Brandywine Embraces the Challenges—and Celebrates the Results—of Remote Artist Residencies During a Global Pandemic
Pigment of the Soul: Visiting Artist Prints, 2019–2021, is a testament to the human spirit and the power of adaptability in an era of uncertainty, social disorder, and hope. Since December 2019, people have spent more reflective time alone than ever before because of the COVID-19 pandemic. This has strained humanity’s ability to interact with civility and accountability because of the loss of family, friends, and colleagues to the virus, simultaneous to witnessing—or experiencing first-hand—wildfires raging in Western states and police overreach with deadly force, which sparked vast and impassioned Black Lives Matters protests throughout the country. Images of the expanded border wall between the United States and Mexico became a resounding metaphor for the divided politics of a nation that have caused artists to pause, react, and respond. These events became a catalyst for people to reaffirm their values and create new boundaries for balance in every facet of their lives. For some artists, isolation was not new, but the physical limitations and bombardment of toxic politics, dislocation, and human suffering have created psychological and emotional hardship. Conversely, others took the time to become more engaged with their work and explored new mediums and approaches to the ideas that shaped the world around them.
Fourteen of these artists found their way to Brandywine Workshop and Archives, which has committed itself to ensuring the sustainability and development of its printmaking residency program despite unprecedented challenges such as those posed by the pandemic. Artists Agathe Bouton, Diedrick Brackens, Willie Cole, Galen Gibson-Cornell, Louis Delsarte, Mikel Elam, Vanessa German, Sam Gilliam, Miguel Horn, Althea Murphy-Price, Yoonmi Nam, Tim McFarlane, Alexis Nutini, and Andrea Packard discovered solutions to new questions about how to make the most of a remote Brandywine residency. How does an artist residency function in isolation? How does the pandemic catchphrase "alone together" work within a collaborative process that is usually more hands-on? Did the pandemic force artists to approach their image-making with a greater sense of urgency or experimentation? The answers to these questions are evident in this body of work—work where memory, hope, and dreams reflect conscious and subconscious feelings about tangible and ephemeral manifestations of life, death, spirit, historical materialism, nature, family, and the cosmos.
These pressing questions were born from numerous and profound events: mandatory lockdowns, a president impeached twice in his first term, significant protest movements for social justice and truth-telling in education about the country’s history, a mob of violent extremists storming the United States Capitol—and the swearing in of a new president at the same site two weeks later. American citizens found themselves at odds with themselves and everyone around them.
This challenging, tumultuous period has, unquestionably, impacted the creative and cultural sectors worldwide, and artist residencies are no exception. The defining values of international exchange and in-person collaboration are life-changing and deeply intertwined experiences for artists. Travel restrictions, financial hits to arts organizations, and essential public-health measures have threatened the state of this field for months and years to come. Art residencies will be even more critical as the global creative community recovers from the pandemic (see "COVID-19: Impact Survey on the Arts Residencies Field," Res Artis: Worldwide Network of Arts Residencies). How will the creative community recover when 65% of artists have been forced to pursue non-arts work and 12.2% are considering leaving the field entirely? Sixty-eight percent of artists and 61% of arts residencies have been unable to access emergency funding. Eighty-eight percent of artists' mental health has been affected, and 57% have indicated that COVID has negatively impacted their ability to produce new works.
It has been almost two years since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, and creative sectors worldwide are still struggling. Inherent to how arts and cultural exchanges cross national and international borders, the field of arts residencies has been greatly impacted. By September 2020, the majority (54%) of planned residencies were modified, cut short, or postponed. One in ten arts residencies has been postponed indefinitely. Mid-career and established artists were more likely to have their residencies revoked and, therefore, were most financially impacted (ibid). At the same time, however, emerging artists were more than twice as likely to pursue full-time work outside the arts sector during this period, which suggests that the pandemic could derail their career plans more permanently, furthering and deepening a prolonged negative effect on the arts sector and the lives of individual artists. This is significant because 200,000 students graduate from undergraduate and graduate arts programs annually in the US. Historically, under the best circumstances, only 10% of them go on to make a living as full-time artists.
Brandywine's commitment to ensuring sustainability and development within the field, despite unprecedented challenges such as those created by COVID-19, is shaped by its pledge to explore all possibilities for ensuring that art-making will continue and flourish. Theoretical and aesthetic concepts coexist with previous residencies, current events, emotional outcry, and socially responsive objectives. The art produced at Brandywine reflects the world around us and encourages disparate communities to bridge intercultural misunderstandings and promote peacekeeping. Undoubtedly, Brandywine will continue to play a critical role in the reemergence of national and international exchange in the post-pandemic future. It will continue to be at the forefront of demonstrating how arts residencies can be reimagined, redefined, and implemented.
Inherent to Brandywine's embrace of intellectual, cultural, and social diversity, the Workshop supports the exploration of varied established and emerging printmaking processes and realizing the fullest creative potential of each participating artist by working in partnership with other specialist workshops and studios. Such partnerships have enabled artists to further develop, extend, and expand upon their existing practices and aesthetics in innovative and unexpected ways. Brandywine’s production partnerships with Nicole Donnelly of PaperTHINKtank, Alexis Nutini of Dos Tres Press, and independent printmaker Galen Gibson-Cornell enabled these master printmakers to work safely during the pandemic in their studios with one or two people in controlled environments and with social distancing. The collaborating print workshops worked effectively with the remote residencies model, using current technology and sharing essential parts of the production process.
Among the many ways that technology enabled the artists to stay connected was through various platforms that included Zoom meetings, real-time chat rooms, cloud-based team-collaboration software, cross-platform messaging, and Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) services. Among the most popular teleconferencing platforms included Click Meeting, Google Hangouts Jitsu, Skype, and Zoom. Team communication supported collaboration through Campfire, Hop, Signal, Slack, and Teams. Project management included Asana, Basecamp, Monday, and Trello. Brandywine’s most essential complement to all these platforms was using WeTransfer and Dropbox to share large files.
Cultural production is nurtured by individual work ethics and collective raison d'etre within any artist residency. Artists and their art create community by depicting shared events and presenting disparate perspectives on the times in which they live and work. Despite the impact that COVID-19 continues to have on artists’ and organizations' psychological, emotional, and financial lives, optimism for the coming year persists. Artists are not deterred from applying to residencies and, while COVID-19 has required organizations to modify their residency programs, it has not stopped organizations from offering them. Pigment of the Soul is about the hopes, dreams, fears, challenges, and triumphs of a group of artists who contemplated the meaning of life and the collective elements that reflect our humanity during a long period of uncertainty, resulting in art shaped by, and that shaped, paradigm shifts in practically all sectors of society in the U.S. and globally.
The most compelling thread seen throughout Pigment of the Soul is how it makes material the artists’—and humanity’s—overarching, inherent need to create. This imperative is so profound that it drives us to transcend extreme and unexpected challenges, not only overcoming constraints but inventing entirely new modes for individual expression. The obvious benefits of collaboration have been recognized since time immemorial and established the impetus to join together and share in creative endeavors. The response of artists to the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrates that this dynamic endures even when isolation is required, and that seeming limits on collaboration can spark ingenuity, thereby yielding extraordinary results that speak of constancy and change—and the constancy of change—in our perspectives and emotions.
In this way, the creativity presented and celebrated in Pigments of the Soul connects with the ancient cave markings that represented the earliest form of visual communication. Our ancestors’ made marks as a way to bear witness, for their present and posterity, to human existence which, then as now, is one in which suffering, sacrifice, and celebration coexist, “alone together.” The body of work produced during Brandywine's most recent residencies is both material and metaphorical testimony to the resilience of the human spirit and its commitment to uphold ideals and principles that reinforce the value of community and collaboration. With the resiliency and resolve to endure disruptions in their creative practice, artists document and share the profound vulnerability of humankind while communicating visual statements that spur reflection and serve to inspire.
Halima Taha/tahathinks, Copyright 2022
