The Days at Camp

Camp days are blending into one another with Kevin doing exquisite corpse drawings with the kids, journaling, pastels, chess, and dance. The evenings continue with readings, lectures and good food. And BLOGGING FOR ARTISTS!

Day 4 Camp Pocket U

A day in pictures; the kids and visiting artists commune and talk ideas, throw pots, do sumie (Japanese ink painting), and play tennis.

The evening began with a bang! Lars installed his ECHO!!! Like a dream on the lake with the moon above. Lar's piece was beyond my expectations! His words reflect our tasks as we attempt to support each other's ideas, teach, discuss and make an ever expanding pockets of utopia. Pockets are cool right, you can never have enough pockets! (Camp Pocket is sponsored by Norte Maar.)

Kevin read to us again from a John Lilly book. Kevin titled his evening readings Metaprograms. These readings are calming and seem to settle the group into a discussion of clarified thought where we plan for the next day and the future. When I figure out how to put Kevin's inspirational readings online I'll send out a tweet.

The morning begins with journaling and sketching

Sumie with Kay

Ceramics and Critque

Michael throws pots

Lars, Debbie and Lars visit the kids camp

Chloe discusses the personal, the public, the investigative, and the world to 7 to 12 year olds and...they GET IT!

The evening program begins Kristin, Bill, and Karl talk about cloud patterns above Rouses Point and the fact that Rouses Point was an important stop on the underground railroad.

Lars Kremer's Echo excedes expectations!

On the train with "super artists"

Now that I am on the train, a in semi-camp counselor as conductor role, I can let my thoughts solidify a little, although my brain is somewhere between pudding and jello and not a mass of smartness. I am traveling with Kevin, Ellen, Kay (mom), Andrew and Paul. I am passing out snacks and am already enjoying the conversations of Kay talking about past train travel, Ellen's desire to pass through India via train and Kevin's train of thought that eventually leads back to John Lilly.

John Lilly was an American physician, psychoanalyst, psychonaut, philosopherand writer.
and pioneer researcher into the nature of consciousness using as his tools - the isolation tank, dolphin communication, and psychedelic drugs, sometimes in combination. He was a member of the Californian counterculture of scientists, mystics and thinkers that arose in the late 1960s and early 70s. Tonight Kevin will read, "Lilly's Voice," by John Lilly where he advises on the importance of being "super present," "super intelligent" and getting to a place where one has a deep empathy (sympathy and love) towards others. I could really use that lecture and the Lilly readings couldn't be a more perfect way to begin the adult program of Camp Pocket Utopia.

My Camp Pocket U. project has many different components; kid, free, train, communal, hotel, house, backyard, public, private, art-making, conversation and transformation. Just as Pocket Utopia, the salon, exhibition space and artist residency program, I ran in Bushwick for two years was an extension of my art, so is Camp Pocket U..

Norte Maar, through generosity, hard work, and dedication to collaboration, has provided the operating structure for this extension of my art process. And it is a process.

My art making process involves defining and redefining the role of the artist in, what I have observed lately, a rapidly evolving cultural landscape of limited resources, changing audience participation and the urgency of other global matters (the environment, health care and the economy). Artists have a responsibility to respond to the world around them. As John Lilly put it in 1994, the year I moved to New York City to be an artist, "one tends to repeat in order to be safe." Under repetition we ignore possibilities of a widening spiral that has no end.

Let's seize this camp opportunity and coin the term "super artist." Now, let's try and define it. For the next few days, my task at this "camp as exhibition," where Beuys hangs out at Womanhouse, is to make a spiraling list of understanding who the super artist is in all of us.

Kids Camp day #2 - prepping for adult "campers" to arrive

Day #2 had kids throwing pots with Michael and Jackie, of course knitting, and now word playing with lars and performing with Chloë.

20 Pratt Street gets outfitted with a tent for salons and discussions over dinner! More visiting artists arrive tomorrow by train!

Snap shots from the day at school and 20 Pratt.

Brece's classroom day 2

Ceramics with Jackie Sabourin and Michael LaVigne

More Ceramics with Jackie Sabourin and Michael LaVigne

Wordplay with Lars Kremer

Playing with the word echo with Lars Kremer

Performance prep and study with Chloë Bass

Prepping for the salon and discussion tent at 20 Pratt Street

A view of the front with the "salon tent" in back, Julia tending her own garden, Michael LaVigne on the front steps

The big top goes up!! (Not sure who's up on the ladder?!)

Art exits the ice chest ready to hang our Ab hinc show (Is this proper art handling technique?!)

Hotel now says WELCOME TO CAMP POCKET U.

Another 1st - Free Art Camp for Kids - Day 1

There were 14 students today at the first day of Norte Maar's Camp Pocket U. Campers learned a little dance with Julia Gleich, knitting with Brece Honeycutt, drawing with Matthew Miller, with Jason Andrew and Chloe Bass facilitating. I lead an hour of action painting and I'm headed back to New York from the North Country with a fair amount of paint splatter on my clothes. No questions asked through airport security.


The kids loved knitting and Brece! Matthew treated each camper like a serious artist and Julia made hearts leap with gentle stepping and beautiful music. I'll be gathering up the adult campers, for saloning, more learning, and discussion of the artist working in the world.

The first campers arrive!

The teachers arrive! Dancers, knitters, drawers, performers!