Fires Lit: A Look Back on Participants Of The PILOT LIGHT Residency Program
2019/2020
Albany High School, NY, United States
Over the fall and winter of 2019, we invited a few talented artists, musicians and writers to create their work here on the Arts Letters & Numbers campus. With safety procedures in place, we offered the space and support to explore and expand creative practice. Today we present a small collection of their works made during the Pilot Light Residency.
Celine Browning
The main goal for my 2-week Pilot Light residency was to allow myself to explore new and unexpected ideas while continuing to develop ongoing projects. To help in this process, I kept a kind of visual journal, where every day I produced one physical sketch at the beginning of the working day. Using the same dimensions (5 inches by 5.5 inches) and the same materials (reflective mylar, tape, and greasepaint), I gradually created a grid of 13 sketches. This ritual helped loosen me up in the studio and provided me with a visual reminder of the passage of time during the residency.
Christine Lorenz
I work with photography, and for the past few years I’ve been making photographs of salt crystals, which I grow at home. I had a lot of editing to do with this series, and wanted to spend some time reading and writing about the work. I came equipped with my laptop, my trusty printer, and a stack of books. The quiet time, open space, and supportive, small community at the Pilot Light Residency let me focus on refining my way of thinking about this project and how it fits into the cultural moment we are living in. I spent some time collaborating long-distance with another member of the ALN network, philosopher Becky Vartabedian, with whom I’m co-authoring a conference paper about ways that photography can give voice to some of our fellow beings in the world.
Loom/Creek Studio Buzz Studio Buzz II
Chrystine Rayburn
Over the course of a three-week residency at Arts Letters and Numbers, Chrystine created an aural journal of her experience through field recording, clarinet improvisation, and multi-channel sound installation to explore the interplay between found sound and musical composition.
Colleen Keefe
I spent two weeks at ALN - the last week in October and first week of November 2020. I came with a plan to start a novel based on "A Pattern Language", a seminal 1977 treatise on architecture and urban planning, in which around 250 design patterns at various scales are described and interrelated. The idea was that the book would unfold in similar fashion. In order to work out the relationships, I turned to drawing, which has been my primary creative practice for a long time now. "Mapping A Pattern Language" is the byproduct of that research. I'm still working on the novel.
Jason Fiering
At ALN, Jason Fiering began a new piece for his series of sculptural paintings entitled Turned Down. In these pieces, the motif of a single fold is repeated in many small canvases that assemble on crude steel supports. The fold is meant to break the one-sidedness of the paintings and imply the act of revealing (or revelation), and to create ambiguity in the association of the elements it creates. Beyond these formal considerations, the title “turned down” intentionally references bedcovers. The series is to occupy the gallery like an encampment, its fragmented cots and bunks have a provisional and transitory character that reflects the disrupted circumstances when a bed is something other than a refuge.
Jason is a painter working in Boston and New Bedford, MA. When not painting, he is a research scientist in medical equipment.