The Magic of Artist Residencies with Fellow Lavaughan Jenkins

“The Magic of Artist Residencies” is featured in Issue 11 of the Boston Art Review. Below is an excerpt from the issue. You can read the article PDF here. If you are interested in a copy, please visit here to order.

“My first residency was two years ago at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts. It’s a seven-month residency in the off-season. It’s in October and it’s starting to get cold, there are rainstorms and snow. You basically have the town to yourself. My favorite days were waking up in the morning, making a cup of coffee, and walking down to the beach, especially after it snowed. The sea sparkles. It’s super magical.

It can also be lonely. The residency had twenty artists, so we got to be together, but you’re still in this big old empty town. Depression is a real thing at art residencies, because you’re pulled away from your immediate life. But I think that feeling plays a big role in how your work changes when you’re at residencies. It’s like your whole world is upside down… The one thing that you’ve got to do is make work.

My painting changed, but also, I changed. It really pushed my progression and my work. When you’re at a residency, all these things in the real world, like bills, don’t exist anymore. All you have to do is wake up in the morning and create. How amazing is that? I think that’s the crazy thing about being at a residency: all you have is time.”

Lavaughan Jenkins was a 2021-2022 Visual Arts Fellow.