Guest Blog: Joanna Chen, Entry Four
The following is reprinted from Garnet News. VCCA Fellow Joanna Chen, who lives in Israel, is writing a six part account of her residency at VCCA. (All images, Joanna Chen)
This week, after dinner, I present my work to the other fellows. I decided to share work I’ve done here, an abstract piece on trees and homeland, and a new chapter from my book.
The
presentation is a joint venture with Avy Claire, a visual artist from Maine who
has been here almost as long as I have. Her work taps deeply into landscape,
and we both feel a certain affinity.
We
take walks together in the countryside around VCCA, and I enjoy seeing the
world through her eyes — the invasive plants that have become rooted in the
native — and her uncanny awareness of what lies beneath the surface.
I
don’t usually have a problem reading. A friend once told me I should imagine
I’m reading the back of a Cheerios box, and this little trick still works for
me, irrespective of how many people are in the room. This time, however, as I
stand there, pages in hand, reading a line about my home in the Ella Valley,
the faces of my three beautiful children swim up before me, and I falter for a
moment, unable to conjure up that big, bright, yellow box. I clear my throat,
apologize and then continue.
I don’t
usually have a problem reading. A friend once told me I should imagine
myself reading the back of a Cheerios box, and this little trick still
works for me…
I’ve
never been good at art, but with the help of Avy’s visual acumen, we turn the
residency living room into a forest. There’s a sound track of birds recorded at
5am one chilly morning when I could not sleep; there are thin strands of yellow
string tied with twigs and tiny bits of satin to represent the red cardinals
that we hang together from the rafters after I climb a precariously high
ladder, ignoring my vertigo because I want to prove that I can do it.
Together,
we articulate through artifacts and words what it means to us to create.
There’s a lot of fun in the process, too, and I’ve grown accustomed to Avy’s
sudden eruptions of laughter as we work.
There
are two weeks left before I pack my bags and return home. My book moves across
the cork board in my studio, changing shape daily as I add another photo,
another note, another theme scribbled in felt pen that escaped
It
has flown the confines of my laptop and has become a visual entity that
breathes and speaks. I will keep adding to it and will eventually write it into
the book that, I hope, will speak not just to me but to others.
Last
night, I slipped away from the living room earlier than usual, walking away
from dinner and conversation with the other fellows and down to my studio in
the dark of night. I arrive at my studio door, fumbling with the key in the lock,
and open the door. What The Trees Reveal is waiting for me.
********
In
NOTES FROM AFAR, writer Joanna Chen sends us weekly dispatches from
Amherst, Virginia during her six-week residency at the Virginia Center for
the Creative Arts. In Notes, Chen explores challenges
and advantages particular to women writers, the allure and the reality of
leaving her partner and children to write and the importance of personal
space as she charts her own creative process in the foothills of Virginia’s
Blue Ridge Mountains far away from her home in Israel’s Ella Valley.
NOTES
FROM AFAR is the first in a pilot series focusing on women in the arts and
one that we hope will become a regular feature.
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