Artist and educator Ivilina Kouneva‘s collaboration with poet Jaclyn Piudik, “For Rituals and Visuals: a Myth under my Skin…” involved three residencies in Canada, France and the USA. Here, she shares a short diary of their collaboration, where “the mythical lurks through daily life” and “sense of place forms an important part in our travels.”
We like to look at our project as an undemanding process where strings from various directions are pulled while exploring the crossing points in our creative work. It is rewarding to build on narratives from different cultures, linking them to our personal stories.
Ivilina Kouneva is an artist and educator using colour, drawing and cut-out to articulate complexities of climate change in our everyday lives, and create dialogues between old and new.
I think of the artist residency as the most suitable place to process your stories and project them on other narratives in the context of the surroundings. It is a dedicated creative space, where interweaving your impressions with the experiences of others comes naturally. I research carefully before approaching an organisation, having in mind the uniqueness of the environment and the community that I would like to meet and work with. I am so grateful for the past two years, when the collaborative project with poet Jaclyn Piudik “For Rituals and Visuals: a Myth under my Skin” has been conceived, nurtured and developed.
Click on images for larger view:
Artscape Gibraltar Center of the Arts Artist residency at Toronto islands (26th June -10th July 2022)
A short trip by ferry separates the 15 islands from the heart of Toronto and its harbourfront. This is a zone of transitions and desire lines, where wild nature and urban vibes overlap, surrounded by the pristine waters of Lake Ontario.
At Artscape Gibraltar Center I found a community that reminded me of a beehive. Everyone seemed to follow their own routes and routines. Within a network of activities, everybody seemed happy to offer you a hand. Every area inside this former school building and outside, in the gardens, was put to use. Niches and shelves along the wide, long corridors were all turned into creative-needs spaces, such as an improvised library and help-yourself arts supplies room. I found discarded paintings, abandoned photography, paint, glue and paper leftovers. That was a real blessing for my project, which aimed to use the sources in situ, benefitting from reusing and upcycling what had been already created at the place.
I met Jaclyn in the 2nd week of my stay. A week was enough to realise that we have a similar vision, both seduced by multilayered imagery, where the mythical lurks through daily life. Jaclyn came to see me at my open studio event. She signed for me her book of poems To Suture What Frays, published in 2017. I gladly gave her one of my cut outs collages. Thus far in our collaboration we keep responding to each other’s creations – a visual for a verse and vice versa. Jaclyn describes our process as “complementary and intuitive,” with “ moments when our work overlaps organically with no need for speech.”
We gradually embraced the idea of a long-term collaboration. The title “For Rituals and Visuals: A Myth under my Skin” best describes its core, with phrases taken from two of Jaclyn’s poems.
Brac – Nerac – Auch, Gascony, France, 15th-21st July 2023
We met again for a week in Gascony, France. Jaclyn flew from Canada for her planned writers’ residency in the area. I jumped on the opportunity to join her from the South East of England. It was a vital test for our collaborative ideas as well as a chance to plan for the next year.
Climbing cobbled streets and sitting on the banks of sleepy waters of medieval market towns, we dived into a slower-paced culture. This helped us realise that discerning daily routines might unfold unexpected stories, touching hidden spaces within us.
We think of this experience as the opposite of being increasingly ‘wired’. We perceive it as firm support for the ecology of human relations, sourced by creative imagination.
South Porch Artist residency, South Carolina, USA, 10th-24th June 2024
And here we are, in the Somerville residential area, a 40-minute drive from Charleston. We met with the local community that thrives on and supports art and artists. We exchanged stories, went on trips, sat around a large table in the magnificent house with Southern charm.
Our hope at the residency was to experiment with the integration of text and image.
Naturally, we were drawing on the mythology and culture of the area, all of our senses open to our surroundings. Everything that we assimilated since our arrival at South Porch influenced our work, displayed in an installation on the last day of the residency…
We like to look at our project as an undemanding process where strings from various directions are pulled while exploring the crossing points in our creative work. It is rewarding to build on narratives from different cultures, linking them to our personal stories.
A sense of the place, which provokes ‘sensing’ our identity, forms an important part in our travels.
We have presented our project to an international community of artists and writers via Zoom. Some of our visual and verse pairings have also been published by IceFloe Press.
Now we are excited to work towards a chapbook. We are also planning a collaborative exhibition for the future.
Notes
Ivilina and Jaclyn have written about their residency at Ivilina’s website: For Rituals and Visuals: A Myth Under My Skin, where Ivilina also has a post on a residency in Quebec as well as the Ontario one. Ivilina shares images from the project on her Insta.
IceFloe Press has published three of Jacyln and Ivilina’s short verse-and-visual pieces: A Collaboration: Artwork by Ivilina Kouneva / Poetry by Jaclyn Piudik.
See their websites for more work by Ivilina Kouneva and Jaclyn Piudik.
You can find information about the South Porch Artists Residency and Gibraltar Point residency at their websites.