Janice Mason Steeves

Yesterday, four of our group of five residents here at the Baer Art Center in Iceland went on a boat ride from the nearby village of Hofsos, northward, up the peninsula. There is a beautiful headland or Cape that we can see from the residency. It's connected to both shores with long, low spits of land covered with stones, almost creating a lake, except for one small opening where the stones and land were washed away in a recent storm. Our boat ride was to take us to the other side of the Cape. Although I had seen images of that other side on the website of Neal Rentoul, who is a photographer and was a resident here in 2013, I was totally unprepared for the power of the experience. The water was calm, the weather was overcast. Perfect for floating so close to this enormous Cape and for taking photos. This entire side of the Cape is made up of basalt columns. It was so breathtaking. I felt like screaming. I felt like being silent. Both at the same time...

I'm settling into my residency at the Baer Art Center in Iceland. It's been nearly a week now and my eyes and mind are filled with many sights that are so different from the part of the world where I live (in the country outside of Toronto, Canada). The residency is located on a farm near the town of Hofsos in Northern Iceland on the shores of a fiord called Skagafjordur. The owners breed Icelandic horses. One of the most exciting things our group of five residents has done, was to hike up into a nearby valley, after being dropped off part way up. We passed through a couple of cattle gates and across a small river to where the horses are allowed to run free for the summer. They were curious, and cautiously came toward us and surrounded us, allowing us to pat them. Yesterday, we drove around the north part of the peninsula, through three tunnels, that connect formerly isolated towns. One of the tunnels was a one-way road, built in 1967, narro...

Potential art supplies to pack I'm wondering what to pack for my artist residency at the Baer Art Center in Iceland that's coming up in a week. It's the art supplies that are the problem really. What do I pack? What will I work on? How can I know? Do I limit myself in advance? It won't be easy to get more art supplies once I'm there.  It's not only the opportunity to travel that I'm looking forward to, but to be allowed an entire month to spend on my painting and my writing is a huge gift.  I like the freedom an artist residency allows me, to explore new ideas, new ways of working. "We travel, initially to lose ourselves and we travel next, to find ourselves. We travel to open our hearts and eyes and learn more about the world than our newspapers will accommodate", says Pico Iyer in his essay, "Why We Travel". "Yet for me", he goes on to say, "the first great joy of travelling is simply the luxury of ...