Guest Blog by Cliff Garstang: Artist Residencies - Virginia? Nebraska? Or France?

As part of my series on artist residencies, I am happy to welcome Cliff Garstang,  editor of Prime Number Magazine and a fellow Queens MFA alum, who will share some of his experiences at different residencies. Incidentally, Cliff also runs the blog Perpetually Folly where he publishes, among many other missives, his annual Literary Magazine Listings based on the Pushcart Prizes. He's been my inspiration for putting together my similar list for best literary magazines for nonfiction. Alright, here's Cliff on residencies (Thank you, Cliff!):

Most of my artist colony experience has been at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts in Amherst, Virginia, where I’ve been in residence several times, but I’ve also been to two other residencies that are quite different.

VCCA France

The more exotic and stimulating of these is actually VCCA’s outpost in Auvillar, France, Moulin á Nef. It’s VCCA, and one must have been a VCCA Fellow to apply, but it functions very differently. Getting there is the first difference. Some people fly to Paris and take the train south (making at least one connection along the way). I flew into Toulouse where I spent almost a week exploring before going on to Auvillar by train, just one hour away. What I hadn’t realized when I applied was that it’s a small facility. In contrast to VCCA-US, which has space for twenty-five or so artists at a time, VCCA-France can accommodate just four. Upon my arrival, the Resident Director showed me to my room, a large space on the second floor of the lovely old house that serves as the residence. We then went to the newly renovated building next door that holds the four studios, configured so they can function for visual artists or writers—big sunny spaces few furnishings to get in the way.

Cliff's bedroom at VCCA France

So the sleeping and work space is fairly standard. The big difference is in the meals. There aren’t any. Or, rather, there is one “Fellows Dinner” each week, prepared by the Resident Director. The rest of the time, residents are on their own, although transportation is provided once each week to an incredible market in a nearby town. With our market provisions, we cooked our own meals in the house’s kitchen. It’s a small space, though, so when I was there the residents decided to share meals and rotate cooking duties. That worked well. And the result was a series of wonderful, slow dinners, with lots of wine, making it nearly impossible to return to work afterword. For lunches or the occasional night out, the village of Auvillar has some nice restaurants, and we visited those from time to time, as well.

But, of course, the real point of being there is not the food or the wine or, really, the number of other residents. While I may have missed making lots of new friends, I managed to get a lot of work done.

And then there’s the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts in Nebraska City, Nebraska, which, other than the fact that it’s in Nebraska, is somewhat similar to VCCA-France. It has space for just five artists in three apartments, with shared cooking facilities. Meals are not provided, but residents receive a stipend with which to buy groceries. The work space is also similar: visual artists have studios in a separate wing of the building; my writing studio was a separate study in my apartment.

What these colonies share, of course, is the precious gift of time to write.

Reading Out Loud

I've been a bit quiet on my blog here because I've been loud otherwise: I've been using every free minute I have alone to myself to read my book manuscript out loud, following a tip from Sandra Beasley. When one of my students asked her how she managed to keep her memoir Don't Kill the Birthday Girl engaging even though she had to convey a lot of research, she said that she read it out loud. "You find the boring parts that way," she said.

Being a poet, reading her words out loud comes natural to her. For me, it's a bit odd, especially because I have to wait until I am home alone, or at least until only my husband is at home and in his office at the other end of the apartment. Jabbering out loud to myself would be too weird otherwise.

Sandra is right, however. You do find the boring parts when you read out loud. You immediately realize where the narrative is dragging because reading out loud requires a different kind of effort. Thankfully, I have not found too many passages that ended up on the chopping block. Reading an entire manuscript out loud is a chore but it's also helping me see it as a whole, which is a special challenge with a longer manuscript.

I've read out loud to myself before, whenever I had to prepare for a reading, but those were all short pieces. In fact, my main goal then was to time myself, and figure out where I could cut to stay within the time limit, and having the family as a practice audience was beneficial. When you read a short piece out loud, over and over again, you find that you better be in love with your words, or you won't want to do it, and if you don't want to read it, how can you expect a reader to get into it? It only makes sense that the same logic applies to a longer piece.

Photo Essay: The Chicago Lakefront in Winter

My daughter and I braved the cold, the grey and the wind yesterday and walked the Chicago lakefront. We were rewarded with this symphony of grey and white, and what seemed like vast loneliness. We only met two hardy bikers, two joggers and a few walkers.

The ducks found themselves the only open water under the bridge to the 59th Street Harbor.

Frozen boulders along the shore - my daughter had to steady me while I crouched to take this picture as everything was glazed in ice.

This is really a view of the 63rd Street Beach House, but to me it seemed like an apparition from a snowy Japanese movie.

Icicles along the pier at 59th Street Harbor.

Dune grass is the only sign that really, this is a beach scene.

The one-armed street light.

Lake Michigan itself - nothing moves, and nothing is to be seen, except grey and white.

We shall end where we began this essay - with the trees - grey against white. I loved the urn shape of this one.

Green Eggs & Ham: A Story with 50 Words

These days, in the age of soundbites, we challenge ourselves to tell stories in no more than 140 characters (on Twitter), or no more than six words (see the Six Word Memoir project). Here's a challenge from Dr. Seuss, a.k.a. Theodor Geisel, that I was intrigued to learn about at the Dr. Seuss exhibit, and that might be a little harder: Write a story using only 50 words, i.e. the same 50 words.

He, in fact, did just that: He bet his publisher $50 that he could write a story using no more than 50 words, and then he did it, writing his bestseller Green Eggs & Ham. Not only did he write it with 50 words, all the words have only one syllable, except for one: "anywhere." And all this in 1960.

Many of his books are based on a list of 220 beginner words, which makes them easy to read for children. Another secret: They are often written in anapestic tetrameter, a cadence easy to follow for young readers.

I loved these two insights into the craft of Dr. Seuss, and maybe one day I shall challenge myself to learn more about rhyme and rhythm, and consider the simplicity or complexity of the actual words I use.

Guest Blog by Marcia Pradzinski - A Residency at Ragdale

Tree at Ragdale - photo courtesy of Barbara Terao

Poet and nonfiction writer Marcia Pradzinski has been a member of my Advanced Memoir Workshop at StoryStudio Chicago for a while, and was recently awarded a two-week residency at Ragdale. As part of my series on artist residencies, I asked her to share her experience:

Marcia: The Ragdale residency in Lake Forest, Illinois is set next to acres of prairie. The rural setting offers respite from the usual busyness of everyday life, giving the artists’ minds clarity in order to focus on their works of art. Yet the residence is not completely isolated from an active community; downtown Lake Forest is about a mile away. There are restaurants, a bookstore, other shops, and a train that you could take into Chicago, if you so desired. For me, it was a perfect combination of city and country.

I usually write at home in the middle of household distractions that win me over and interrupt my writing. Ragdale eliminated those disturbances for two weeks, and put me in contact with writers and visual artists whose work and ideas inspired me. During the mornings and afternoons, everyone worked on their own: the writers in their rooms at computers, the visual artists in their studios. If the residents were not busy at work, some might be wandering the prairie, while others might be chatting in the kitchen or the living room. In the evenings, everyone met for dinner, prepared by a fantastic chef, who stocked the fridge and the cupboards with leftovers for the next day’s breakfast and lunch.

Ragdale - photo courtesy of Barbara Terao

After dinner, the residents shared their work. One visual artist showed us her photographic compositions; another displayed her sculptures made from branches, twigs, stones and other things found. On other nights, we heard poetry, memoir shorts, and novels in progress. The presence of other artists and the interaction with them inspired me to read and write as much as I could. As a result, I put together the jagged beginnings of my book-length memoir.

At Ragdale I was in residence with others who wanted the time, space, and quiet to work. Our only chore was stacking the dishwasher. I didn’t get as much done during those two weeks at Ragdale as I had hoped to, but I did get much more accomplished than if I had been at home. It was my first experience with a writing residence, and I hope it will not be my last.

Space Camp

My favorite spot at Space Camp this time was the
Davidson Center for Space Exploration, a new hall built to exhibit the Saturn V. When I was a space camp last with my older son, in 2006, they were still collecting money to restore the rocket. Now you can walk under it, and appreciate all its hugeness, and get some kind of idea of the power required to leave the gravity of Earth.

It's been a tradition in my family for me and one of our children to go to parent/child space camp at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Since I went with my two older kids when they were in 3rd and then 4th grade, a trip with my youngest, now in 6th grade, was overdue, and so I booked us to go over New Year's, which seemed a good time to be traveling south anyway.

I can't exactly say how the tradition started, or how I found this particular program but it's been a great way for me to spend one-on-one time with one of my children, which is always a challenge when you have three. Plus it's a nice way to learn. It also struck me this time that we can't take it for granted that our kids know about space travel, especially travel to the moon. I grew up with that; I was a little kid when Apollo 11 landed on the moon, and I remember my dad's excitement. But for our kids this is ancient history, as one of the IMAX movies we watched, Magnificent Desolation, addresses very nicely. We do have to teach them about that history, or they have no concept of what it takes to travel to space. These days, Space Shuttle missions seem almost self understood, but they are not, and even they are fading into history as the last space shuttle flew last year.

Simulated Space Shuttle Mission at space camp: the orbiter
crew as seen through the Mission Control monitor

The U.S. Space & Rocket Center exists in Huntsville because that's where Wernher von Braun and his team were moved to an existing Army base to develop those rockets that eventually took us to the moon. While clearly a highly accomplished scientist, Wernher von Braun is a problematic figure for me because he did work for Hitler and the Wehrmacht (developing the V-2 missiles that were targeted at the Allies) until it became inopportune in May of 1945, at which point he decided it would be better to defect to the Americans than to be captured by the Soviets who were about to overrun the Baltic town of Pennemünde where he was working.

The current Wernher von Braun exhibit at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center does not address his to me rather obvious opportunism; it simply begins with his defection (they even display the bicycle that his brother supposedly used to alert the Americans). The exhibit shows him as this great scientist with vision and charisma, which he certainly was, but it would have been an exhibit with greater depth if it had also addressed his problematic past. After all, every hero has his faults.

My son rides the MAT (Multi-Axis-Trainer) at space camp.

So what do you do at space camp except see an exhibit which you could see if you just visited the museum there? We did three simulated Space Shuttle missions, and had different roles each time, with the child taking the lead. First time around, my son was commander, and I was pilot (The amount of buttons one has to find on that flight deck are mind-boggling!). We also got to work as Space Station Scientists, as well as INCO (Integrated Communications Officer) and Mission Scientist (both working in Mission Control in "Houston.") We were on a great team with other parents and children, and had loads of fun while each of us was trying to figure out what the hell we were doing. At one point, we parents and kids in Mission Control did a rendition of the "Sponge Bob Square Pants" theme while we were waiting for the orbiter crew to get their act together.

We also built rockets and launched them on a bright and balmy afternoon (60F - I knew it was a good idea to travel south in the winter...), and we rode lots of different simulators that astronauts actually used to train for space travel. My favorite is the 1/6 chair, so called because on the Moon you only weigh a sixth of what you weigh on Earth. They strap you into a harness, and you get to bounce around like a baby (see the little video above of my son "walking on the moon").

And of course we learned a lot of space travel history: early rocketry, the space race between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, Sputnik, the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo projects, the Space Shuttle Program, the MIR, the International Space Station. The main idea of space camp is to learn while having fun, and they do a great job at that. We certainly enjoyed ourselves, and learned a lot, even though I must say the 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. schedule was exhausting. But then again, space travel is not for the weak at heart.

Writing Exercise: Color List - White

Dusty Miller at the Lincoln Park Conservatory

Even though there still is no snow outside here in Chicago, the color for this month is going to be white, perhaps because at this point I am really craving white! Snow, snow, snow!

For the uninitiated, the idea is to come up with ways to evoke white without mentioning the color itself since one of the challenges of writing effective descriptions is getting the color just right. Each month on this blog we work on one color, so far we’ve done, gray, brown, orange, red, green, pink, blue, and yellow.

Here's my little start for white, and I am curious to see what you will contribute:

baby's breath
bridal veil
cream
eggshell
milk
salt
snow
sugar

Dr. Seuss's Creative Process

The Christmas Around the World exhibit
also wrapped up today. Fittingly, the
Great Hall with the big Christmas
Tree was decorated with Grinch
posters.

Today was the last day of the Dr. Seuss and the Art of Invention Exhibit at the Museum of Science & Industry, and thanks to my daughter, who purchased tickets in advance, we actually made it there. Not that we couldn't have gone before, but how often have we missed great exhibits in our very own city, thinking, oh yeah, we will get there, and then they are over?

And the Dr. Seuss exhibit we had to see, for his rhymes and characters are part of our family language, as I am sure they are for many others. Most prominent from my own childhood is Horton the Elephant from Horton Hatches the Egg. Many a time my mom would repeat this rhyme to emphasize a point:

"I meant what I said
And I said what I meant...."

Sometimes we children would chime in:

"An elephant's faithful
One hundred per cent!"

And the "somebody" from The Cat in the Hat Comes Back became a bonmot with my own family: Whenever something needs doing, we'll ask who the "somebody" is who has to do it, referring to:

"When our mother went
Down to the town for the day,
She said, 'Somebody has to
Clean all this away.
Somebody, SOMEBODY
Has to, you see.'
Then she picked out two Somebodies.
Sally and me."

Unfortunately, picture taking was not allowed inside the exhibit, which featured many original artworks by Theodor Seuss Geisel, a.k.a. Dr. Seuss, so I can't share any pictures here. But I was most struck by his creative process, which was meticulous, to say the least. Of course the exhibit was geared towards children, but I nevertheless was interested in his artistic approach, even though this is the curator's interpretation, not an explanation by Dr. Seuss himself. Thankfully, I had my notebook along, and taking notes was not prohibited, so here is how the exhibit portrayed his creative process:

1. See

2. Imagine

3. Be your characters

4. Get under your influence (i.e. utilize what influenced you. Dr. Seuss's father was a zookeeper. Not surprisingly then, did Dr. Seuss know a lot about animals, and in the end preferred to create his own many times.)

5. Draw, draw, draw (for us writers, substitute: write, write, write)

6. To rhyme or not to rhyme (translation for me: study more how rhyme and meter work. Dr. Seuss often used amphibrachic tetrameter:

   "And now comes an act of enormous enormance,
   No former performers performed this performance.")

7. Edit it, then edit it.

8. Do the details (Dr. Seuss labeled every color in each drawing to match the printers' color charts to make sure they would use the correct colors.)

Even if he didn't exactly work in that order, surely all these steps were taken at some point. Clearly, here's someone who worked very hard, knew his medium very well, and wasn't afraid to experiment.

Antebellum Homes in Huntsville, Alabama

This holiday season I didn't manage a photo trip to capture some of the kitschier Christmas decorations on Chicago's Southwest side as I had planned on my winter list. However, before immersing ourselves with travel to the moon and space shuttle launches at space camp in Huntsville, Alabama last week, my son and I walked through Huntsville's historic Twickenham District. So, before the holiday season is entirely over (the Orthodox Christmas is celebrated tomorrow), I shall share with you these tastefully decorated antebellum homes.

Mastin Batson, 1819, on Franklin Street

Huntsville features the most antebellum homes in any city in Alabama. Antebellum refers to homes built before the Civil War (1861-1865). We walked down Franklin Street and side streets from there.

Munroe Clark, 1814

From what I can tell, that tree in the background is a rhododendron, which reaches only bush size up north.

Bibb Home, 1836

Wharton Walker, 1820

Mastin Home 1822

You do have to watch your step on those old brick side walks!

Candle Smoke Writing

Here's a different kind of writing for you: Candle Smoke Writing, or rather, historical graffiti. My son and I stopped by Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky on our way down to Space Camp in Alabama, and while we had only booked the standard Mammoth Cave Passage tour, the guide was nice enough to take us small group of between-Christmas-and-New-Year's visitors on a side trip to Gothic Avenue, where you can find these rather magnificent displays of graffiti from before the Civil War. See inscription from 1827 in the middle of this picture. The 7 is backwards as many of these writings were done by holding the candle over a mirror rather than craning your neck for a few hours.

Turns out most of the guides in those days were slaves, and allowing visitors to leave their names on the cave ceiling was a way for them to make some money.

Another way for them to earn a little something was to offer visitors the chance to leave their own stone tower or "monument." This was also a rather clever way of clearing the path of rocks, something the slaves were in charge of.

A beacon of modern light - the Christmas tree in the Rotunda in Mammoth Cave.

Coming up for air - I shall leave you with this image of the bare forest above the cave. Still no snow yet in this picture, perhaps we shall see a dusting as we are on our way back now. More impressions from our short trip coming soon.

Happy New Year!