They Came, They Chopped, They Poemed & Pickled

Monika Gross 

Asheville, NorthCarolina

January- February 2016

They Came, They Chopped, They Poemed & Pickled

www.At-A-Site-Theater.com

On Saturday, February 6, 2016, the last day of my four-week residency at the Rensing Center, director Ellen Kochansky and crew hosted a community workshop called CABBAGE POETRY in my “home away from home”, the Pottery studio. Though I am not a potter, I was able to throw myself into my work in this open and inviting space while on my retreat. I worked deeply into my writing project, a theater adaptation of the correspondence of American poets Denise Levertov and Robert Duncan. Now I was making my transition from solitude and internal action back into my “civilian” life as mom and wife. I needed a good transitional ritual, and a workshop in devised poetry mixed with natural fermentation should be just the ticket. 

At 8AM I built a healthy fire in the woodstove to warm the space for the dozen people who would be attending the 10AM-2PM workshop. This woodstove and I had bonded during my stay. Any of you who use woodstoves for heat know about that special hearth relationship, kind of like keeping a writing project alive, where you are always aware of the condition of your fire, always calculating when the next log should be added. Rule #1: Do not burn out! Tending the fire. Feeding the flames. Not wasting wood by carelessly sacrificing logs haphazardly. Blowing on the coals to seduce out as if by magic new flames to feed on a new log.

Gradually the others arrived. First came Clemson history professor Pam Mack and her daughter, Elizabeth Mauer. They were leading the fermentation workshop. We set up folding tables and cleared surface space in the kitchen, laid out salt and cabbages and bowls and knives. Katie Nocella, the assistant to the director for the Rensing Center, brought quiches and salads for our lunch break. John had brought some roasted wild boar - culled locally, for delicious tacos carnitas. Director Ellen Kochansky and her 95-year-old mother, Evelyn Rensing Kochansky, for whom the center is named, arrived and made sure nothing was wanting or needed. We fashioned a cabbage centerpiece and two long lettuces in vases for the table.

Voilà. We were ready.

Abby Minor sees poetry everywhere

With a title like CABBAGE POETRY, I expected this event to have a certain Dada-Meets-Sauerkraut flavor, and I was not disappointed. My fellow resident artist, writer Abby Minor, had given some hours of her precious retreat time to patiently cutting up tiny words from catalogs and placing them in little envelopes for us. We each got an envelope of tiny word bits, a section of old faded blue, green or brick colored cardboard folders, a bit of white glue in a cup, and a paintbrush. And time.

We sat on the four sides of the doubled-together folding tables covered with a green tablecloth - 3 x 3 x 3 x 3 – and we created poems from what we were given. As in life. We all wanted more time. Abby was a benevolent poet-fairy and granted it

 

Afterwards, we read our poems to each other, in no particular order. I wrote two. Here is one:

Greek lessons

its molecules

            Brushed

                        the first scarlet motion

                 sunscald

Impossible problem.

                                    made of part solution

                                    decades long solution

product production product

                        decades later

                                    the first picking

                                                it's harvested

The poems were set out to dry on the piano.

Then the rest of the morning was spent chopping and salting our cabbages, 

And then hand crunching them to squeeze out the natural liquids, as daughter/mother Elizabeth and Pam supervise.

And then stuffing them densely into glass mason jars, making sure they were covered with brine. 

After lunch we made Jun tea, a fermented green tea and honey. 

Ellen showed us how to make pickled lemon rind. 

Throughout we listened with fascination to the knowledgeable narratives of Pam and Elizabeth as they shared simple, old-fashioned methods of making fermented foods based on their experience with the natural fermentation process popularized by Sandor Katz. We learned about scoby (Symbiotic Colony Of Bacteria and Yeast), dead yeast, and that we were all covered with loads of bacteria that could pickle just about anything.  I never realized how much fizzy fun bacteria could provide!

After everyone left it was quiet in the Pottery. I knew it had successfully made its transition back into a communal Rensing Center space again. I was ready to pack my car to the gills and head back to Asheville. The Pottery was ready for the next resident artist to arrive: Kathryn Field, a visual artist coming from New Hampshire. And the next who would follow her. And the next. The tiny word bits would form new poems and the natural fermentation processes of creativity would symbiotically colonize new art scoby in the briny generosity of the Rensing Center.

Fellow artist in residence, visual artist So Hee Kim

Monika Gross performing as poet Denise Levertov

Pickens Flea Market

So Hee Kim

Providence, RI

January- February 2016

Pickens Flea Market

This is the porch of the Rensing Center, which was turned into my studio. Inside, I have been making paper, cardboard box using found, recycling materials (Ingles newspaper, Ellen's box of her historical records, the waste I have been creating at Rensing Center). 

The placement and layout of the objects at the fleamarket reminded me of the way I like to paint on canvases.

Pickens Flea Market

So Hee Kim

Providence, RI

January- February 2016

Pickens Flea Market

I arrived to Rensing Center a little more than a month ago from Seoul, Korea.

Every Wednesday monrings, Ellen would take us to the morning flea market, which was just about 10 minutes away from Rensing Center. I've been intrigued by the various groups of eclectic objects gathered by the local community. I was interested in how the objects seemed to have a sense of missing history and were laid out on the tables. The tables seemed to serve as a stage or a flatbed painting for the objects that could be easily played and moved around by the people looking through things to buy at the flea market. By the end of February, I plan to make a performative, interactive installation at the flea market by using the objects that I have gathered from the flea market and at Rensing Center.

-SO HEE KIM

Just Enough

Abby Minor

Aaronsburg, Pennsylvania

January 2016

Just Enough

I drove up to the Rensing Center last Saturday night, Orion shining clear in the eastern sky.  It was cool but not cold, and I thought I could hear someone nearby ringing bells.

Now that I’ve been here a week, I know that the bells aren’t some hill magic.  Still, the white goats who graze in the meadow across from the Guest House make a kind of irregular church-music as they go, and there is some magic, for me, in hearing bells that don’t mark hours.

In trying to name the qualities of this place, I keep thinking: solitude without loneliness, intensity without haste.  There’s also a waterfall without a name, and a cat—Bob—without a tail.  Down the hill there’s So Hee working on her installation.  Up the hill there’s Monika working on her play, and beyond where she works there are the Appalachian foothills, the blue wall—at evening truly dark blue, backlit orange.

Yesterday I overheard Ellen say about an art project she’d made from shredded letters, strips with only bits and half-phrases still legible, “The tiniest amount of something is all you need.”

Looking around here—solitude without loneliness, waterfall without a name—I think, “There’s just enough.”   

 

-Abby Minor

Journal

Lucia Rollow

Brooklyn, NY

Winter 2016

Journal

I arrived at the Rensing Center unsure of exactly what I would find but with the knowledge that I was going to spend the next 6 weeks of my life walking in the woods and climbing hills and documenting it in an illustrated journal.

Below are a few excerpts from my stay.

Journal, Day 1.

Every day started with a nude self portrait taken from each of four angles. The purpose of these self portraits is to document what, if any, visible physical changes my body undergoes during my stay in the woods.

Following the self portraits in an exploration into the woods.

The following are a few samples of large format portraits of waterfalls in upstate South Carolina.

Lucia Rollow

Getting Lost

My photographic work is, among other factors, reliant on the weather conditions. Upon my arrival to Rensing, I was greeted with a very warm welcome and a record setting amount of rain. Often inspired directly by the quality of light, the weather threw me for a bit of a loop. I was anxious to get out and explore my new Southern surroundings, but the extremely wet weather insisted that I slow down and take a different approach. My first few days were filled with thrift stores visits, reading in libraries, and researching the nearby area to get my bearings.

I began some collage work and in between the drizzle and all-out downpours, I decided the thing to do (if I wanted to photograph) was to embrace the gray skies. I donned my waterproof gear and ventured out – each day wandering in a new direction. The nearby mountains were an irresistible draw, particularly with the remarkable abundance of creeks, streams, and waterfalls tucked within them. Almost everyday, I hiked with orange, yellow, and red leaves drifting down around me. On several occasions, I stood alone among the trees, the rain announcing itself with slight crackling as it hit the leaves on the ground. In those moments of stillness, it sounded as if the earth was coming alive and tiny creatures would soon emerge. It was magical.

I often begin to understand a place by looking for photographs to make within it. At Rensing, I particularly valued the time I spent outside roaming the nearby towns, state parks, and forests. I made some photographs on my hikes, but maybe more importantly, had the time to be alone with my thoughts, and not feel limited by my all too normal “what do I need to check of the list?” mentality. Each day spent examining the landscape was an important time for reflection. It was quite a privilege to, on any given day, be able to hike for hours, rarely encounter other people on the trails, and unplug from screens. Some days I ‘found” many photographs among the natural and manmade landscapes, while others I was still looking as the daylight departed. I set a personal goal to be able to relax more into the ups and downs of my practice.

During my residency, I was compelled to wander based on a town’s unusual name, a feature of the regional landscape, and/or sometimes the light in the distance just seemed worth chasing. I brought along a copy of Rebecca Solnit’s A Field Guide to Getting Lost and thought a lot about how feeling lost relates to how I make work. The book was the perfect companion as I reflected on how I engage with, and creatively respond to new places. Between google maps, my rental car’s “never lost” GPS, and trails maps, physically, I was (or could be) relatively located at any given moment. Each time I go in search of an image, I don’t know what I am looking for until it’s upon me – and even then, more often than not, it eludes me. In this way, as the days passed, I could feel utterly lost, unable to “find” a compelling image. Of course, this then made it all the more exciting when I “found” one. I noticed that my feelings about the unknown fluctuated between excitement, disappointment, wonder, and fear – and that often I experienced these all of these within moments of each other (or simultaneously). My favorite days were the ones that where I was a little bit lost and found, both physically and mentally. I now look forward to revisiting these experiences, as I edit my new collection of photographs.

Beyond my photography, it was wonderful to have the opportunity to engage in more tactile art making at Rensing. I explored my interest in mixed media and collage. I also had the opportunity to play with natural inks and make collages with the various paper ephemera (postcards, books, etc.) that I collected along my nearby adventures in South Carolina, North Carolina, and Georgia. I very much enjoyed making “maps” of natural materials collected in the woods. (Thank you Ellen for sharing a wonderful technique that was new for me and also nostalgic to the wax paper leaf collages I made as a child.) In the final days of my residency, I took several hikes, looking more closely at the details of the natural landscape than I had previously. I frequently found myself on my hands and knees scanning the leaves, dirt, rocks, for items to collect for my nature collages. Sometimes a particular leaf would catch my interest, the lichen curled around a branch, or the gleaming mica. I selected items that resonated with me and later reexamined them as I archived them within layers of silk and natural glue. I plan to experiment more with this process of recording place through collage both at home and with future travels.

Rensing provided quite the contrast to my typical California experience of fall. With the season changing, for as much as I got out to explore, it was the ideal time go inward with my practice. Actively make, yes, but an equally important time to reflect. I loved being able to observing the subtle changes of the landscape day-to-day, leaves changing, and the days growing shorter. With slowing down, I paid more attention to visual world around me and also the sounds - the drifting chimes of the goats’ bells, cows mooing, the roar of waterfalls, raindrops falling on the roof, and (on the dry days) the crunching of leaves under my feet. It was such a pleasure to get to hike (in rain and some shine) nearly everyday, be alone with my thoughts for hours on end, and redefine “what feels productive?” I appreciate all the time I had to photograph, read, play with materials, listen to podcasts, practice yoga, hike, and for all the conversations has over a glass of wine or while sharing meal in such a special place. I am especially grateful to Ellen, Evelyn, Katie, and the rest of the crew, who generously shared their love of land, creative space, and the community they have cultivated at Rensing.

Into My Own

Seth Amos

San Fransisco, California

November 2015

Into My Own

I was dropped off at Rensing Center like it was summer camp. My parents drove me into the woods, helped me put my stuff in my cabin, and made sure I had everything I needed before they left. I wouldn’t have a car for the next four weeks. I knew I could hitch a ride into town for the essentials, but I would spend the larger part of the coming weeks in solitude.

Unlike camp, though, I poured myself a glass of Suntory Hakushu 12-year, sat on the back porch of the Guest House, and started writing. The first line I wrote was “I am now begun.” That line has yet to be used for anything I’ve written thus far, but it was the grease in the gears that evening. I wrote a long time without editing, without reading anything. I was not concerned if it was a poem; I knew there would be seeds left along the way, and that I could sow them later. I was indeed begun.

The next morning I awoke early, made a pot of strong coffee, and pulled out all of the books I brought with me. There are situations when environment selects your reading for you. In America, one could not, or should not, be on a boat without Herman Melville or Mark Twain. One in Japan would not go on a nature walk without Basho. In this case, the cool autumn morning and the changing leaves picked the poems of Robert Frost. It must be said that one should never go into the woods without him. The first poem I read was a hopeful foreshadowing, as well as a nod to the first line I had written the night before. “Into My Own” is the first poem in Frost’s first collection A Boy’s Will. It is from the perspective of a young boy (it can be assumed to be Frost himself) who strikes out on his own and considers what those that love him would find different about him the next time they saw him. The closing couplet reads:

                        They would not find me changed from him they knew—
                        Only more sure of all I thought was true.

It is not a mistake to think that a journey into the woods, mostly alone, for four weeks would change a person. In fact, I know that there are certain parts of me that have been changed—or more precisely, put to rot—during my time here, but the focus should not be on the transformation. The most encouraging part of my time at the Rensing Center has not been the body of work I’ve produced—which is encouraging in itself and a large part of it—but the reinforcement that I was doing something right before. The weeks have galvanized this, and therein lies the change.

People may notice their own changes in me, but it’s the constant that excites me. I am happy to have put certain things behind me and to have dug into new ground, but I am pleased that those who know me best, myself included, can look at me after my time here and say, in so many words, that I am still “him they knew” just more certain of  “all I thought was true.”

Seth Amos