The creative life is hard. It involves an overwhelming amount of rejection and so requires an abundance of faith, focus, trust, and belief in self. As artists, when we submit our work--to publications, juried shows, galleries, when we apply for grants or public art projects--it could take 50 rejections before we get an acceptance. It can be disheartening to put so much of ourselves into our work only to have it rejected or, worse, ignored entirely. We press on, though, despite the challenges, because making art provides us with a meaningful life.
The reason that literary, visual, and performing artists take weeks, even months, out of their lives to come to places like The Rensing Center is because an artist residency helps to replenish our stores of faith, focus, trust, and belief in self. When we are here, we are seen. In a career filled with NOs, an artist residency is one long sustained YES. It is a pat on the back, a Good Job, a Keep Doing What You're Doing.
What makes The Rensing Center stand out, is that it places an emphasis on the artist as a whole person. We are encouraged not only to make work and to relax, but also to live lightly on the land, to learn about the surrounding culture, to figure out what is most important us, and to integrate it all into our lives.
Also, you do not have to choose what work you will do while in residence here. Other residency programs ask that you apply as either a writer or a visual/performing artist. I, for example, am both. At another artist residency, I would be seen as one or the other, given either a writer's studio or an artist's studio.
Rensing has given me the great gift of allowing me my writing practice and my studio practice. I have a comfortable writing desk in my cottage that looks out onto the woods, as well as whatever additional space I need to make visual work during my stay here. Rensing is a place of respite, reflection, and integration.
-Jennifer Rabin
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