The Residency Residents

Erica Scourti at Can Serrat

There are only two other artists here now. The rest have finished their residencies. Can Serrat will close for December. Things are winding down here. But I still have eleven days left and will continue to absorb this area of Cataluña, Montserrat, El Bruc and Barcelona. I´m loving spending time with the other artists and learning about their work. Erica Scourti is an exceptionally creative artist/filmmaker from London, England who works mainly with digital media, and is interested in language/word-based video art. She has recently done a residency at I-Park in Connecticut.

Natalie McQuade at the Museu Nacional d Art de Catalunya

Natalie McQuade is a brilliant multi-media artist from Melbourne, Australia. She incorporates sculpture, sound, installation and printmaking into her work ...among other things. At Can Serrat, among other projects, she is making several pinhole cameras out of found Spanish cigar boxes.

These are two very creative, very exciting young artists and I so much enjoyed sitting with them while they discussed their work. I´d recommend spending some time visiting their websites.

Otto Castillo, Karine Argile, Jessica Hirst, Marcel Sala
Karine and Marcel run Can Serrat

Jessica Hirst and her partner Otto Castillo have just finished their residency here. Jessica is a multi-media artist. Her current work involves considering logos on the clothing we wear. She has created a personal logo and is collecting used or found clothing and applying her Palmer Fishman logo to these items. They are at once hilarious, and yet worthy of consideration. Her blog has photos of her newly introduced line of Palmer Fishman clothing.

Abde Samad Chakour

Abde Samad Chour, from Casa Blanca, Morrocco, works here at the residency.

There are also six cats here at Can Serrat. I´ve only been able to capture three of them. I´m not crazy about cats so this is a test for me to have six cats wandering in and out of bedrooms, dining room, shower....everywhere.........

Bully Boy who bullies the other cats

Moushou the brother of Noor

Noor the friendly one

There are also two resident ghosts at Can Serrat, whom I have not been able to photograph. I guess it is not surprising that there are at least a couple of ghosts here, considering that the building is perhaps 350 years old. One reportedly is a woman who died here in childbirth. The other is a man who hanged himself after gambling away this building which was his home and farm. The male ghost resides in the blue room on te Norwegian student side of the building and has been known to throw objects around the room. On the Can Serrat side we have the quieter, sadder woman who supposedly drifts from room to room. Makes me alittle sleepless I must say.

It all makes for an exciting, eclectic mix of characters and personalities, animals and ghosts.

Liminal Time

The word liminal comes from the Latin, limen meaning threshold. an in-between place, a place of transition, a time of waiting and not knowing. Dawn and dusk are considered liminal places. Crepuscular animals, like foxes and coyotes are most active at this time of day, a time that is considered a magical time in Celtic spirituality and to Indigenous people which is perhaps the origin of their designation as tricksters. As I write this, the northern hemisphere has just passed the vernal equinox, where day and night are of equal length.We are in a liminal space between winter and spring right now, unsure if we will have one more storm or snowfall before spring finally settles in. We're also in a liminal place as we live through this pandemic with the anxiety and discomfort of not knowing. A time of great transition for the entire world, wondering what we've learned from this and what lessons we'll carry forward. Author and Fr...

Lessons that Stone Walls Teach

Dry stone wall in the Burren, Co. Clare, Ireland I've just returned from teaching a Workshop in Wild Places class in the Burren in County Clare, Ireland. Writing this post, I'm reminded of another post I wrote after visiting Inishmaan, the middle of the Aran Islands off the west coast of Ireland several years ago. Stone walls crisscrossed the island in tight webs like a fisherman's net. I wrote then that the web of stone walls made me think of the idea of putting limitations on our painting as a way of exploring more deeply and how walls give limits against the limitless. You can read that article here. As our group hiked in the Burren with our guide, Marie McGauran we learned that the walls are stronger because of the holes in them. The wind can pass through. The oldest stone walls, estimated to be 3500 years old are at Skara Brae, a Neolithic site in Orkney. Most walls were built in the 18th and 19th century, marking areas of private ownership and resultin...

Am I Too Old to Change? Embracing Life

Photo by Miguel Á. Padriñán from Pexels I'm in the process, at last, of working on the book that came to me in a dream seven years ago. It has circled my head all these years, demanding I get at it. It's called: We're Not Done Yet: Coming to Art Later in Life . It has actually hung in the air a couple of feet behind my head, attached by a string like a helium balloon, like a cartoon cloud, waiting for me to get to it. Some of you will know of it because I posted a request on Facebook in 2019 asking for artists who have come to art later in life to reply to me if they'd like to answer a questionnaire. I received 168 responses plus earlier interviews I did before the put out the questionnaire. There was some overlap, and some didn't respond after they'd offered to. All in all, I received 128 responses. By a huge majority it was women who responded to my questionnaire. By the time we get into our 60's we bring a rich life experience to our work: m...

Janice Mason Steeves

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