One Step at a Time
This is a story of creating.
As artists, we understand this word and we live it every time we bring something into the world by the efforts of our minds and bodies. In my experience creating can sometimes come lightning fast. At other times it seems stalled and so many ideas are swirling in my head, with nothing to adhere them together into a unified idea or process. It can be daunting at times when big ideas emerge, and I am not sure how to proceed.
Slough Studios is one such idea that began over nine years ago, around the time I was graduating with my BFA. This was long before I was to enter the then, Nomad, now Confluence MFA program. The idea of developing an artist residency seemed a logical and not too difficult task. (Little did I know). It simmered under the surface of my consciousness, and over the next few years would occasionally pop up to get air.
There was always something however coming to prominence pushing the idea back under. And this is where, for years, the idea stayed in a holding pattern.
Life though is at times disarmingly strange. Of its own accord, the idea resurfaced and this time it refused to disappear. I had just started my MFA. It was spring 2020 and we were all settling into the life of Covid. I decided to push forward with drawings for the studio and to choose a building site even though or perhaps because, we were now hunkered down in the midst of Covid restrictions.
Slough Studios Drawings.
I had negotiated an agreement to purchase the property that the studio would be built on which was adjacent to land I had owned for 18 years. One of the terms for purchase was to clear the scrub brush from the old skid trails on the mountainside. I walked the property with my dogs, over the winter and early spring, flagging the trails which would be cleaned up. By the end of my first year on the MFA, I was ready to proceed with construction. It was now spring 2021.
Slough Studios Site building selection with 51 North.
Building started and life became exceedingly busy managing work that provided an income to support myself, moving into the second year of the MFA, and making a myriad of decisions with respect to the construction. The simple idea had ballooned into something which at times seemed unmanageable.
I took this in stride through a process of compartmentalizing the jobs and taking work, art making for thesis and studio construction one step at a time. The studio was completed Spring 2022, with ongoing work being done to the accommodation sites.
I have found that life experiences intertwine and influence the next steps. What I learned during the Nomad (Confluence) MFA, informed not only the body of work that I generated for my thesis and the future, but it has also informed the nature of what I am trying to accomplish here at Slough Studios. The interdisciplinary MFA allowed me to imagine inviting individuals of all backgrounds, to come and spend quality time at Slough Studios. Problems can be solved, and new ideas can develop when there is diversity of thought. It is my hope that this land-based arts residency and retreat becomes a recognized place of arts-based research and creation. Great things can happen when we take it one step at a time, and never give up on an idea.
published by Kathryn Cooke
