2019 Goetemann Artist Residency

Below are the five artists selected to participate in this, our 15th season. Conceived by the late Gordon Goetemann (1933-2016) as an educational vehicle to help local artists stay informed of trends in the art world, the Goetemann Artist Residency has become the unrivaled success of The Rocky Neck Art Colony.

Over the years the program has evolved from the original three juried artist residents and added The Distinguished Artist/Teacher, The Gloucester Invitational Artist and the Environmental Installation Artist. All residents enjoy a rent free, month long retreat, to create their work in a live/work studio on Gloucester’s Madfish Wharf.

The all-volunteer staff meet each resident and help to make their stay welcoming and productive.

Please join us in welcoming:

Marilu Swett: Goetemann Residency Artist, June 2019

Marilu makes work in the dual areas of sculpture and drawing. A native of greater Boston, she lives and works in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts. She has exhibited throughout the US. She is an Associate Professor of Art at Montserrat College of Art in Beverly, Massachusetts, and a member of Boston Sculptors Gallery.

Marilu Swett makes work in the dual areas of sculpture and drawing. Her work reflects her interest in biological form, its volume, complexity and variety and the ways we interrogate it. She indicates this in a general and fanciful way, by abstracting, inventing, and overlapping relationships to indicate space and slow movement. The work shifts between the layered space of her ink drawings and the factual space occupied by sculpture. References include natural systems and subsystems, microscopic form, telluric and oceanic form, images from the human body, and industrial artifacts.

Recently, Swett has been looking at the ocean as site of evolution, human industry, and watery companionship. Seaforms of all scales appear, evolve, and dive beneath the surface. Themes from 19th century whaling and fishing show up in her choice of material, hardware, and pattern. Pieces evoke the leisure time activities of scrimshaw and textile embellishment and the hard labor of fishing and whaling, directly and indirectly. Rumination about things afloat or beached, buried or layered over, untethered and unwoven, reflecting the energy and unexpected juxtapositions of coastal life, the profound experience of being in and on the water and walking its shores, drives her new work.

Her new work is driven by rumination about things afloat or beached, buried or layered over, untethered and unloved, reflecting the energy and unexpected juxtapositions of coastal life, the profound experience of being in and on the water and walking its shores.

I am very interested in the opportunity to stay in Gloucester with direct access to the shore to shape the particulars of my work. I welcome the chance to turn my eye to Gloucester’s landscape in a sustained way.

Artist Website: MariluSwett.com

Opening Talk at The Cultural Center at Rocky Neck: June 3, 7:00 PM

Closing Talk at Goetemann Studio: June 27, 7:00 PM

 

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Eeva Siivonen: Goetemann Residency Artist, July 2019

A moving image artist originally from Helsinki, Finland, Eeva currently lives in London, Ontario. She earned her BFA and MFA degrees in documentary film directing from Aalto University in Helsinki before moving to the US as a Fulbright Scholar to pursue a second MFA in Video Art from Syracuse University.

From Eeva Siivonen’s Artist Statement: I look for the moments of connection when images, words and sounds meet and align—creating, however briefly, a unity of a voice or experience. I play with the constant tension between the pre-linguistic and ambiguous nature of images and sounds and the gravity of language that defines and creates meanings. I believe in the fleeting nature of these connections and in the inevitable failure of fixed meanings. I prefer to embrace chaos and the fragile nature of our subjectivities—the constant stream of memories, random thoughts, and associations that collide with the perceptual world around us, keeping us in a perpetual state of aimless change and movement.

I create a world that consists of fragments and illuminates what is small and ephemeral—details, thoughts, and emotions that appear and disappear like fireflies at dusk. I’m compelled by the subtle details that go unnoticed, the disregarded little pieces and traces of thought and experience that speak through silence rather than noise. I suture together a visual and sonic space where the overlooked and forgotten becomes visible and amplified in an effort to create space for attention and empathy. My work is a form of resistance—a way to create space where we can see and be seen.

Strange Places and How To Survive Them (2015) Single channel video by Eeva Siivonen on Vimeo.

Artist Website: www.eevaleenasiivonen.com

Opening Talk at The Cultural Center at Rocky Neck: July 1, 7:00 PM

Closing Talk at Goetemann Studio: July 25, 7:00 PM.”

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Matthew Trueman: Goetemann Environmental/Installation Artist, September 2019

Sponsored by Karen Ristuben

Matthew is a Canadian sculpture and video artist who completed his MFA at Western University in 2018, and studied Mechanical Engineering before that. A resident of London, Ontario, he employed his woodworking background to found an environmentally responsible furniture business called Joined Habitat.

From Matthew Trueman’s Artist Statement: I am currently building on a series called Instruments for Landscapes that utilizes musical and clockwork technology powered by found sources of energy to create autonomous instruments tuned to specific landscapes.

A central theme of this work is an exploration of space using our ears, as opposed to our eyes, as the primary source of information. This shift of sense is especially relevant for understanding marine animals that rely far more on acoustics that humans.

The Instruments for Landscapes series aims to allow us to listen closer by making sound. To do this the sculpture, and ultimately the listener, must absorb, respond and harmonize with the elemental and ecological sounds of the coastline.

The sculpture will power itself using energy from the wind, water or the sun to create an output that works like a telescope, allowing listeners access into the depth of the soundscape around them.

Artist Website: www.matthewtrueman.com

Opening Talk at The Cultural Center at Rocky Neck: September 3, 7 PM

Closing Talk at Ocean Alliance: September 26, 6 PM

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JJ Baker: Goetemann Residency Artist, October 2019

Currently living in Houston, Texas, JJ was born in Cincinnati, Ohio. He received his BFA from the University of Cincinnati. His work has been shown in both Cincinnati and Houston.

From JJ Baker’s Artist Statement: My recent art has focused on portraits and the figure. I use portraits to explore the human psyche and our environment. I pull images from art history, movies and my surroundings. This synthesis of images represents the barrage of information we are subject to.

Combining various drawing, painting and collage techniques, I paint portraits to represent the perception of the self: How we perceive, how we are perceived, and how we want to be perceived.

I have always loved the East Coast the artistic communities there. I have always dreamed of being able to live in a lighthouse and paint. I think this is the closest I can get to that!

Artist website: JJBakerart.com

Opening talk at The Cultural Center at Rocky Neck: October 1, 7 PM

Closing talk at Goetemann Studio: October 24, 7 PM

 

 

 

 

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Joan Snyder: Goetemann Residency Distinguished Artist Teacher, August 2019

Sponsored by Geoffrey H Richon Co., Inc., Contractor

We are honored to have Joan Snyder who will be the 2019 Distinguished Artist/Teacher for the Goetemann Artist Residency of the Rocky Neck Art Colony.

Her introductory talk, “Conversation with her daughter Molly Snyder-Fink,” will take place at the Cape Ann Museum on August 18th, 2:00pm. This talk is free and open to the public (video of the talk is here).

It is being followed by a four-day workshop at the Montserrat College of Art.  The workshop is now filled but there is a wait list.

Photos and more information will appear on this site in early April.

Painter Joan Snyder, known nationally and internationally, has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and was a MacArthur Fellow.  Her work has been in Biennials at the Whitney and Corcoran museums.

Her work is currently on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art as part of an exhibition entitled “Epic Abstraction: Pollock to Herrera.

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Jason Burroughs: Gloucester Invitational Artist, May 2019

Jason Burroughs, studied sculpture at Montserrat College of Art, in Beverly, Massachusetts, and graduated in 2017. Currently working as a welder at Essex Bay Engineering, he likes to spend any free time sketching and painting plein-air.

From Jason Burroughs’ Artist Statement: As a native to Gloucester, I am interested in our city’s art history, the waterfront and the architecture. Ever since my early days at Cape Ann Art Haven, I have been inspired by the individual artists who defined Gloucester as an arts colony and contributed to the foundation of Gloucester’s cultural heritage.

Studying sculpture at Montserrat allowed me to gain knowledge of different processes and materials and I’ve used them to create drawings in space, based on Gloucester. My 3-D work is made of wood, cast plaster and/or metal and is inspired by the forms repeated around or relative to the waterfront.

After finishing my senior thesis work, I continued looking to Gloucester for motivation and decided to focus more on my painting and sketching, placing myself more so in the shoes of the Gloucester artists that I admire. Working plein-air, whether it be sketching or oil painting, allows me to be more specific and descriptive than sculpture, while also working faster.  There are many neighborhoods around Gloucester that have distinct houses or streets and offer hints to the life of the people of Gloucester.

 

Artist Website: Jasonburroughsgallery.com

Opening Talk at The Cultural Center at Rocky Neck: May 6, 7:00 PM

Closing Talk at Goetemann Studio: May 30, 5:00 PM

 

 

 

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For further information:

• Questions and/or more information about the residency: Residency@rockyneckartcolony.org
• Information about each former Distinguished Artist/Teacher and Resident can be located on the website under the year of their residency. For more information, contact the Director of the Residency, Residency@rockyneckartcolony.org.
• Ongoing news and upcoming events, visit the GAR Residency Blog https://garesidency.art

 

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Past funding for the Rocky Neck Art Colony Residency Program was given in part from the Society for the Encouragement of the Arts and made possible by The Massachusetts Cultural Council’s John and Abigail Adams Arts Program.