“Every voyage can be said to involve a re-siting of boundaries. The traveling self is here, both the self that moves physically from one place to another, following ‘public routes and beaten tracks’ within a mapped movement; and, the self that embarks on an undetermined journeying practice, having constantly to negotiate between home and abroad, native culture and adopted culture, or more creatively speaking, between a here, a there, and an elsewhere.”
Trinh T. Minh-Ha’s Elsewhere, Within Here: Immigration, Refugeeism and the Boundary Event
In the summer, between the second and third years of my Master of Fine Arts program, I came to Paonia focused on concerns regarding my final thesis year and what’s to come after graduate school. My forward-thinking approach to life and work fostered anxieties. I worried myself with endless questions: How do I succeed as an artist at Michigan State University, the research institution where I am pursuing my degree? What happens after I graduate? Will I return to my birthplace of Los Angeles, the city of my formative years? Or will I move to the motherland, the Philippines, where my mother and extended family have been residing for over a decade, to stay close to and care for my elderly mother as she grows older?
In early August 2021, I arrived at Elsewhere Studios by plane from East Lansing, Michigan, after a brief layover in Phoenix, Arizona, and a car ride with the Elsewhere program manager. Only a few days into the art residency, my preoccupations about the future had been subdued, at least temporarily. I’m not sure how that happened, but I suspect it was due to the open-ended nature of the Elsewhere Studios art residency. The residency opened a mental space for art-making with no strict deadlines hovering over me. In addition, what was unique to this experience was meeting a plethora of creative individuals during the residency: my co-residents, Eliza Edens, Summer Orr, and Marcus Rogers; the program manager, Henry Kunkel, and executive director, Carolina Porras; and Paonia locals, many of whom were previous residents at Elsewhere. The welcoming atmosphere that Henry and Carolina created and the kindness that my co-residents extended to me and each other made me feel at ease. I was humbled by their generosity. I especially valued the instances in the studio in which Marcus, Eliza, Summer, and I shared each of our works of art. The living spaces at Elsewhere invited these intimate, vulnerable moments. I look back at these memories with joy.
Paonia and its surrounding areas offered peaceful solitude for art-making as well as a community rich with events to be inspired on a daily basis. To name a few, this included barefoot live music house parties, life drawing sessions on Wednesdays, film screening nights and a Zoom film discussion, Pickin’ at the Park, dance parties, and art exhibitions in Aspen. The film screening of and discussion on Tesoros, written and directed by María Novaro, had me reflect on the meaning of treasure in my own life. The creative and fluid way Novaro uses the film medium, through methods so antithetical to Hollywood, also had me reflect on my own use of video in my work. The live music events were awe-inspiring. They made clear to me the importance of audience participation in all forms of art. It was refreshing to experience the natural connections that each musician or band made with the audience, and how unlike many examples in visual arts, there was active listening and engagement from both audience and performer because both parties were there, in real-time, and the art was their shared experience.
The other residents and I also organized our own hangouts like trail hiking trips, gatherings over drinks at a local winery, breakfast burrito excursions to Farm Runners, a Wild Wild Country watch-party night, and tarot readings. During my long studio days at Elsewhere, boredom never set in either: Tomatoes, Elsewhere Studios’ very own Tabby cat, gave me company, always around waiting for cuddles!
The expansive landscape in Colorado also made an impression on me and my art practice. Inspired by the scenic bodies of water, I made an experimental video titled Typhoon Survivors that focused on Super Typhoon Yolanda, a typhoon that I had experienced firsthand when it had devastated the Philippines in November 2013. Making the video involved interviewing three Filipina nationals about their recollections of the typhoon. In the video, I wove their personal stories with visual scenes of water. My experience making Typhoon Survivors directly impacts the way I envision my current body of work, as I prepare for two solo shows in 2022.
You can watch the finished video here: https://vimeo.com/589164737/0d123b1931
