Visiting Artist Brochure

One Year After Un An Après

Six artists reunite to reflect on the impact of their artist residency in France

INTRODUCTION Even while still working in France in the summer of 2015, the six artists selected as residents for the Alfred and Trafford Klots International Program for Artists mused about creating an exhibition that would document and explore how the residency influenced the direction of their artistic lives. Such an exhibition would be an interesting opportunity to witness how the immersive eight week artmaking experience in the medieval French village of LĂŠhon had impacted their creative practice, as well as other aspects of their professional and personal lives.

This exhibition provides that opportunity, and demonstrates (as well as being part of) the ongoing process of reflecting on and integrating lived experiences, and building on them in meaningful ways.

THE ALFRED AND TRAFFORD KLOTS RESIDENCY The Alfred and Trafford Klots International Program for Artists, administered by Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), was created and endowed by Trafford’s widow, Isabel Klots, to allow artists to experience the enchantment and inspiration of working in Europe. The Program has invited and hosted hundreds of accomplished visual artists in the west of France for multi-week residencies, currently in the beautiful medieval town of Léhon, one of Brittany’s celebrated Petites Cités de Caractère. The Residency’s simple goal is to provide professional artists with uninterrupted time to work in the magical light of western France amid its storied landscape and grandly historic built environment. Such a sojourn has been designed to deepen, enrich, and expand the work of those artists lucky and talented enough to be chosen for the program.

The artists represented in this catalog are among that happy lot. Indeed, the show at Hiram College for our 2015 artist residents is precisely the evidence that the chief goal of the Residency has been met. What is represented in the pages that follow and in the show itself reveals the continuing powerful effect of the time spent in Brittany, a region that has seen its influence endure in the work of many artists from all over the world across the centuries. MICA and The Alfred and Trafford Klots International Program for Artists are indebted to Hiram College and, notably, to 2015 MICA/Klots artist resident Christopher Ryan, for organizing this exhibition. Both the exhibition and the catalog are proof that our work with the Residency, and, most importantly, the time and creative efforts of the artists during their residency, have been more than worthy of our efforts.

Christopher and Jane Shipley Directors, The Alfred and Trafford Klots International Program for Artists Maryland Institute College of Art

JONATHAN BILLET BROOKLYN, NEW YORK

Jonathan Billet’s background is in sculpture and for many years he maintained a studio in Brooklyn – a woodshop, a mold-making shop - where he created his work. He teaches at Parsons School of Design and runs a 3D rendering business. He is currently writing a series of screenplays.

Heading into the Léhon residency I knew that my artistic life was going to change. Just before traveling, I had packed up a studio space in Brooklyn, NY which meant I was no longer going to have the tools and materials with which I had aligned my identity for so many years. My biggest goal for the summer was to experiment with new ways of making work that I would be able to continue upon my return.

In France, the days were long and uninterrupted with the sun setting after 10pm by mid-June. Without familiar distractions, even with everything being new and peculiar, it felt as though two days fit into one. In that time I worked on paintings, took photographs, shot video, and wrote. Each mode had its appeal but when back in New York, it was the narrative work, the writing and the video, that excited me the most. I had for many years tried to capture philosophical, verbal ideas in my sculptures and now I had a form that allowed me to speak those ideas within the body of the work instead of an artist statement.

I’ve continued writing with the idea that I would produce stories that would eventually take on a visual form – film, graphic novel, or possibly, live performance. I’ve sustained this throughout the year, focusing on character-driven narratives. Surprisingly, writing hasn’t felt that different to me than making sculpture. It builds in the same way and ends with many parts coalescing around a shared space. Where writing is pointedly different, is that things of sizes and weights that would have been prohibitive for me to use in sculpture can be brought into a story with no more effort than putting down a word.

Storyboard, pen on paper, 2016

AllĂŠe Couverte, gouache on paper, 2015

Gates of Hell, 3D stereoscopic archival inket print, 2016

Bretagne, gouache on paper, 2015

BENJAMIN DUKE EAST LANSING, MICHIGAN

Benjamin Duke received his MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art, Hoffberger School of Painting, and has been teaching painting and drawing at Michigan State University since 2006.

A residency is like being on a boat, a boat that is lost at sea. A boat that is lost at sea with a pack of rabid dogs…Or at least rabid squirrels. ‘Life of PI?’ Yes. ‘Dudley and Stephens’? Yes. Can you get the squirrel to share its last nut? Is it okay to eat the squirrel?

What if we draw straws?

Residencies tend to inspire long, ongoing conversations. In a 1968 conversation between Norman Mailer and Marshall McLuhan called “The Summer Way,” (look it up!) they discuss the role of the artist in society. McLuhan sees the role of the artist as the lone individual able to confront the present moment, to take in the ‘information overload’ and discern the patterns that reveal what our “world is made of.”

…we have put a man-made satellite environment around the planet.

The planet is no longer nature, it’s no longer the external world. It is now

the content of an art work.

In McLuhans’s use of ‘world,’ I hear the echo of Heidegger’s notion of “Dasein,” of ‘being -in-the-world.’ The realization that ‘sense of self’ is locked into a network of individual and historical accidents. That the words we use invent, not just who we think we are, but where we think we are. Sometimes I forget that I am always at an Artists Residency, that living itself is a work of art. Sometimes I forget that we are all on this boat together.

I forget that I am a squirrel. It’s not that Residencies are artificial experiments in living, but that life is. You don’t have to go to France to live in France. You don’t have to be at the Artist Residency to live like an artist, to live in creativity and wonder.

The Lock at La Hisse, oil on board, 2015

Rebuilding, oil on canvas, 2014-16

Detour, oil on canvas, 2016

Continuable Beyond, oil on canvas, 2015

KATE LANGRIDGE HUMBLE, TEXAS

Kate Langridge is a perceptual painter and draftsman. She substitute teaches grades K-12 in the Humble Independent School District of Humble, Texas and is studying to receive her teacher certificate at Lone Star College. Kate grew up in an Illinois town that is within driving distance of the Art Institute of Chicago and she credits its Impressionist art collection as one of her formative influences. Kate received her BA from Knox College in English Literature and Studio Art and her MFA in Painting from the New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting, & Sculpture.

The residency and its participants gave me courage to reevaluate certain necessary things. When I returned from France I went about changing my color palette and identifying new ways to integrate imagination into my paintings. I eliminated a limited palette and turned to monochromatic work. I constructed cardboard props for paintings based on how they represented spaces and feelings.

I left France feeling quite confident that I had found some ineffable answer or confirmation, which I was taking back with me. Some of my most memorable experiences are of morning talks, afternoon cobblestone walks, and the quiet pleasure of participating in things without an unnatural exertion. I viewed a collection of French Abstract Expressionist artists, Breton painters, and an exhibition of Italian drawings on a day trip to Rennes and was able to later connect it to works on view at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.

Overall, I was left fascinated with the elements of design I saw everywhere that seemed made to connect people to a location and I wanted to emulate it in my work.

Jardin du Val Cocherel, oil on canvas, 2015

Cardboard Prop 3 (Monochromatic), oil on canvas, 2016

Cardboard Prop 2 (Monochromatic), oil on canvas, 2016

La Rance, LĂŠhon, oil on canvas, 2015

DANIEL RIESMEYER BOZMAN, MARYLAND

Daniel Riesmeyer is a representational painter and Adjunct Instructor currently teaching in Maryland. He received his B.F.A. from the Maryland Institute College of Art and M.F.A. in painting from Indiana University. Artistically, Daniel is inspired by Art History and interested in the relationship between immediate perception and how memory, accumulated time, and the imagination can transfigure those observations.

I had never traveled abroad before participating in the Alfred and Trafford Klots Residency and as I look back at the experience, I am reminded of a line by John Steinbeck as he assessed his own journey across the United States: “…many a trip continues long after movement in time and space have ceased.”

One thing that was readily apparent while exploring Léhon and the surrounding area was the level of connection and integration its inhabitants had to a historical heritage – as though time had progressed laterally as opposed to linearly and the hands that had quarried the stones for the medieval chateaux were now busy building high rises in nearby Dinan. I found that although the formal aspects of light and space were of initial interest, the interconnectedness of the landscape, its history, and its people were my true subjects.

Since my return home I have continued to think about the process of making a painting as a search for a kind of cohesion of life, space, and people. The area where I live on the Eastern Shore of Maryland is an interesting subject for me because it exhibits a convergence of two opposing ways of life. The area has a rich colonial history as a thriving working class port town and hub of agriculture and commercial fishing. As these industries have slowly declined, the area’s economy has transitioned into one dependent on a migratory population of upscale vacation property owners. Although my painting process is very similar to that which I employed in France, I am struck by a sense of tension I perceive between old and new ways of life, and am exploring ways to address this in my work.

View from LĂŠhon, oil on muslin on panel, 2015

View from LĂŠhon, oil on muslin on panel, 2015

Reflection on the past, oil on muslin on panel, 2016

Beach House, St. Michaels, ink on paper 2016

CHRISTOPHER RYAN CLEVELAND HEIGHTS, OHIO

Christopher Ryan is a realist painter and an Associate Professor of Art at Hiram College, where he teaches painting, drawing, and design. Ryan’s B.A. from John Carroll University included studies in History and Art History, and his M.A. from the University of Virginia was in Modern European History. Ryan received his M.F.A. in painting and drawing from a joint program between Studio Art Centers International (SACI) in Florence, Italy, and Bowling Green State University. Ryan’s artistic interests grow out of his engagement with art history and his time living and working in Italy. His artwork reflects interests ranging from ancient mosaic and inlaid stone floors to European plein air painting.

Leaving behind for two months the normal duties and routines of work and life to focus on artmaking in a historic French village is no question a luxury. However, I discovered that the absence of life’s daily distractions can also compel one to confront lingering emotions and poignant memories. For me this had to do with the recent loss of loved ones. I found that amid the beauty and tranquility of Léhon, I still had to address unresolved matters of loss and mourning. Perhaps mirroring my state of mind, I gravitated to liminal spaces; those incomplete or partial structures that possess a degree of ambiguity through decay or destruction, allowing them to be interpreted in a multitude of ways.

Using the momentum of the residency, I spent the rest of the summer and fall painting and drawing onsite at an abandoned factory near my home. These dilapidated structures also had a liminal quality, and I found that I could build on some of the themes that I had explored in France dealing with ruins and ambiguous forms. Inspired by my fellow residents, I returned to drawing as a means of exploration and expression. Expanding on some of the compositional drawing approaches explored during the residency, I’ve found an effective way of compositing disparate images to create drawings that address absence, grieving, and the wandering and unanchored nature of memory.

Sunken Pool, oil on board, 2015

LĂŠhon Houses, graphite on paper, 2015

Looking Toward Es Nonais, oil on board, 2015

Finding Equilibrium, ink on paper, 2016

ROBERT WEISS DALLAS, TEXAS

Born in Texas, Robert Weiss completed his BFA in painting and printmaking at the Maryland Institute College of Art. He received his MFA from Syrcuse University in New York where he studied and taught painting and drawing. While teaching art courses at Ball High School in Galveston, Texas, Robert co-created a film titled Ike: A Documentary, The Story of A Torn City Rebuilt

by Everyday Heroes. This award-winning film reveals the devastating effects of Hurricane Ike and the incredible resilience of the Galveston community. Robert currently teaches film at the Episcopal School of Dallas while continuing to work on his own short narrative films, documentaries and paintings.

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I remember with acute perception every single position where I sat and painted. I remember all of it with such pristine clarity because I found myself in a foreign land where my senses were deranged. I was within a fascinating time capsule deep in the French countryside. My days in LĂŠhon consisted entirely of painting sessions disrupted only by refreshment and sleep. I became so keenly aware of the light and time of day. I knew that once the chimney shadow touched a certain place on the slate roof, it was time to get lunch and prepare for the next round of painting.

When I first arrived in LĂŠhon, I found it incredibly difficult to find my voice amidst the foreign landscape. After two weeks of constant, restless work, I finally started to unlock the secrets of the landscape. As the paintings unfolded, I became engrossed in the layers of paint and the technical process, and the work became less about the finished piece and more about the act of bargaining, beseeching, penance and repetitive ritual.

I was painting the landscape while simultaneously having a conversation with the great painters of the past who had studied the French countryside. I was able to revive my knowledge of the great landscape painters like Corot and Courbet and then formally challenge the rules they had established in complex and meaningful ways. I could not have done this anywhere else on earth.

In my day-to-day life back in Texas, I am often oversaturated by the sensory overload of the digital media age. However, a strange sensation often comes over me where I feel connected to not only my own work and France, but also to all the paintings of the past that I love. This allows me to feel that I am a part of a rich artistic heritage. Now that I am fortunate enough to know that this sensation exists, I can continue to strive for it.

Abbey, graphite on paper, 2015

Mary, acrylic on canvas, 2015

Tunnel, graphite on paper, 2015

Tree, oil on canvas, 2015

Nous sommes surtout très reconnaissants de l’accueil très chaleureux de la part des léhonnais pendant notre séjour en Bretagne.