I was very fortunate to recently spend a month on residency in Santa Monica, California. I had a live/work space one light rail stop from the beach and a bicycle in a colour I love. I spent a tremendous amount of time at the beach and a great deal of time getting to know the city of Santa Monica. I have spent a fair bit of time in California, usually based in Los Angeles with a handful of days spent on the coast, usually Venice. I have a deep love for the Venice/Santa Monica boardwalk and make it a point to spend time there whenever I am in town. It was such a pleasure to base myself near this favourite place for the duration of my trip and visit LA proper instead. I walked, biked and rode the train everywhere I went, carrying a small foraging kit comprised of bonsai shears and pruning shears in a mesh bag. I would collect any botanical material that caught my eye after identifying it with a plant app on my phone. I would then place the mesh bag of botanics in my handbag to process when I returned to my studio.
Some of the inks and anthotypes I made
I processed the botanics I collected into inks. It was conceptually a sort of loose California extension of my Little library of foraged inks projects where I shared my botanical inks with the public in mostly organized spaces and once in the wild. In California I shared my ink with the public in Santa Monica during an open studio for Frieze Art Fair at the beginning of my stay. I shared the inks again at the end of my stay with a group of adults and children who first encountered my work during the Frieze open house and liked it so much they wanted to try it again! The group of about six children and ten adults painted with inks and made anthotypes with the bay door open on a bit of a blustery Santa Monica day. It was a pleasure to share my work with this group and the man who arranged the afternoon gifted me with five beautiful hand picked books focusing on botanical art, concepts, theories and stewardship practices. It was such a thoughtful gift. He also gifted me a cellulose (a type of plastic made from plants) fountain pen and mechanical pencil set from the 1940s. I was so surprised by these unexpected treats!
A gift of books. I found the vintage copy of California Spring Wildflowers at The Last Bookstore, one of my favourite bookstores in LA. I also love Skylight Books, in Los Feliz.
Many people were generous with me while I visited California and I have been telling anyone who will listen how friendly/lovely I find the majority of Californians for years. It is one of the things that keeps on bringing me back there, nearly annually, since 2012 when I went for the first time. This time I was put in contact with an artist called Kim Russo who also collects and processes wild pigments out of her home studio in Topanga Canyon. I was lucky enough to have Kim come for a studio visit with me and then on another day she took me into the mountains of Topanga where we gathered sour grass, oak gall and acorn caps to process into inks.
Sour grass I harvested with Kim in Topanga Canyon ready to be pressed in my flowers press
I also met a number of international artists who were concurrently residents at the arts complex where I was stationed. Cristallina Fischetti is a painter from London who also hosts a weekly podcast called Hype A on which she interviews artists about their artistic practices. Cristallina invited me to be the first guest from the arts complex on her podcast and we had a lovely studio visit followed by an on air conversation about my work and Unama’ki.
It’s good to be back home again in Unama’ki. But I do miss the warmth and proximity to the beach!
This residency was made possible with the generous support of the Canada Council for the Arts.