vermont studio center

Erica Scourti on the Artist in Residence

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Check out what artist Erica Scourti has to say about our month at the Vermont Studio Center in this post from LABKULTUR.TV: Artist in Residence: an inside view "Welcome to the parallel reality of the artists’ residency, a cross between art school, summer camp and (working) holiday resort for time-pressed artists and writers.

Here at Vermont Studio Centre, everything an artist needs for maximum creative output is catered for. Three home-cooked meals a day, spacious individual studios, workshops and equipment, a meditation hall, yoga studio and a well-stocked art store that- rather like a bar and just as dangerous- allows a running tab. ..."

VSC Debriefing

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I've spent the last month at the Vermont Studio Center, an artist-run residency program, and it's been great. This was my first residency so I wasn't totally sure what to expect, but I shouldn't have worried: great food and facilities, beautiful scenery, and brilliant people both in residence and on staff. In some ways it was pretty much like a mini-intensive grad school without all the stress (also minus the CTA and Jewel-Osco), and I amazed myself by drawing. Yes. Also making lists that go nowhere, which I'm much more accustomed to, and other components of a healthy practice (soccer and karaoke).

VSC's facilities are divided more or less by dimension---making three-dimensional work I had a great studio, spacious and with access to a kiln and an amazing wood and metal shop. Though I wasn't working with metal exactly, I did take the opportunity to start making some of my own tools, real profesh (actually, having them very helpfully made for me---thanks Harlan and Nick!).

Which brings me, of course, to the most important part: my amazing friends, colleagues, and collaborators. The pop-up show KEGGER, which Guadalupe Martinez, Erica Scourti, and I put together was great, and I look forward to future collaborations with these two incredibly talented artists as well as many others. A few samples for you--work by, from left, Mathew Zefeldt, Layet Johnson, and Miho Tajima:

 

This program partially supported by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency.

KEGGER: Brand-Spanking-New Work by Kate Hampel, Erica Scourti, and Guadalupe Martinez

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April 25th at the Vermont Studio Center, our group show will open at 5:30pm.

KEGGER: a show of brand-new work by a group of artists who aim to blast you out of your bourgeois posturing and so called ‘problems’ with a kick up the arse that you will end up thanking- and quite possibly paying- them for.

Wiping away the dead skin of contemporary art-babble and all its attendant pseudo-bollocks with a fresh new approach fostered in the cutting-edge studio practice of their VSC residency, the artists smear their lipstick all over the dead weight tomes of accepted aesthetic practice, re-invigorating our belief in the power of art to move, shake and amaze you.

Bringing a neo-punk post-feminist attitude to bear on the question of longing and belonging, KEGGER invites the viewer into the boudoir of contemporary desire and promises to stay up all night arguing until our voices are hoarse and none of it even matters anymore.

Therein lies the opening through which the viewer can insert himself or herself, completing the work and releasing themselves from their ideological chains.

Kate Hampel is an interdisciplinary artist currently based in Chicago. Her work investigates the structures of violence and desire implicit in our social contracts. www.katehampel.com

Erica Scourti is a London-based artist exploring value and systems of belief in contemporary net-worked culture. www.ericascourti.com

Guadalupe Martinez is an interdisciplinary artist based in Vancouver, Canada. Her work investigates the politics and poetics encountered at the borderland between Self and Other. www.guadalupemartinez.com

This program partially supported by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency.