When younger and still working a nine-to-fiver that required occasional travel, I used to joke that a perfect life would be one in which everything I did was a tax deduction.
Grown older, wiser and scared-er, however, I think perhaps I have found my perfect life in the world of artist residencies.
For those with feet still firmly planted on the ground, artist residencies are unique places—often in isolated, rural or exotic settings that sound attractive on paper—where artists congregate for weeks or months at a time to socialize, take in the local color and work. Or at least speak gravely about the work they intend to do.
Not "just anyone" can be accepted for an artist residency. There is an application process; one must present a resume with a smattering of artistic accomplishments and propose intended work which may or may not be done. An "artist" might be a painter, a writer, a musician, a choreographer—anyone tangentially related to the arts—and the residency gatekeepers will admit you, or not, based on whatever vague criteria they are using at the time.
In the past, I've been accepted to art residencies on a down-trodden farm in Massachusetts, a Zen monastery near Woodstock, and at a more upscale and prestigious rural compound where semi-famous artists attend and lunches are provided each morning in metal lunchboxes like the kind my father used to tote to the steel mill.
La Maison de Beaumont, where I've landed this August, combines the remoteness of the down-trodden farm with the aura of artistic respectability of Impressionist Provence. Beaumont is a picturesque but non-fussy town far off the beaten tourist track, requiring a $140 taxi ride from Aix-en-Provence even to set foot in. There are narrow, winding streets, two cafés with varying grumpy and overworked owner/managers, and, atop the hillside, a crowning 17th-century church with constantly banging bells.
Nine artists are in residence, among them Natasha, an oil painter; Sharone, who creates abstracts with acrylics on raw canvas; Rick, an observant but unobtrusive photographer; and myself, typist and occasional writer.
Does one get any work done at an artist residency?
Perhaps.
I myself have been getting up at 5 a.m. to squeeze out 1,000 words daily whether I like it or not. Others explore the countryside on foot or in their little rented Renaults or Peugeots. Still others haunt the boulangeries and local towns, bemoaning the already-harvested lavender and attempting to celebrate the small and drooping sunflowers the baking summer has produced.
In other words, we are serious artists with serious time on our hands.
So far, when not working, I've sunbathed at Cassis, crammed my face full of delicious croissants from Mirabeau, and graced an artist swim party at the home of the parents of La Maison de Beaumont's owner, a French financier living in New York.
So—vacation or hard labor?
You decide.
