Images courtesy of Eden Rock Gallery
Currently on view at the Eden Rock - St. Barths is an exhibit from acclaimed artist Catherine Howe, who recently finished up her residency at the hotel where she created works for the exhibit. Howe had her first exhibition in New York at White Columns in 1987. After that she served as Curator at Hallwalls (1984-88) while in Buffalo for graduate school (SUNY, MFA.) Currently she is on the Graduate Painting faculty at the New York Academy of Art, where she runs a seminar on contemporary culture. Her paintings have been exhibited extensively in New York, including solo exhibitions at Claire Oliver, Casey Kaplan, Liz Koury, Littlejohn Contemporary, and Bill Maynes Gallery.
Howe was kind enough to answer a few of our questions about the residency, the new work, and what it's like to work with sand in her toes:
WHITEWALL: How did you get involved with the hotel and with the residency?
CATHERINE HOWE: For several years, the hotel has had a relationship with the New York Academy of Art, where I am on the graduate faculty in painting. Natalie Clifford, Eden Rock’s Gallery Director, stopped by my New York studio last winter, liked what she saw there and we hatched a plan for this show.
WW: What is your workspace and environment typically like when you're working on a project? How does it compare to your process at Eden Rock?
CH: My studio is in Hell’s Kitchen, a midtown Manhattan location famous for its ethnic restaurants and the seedy Port Authority bus depot, a strange and noisy place for daily painting practice. I have managed to thrive in the hectic New York art world, where just getting to the studio each day can be an ordeal. Maybe it helps give the work an edge, but it is also tiresome.
WW: What sort of effect did your environment have on your work? Did you have an idea of what you wanted to do before you started the residency or did you find inspiration in your surroundings?
CH: Rolling out of bed in St Barths for a fortnight is a welcome departure and shockingly soothing by comparison. To my delight, I have been really motivated by this place, working each day with sand on my toes in a damp bathing suit.
So, it is a radically different experience for me compared to sweltering summer studio in the city. Pleasurable surroundings may not be so bad for the artist after all! I have discovered that I love working in exotic locales, far away from home, where unexpected ideas are always the result.
WW: Which work was your starting point for this exhibition?
CH: I came here with bags of paint, (some of which exploded in my luggage enroute), a giant roll of watercolor paper, but no specific plan, other than avoiding the seaside clichés of tourist paintings of sunsets and palm trees (OK, I did one or two to see if I could!). Once here, I just began to do what seemed natural for me. I let the place seep in and seep out. If you avoid the shopping, St Barths can be a tropical paradise cloistered from the ordinary distractions and trivialities that besiege the artist daily. The steady rhythm of the surf is a welcome backdrop to painting, musing and reconsidering.
WW: What was your interaction with the clients of the hotel like? Do you have any anecdotes about spending time with guests?
CH: The guests I have met are perfectly charming and seem to be open to taking a look, since they are all on holiday, and like me, removed from their routines. They were sometimes surprised to find “a real artist” in the resort and this made me feel great. I have had some interesting exchanges with a number of them, a novelist, a basketball player and a fashion buyer, to name a few. The opening reception was packed with some truly tan and glamorous types and the wine was much better than the stuff they serve at New York galleries! I made some new friends and possible partners for future projects here. It is always interesting to hear people react to the art, though it also makes you feel vulnerable and exposed.
WW: Aside from the environment from which it was created, what is unique about these pieces when compared to some of your earlier work?
CH: The work I have made here is full of light and is freer than some of my previous works. The ones I made in New York for the show are an imaginary response to paradise, while the ones made here are perhaps more visceral, more spontaneous.
I love residencies and believe they offer a unique and productive experience for artists. I think both emerging and more experienced artists get something from them, pushing art making into unexpected directions and letting them forget themselves for a short time.
WW: Do you think the residency helped you in any way to foster creativity? Do you think something like this can benefit artists by giving them a different perspective?
CH: Artists and writers have long gone to extreme places to make their work. Proust had the cork- lined room, Jonathan Franzen wrote "the Corrections" aided by the earplugs, a blindfold (and no television!), seeking a state where senses are heightened rather than dulled. Gauguin, convinced that painting is “a Gospel to which a disciple must submit completely,” fled to his version "unspoiled" paradise (and then helped spoil it, apparently). Agnes Martin, just at the moment New York noticed her work and success was nigh, escaped in a camper to avoid it.
She crisscrossed the country, finally settling on an isolated mesa in New Mexico, where in winter she was blissfully snowed in for weeks at a time. Martin equated her preferred artistic state of mind with that of 'wordless and silent' meditation.
To retreat into luxurious solitude, to make-work and live a life in temporarily surrounded by perfect beauty (except for some of the tourists), a residency here is a tremendous gift. To the beach and down the utopian path of pure perfection...
The best “artists’ retreats” try to provide this, at least until dinnertime.
They are a haven where we can sweep away distractions and just create.
We leave our striving competitive selves behind to step outside of our daily lives for a short time. The gift of solitude means divine potentiality, the hope that if we might go out into the unknown and face the danger, something may come to us: something new.
WW: Did you come across times where you felt like you had hit a wall, and being in St. Barths became a struggle?
CH: I am gazing out over a limitless expanse of ocean. It is hard to remember who I was before. It is place for streamlining, where one's art might become sharper and brighter. It offers clarity- the view out and the view in, and the expanding framework needed to do anything really worthwhile. As for difficulties, the only “wall” was my own self-consciousness working in front of the guests…
WW: Which piece in your exhibit is the most indicative of the time you spent in St. Barths in your opinion?
CH: The large watercolors made here, are absolutely new and thrilling for me. I painted them at night while the guests were in their rooms. It was secret studio time. I can’t wait to show them to my New York gallery!
WW: What are you working on currently?
CH: I am planning a show in New York with Thomas VonLinterl, a Chelsea gallery I have recently joined; the show will be in 2012, and will surely bear the traces of my time in St. Barths.
