As you can imagine with dozens of artists invited to the Hermitage every year and dozens more from previous years coming back for Part II or III (or sometimes IV) of their residency, there are as many artists-in-residence combinations as shells on our beach.
Some artists who meet at the Hermitage hit it off so much they try to arrange their schedules so they can return together. Others just happen to book the same week the second time around as in “Didn’t I see you here last May?”
At their welcome dinner at the Hermitage, Tameka Norris, Will Villalongo and Terry Adkins talked and joked as if they’d known each other for ages. That’s not unusual at this place but in their case, they actually had known each other and their arrival at the same time wasn’t exactly a coincidence.
When visual artist Will spent his first week at the Hermitage he mentioned to Program Director/Co-founder Patricia Caswell that we (as in our National Advisory Committee) should invite more performance artists. Patricia told him that NAC member Franklin Sirmans had just submitted the name of Tameka Norris, a visual and performance artist. She also just happened to be a former student of Will’s at Yale. Will decided not to tell Tameka so her invitation would be a surprise.
When Tameka received her shell and Hermitage invitation in the mail in New Orleans, she had remembered seeing Will mention his stay at the Hermitage on his Facebook page and contacted him to share the “surprise”. “I didn’t know he knew,” said Tameka.
Meanwhile she and Terry Adkins happened to be part of the same exhibition, “Radical Presence,” that debuted in November 2012 in Houston. As they talked about their future plans, Tameka mentioned the Hermitage. “I think I got that too,’” Terry told Tameka.
Tameka already knew Will’s dates and scheduled her visit so some of their time would overlap. For Terry, it was just a matter of trying to fit his Hermitage time in “I had other things happening and this was about the only time I could come.”
When Will found out Terry was headed to the Hermitage, he recalled meeting him many years earlier under much different circumstances. “Terry doesn’t remember but he gave me a crit when I was in art school,” Will said shooting Terry a smile across the room. The two had run into each other in passing as artists do in NY. It was however a coincidence that they booked the same flight from New York to the Hermitage.
Their past experience allowed the three to settle in quickly. “It’s been nice getting to know Terry and Tameka in a different dynamic,” said Will. “And he’s not dodging me because I have questions,” shot back Tameka, referring to their teacher/student days. Their stay included kite flying on the beach, July 4th fireworks, road trips and watching horror movies on a taped up white sheet in the main room of the Hermitage House. And yes, they did get plenty of work done.
“I find this concentrated quality time quite rewarding,” said Terry, who’s literally gearing up for a project that will take him to the North Pole this fall. A constant stream of packages with new photo equipment followed him to the Hermitage where he spent a lot of time getting familiar with the gear.
Tameka and Will also used their residency time in untraditional ways. Both visual artists, she is writing, and he is reading stories by James Baldwin, something he has long planned to do but said he never had the time for.
Tameka believes her stay here was greatly enhanced by the company, including Mimi Herman, a writer and poet from North Carolina. She said hearing what the others think, even if it’s about current events has all been part of “the artistic process.”
And part of that process was a presentation at Art Center Sarasota. Ironically Will had planned to do the talk but had to leave the Hermitage early so Terry and Tameka stepped in with great success. Community outreach by the artists is part of the Hermitage experience.
Lounging on the Hermitage couch Terry called his stay “A mutually nourishing exchange, quite rewarding,… unforgettable.” We hope he flashes back to his weeks in the sun while he’s taking photos and creating art at the North Pole.
Tameka Norris – Family Values, a solo exhibition at the Contemporary Arts Center in New Orleans, opens August 3. Will Villalongo’s work can be seen in The Shadows Took Shape opening November 14, 2013 at the Studio Museum in Harlem in NYC and, in another cool coincidence, Radical Presence – Black Performance in Contemporary Artfeaturing Tameka Norris and Terry Adkins, begins its run at the same museum on the same day.