I’m in an MFA program, y’all, and I’m just about done with the first semester. I’m doing the low residency MFA in Visual Arts at Lesley University College of Art and Design in Cambridge, MA. The structure of this program is that each of four semesters is bookended by a ten day residency period on campus. During the residency period you bring in all your work and have critiques with faculty and other students, as well as attend seminars, critical theory classes, and hang out with your fellow students. Then during the rest of the year you work in your own studio and work with an advisor from the faculty and an artist mentor who can be any artist so long as they meet certain criteria. I was very fortunate this semester to have the wonderful artists Laurel Sparks as my advisor and Eva Lundsager as my advisor. You are also required to write five papers during this time. The first is a review of the residency period, the next three are research papers on topics pertaining to your studio practice, and the last is a review of the semester as a whole.
I just turned in that last paper this morning, and part of it was an enumerated list of life events that have coincided with the semester in question listed in chronological order. It’s quite a list, and I’d like to share it with you here.
1) My fiancée, Liv, and I bought a house together and had some minor renovations done (floors and walls). The sale was executed on January 6, during the residency period. The house is in Harvard, MA, in what is considered a rural area. Our previous apartment was in downtown Lowell, the third or fourth largest city in MA, and prior to that we had lived in apartments in Cambridge and Boston. At the new house we have a mailbox on the street and the post officer leaves order forms for stamps every couple months.
2) I had a solo show of my paintings at the Newton Free Library which ran from January 12 – 30. This was an opportunity I had applied to and been rejected from twice before, so it seemed like a big deal, but because I had a lot of other stuff going on I didn’t do a good job advertising and anyway the weather sucked and only five people showed up to the reception.
3) We moved into our new home on January 30.
4) Our first child was due to arrive on February 6. He was not born until February 17, but I started my parental leave on the 6th anyway. Liv and I took the opportunity to take several nice walks together around our new neighborhood. We had planned and hoped for a natural birth, but instead we ended up with an induction, epidural, and cesarean section. Talkeetna Finn Gold was born the morning after we arrived at the hospital 9lbs 1oz and 21 inches long. We all left the hospital together four days later.
Welcome to the World, Talkeetna Finn. Wish we’d done a better job getting it ready for you.
5) On a follow up visit to the hospital the next week Liv was diagnosed with post-partum preeclampsia and was immediately checked in. We were told not to expect to leave the hospital for a couple days. I wrote my first research paper from the hospital room while she and Tally slept.
6) On February 26th I saw my therapist. On the 27th I got a haircut. On March 5th I went to the dentist. These seemingly quotidian events now seem quite novel.
7) In March everything began to shut down. My first studio visit with my artist mentor Eva Lundsager ended up turning into a telephone call on March 16. I set up a make shift studio in the basement of our new house so that I could continue to work while observing quarantine.
8) Our dog Teddy had an appointment at the vet on March 18, which led to an ultrasound at another facility on March 19 at a larger facility. At the first appointment they encouraged me to come into the screening room with Teddy. At the second one they made me wait in my car. Masses were found where they were not supposed to be and these were causing pain and occasional incontinence. It was thought they were cancerous but further invasive and painful tests would be needed to know for sure, and knowing for sure would simply mean we would have the option to give him a treatment that would lower his quality of life considerably during the duration of the treatment and at best only extend his life for a number of months. We developed a daily routine of dosing him with pain meds twice a day plus a supplemental ball of boiled ground beef as well as mashed sweet potato with ground cilium husk mixed in to promote colon health. The pain meds were in liquid form and his favorite way to consume them was dripped on a cold leftover pancake.
9) On March 28th we did not have the combination housewarming / baby shower (babywarming) party we had invited all our friends to.
10) During the residency period I shared a studio with Tracy Hayes, who is a member at the Bromfield Gallery in Boston’s SoWa arts district. I’ve always admired Bromfield and told her so. She suggested I should consider membership and so what would have been an in-person interview at the gallery in early March turned into a Zoom meeting studio visit on April 5 and then an invitation to join the gallery in early May. I accepted and my membership begins on June 1.
11) We had to cancel our flight to Utah for Easter where Tally was going to meet my family. Only my mom lives in Utah, but my dad and sister were going to meet us there as well. Tally is three and a half months old now and he has only ever met one set of grandparents, Liv’s parents, who visited from New York while we were still recovering in the hospital.
12) Teddy started having accidents again towards the end of April. He had been showing remarkable signs of recovery up until then and we had even been weening him off his pain medication at the vet’s recommendation. Late at night on April 26 he stumbled and fell and had a little trouble getting back up, but seemed ok afterwards. The morning of the 27th he fell in the hallway outside our bedroom and made a howling noise, unable to get back up. I picked him up and brought him to his dog bed by the sliding glass door leading to the deck. He stayed there for a couple hours until he needed to pee, when he managed to get up to find me to let me know he needed to go out. On our way back to the door he fell again and when I put him down on a pad by his bed his body was like a wet noodle and he began to pee on the floor. I went and told Liv, who was nursing Tally. I told her I was afraid Teddy was never going to get up again. I cried. He did get up again, but just twice: once when he needed to poop and he stood up by the door and I let him out and he fell down on the deck and I had to go and get him and bring him back in, and once while we were waiting for the person you call to come and euthanize your dog to arrive, when Liv and Tally and I were sitting on the floor near him and he got up and slowly ambled over to us and pressed his little head against each one of us and then went back to his dog bed to lay down forever. We had to wear our masks when the lady arrived. It’s the same mask I still carry in my errands bag and it has a particular aspect to it, a slight deformity and mild smell from having been stained with tears.
Miss you Teddy. You were a good boy. You only ever brought joy into people’s lives.
13) Liv’s birthday was on April 28. I was caught off-guard by the passage of time and gave her a pair of diamond earrings I had stashed away for just such an occasion. The earrings were a free gift from the mail order jeweler I got her engagement ring from. She knows this but was delighted anyway. I did a little better for Mothers’ Day and managed to get an Amazon Basics gold tennis bracelet with a small diamond on it delivered just in time. I gave her this along with a locally made letter-pressed Mothers’ Day card I bought for my mom a couple years ago and never got around to sending. This all went over exceedingly well and made me look like I was very good at doing nice things. She has worn both the earrings and the bracelet every day since then.
14) My paternity leave ended on May 4. My day job is as a robotics engineer at a company in Waltham. I work three ten-hour days a week so that I can have time for my studio practice. Now I do that work from home. I’ve had to set up a workstation in our basement, sharing space with my make-shift studio.
15) I’ve had a couple additional virtual studio visits with Eva, now over Zoom, and also had a call with Cicely Carew whom I am very happy to have met at the winter Residency.
16) In mid-May I learned that it is considered old fashioned to put two spaces after the period. I have always put two spaces after the period and find that it is impossible for me to not do so. I spent the next couple weeks re-reading every email I write before sending it to remove the extra spaces. This makes me feel old and wonder why no one ever told me.
That’s it. That’s the end of the list. The rest of the paper was lists of artists I’d researched and texts I had read as well as pictures of un-stretched paintings I’d completed. I hope to get some of those up here soon. I’ll be stretching some of them for the upcoming residency. They’re all big.
And now here we are and I’m struggling to get enough sleep and it feels like the world is falling apart and my troubles have a way of feeling very small compared to everything going on out there. When I take a step back I recognize that I have been very lucky. Very privileged. My struggles are real, but right now as racially charged riots erupt across our nation in the middle of a global pandemic they seem rather small. I am really working hard in my studio. I hope that it helps somehow. I know that I would not want to live in a world without art, or in a society without artists.