Christa Donner's Can Serrat experience

Before I came to Can Serrat I’d begun exploring metaphors for the human body in geology and the biologies of other organisms. Working in El Bruc gave these ideas a home and a structure to build from.

Upon arriving, I was struck by how still it is here. Often the only sounds are the songs of a few birds and the low hum of the highway. If you want to spend time with humans sometimes you have to actively seek them out. But everywhere there’s the residue of inhabitants who have walked the same trails a few hours or even years before: an abandoned pair of leather shoes on the mountain, the ruins of a wooden teepee, a crumbling figure made from stones. To me these serve as imaginary portals from the outside world to interior spaces. I’ve found myself drawing tunnels and caves, the architecture of social insects -- swarms of sisters living in communal nests supported by trees or deep underground.

Beyond my individual work here, Can Serrat provided the chance to pursue a residency in collaboration with my husband and small daughter – something not many programs support. My artist-husband and I worked out a studio / childcare schedule between us, which is a creative process in itself. Karine at Can Serrat helped us out with a crib, some toys left by previous artist-parents, and even made special meals for our picky two-year-old. It’s not easy to make art and raise a child at the same time, but doing so offers creative discoveries and unexpected moments that just wouldn’t happen otherwise.

Ideally the end of a residency is more of a beginning than a conclusion. I’ve made stacks of drawings, but I’m also leaving with a suitcase full of creative research: field recordings, video footage, hundreds of photographs, information and ideas that can expand into larger multimedia projects in my Chicago studio. My time in Spain will continue to feed my practice long after I’ve left.

Studio View

Christa Donner explores the human body through visual narrative, metaphor and sensory experience. Her work has been featured in numerous gallery and museum exhibitions in Japan, Colombia, Cyprus, Finland, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, and throughout the United States. Donner is based in Chicago, IL, where she is the founder of Cultural ReProducers, a community-based project and online resource supporting active cultural workers who are also parents of small children: www.culturalreproducers.org. 

You can find more about her work at www.christadonner.com.

Discovering global musical scientist, Melanie Edwards

Global musical scientist, Melanie Edwards, has been awarded a research grant towards her seventh experiment at Can Serrat, in El Bruc! This October and November, Edwards returns to Spain, after a 12-year hiatus, to further grasp the language, influence and source, to create her first bilingual, musical children's book The Seed That Made It Big/La Semilla Que Hizo Grande. In addition, Edwards will compose original songs paralleling the book's intentions and themes. This comes on the heels of having spent the winter writing, recording, mixing and mastering her sixth project, Las Rosas, in Costa Rica. 

Check out her new song "The Circle", written and recorded at Can Serrat:

https://soundcloud.com/melanie-edwards-labs/the-circle

Edwards blends natural sounds chronicled through her journeys with her own intricate compositions. A musical and scientific hybrid, she is a classically trained pianist, violinist and singer who studied nuclear science. Touring worldwide with her symphonic lab, she captivates audiences with her haunting vocals and complex melodies, challenging all things between the binary. 

Here is the link to iTunes to listen to her songs:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/melanie-edwards/id369357306

For more information about Melanie and to purchase her albums, 

visit her website: www.melanieedwardslabs.com

Introducing Anat Canaani

Anat is an Israeli painter, who lives and works in the Golan Heights, Israel. A graduate of Bezalel art and design academy Jerusalem Israel. 

Anat was awarded a support stipend towards her October 2013 residency.

Anat Secret Garden - 161 x 182cm

Grinding the pigments from the tree bark

First Day At Montserrat - 95 x 45 cm

Montserrat Sketch

Drawing on Linen - 112 x 404 cm

95 x 45 cm

From the Printmaking Workshop

Studio View

The days at Can Serrat gather up like a pile of fallen leaves. Here I was inside the time of nature, I witness the leaves changing colors from green to yellow. The wide open space of the natural park became my studio and the mountain my teacher. Watching the reflection of clouds wind and light upon the mountain was an uplifting sight. The friendly people of El Bruc and the ones that gathered together every night in the lightened kitchen gave me the sense of humanity and warmth and the motivation to create. I felt inspired to paint at Can Serrat.

Meet the artist: Kimberly Trowbridge

After leading a 10-day plein air painting tour in La Rioja with my students, I arrived at Can Serrat and continued working from the landscape. I began each day by hiking into the mountains and finding a spot to spend my afternoon painting.

These oil sketches were a way for me to get outside of myself by responding to color relationships in nature. Very importantly, these studies have also become a way for me to explore a more gestural mark that dances on top of my innate sense of structure.

In the studio, I have been very experimental— allowing myself to follow different pathways through painting, collage, and drawing in order to identify what aspects of image-making hold significance for me.

After a difficult year, I am beginning a new cycle in my creative practice. This time has been about exploring new forms for building a new narrative for myself.

Montserrat (II), Oil on Canvas, 32 x 40¨ 

Kimberly Trowbridge is an artist from Seattle, WA, working primarily with oil paint, collage, and drawing. Her work is exhibited frequently in the United States, and she is an instructor and lecturer on figure painting and color theory. She runs a private painting school out of her Top Hat Studio in Seattle, and leads international plein air painting tours.You can find more information about her here: http://www.kimberlytrowbridge.com

Thoughts of Julie Pennington...Australian ceramist artist.

Can Serrat provided the opportunity for me to retreat from the usual demands of my daily life in Australia, and time to focus on my art making in an environment free from other distractions. Provision of unique accommodation, meals and a light filled studio in a 200 year old farmhouse was very appealing. The chance to travel to Spain, to a charming village in the Montserrat mountains of Catalonia, was irresistible!

Although my main arts practice is in Ceramics, I did not plan to work with clay at this residency. Rather, I wanted to allow myself the time for thinking and developing ideas to pursue back home. In much of my ceramic work to date, I have been interested in various printed surfaces. I have also pursued printmaking and other 2D works on paper in an attempt to obtain a cross flow of ideas and techniques between the two areas of art making. During a recent residency at Sturt Craft Centre, Mittagong, Australia, I took a new direction with my ceramics, producing sculptures and wall pieces. This body of work sought to push the boundaries of the material, and explore the notion of clay drawing. Inspiration also came from fragile forms found in nature.

Being at Can Serrat allowed me to contemplate and question the future direction my arts practice might take, and to just be in these surroundings and see where it takes me.

Over the month, some daily rituals began to occur – walking into the village of El Bruc for a 'cafe cortado' (that hill never got easier for Salonge and I!), wandering around the whimsical garden, walking amongst the olive groves with the ever present blue sky above, bringing back flowers, grasses etc to the studio and observing the changing light on the amazing mountain views. This was a wonderful new environment to absorb and draw inspiration from. I immediately responded to the colours, textures and patterns, but there is so much more...which I'm sure is yet to surface and inform my work.

Many photos were taken, as well as drawings and paintings. I began working with oil sticks again, mark making with sharp implements, a technique not dissimilar to sgraffito on ceramic surfaces. As it happens there was a block of clay in the studio, which in the end I couldn't resist, and made some pinch pots from this deep coloured terracotta! I was very drawn to the beautiful old buildings, studded doors, decorative iron, tiles, weathered walls and stone. Being only 45 minutes from Barcelona, meant that I also got to spend many happy days in what must be one of the most beautiful cities in the world! So much to take in – beautiful architecture, street scapes and museums. I was also able to seek out some ceramic galleries and studios, and make some contacts with other ceramists.

In the month at Can Serrat I got to know and connect with the other residents, whom I hope to stay in touch with. It is always interesting to exchange ideas with other artists, and motivating to be in a creative space. A diverse range of people from different countries, sharing this very special place. Time for conversation, some serious, some very funny! All very valuable and memorable. A big thank you must go to Karine and everybody involved with Can Serrat, for providing such a relaxed environment to pursue our artistic paths.

Julie lives and works in the Southern Highlands, Australia.

To view more of her work visit:

www.julie-pennington.net