Ray Wilson - Elsewhere Resident September 2013

Elsewhere Studios is a magical hub for people in almost any stage of development. I’m 28, have a bachelor’s degree in Political Science, 7 years of work experience (corporate), and am an energy intuitive. I quit my job in April 2013 unsure of what to do with my life. I was certain that the corporate world wasn’t for me, and that my life purpose wasn’t working for someone else. However, I didn’t know what that looked like or how I was going to go there.

 Elsewhere gave me an opportunity to find my path and expand it. I’ve always been interested in film and recently found a passion for rock-hunting to make macramé pendants with. Moreover, I was also giving Reiki sessions and readings to people and was unsure how all of this would combine into me. Being a public psychic was not something I was ready to do, and Elsewhere helped me step into my power comfortably.

 Not claiming that it was easy to find myself, but that the space and support at Elsewhere Studios enhanced my ability to find myself. I inevitably would have stepped into my power, but most likely would have taken longer. At Elsewhere the director Willow and manager Karen go out of their ways to ensure that you have everything you need during your stay. Furthermore, the community enhanced my stay at Elsewhere because there are scheduled events to share your art (in whatever form your art takes), and people are open to experience your art without judgments.

 While I was at Elsewhere, I was able to put my hands in art and become familiar with multiple art mediums. Discovering how I want to express myself, which is invaluable. Elsewhere’s space provided a beautiful place to teach Reiki; I attuned 8 individuals to Reiki Master during my stay.

 With all this said, Elsewhere Studios provides a safe fun environment to express you. In any form you choose appropriate, and enables you to change directions if so you choose. The town of Paonia is rich with experiences that will help define you forever.

 Staying at Elsewhere was monumental for my transition. Yes, my transformation would have happened regardless of being at Elsewhere. However, we get to steer our 3D experience and by attending Elsewhere’s residency program it will launch YOU to another level; that level is up to you.

 I choose to step into myself and confidently share with the world who I am without fear of what others think. Elsewhere helped me find that confidence.

 Welcome 2014! May 2014 be full of #awesomeness for you.

Mat Dubé - Residency August 2013

Elsewhere Studios Residency - Paonia, Colorado 09/01/2013 By Mat Dubé · Facebook, Twitter, Google+ This was my first time participating in an artist-in-residence program and it definitely won't be the last.  It was a full month of maximum creativity in a super inspiring environment!  Worked on a new technique I've been wanting to try for several years...mixing watercolour, sculpture and drawing.  I'm really happy with the end result! Also got to live and create with some amazing artists: Diana Naccarato from New York, Megan Yankee and John Osburn from Columbus, Ohio and Mark Winston from Chicago. Check out the video below to see my live/work space and the rest of the studio. A big thank you to Karen and Willow at Elsewhere! http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=CqrKIg_Hy-Q

Place Specific Timestamps

Every place has its own rhythms, its particular headliners. Time slows or speeds up depending on routine. Arriving from the city where my own personal signatures of time are bulleted by public transportation alerts, crowds or lack thereof in patterns like flocks of birds, the last rays of light escaping as I cross the bridge home after a day of work. The feeling to rush while on the clock makes large parts of day the dissolve into thin air. Of course there is beauty to be found in the city, but the breaks that Paonia offers are welcome especially the isolation and stillness to drink it all in.

Not a day has gone by in Paonia wherein I haven't exclaimed to anyone in my company to- Look!

You don't have to go far, the two minute errand into town from the studio nearly does you in. The mountains sit in full view and the sky stays always a breathtaking blue. At night the stars are dizzyingly clear, the moon hangs large. There is usually something unique to see in the mix. You can count that the days and nights will be just as beautiful as before. At 5 I make a point to look out at the sunset-it is always a radiant blaze. It is comforting to see, the continuity within nature here especially as our world seems like it will go out like a matchstick at anytime. These points in the day where time slows into a further quiet.

If I had another month here I think I would spend more time just watching..

A Toast to 2014!!

Oh, you thought I meant a glass of champagne and some pithy remarks about resolutions?

No, no no.  Talkin’ ‘bout toast.  As in Bread and Buttah.  A toast post, if you will.

I mean, Elsewhere Studios is right next to a bakery, The Flying Fork, so I daresay this is appropriate.

So far I have taste-tasted (toast-tested?) several of the Flying Fork’s bready delights.  Whole wheat, rosemary foccaccia, cranberry walnut…I’m thinking about firing up the toaster oven right now.

Wikipedia defines toast as bread that has been browned by exposure to radiant heat.  I don’t know about you, but that is dang sexy.  Red hot coils!  Tongs and open fires!  Maillard reaction turning that bread to a perfect golden brown.

From what I’ve read of toast history, it sounds like toast arrived on the scene as the best way to make stale bread palatable.  So toast is like, recycling!  Sweet. But of course I think it’s better with fresh bread, and not grocery spongey wonder-white.  I’m just gonna put that out there.

Toast can be really personal, though.

I’m not here to tell you that your bread needs to have gluten in it.  I’m not here to debate the knee-knocking deliciousness of melting salted butter versus cholesterol-free Smart Balance, or mock your vegan coconut oil-white miso whip (cuz that stuff be good).  Do you like honey on ya toast?  Get it.  Is jam your thing?  Avocado and sea salt?  Maybe a full-on lumberjack shit-on-a-shingle manly meal?  Dry toast and tea for a sick tummy.  Massive mayonnaisey BLT for some big yummy.  Toast is versatile.  Toast is the most.

Plus, making toast is a no brainer.  Drop bread slice in slot.  Depress button.

Perfect for those hungover mornings when you need that extra two minutes to stare off into space and groan and think about all the embarrassing things you did or said mere hours earlier in the midnight hour.

Ding!!!

Toast is ready to comfort and soothe you, belly and psyche both.

Why not have another slice?  Maybe with some peanut butter slathered on it this time.  Oooohhh.  Perhaps a little midmorning (or afternoon?) pot of coffee alongside?

However you love your toast, here’s hoping you enjoy it this new year.  But should misfortune befall you, and you accidentally drop that delicately browned slice of awesome onto the floor, may your toast always land butter-side up.

Lace, Rhinos, and Sea Anemones

Lace

(this is the first piece I made at Elsewhere.)

Rhinos

(These are the rhinos from the Houston zoo.  They are the inspiration for my second piece at Elsewhere)

Sea Anemones

(This is a glass scientific model by Blaschka , titled Sea Anemones Fighting.  This is the other inspiration for my second piece at Elsewhere )

Rhinos and Sea anemones fighting (a work in progress)

Nicole Banowetz (me) with the rhinos fighting among velvet.

(photograph by fellow Elsewhere resident Landon Newton)

If interested you can see more of my work on my website or my blog.

http://www.nicolebanowetz.com/

http://nicolebanowetz.wordpress.com

Study Break!

Elsewhereain Carrie and I went on a skiing adventure a few days ago to Grand Mesa. After bickering over whether or not we would run out of gas climbing the some 4,000 feet on the snowy roads, we made it to the top.

We only lasted about and hour but with the sun setting and below zero temps we were still happy we made the trip. That is not to say we were very happy to climb back into the car… Our trip ended (after refilling the tank) at Zach’s Bar and Barbecue, which we can recommend to future residents. If you like ribs, homemade sugary pies, and dead animals on the wall, this place is for you my friends!

 

The In-Between Place

I came to Paonia from Moab. Or, I came to Paonia and I brought Moab with me. I've been writing about Moab, letting Moab dominate my mental landscape, for much of the last two years. And there's something about Paonia--where the desert meets the mountains, where canyon country is reachable but not too close--that settles me and helps me bring Moab into focus.

I've done this before. My first residency at Elsewhere was during the summer of 2012, and I was immediately smitten. When it comes to places, I'm easily smitten: I go to Moab and fall in love. I come to Paonia and fall in love here, too. I go home to Brooklyn and remember that I've loved it there all along. When so many places seek to claim you for their own, how do you choose where to be?

Long-term decisions aside, I choose to be in Paonia, to work in Paonia, because I like knowing that Moab is close, that I could go there if I really wanted to or needed to. And I like knowing that Moab is also far: far enough that I can begin to process the experiences I had there. The plane flight over Canyonlands. The 100-foot rappel from Morning Glory Arch. The afternoon with a 94-year-old woman who at first couldn't place me, and whose whole face changed, twenty minutes into our conversation, when she looked at me and said, "I remember you now."

Close: I still feel freshly infused with energy, with the rush of two perfect weeks savoring the red rock and yellow leaves of desert autumn. Far: I can begin to detach, to read my own notes and memories critically. I can reflect. I can pat myself on the back for making it through that pack raft trip without getting tossed into the rapids. I can blush with shame about the moment when a former county commissioner wanted to know my environmental politics ("Are you more wilderness-prone and Sierra Club and SUWA [Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance]? Are you... one of them?”) and I hedged and told him I'm kind of in the middle instead of telling him the truth: that I'm practically-minded with an environmentalist heart.

Paonia is my in-between place, where I'm closer to Moab than to home, and far enough from everything to clear my head. I like knowing that the North Fork Gunnison River is flowing by on its journey to join the Colorado, which slices through Moab. With the last of fall's yellow fading to brown, leaves crunching underfoot, and the days growing shorter, Paonia is gently reminding me that it's nearly time to go home. Home being Brooklyn, for now, while I wait to see which spot on the map will steal my heart next.

Rebecca Worby

@bworbs

On Fruit, Paonia, and Home

“The West for desire, the East for home.” – Thomas Wolfe, Look Homeward, Angel

I read that last spring in North Carolina.  A succinct anomaly in Wolfe’s typically florid prose, the prose of a young person.  He seemed to be reminding himself of that equation: West = Desire, East = Home.  I appropriated the phrase and taped it to my wall in Paonia; it was my own reminder.

Driving, I have passed towns in Colorado with names like Bountiful, Fruita, Orchard City. The names mean fertility.  They mean fruit.  I ate a hundred apples in Paonia, each one bright, succulent.  I drank juice of local grapes impossibly sweet.  Paonia’s flavor was on my tongue. Even Paonia Realty’s sign portrays the valley as green farmland framed beneath by a laurel-like arc of grapes, peaches, apples and pears.  As my friend put it, Colorado is a cornucopia.

Wolfe’s phrase, then, seems apt.  His great West is like an offered peach which, when bitten into, will overflow, irresistible.  We bite, we taste, we devour.  Then we chuck the pit.

One warm Saturday afternoon, I awoke from a nap, my head thick with words I had been reading, and walked out into the town's yellow light as if bewitched.  Here was the extended fruit: Paonia golden, Paonia dreamy, its orchards dripping with gifts of apple, its trees alight with gentle October sun.  I walked and walked as if hypnotized.  Here I was, biting into the fruit.

It follows, from the equation, that the West ≠ Home.  My walk seemed to affirm this.  How could one make a home of a place so enchanting?  Enchanting places belong in dreams and vacations, not homes.

I ended my walk, returned to Elsewhere Studios.  I made a cup of tea, talked to my housemates, sat by the woodstove now useful for the autumn evening, and did a little writing.  All the rituals of home.  How quickly I learned which mug was my favorite; how quickly I grew fond of people near me!  Fantasies and desires blooming in the fabled West had not kept me, it seemed, from carving myself a little notch of home.

I left Paonia eastbound with a heavy heart and a sack of local apples.  My brief place there was possible only with the warmth that greeted me.  I reevaluate the equation, its permutations: the West for home, home for desire, desire for home.  And now: the East.

I like it here...

“I like this place, and willingly could waste my time in it.” - Celia, As You Like It I was taking some time out from working on my novel, willingly wasting time reading Shakespeare when I came across this line. Rosalind, Celia and Touchstone the clown have escaped the vanity and pomp of the court and are have arrived in the magical forest of Arden. I'll be leaving Elsewhere and Paonia in a few days and reading these lines almost brought a tear to my cynical, English, crime-writer eyes.

It's not that people come to Elsewhere to waste time at all – my time at Elsewhere has been very productive, but Elsewhere – and Paonia – are places you come to escape the pomp and vanity of the modern day court and return to nature, good food and community.

I didn't know what to expect at all... I arrived in Paonia after travelling the world for nine months, and although I've been to a lot of places, there is nowhere quite like Paonia.  I was installed in the Gingerbread House, a cute, lopsided little cottage at the back of the main Elsewhere building and, once I'd mastered the art of chopping wood and lighting the stove, I found that it was the perfect working environment. I soon settled into a routine and, sitting at my desk, with the occasional company of Tomato the cat, I rattled through a redraft of a comedy screenplay and the first draft of my new novel, a crime caper provisionally titled 'The Head of Charity Lane'.

Whilst it was great to get so much work done, for me the best part of the stay was the fun I had with my fellow residents, Rose, Molly and Melanie. Whether going out for pizza, dancing like lunatics in the studio to Bohemian Rhapsody, or getting to know the locals, I feel like I've made three new friends and will leave with many happy, funny, unforgettable memories.

Rose Molly and I, all being writers, were honoured to read our work on Tara Miller's KVNF radio show, One Woman's Perspective, and we were all touched by the number of people who attended our final presentation.

Some less enlightened people would think spending a month and a half in Colorado writing was a waste of time, and they might say some people who live in Paonia are wasting their time pursuing lifestyles which don't involve an office job and a mortgage because time is money in the West, but, I willingly could waste my time a little longer in this modern day Arden. I am sad to leave but, alas, I must go to the court of vanity, otherwise known as LA, and then return to the court of pomp, otherwise known as London.

I'd just like to say thank you to Karen and Willow for the hard work they've put in to make Elsewhere such a great place, thanks to my fellow residents for being such great company, and thanks to all the Paonians who have made us feel so welcome in their community. Oh, and thanks to Tomato for being the friendliest cat ever.

HJ Hampson

www.hjhampson.com

Twitter: heatherjhampson

Elsewhere Feeds Your Creativity

It is my last week at Elsewhere and I cannot believe it is already coming to an end. It feels like it was just last week I first stepped foot in Elsewhere Studios, exhausted from a long days trip and trying to pull myself together long enough to be somewhat presentable when meeting my fellow residents. From that very first day, I have felt completely at home here at Elsewhere and the town of Paonia, completely taken by the beauty of such an amazing place. 

My first few days were spent getting settled, unpacking, and organizing all my supplies. (As an oil painter, I have many supplies I had to ship in.) I also spent a lot of time in those first couple of days exploring the town and realizing Paonia's breathtaking beauty. October, like most months I am sure, is an ideal month to spend here at Elsewhere. The beauty that surrounds you automatically influenced and seeps into every work of art you make.

Having never created art outside of an academic setting or at an artist residency before, I was at first very anxious about my production process while at Elsewhere - I wasn't quite sure what to expect from myself. I set a goal to always be working on at lease 2 pieces at a time and come away from Elsewhere having created 5 paintings - a reasonable goal. I left that goal in the dust. Elsewhere, within Paonia, is an artistic haven, an ideal environment that feeds creativity. Within the past three weeks alone I have produced 9 paintings and still have 2 more in progress.

I have enjoyed every minute spent at Elsewhere. The other residents are amazingly talented writers and I am so glad I got to share this experience with them. Not only did we have fun whenever and wherever possible, but we got to share with and influence and critique one another, making our time spent at Elsewhere that much more productive and beneficial.

Thank you Elsewhere for this amazing opportunity. You have helped me realize my dreams are feasible and that I can enjoy every minute of my artistic journey.

- Melanie Reese, painter, Oct. 2013 artist in residence