Artist in Residence - No Sleeping Allowed!

What comes to mind when you think about an "artist in residence"? Maybe living in a remote national park with moose and marmots for company? Or working at an art school with vigorously engaged students creating along side? Or how about a space in a luxury downtown hotel?

Yup, I got picked as Miss October at the Delta Oceanpointe Resort for the Artishow programme here in Victoria. The Victoria Arts Council has set up a "Artishow" for local artists to showcase and demonstrate their artwork in four of Victoria's most prestigious hotels .....ok, but not The Empress!

Now before you get all excited - let me tell you I chose October, and I knew it would be quiet, because my summer months were taken up with family commitments. But even in October, Victoria is a tourist destination and I've met some very nice people from Calgary, San Francisco (he lost a second home in the recent California fires), Mexico and Montreal!

So three of my large pieces are on display on the Mezzanine - if you happen to stop by, that's up the large stair case. And I have a table to display and demonstrate my work. My focus for the month was to work on smaller pieces that didn't require and paints or dyes and I didn't want to bring my sewing machine (I was afraid I might get asked to hem some pants!) So I knew there would be some limitation but I've been quite excited to have large chunks of time with out the distractions of other errands that might pop up. I tend to be a "flitter" when it comes to working in my studio so I can easily distract myself from tasks at hand!

I trialed a couple of ideas, combining paper and fabric into books - not quite what I was looking for but they helped me to fine tune some ideas....

I've been working on simplifying my designs into what I'm calling my "HouseMade Cards and HouseMade Books" - cut out and illuminated houses from paper. I'm so pleased with the cards I've put them into my Etsy Shop: HouseMade Cards

I have two more weeks of my "Artist in Residence" left and I'll continue to work on my HouseMade cards, I have a Studio Tour coming up in Novemeber so I can build some inventory!

What else has this residency taught me? I've learned a little about the ebb and flow of life around the hotel: the airport shuttle comes by about every 45 minutes. The coffee shop (with Starbucks coffee) closes at 2pm. The bar starts to fill as I'm leaving at the end of the day. Conference meetings break out at 12 sharp, but they are busy with their own groups and rarely look up from their "tech" devices! People in the neighborhood stop by as they walk through the hotel, often with little dogs in tow.
Plus I have an amazing view of the Inner Harbour from my work space.

Stop by if you are in the area: Wednesday-Friday 10-5pm! Delta Oceanpointe Resort
There's some cool fellows hanging out there as well!

Oh yeah - the "residence" part of "artist in residence" is a bit of a misnomer - I go home to my own bed each night!