This summer, our recent alum Lee Noble ’20 traveled to Mildred’s Lane, located in the Pennsylvania woods on the Upper Delaware River. During this week-long experience, fellows and practitioners apply tools and concepts of contemporary art to landscape, vernacular architecture, installation art, sculpture, history, archaeology, natural sciences, utopian studies, and creative domesticity. This program is just one of our growing number of Launch Opportunities for MFA students.
We caught up with Lee to learn more about his experience during the residency.
What were some of your goals going into your time there?
Just to meet people. Classmates, teachers. I think the best part of residencies and post-grad programs in which I have participated so far is meeting a kind of extra cohort of people, like adding a whole other alumni network to your circle, ideally. Also I just wanted to decompress from “lockdown” and get out of the house and be outside.
What did your average day look like during the residency?
Breakfast at 8am. Reading from 9–11 or so. During this week we were participating in a class led by Leigh Claire La Berge and Caroline Woolard related to their project “Marx for Cats”. We read selections in progress from Leigh Clair’s new book (same title). Then “Workstyles” for an hour or two (Mildred’s Lane has a number of ongoing projects and maintenance, and operates in a work–trade / work sharing kind of way, so there’s always something that needs attention, and there’s usually some ML–specific terminology to go along with everything — I basically weeded the rock patio and fixed it up, my workstyle for the week). Then lunch. Then class from 1–3 or so, discussing the reading. Then free time or project time. Dinner around 6.
Can you speak about your cohort while you were there? How much contact did you have with them?
We did everything together on this schedule. There were two other students there this week, Hannah Hirskehorn from SAIC, and Brett Wallace from NYC, plus two teachers I mentioned, plus two visiting artists who dropped in later in the week Daniel Tucker and Emily Bunker, plus the staff consisting of rotating volunteers and alumni Carla Duarte, Samiha Tasnim, plus friends and guests dropping by. We all just hung around outside and ate together in a big field.
For those who haven’t done residencies before, there can be a lot of questions about logistics. Can you talk a little about how you transported your practice to a new location?
I love to transform my practice, so I usually drop everything and work on a project related to being in that space and adapting to it, I don’t often try to transport a studio project to a residency. In this case, the only thing I did outside of participating in the week’s class schedule was to make some field recordings of the very remote woods and landscape, and to take some 35mm pictures of my time there.
What were you inspired by during the residency program?
Mildred’s Lane is a really unique collection of land-based and conceptual projects… living spaces, community-building spaces, and philosophies. It’s 90-something acres of land in eastern Pennsylvania, really like a campus; a big house, a pond, many artist-built cabins and livable sculptures throughout the land, each one has some kind of thematic concern of conceptual basis [the one I stayed in is an exact replica of Thoreau’s Walden cabin]. People come and go, contribute to it somehow, lead a session, cook dinner, or build something — it’s almost utopian. Since the main crux of Leigh Claire’s new book and the discussion class were Marxist historical issues (and cats), we all talked about how artists can work to build pedagogical communities outside of capitalism and around entrenched institutional concerns. It’s incredible to see someone (J. Morgan Puett, and really a huge group of people) making this kind of alternative school into their life’s work.
What were your takeaways about your work, career, or practice?
Keep on keeping on, be dedicated, ask for help.
Mildred's Lane
Mildred's Lane
Mildred's Lane
