Thursday, February 27, 2014

Homemade Artist Residency

When I was a kid, one of my brothers and his friends used to use spring break to stage a backyard two-on-two basketball tournament, and they called it the Riley-Montague Invitational, or some such thing, after, I think a couple of obscurish local college basketball players.  At least, that’s how I remember it.

 A couple years ago, I noticed, by way of Joanne Mattera’s excellent blog, that some artists rev up their production by ‘awarding themselves’ a residencyLaura Moriarty and Tim McFarlane were the two examples that have stuck with me. They put together homemade artist residencies by taking a couple weeks off the day job and strictly dedicating that time to working in the studio.

I realized I’d unofficially been doing that for years, just by virtue of the schedule of my day job. That is, a couple times of year, if I’m lucky, but at least once, I get a full, uninterrupted week in the studio, courtesy of working an academic schedule and/or having a civilized amount of vacation days. I just never gave it a name.  LIU’s spring break is coming up, which has always been a productive week for me. So, this year, let’s go ahead and call it a DIY residency, and perhaps I can even document it as such and share it here, and on FB.

Maybe I’ll even steal my brother’s name and call it The Riley-Montague Artist Residency. Because I always did like the sound of it.