All I Want Is Time
France. Part Two
“I detest a day of no work, no music, no poetry … It’s all brewing in my mind, all I want is time.” -Barbara Hepworth
I am now a little more than a third of the way through my residency program here in Vallauris. I arrived with a very specific idea of what I wanted to make. Almost all of my work in the studio for the past ten months has been about gathering information for my time here.
I was worried about a lot of things when I embarked on this journey. How I would spend my time inside the studio was not one of them. What I intended for this residency was to find a way to engage with the world in the moments that my hands were not working with clay. I know that it is an enormous privilege to find myself in a position to create this kind of space and be able to explore all of these ideas, all while remaining focused on my art.
Making things is easy for me. Beginning projects in the studio that I’m interested in is often an effortless endeavor, unlike so many other tasks that can fall through the cracks of my ADHD riddled brain. After only a couple of days getting used to this very different studio as well as a clay body whose material properties couldn’t be more opposite than that of my clay back home, I have been able to settle into a lovely flow of creating new work here. All of the pieces I’ve intended to make for my main project (plus a few more) are either made and drying, or will be by tomorrow.
My world has felt incredibly small and slow since my last post, yet I have already had an incredible amount of experiences that have filled my body and mind with so much. I do not want to overly romanticize anything, mostly because I know that this is not my real life. Moreover, because there are already countless pages and posts written by people celebrating a version of life that is mostly unattainable and I have no intention of adding to that noise.
But, I also know that I began this Substack in order to share more than just the daily life of my studio world. I started writing here because I found the previous ways of telling stories about my work and my world via social media lacking the depth that I want. That does not mean I have not been sharing my world here with others. Any one of my family and friends who have checked in via text or whatsapp have no doubt received a response full of photos and far too many details.
A couple of days ago, I was texting with a friend and they asked about what my daily life was like here.
I wake up fairly early, between 7am and 8am and I head to the cafe a few blocks away in the main plaza, across from the library and next to the Picasso Museum to order my cafe creme and a pain au chocolat. I open up the Book of Alchemy that I mentioned in my previous post, read the entry, then follow with a few pages in a journal that I have dedicated to this newly found daily practice. I then move over to my regular studio notebook to look through my anticipated plans for the day or just find myself scribbling down a few more thoughts. Filling pages in that notebook as quickly as I can fill shelves with my work.
I head to the studio to check on things. Sometimes staying for a while, sometimes passing through as I gauge the readiness of my work for the next step in the process.
Lunch is my daily indulgence here. If we haven’t planned something as a group, I have been walking down the hill about thirty minutes from Vallauris to Golfe-Juan, or taking the bus or train to Antibes or Cannes for a proper meal. I bring both my notebook and something to read because I know that I will be sitting in this spot for at least the next hour and a half if not longer. I know that because I am in France. But, also because I have been following Zak’s Rule™, named after my friend of Zee’s Weiner System fame. A few days before I left Austin, the system was at a party I was attending. On my way out, he called out from behind his hot dog cart, “Hey Keith, do me a favor…When you’re at a cafe and you’re about to leave, stay for five more minutes.”
After lunch and that extra five minutes, I return to the studio and get to work. Sometimes for an hour. Sometimes for three.
I read. I wander. I take photos.
So far, I have been having a simple dinner at the apartment. Scrambled eggs with boursin and a salad. Definitely with a generous portion of the baguette I picked up after lunch from whichever boulangerie that I was closest to. Sometimes it’s just a simple jambon beurre or an anchovy and butter sandwich on that same delicious baguette.
Back to the studio. For another hour…maybe three.
Finally, it’s back to the apartment. Reading. Writing. Editing some photos from the day before opening up google maps to see which bus or train I need to hop on to get to whichever place I intend to explore next.
The quote at the beginning of this post, from one of the last interviews with Barbara Hepworth, was on the wall in the gallery at Fondation Maeght. Our first field trip as a group, my fellow artists-in-residence and I visited this incredible venue in Saint Paul de Vance last week. Luckily, we made it on the final day of Hepworth’s exhibition in their gallery.
Being able to be in the same space with so much of her work, all in one place was obviously inspiring, but it was that quote that resonated throughout my body. It immediately reinforced my reason for being here. Why I decided to take this particular moment to step back from a studio life that I have been practicing for almost thirty years.
I found myself with more emotions flowing than anticipated. I had just sent an email to my studio mailing list announcing some fairly significant news. I am moving out of my current studio and when I close the door to my studio at Canopy at the end of January, I am not opening the doors to another one right away.
I have looked at potential next spaces. I have considered extending my current lease. Most of all, I have had countless conversations with my friends and family about this decision. When I finally sent that email out to my mailing list, my decision was no longer theoretical. It was no longer just for me. It entered the realm of what is real.
Announcing such a major change from abroad, while actively making an entirely new body of work was a bit strange. I have already unloaded a small kiln with the first few pieces from my time in the studio here at A.I.R. Vallauris and seeing my work in clay move from an idea to an object that exists in the world is always magical. For thirty consecutive years, each one of my finished objects has always led to a new one. In the new year, the stretch of time between my most recent piece and the one that follows is entering an unknown timeline.
That’s the thing. The thing that I have been returning to over and over again is the idea of time and my relationship with it. That relationship is one of the biggest reason for my decision regarding my studio. Whether it’s the way time shifted for all of us coming out of the pandemic or the massive acknowledgement of it after my heart attack, my sense of how time moves and how I want to move within it continues to evolve.
What lays ahead for my work is no longer just through clay. It is also through the lens of my camera, the language I search for to describe this journey, and the stories that I will tell as I continue my work.
I cannot overstate the beauty of this gift– To be here with the chance to truly begin looking at how to explore and engage with the world outside of my studio walls as intensely as I explore my world within them.