Friday, May 24, 2013

En route from Aroostook County to Deer Isle, Maine


Here now.  My room.
 194 statute miles

Another traveling post. This site started as one devoted to travel, and so it remains, as long as my feet remain itchy with wanderlust. I resolved silently, a while back, not to mention my alternate career as a fiction writer for at least a year; I'm not sure I made it. So again, I'm coming out as a writer of fiction, something I hesitate to mention on these pages.

Nevertheless, I have been accepted to the Haystack Mountain of Crafts (donate!) Open Studio Residency for artists of all disciplines. I applied almost on a whim, the day I received my first rejection for the Iowa Writers' Workshop, not thinking I had a shot at the prestigious residency, hoping at least for a chance at a summer workshop. But I was accepted for both, which simultaneously daunted and thrilled me. Especially after I searched online for some of my fellow artists.

Here is some of their work (I think, if google can be trusted):

Megan Biddle

Nancy Koenigsberg (Sculpture made of coated copper wire and glass beads)

Jiyoung Chung (Made of paper!  I think.  Korean joomchi)

Rama Chorpash (Fiber art designed according to the topographic contours of Central Park.)

Melissa Craig
People are traveling from Hawaii, Texas, Oregon, Ireland. Many have had solo shows at New York City galleries. Others are professors of their craft—metalworkers, glassblowers, papermakers, enamelists. I am an anomaly as a novelist, at least so far as I know.  They are real artists--in museums, in permanent collections.  The only other writer I discovered is a former Maine poet laureate. More exalted company than I could have dreamed.

As I sit here writing on paper during my road trip lunch, I keep thinking they've made some kind of mistake, that I'll be turned aside at the door. But it is fear, of course, fear of the magnitude of the gift being given.  Let's just say I'm very pleased to be a participant with such fierce companions in arms.

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