Catching Up With Content Curator Mica England

So what has the stARTup staff been up to these days? Apart from the recent and upcoming holidays, plus the announcement of stARTup Los Angeles 2020 on the horizon, Fair Director Ray Beldner was faculty at the Kipaipai artist workshop at the Carey Institute for Global Good, NY and Content Curator Mica England was away for her first residency in Petaluma.

Equal parts rustic charm and contemporary comfort, In Cahoots Residency provides housing and studio space to both emerging and professional artists in a variety of mediums, with a focus on letterpress, printmaking, bookmaking, writing, and collaboration. Residents are provided private individual guest houses (with kitchens and full bathrooms) and 24-hour access to the spacious shared printmaking and artist book studios.

Mica tells us more about the time she shared there with Susan Wolf and Mary V. Marsh…

I’m thankful to have previously known the Director of In Cahoots Residency, Macy Chadwick, from her teaching years at the Academy of Art. When she opened applications in 2018 for her inaugural year of the residency, I just had to apply! And had to patiently (this was very hard) wait my turn until my November 2019 session came around.

I had seen the photos of the grounds, but nothing quite prepared me for how beautiful the studios were — as well as my living quarters, the 7th Heaven loft conveniently tucked between both studio spaces. During my time there I was literally only a few steps away from my workspace — primarily in the Bindery, seen below. I haven’t had actual tablespace for quite some time, so I naturally hogged as much as I could.

Up until a few weeks before the residency, I was juggling a number of ideas — mainly finishing a plethora of old projects I haven’t touched since I graduated. But since the still-recent loss of my mother, and since discovering a treasure trove of old photo albums she had created for her travels when she was my age, I had new purpose. I would make three photo books in conversation with hers, as well as a work to leave behind for the In Cahoots archives.

The first three days I worked like an artist possessed, staying way past my other two comrades-in-arms in the studio, soldiering on through collage after collage. (I ended up making over 60 because I’m crazy.) But on breaks we’d all sneak away to feed the horses and see (and hear!) the puzzling emus. If you want to know what they sound like, listen to your kitchen drain glug and gurgle.

I frequently saw Susan Wolf during my (sequestered?) time in the Bindery. Susan is always looking closely and actively (un)learning. I admire her for her many hats: educator, photographer, performer, printmaker, collaborator, and “interdisciplinary mixed media explorer.” And anyone who enjoys a non-stop Gorillaz and Little Dragon marathon is fine with me.

Each day I would get little glimpses of her works, which I finally got a full appreciation and eye-ful of during our Friday Night Reception.

Susan’s many projects included a roughly 60-page Tyvek-bound book (pictured above) filled with “crap” — her words, not mine — with that “crap” being old digital prints, hand-painted maps, old journal excerpts, and stamped poetry from 2010. We were all inspired that she could so seamlessly continue a project from so long ago, with its contents still holding as much weight now as they did then.

To the left, the Hands of Time. For Susan these prints showcase “time where the hand creates their own truth. It grabs me, haunts me, and feels more real than the news.” And to the right, delicate relief prints.

And as if that wasn’t enough, Susan also built her own “drawing machine” — taking experimental printmaking and adaptive tools to the next level.

Much to my surprise, my other fellow resident Mary V. Marsh was a previous stARTup artist, exhibiting with Quite Contrary Press for its inaugural 2015 San Francisco fair! Quite Contrary Press offers limited edition and unique artist’s books, prints and sculptures made in Oakland by Tony Bellaver and Mary V. Marsh individually and collaboratively. (It’s also quite a small world since Tony was once Director Ray Beldner’s studio mate!)

Mary’s most recent installation Transit Story at Kala Art Institute // Photo by James Ken Butler — Mary’s most recent installation Transit Story at Kala Art Institute // *Photo by James Ken Butler*

A former librarian, Mary’s work explores the intersection of mass media and personal habits of its consumption. She is especially fond of the now-nostalgic processes of archiving and searching information. Our welcoming dinner hosted by Macy was full of wonderful reminisces of library technology (and the lack thereof), some shared and some before my time.

Like Susan, Mary derives much of her imagery and text from journal drawings and diary entries, recording her observations of her surroundings and patterns of daily activities provide her imagery and text.

Mary worked until the very last day in the letterpress studios, packed to the gills with woodtype and all sorts of inspiring posters and prints, on her Meta print. Pictured below, it’s a beautifully layered letterpress, linoleum, wood and lead type, polymer plate, and pressure print referencing punch cards and library history. Mary was particular with her 0s and 1s, carefully resetting it so it was “absolutely correct,” even though the rest of us truly couldn’t tell the difference.

Mary will have a few of these prints at Kala December 6-8, and at the SF Center for the Book on December 7th!

During the creative process, things can go wrong. Macy told us not to expect perfection during this residency, but it’s one of my bad habits. And just because, one of the incredibly delicate Japanese papers I used for my paste-downs near-refused to cooperate, flapped and flopped and forced me to stick and un-stick and STILL not line up where I wanted… so don’t look at the unequal paste-downs, please. And for each of the books I opted for a three-post bind (spending literally hours making holes was a painstaking task to say the least), but of course the posts I brought were too small! And the posts I found at the local artist supplies store were comically too large! I then opted to phone a friend, who miraculously came to my rescue at 7pm reception day with the correct sizes, but alas… in the documentation they remain loose prints sandwiched by book boards.

*My mother’s albums, my books, and more Susan Wolf prints!*

Posts aside, I was and am still proud of what I accomplished — artistically and emotionally. I created when my mother was first diagnosed with cancer, so naturally I would create when her painful journey finally came to its end.

For my time at In Cahoots, I was free to both grieve and celebrate, exploring a side of my mother I had never known. In these snapshots, she is just like me — a young twenty-something with her entire future still ahead of her, so unaware of her potential and what is to come.

And seeing my mother’s work right alongside mine and with my mentors and colleagues, an incredible display of Bay Area women artists, as they flipped through the two of them touched me deeply. And their critique, given from women with decades more experience than me, moved and inspired me even more. I could write thousands more words drawn from theirs that night alone.

*From left to right: Susan Wolf, Mary V. Marsh, Macy Chadwick, and me*

I wish I was back! I wish I was still there! I wish I still had all that space and time to create! Though stARTup’s social media feeds are happy that I’m finally back too. : )