"Place. Space. Collaboration,"
The opening words you see on the Social Studies Residency website. During my week stay at the Arbuckle Residency I came to understand what each of these words meant.
Source: Socialstudiesresidency.com
The Residency
Ross Roadruck and Sierra Reading are both teachers, and artists living in Arbuckle California. In 2019, they would open their home to artists to stay and collaborate.
In May of 2024, Ross became one of my portfolio interviews. During that conversation I explained my history and connection to both living in a rural town, as well as practicing art.
That same month I would be offered an experimental collaboration between the Sac State Photo Department and the Social Studies Residency.
My Project
My work has always balanced precariously between archival narrative research and street photography.
My interest lies in the unincorporated areas of California that see little to no development over long stretches of time. It is that intersection of economic development and land where the most interesting obstructions in landscapes takes place. It is human impact across generations.
The forgotten lives in our world form a palimpsest that we lose the ability to see as we age. It is strangers and visitors who can tear back its layers but its only the collaboration between multiple experienced realities that forms valuable questions. That is why collaboration is valuable.
It grants sight.
Place
Lets take a step back.
The apartment that Sierra and Ross provide during my stay is a quiet refuge buttressed to an almond orchard. The inside is filled with light for most hours of the fall day. Shadows inspire the oddest pictures within its walls.
On every wall there is a host of artworks and oddities making you look twice every time. All around are books and stories by artists, and visitors. You feel like you are one of many when you stay there. But during your week it feels wholly yours.
Whether you explore the bookshelves first or the charming studio there is surely something that will catch your eye. I remember being drawn to the silence. In my home it is rare, but its stillness allows you to think.
Space
I interpret space as a showcase of creativity, it can be limiting to some. Plenty of photographers and artists alike can create wonderful things in confinement with rigid limitations. The same is often untrue when the limits are removed.
Land as far as the eye can see with only a small map on your phone to guide you. Locals giving you points of interest when they have lost the ability to see the abnormality in the normal or the common. Its not their fault, I felt the same in my home and it wasn't until I questioned everything from the street I live on to the origins of those very same streets a division appeared.
The normal suddenly becomes strange and accidental. We all fall into the trap until we take the time to really look. So space meant exploring every street, every country road, and keeping the noteworthy or "landmarks" into a pocket for later.
My process is about the space and the feeling it gives you when you come from one large space and land into another. No personal connections, nothing but the horizon and the faint echoes of history to guide you.
Changes in Space
People can often misunderstand the process of an artist or storyteller or photographer. The place you return to when you finish the physical creation process is just as important. The Arbuckle apartment provided a secluded space to test and think. Although I didn't spend much time in the studio the same is true for 2d artists who visit. When I am editing in Photoshop or Lightroom they do the same tests on canvas, wood, etc. Every process is different but one aspect is constant across all mediums. Experimentation.
What is it?
This project was a mystery to me from the moment I stepped out of the apartment. A mystery that I am still untangling. I do a lot of thinking, but its only when I remove myself from the images, the place, and the strong ideas of it that I can really think. I will spend the next months contemplating the meaning of these images in the larger context of my work. My process is explanation and cracking the ideas for wider understanding.
Why is it?
In Arbuckle, Williams, College City, Dunnigan, and many many more roads I found a sense of openness that Marysville or Yuba City, and Olivehurst couldn't provide. It was busy, but vast. A smaller footprint over a larger space of privatized land. Private is such an odd thing when considering land. It is artificial and the rules change only for those who have the money to make it that way. When you are in a place that looks so open yet you lack access at every turn you somehow feel that you are in a box. A much smaller box than in Marysville or Yuba City or Olivehurst.
Even in a city like Sacramento you are guided to the strange and can explore its secrets. Colusa County is full of a different kind of secrets and a history of land acquisition that challenges my perceptions of the "open". There is a story untold about access and nature that perhaps one day I will take a crack at, but today I question its validity as so many have before I.
What is open. What is owned. What is left.
Photo Composite, William A. Garnett
Collaboration
During my week at the Residency I met many people. Most were just faces and a simple hello while others glared suspiciously. As a street photographer from a rural area it was something I was used to but sometimes it wares on your goals. The real value came from the welcome I felt from Ross, Sierra, their friends and family. It is a grounding that is valuable and necessary when trying to explore somewhere new that reminds you of your reasons for being there in the first place.
Studio Visit
The studio visit was a welcome change by the end of the week's stay. Solitude can be good for artistic practice but ideas don't truly form until you want to share them. I was prompted to speak on the work in its infancy and found welcome questions, even some answers I didn't expect. Seeing my friends again who understand my process all to well during our 2 and a half years together in the photography program at Sac State, eased any worry or reservations that remained.
It wasn't all about my work and I didn't want it to be. I came to know a truth gaining my photography degree after 5 long years, nothing happens in a vacuum and nothing is valuable without someone to share it with. You can do things for yourself and its necessary, but creating something for others is why I continue to tell stories.
Closing Thoughts, Closing Hours
In my last hours at the apartment I wrote in the red booklet. A privilege given to those who take part in Ross and Sierra's artistic experiment. Inside the small book marked with memories from past collaborators, I wrote a small poem and drew a tree. The tree symbolized the place I inhabited; the deep roots of the people and place represented in simple metaphor. As for the poem, I leave that to those who attend the residency next. Like everything else in that book and in that place, its meant for the ones who strive to risk experimentation.
I welcome the next to read my funny little poem with an open heart.
