Recently I applied and was accepted to Haystack's Open Studio Residency. Haystack Mountain School of Crafts is an international craft school located on the Atlantic Ocean in Deer Isle, Maine. The school offers intensive studio-based workshops in a variety of craft media. The Open Studio Residency, now in its second year, provides two weeks of uninterrupted time to work in six studios (ceramics, fiber, graphics, iron, jewelry, and wood) to develop ideas and experiment in various media. The program accommodates approximately fifty participants from a variety of creative disciplines. Participants can choose to work in one particular studio or move among studios depending on the nature of their work. All of the studios will be staffed by technicians who can assist with projects. Haystack's fab lab will also be open, providing an opportunity for experimentation with digital fabrication as a way to augment and complement creative practices. This new artist studio, established in 2011 in collaboration with MIT Center for Bits and Atoms, offers another way of looking at craft in a broader context. I will travel to Maine for the residency that runs from May 25th through June 6th. While there I intend to continue my exploration of "cutting" as theme and process as it relates to material and form. I intend to rotate among studios, observing and collecting sensory data from each of the crafts. My question is how I can translate this data into new ways of seeing, using the new media in the fab lab. I don't pretend to know the possibilities but am curious to explore other ways of finding forms that are referential to its making.
