Ragdale and Re-entry into the "Real World"

By S. Kirk Walsh, writer

The first time I returned to the “real world” from Ragdale was in April 1999. It was my first experience at an artist residency program, and I traveled home to New York City in a state of that post-Ragdale bliss and in awe of my fourteen days in Lake Forest, Illinois.

Never had I had experienced such a nurturing creative environment in my life. At the time, I had recently graduated from a creative writing program, but “nurturing” certainly wouldn’t be the first word that would come to mind when describing that experience. (Challenging and instructive, yes.) At Ragdale, I felt supported—and surrounded—by a group of like-minded people for the first time.

Once, I remembered taking an afternoon walk in the prairie, and a fellow writer, Frances Maclean, joined me on one of the wood benches. We talked about my favorite current novel, “The Waves,” by Virginia Woolf, which continues to be in my top five, and how life at Ragdale compared to life back at home. She asked me how many hours I was writing per day during my residency. I answered, about six or seven hours. And she said, “You know, when you get home, you won’t be able to do that. During regular life, it’s only possible for most people to write four hours per day. It becomes too exhausting.” I agreed with her, saying that even four hours was a lot back in the real world. But somewhere in the back of my head, I thought, “I’m gonna work at home, the way I work at Ragdale.”

As soon as I returned to NYC, I quickly forgot Frances’ wise words. I became both disappointed and frustrated. Why couldn’t I recreate the simple conditions at Ragdale during my life in New York City? I didn’t want to return phone calls to friends. Shopping for groceries and making dinner became a tiresome burden. And then there were those clear-windowed envelopes that appeared in the mail every week or so. Indeed, I had difficulty negotiating the real world, to put it mildly.

After one or two more residencies, I began to understand the re-entry process, and how Ragdale figured into my “real world” experience as a fiction writer. Chicago-based artist Olivia Petrides explained it succinctly to me one night over dinner. “I think of my residency as a way to recharge for the entire year,” she said. “Everything that I work on here during my stay informs my work for the rest of year.”

This approach felt right to me. The creative productivity that I experience at Ragdale is unlike anything I experience in my real life. As Frances said several years ago, it is impossible to replicate it. But, it has become true for me over the years, the work that I generate during a residency sustains—and recharges—me throughout the year. For example, during my most recent residency in November 2006, I completed a very rough draft of a new novel. During my stay, I had the opportunity and space to spread out with my characters and take in the bigger picture of the narrative. Since returning home (now in Austin, Texas), I have been methodically trudging away at revising one chapter at a time, doing my best to work everyday. But indeed, the demands of my life don’t always allow this. I have learned to trust the ebbs and flows of my creative life, knowing that my time at Ragdale is a significant part of that experience.

Another way I bring Ragdale home with me is to stay connected with my Ragdale friends. I have been fortunate to meet many talented artists at Ragdale; some of them I have been friends with for almost ten years. When I open an email or receive a phone call from a Ragdale friend, I feel like I’m tapping into that nurturing community that supports my creative self in ways that I never imagined possible.

A Day in the Life of a Ragdale Artist

By Michael Wille, visual artist

6:00 a.m. – Run 4 miles as part of Team Ragdale. Regin led a troop of three residents each morning to the lake and back.

7:15 a.m. – After having showered, I would head to the kitchen and have breakfast. At this time, others began congregating for similar purposes and we would strike up conversations about the day ahead or the night before. It was in these times that I would learn the personal stories of the other artists including why they chose to come to Ragdale.

8:00 a.m. – I would head back to the studio for the morning’s work. In my specific case that means painting. My painting practice demands a lot of process-based painting. Basically, I work on things that need time to dry. Consequently, I try to work on numerous paintings at the same time to make most efficient use of my time. As a painting professor during the academic year, I am always looking for “seams” in my life where I can fit my practice into it. Ragdale has offered me opportunities to consider a two-week residency as the equivalent of 2-3 months “on the outside.” Back to the story – I would really have 4+ hours in the morning of quiet, peaceful time in which I could fully concentrate. It has been my experience that the other artists are very cordial and friendly, but they also are very respectful of your time and space.

12:15 p.m. - Head out to the kitchen for lunch. I am specifically using the phrase “heading out” as if I am locked up in a cave and then head out to “face the public.” I grab a quick sandwich, continue with conversations with my Ragdale friends that were started at breakfast and quickly head back to the studio for more work.

12:45 p.m. – This would be another lengthy slot for uninterrupted work. I don’t hesitate to emphasize why one would go to a residency – it is to get work done. Although we work in different disciplines, we all share that common purpose of needing to be productive. For the most part, residents choose to leave their careers, families and home life for a few weeks at Ragdale. We all cherish the time spent at Ragdale, particularly when discovery takes place in the studio.

3:30 p.m. – Not everyday, but from time to time I have headed over to Lake Michigan for a quick swim. It’s a great way to break from the routine of the studio. After being rejuvenated by the Great Lakes waters, I’ll head back to the painting studio, where I quickly get back to work.

6:30 p.m. – Dinner is served. We all leave our privacy and enter the quasi-public arena of the dinner table. After having been in a silent environment all day where we’ve been involved in private conversations (within our own minds), we all get a chance to come out of our shells for an hour or so to eat some great food. The chefs do a magnificent job of preparing magical meals for us and we get to have a nice feast (hence the 6 am running!).

7:30 p.m. – After dessert, I head back to the studio for one more effort before the end of the day. If I am in a rut in the studio and need some fresh air, I would head back to the Ragdale “quad” and play some (baseball) catch with other residents for a short while. We might share a drink over great conversation. I would head back to the studio and continue to work my way through my painting process for another few hours until I needed to crash around 11:30, setting the alarm for 5:50 a.m. to get ready to run again.

***Things that aren’t really on a schedule like this are the numerous studio visits that take place upon invitation, requests, etc. Connections are made with kindred spirits and we develop close-knit relationships. Typical studio visits take place where we critique each other’s work. A fresh set of eyes is always helpful. I have had great experiences with fellow residents, where we discuss our work over the course of two weeks. In some cases, it was kind of like going to grad school again, where studio mates/colleagues are there to look at each other’s work.

***In addition to the studio visits, we spend a lot of time socializing as well. Not just at meals, but in the corridors, gardens, Ragdale grounds, etc.

I really get a new perspective on time while there – Over the course of a day, you realize how much time there is when you don’t have to devote any to paying bills, vacuuming the carpet, mowing the lawn, working at a job, etc. When life is (temporarily) emptied of all of those obligations and studio work is placed as the primary priority, everything changes. I consider Ragdale as the place where I re-discovered how long a 24-hour day can actually feel. So as I write this for the website right now, I am cramming it between classes, when I have hundreds of other commitments needing attention. In the midst of my daily life, I realize with a great deal of fondness how much I am able to shift gears when at Ragdale.

Big Ideas at the Ragdale Piano

By Jennifer Fitzgerald, composer

I applied to Ragdale assuming that by the time December 1 rolled around, I would feel crushed and ready to escape to the colony – pressed by teaching, due dates, an apartment that always needs dusting, travel, bills… But I got sick and had to have a surgery, so I postponed most of my teaching to later in the year. Due dates, dust and other dalliances didn’t go away, but I seemed to generally have time. I spent a lot of the time in bed, reading, napping and a fair amount of time struggling to do work. Composing was a chore. I propped myself up in my office chair and joylessly dotted my manuscript paper with notes, trying to continue to meet deadlines. The surgery left my left arm tired and I found it difficult to play piano.

I wasn’t sure whether a change of scene was what I needed. I was already spending all of my spare energy writing. But with two commissions hanging over my head, it was worth the three-hour drive from my Wisconsin home. My boyfriend and I unloaded the car, he went home and I slept a night in the composer’s loft, woke up, ate breakfast, drank coffee…and then I sat down at the Yamaha 6’1.”

My piano at home is a tortured instrument. It’s an old upright that had been in a public grade school for years. I’ve never had it tuned. It’s been through a couple of moves and it didn’t thank me for the last one. We moved onto the third floor of an old Victorian, complete with steep narrow staircases. Our movers didn’t stand a chance. The piano sat in the damp basement for a month until we could get piano movers to hoist it up to the apartment. My piano had to be partially amputated (as did the staircase.) A few months later I decided to stick screws in between the strings of the piano (called “preparing” the piano) to make the piano ring like bells. This usually works fine on a grand piano, but on an upright, the screws started to sink into the nether-regions of the innards, never to be seen again and always to be heard. My piano is nearly flat and jangles with screws. My dog likes it though. She sings along.

I sat down at the freshly-tuned piano in my Ragdale loft and began to play, stiff from surgery and a seven-month playing interruption. I swept the memory of deadlines out into the snow and began to write a set of miniature piano pieces. These were pieces unlike anything I’d written in a long time. Spare, spacious and aphoristic, they suggested to me ideas much larger than their brevity – I was writing music about breathing, about conserving energy, about fear and about the joy of touching a piano. I was writing my physique and I was writing about my limitations. Sickness and surgery forced me to think about my body for seven months. The piano and space, and yes, the seeming endlessness of time at Ragdale gave voice to these seven months and returned joy into composing for me. The composer’s loft reminded me of the music that I want to write year-round, even in my cluttered office with my honky-tonk piano – music that is intense, unembarrassed and uncompromising, music that is big, even if it is little.