ARTISTS RESIDENCE
Synergy in Action
Emerging Artists Intersect at Joshua Tree Highlands Artists Residence written by Barbara Gothard
Dennis Buck
Dennis Buck
Converging in Joshua Tree, four emerging artists from Germany, Maryland, North Carolina and Pennsylvania were faced with challenges and opportunities in this unfamiliar desert environment. Their task was to create artworks independently, then collaborate on developing a cohesive exhibit of their diverse output. Dennis Buck (visual artist), Emily Quinn (painter/photographer), Dimitri Staszewski (filmmaker/ photographer) and Chris Zickefoose (sculptor) were awarded seven-week residencies at Joshua Tree Highlands Artists Residence (JTHAR) during the summer of 2018. Their individual and collective experience would give them what art critic Henri Neuendorf describes as the benefits of a residency: time to reflect, to do research and/or produce work outside of their usual environments with potential long-term effects on both their art and their lives. Developing a unique theme that these artists could write about in a thoughtful manner was paramount, and this step became the catalyst for their collaboration. Equally important was determining how each of their specific genres would complement the others’ works in terms of the theme they chose—Optical Instruments. Buck kicked off the weekly potluck sessions at their respective Joshua Tree residences. Long conversations followed a formula of sharing updates on their work sessions, critiquing each other’s works, brainstorming exhibition titles, discussing art making and art history, and marketing and promoting their work. An unanticipated benefit of these sessions was the recognition that although each created works based on an interior “monologue,” the feedback from the other artists proved to be not only valuable but also resulted in changes to their individual works. Buck’s process involved collaborating with rabbits, the rain and, most profoundly, the heat of the sun (this last in stark contrast to his native Berlin), demonstrating how the elements affect a variety of fabrics and produce paintings without paint or brushes. His work focuses on the act of signing and dating— name, initial and year are the objects of the image. Numbers and letters are obscured into an abstraction of color, line and form. Displaying the power of the desert sun, H.M.2018 pays homage to Matisse’s late scissor cuts. UVresistant materials were cut and arranged on the textiles to allow the sun and rain to bleach the canvases. In his works, Buck observed the outcomes of transparency. The layering of vitreous and translucent 66
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