As always, or almost always (excluding Yaddo in January), the time has flown here. We have an unusually lovely, supportive & cohesive group, which has created a fertile creative environment for us all. And the landscape is so inspiring, especially now that the chilly, gray, misty-moisty weather of our first two weeks has finally lifted. Hard to believe that these 580 spectacular acres are just for us eight artists, but apart from occasional sculpture tours and other events they host here, we have the run of the place. I’ve been hiking in the mountains almost every day. Goodbye, buns of tapioca, hello, buns of steel! The second week we all did show and tell for each other every night after dinner. The three writers — myself, poet Susan Briante, and Jamaican novelist Patricia Powell (who is my bathroom-mate) — read from our work. James Huang gave a slide presentation of his whimsical and astonishingly diverse sculptures. Jeremy Zuckerman played his compositions, which range from the score for Avatar, The Last Airbender to wholly original and unexpected pieces that are hard to describe — I’ll call them digital manipulations of natural sounds. Beth Howe shared her painstakingly rendered sculpture, drawings (which are drawn with thread instead of pen or pencil), and bookmaking. Benjamin Levy, the gazelle amongst us, danced for us and showed us some of the pieces he has choreographed for his dance company, LEVY Dance. And finally, media artist Maggie Cardelús, who sadly is leaving us today to return to Milan, showed us her work, which involves slicing up photographs and using the cut-outs to create these stunning pieces that defy description, some 2-D and some sculptural. I’m thrilled because Maggie made a piece from a photo of me — see below, where I am pretending to be a tree — and has promised me a copy of it. I will miss her, but I now have a friend in Milan, always an excellent thing.
