For artists, finding an environment conducive to the creative process is not always easy. The world intrudes, work calls, family beckons. When distractions mount, how does an artist (or writer) manage to find the time and space to create? Fellowships and grants can allow an artist the financial freedom to work, but those may require lengthy applications and vetting processes.
The Fine Arts Work Center (FAWC) in Provincetown, Massachusetts, regularly offers the opportunity for fellowships to writers and artists. But this past spring they offered former FAWC fellows and alumni from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design MFA program a three-week residency. For Susan Marie Brundage, a painter of contemporary works and an instructor in visual arts at Penn State Altoona, this offer was fortuitous.
“I was given this opportunity because I am an alumna of the Massachusetts College of Fine Arts low residency MFA program at Fine Arts Work Center,” Brundage says. “This is the first time they’ve opened it up to the MFA graduates.” What the FAWC gives artists is “studio space and a place to live. There are no demands on you whatsoever other than to work on the project you said you would work on.” Brundage knew exactly what she was going to do when she accepted the offer. “I went there to focus on a new series of paintings and got a really good start on that. Two done, three almost done—that’s a pretty good chunk of work.”
The series is titled “Comfortably Dumb” (yes, a Pink Floyd reference—Brundage says, “A lot of my pieces reference music titles because I get inspiration from that”). The works depict “the moment of impact when young men play with fireworks.” Her path to this subject was the twenty-first-century phenomenon of recording every moment. “We see all these videos and shows of people doing really dangerous and stupid stuff. You have to wonder about this idea of disenfranchisement, this is where they get their excitement. Maybe it’s because they don’t feel connected. I focused on this whole idea of these ‘firework wars,’ the connotation of war, being in battle and being close to danger, which is actual danger but not taking it seriously. It’s the idea of something people don’t think about, very mundane.”
A previous series covered another unlikely subject for paintings: open pit mines. She explains: “A lot of times I paint very mundane things that people don’t think about, but there’s always an underlying thing going on.” The pits are “the size of moon craters and leave a permanent scar on earth, leave a place toxic forever. When people see the work they don’t necessarily need to know all that, but hopefully they will become more aware of the world around them.”
Despite the idea people have of artists locking themselves away to work, and fellows being required to identify and work on a project, Brundage did not spend her three weeks in complete isolation. She had a “little apartment” to herself, as did the other fellows, but “I interacted with artists and MFA students while I was there. You do get to have feedback from your peers, which is incredibly useful.”
Grateful for what she was able to accomplish in the residency, Brundage is now back at Penn State Altoona for the fall semester, teaching two general education art classes and two classes in the Visual Arts Studies program, and looking for more opportunities to ignite the light.
All Tomorrow’s Parties
Oil on panel
9×12 inches
In the Crosshairs
Oil on panel
9×12 inches
–Therese Boyd, ’79