscape and history for the first time. This breakthrough of bringing human story into what had previously been purely abstract work is a great example of the creative leaps forward made possible by participation in an artist residency.

The pictures below show some of the work I created on Thoreson Farm in 2004. Less than Zero featured my grandmother’s American Family Scale suspended by invisible line in the corn crib to register either a negative weight or a near-maximum weight, depending on one’s interpretation. Barn Dance featured a 1,000 square foot scrap quilt suspended between the open doors of the barn. The quilt would come to life in the strong breezes and cutting light off of Lake Michigan. Other works included Old Orchard, where the historic fruit ladders were suspended upright as if leaning against the vanished apple trees. Counting the Days featured canning jars that I painted the color of a selection of sky each day. These works intended, both individually and as an entire landscape viewers could walk through, to create an experience of tension between what is present and what is absent using the simplest and most direct approach possible.

I also had the pleasure of meeting Leonard Thoreson (1926-2025), the grandson of the farms’ founders John and Ingeborg. He was an unassuming yet formidable man who had spent his life farming and working hard to stand up against the difficulties of poor sandy soil and long harsh winters. We spent a fair number of hours together discussing the farm and the artworks I was making there. He had never encountered anything like what I was doing but in the end came to understand and appreciate my work. He saw that I was trying to connect with and honor a place of unique generational significance to him and his family. Each work was a kind of visual poem that conveyed a historic, human, and emotional reality of the farm that, once presented, seemed intuitively true like it had been there, barely hidden, all along.

The pictures below are from August, 2025.

I was writing actively at this time in addition to making visual art. I staged a reading as part of the final farm tour and exhibition for the residency. One of the poems I wrote during the residency was included in a history of the farm completed by Tom Van Zoeren in 2006. It made use of a rhyme scheme, unlike my later and current writing, but shows an early concern with enduring themes in my work.

The Two - Poem for Thoreson

Empty windows stare at me,
but I swear I see
the two strong souls who built this farm
and raised this barn
and filled this house with laughter.

Whitewashed boards appear to be
endlessly willing
to house the children
and form the buildings
for the two so filled with laughter.

Unlocked doors
and well-swept floors
will always remember
we didn’t surrender,
that time we stole dad’s car
and drove so far
to reinvent our lonely laughter.

Broken fence posts
and dull momentous
cannot express the brightness
of the two,
whose loving laughter
and nightly chatter
made these windows glow
not so long ago.

Keep the lights off,
Keep the life tough.
Keep the dull rust.
Keep the wind rush.
Keep the family trust.
Keep the farm or bust.

Planted pine rows
and bright mementoes
cannot replace the laghter
of the two.

This fall I have been honored by the SeedKeepers organization to serve as their writer-in-residence for two weeks on a historic farmstead on Beaver Island in Lake Michigan. The organization is dedicated to creating awareness of natural and historic conservation. I will be writing poetry, working toward completing a collection about the interplay of people and landscape, and the boundaries, both real and invented, between what we perceive as true nature and what we perceive as made-made. In part due to the breathtaking beauty and isolation of Beaver Island I have been thinking a lot about the notion of heavenly and Earthly paradise. In particular, I cannot get away from the notion of the walled garden, or contained wilderness, which harnesses and domesticates the unaccountable impulse of life to grow and fruit for the specialized purpose of human flourishing. The resulting collection will bring together writing about nature, agriculture, gardening, and human stories intertwined with each.

Artist residencies offer resources, space, and time to not just work but to build up momentum day after day. In times of fully focused work, growth and discovery become exponential. Ideas, techniques, and entire works of art develop that could not have in the hands of an artist or writer dedicating an hour or two each day to the pursuit, as I have now for many years. Like many artists and writers I have chosen to maintain jobs (and eventually a demanding career) to support time spent in the studio and at the writing desk. This has been atop family and countless other responsibilities. I am fully invested in the daily, patient, persevering creative practice that has helped me develop full bodies of work over the past two decades, such as my 2025 poetry releases Trample & Sew and News of Need, but I am also deeply grateful to the artist residencies that have hosted me, including Prairie Ronde in Vicksburg, MI, and the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology in Otis, OR, for the creative leaps and bodies of unique work they have made possible.