One Last Art 251 Email (but not the end)
Dear Art 251,
A tumultuous close to a tumultuous quarter. Of all the challenges we might have anticipated, a power outage on the coldest day of the year was not one of them. I hope you all made it back safely. Abandoning the ship was the right choice, under the circumstances.
I’m back in Irvine myself, fresh from a holiday concert (barf!) and from picking up the glass (gulp!). But I wanted to let you know that some are still at Burns Piñon, and some (myself included) are heading back tomorrow. You’re all welcome to (re)join us if you like. More on this (and further futures) in a moment.
First, some more highlights from our truncated trip and our course as a whole. Game night hijinx. Our tireless crew from Drama. Sculpey mania. Snow be darned, the windows are coming out! All of which speak to the wonderful community we’ve created in a short time. We didn’t expect such a large, dynamic, and committed group for this course; it has been an enormous pleasure and privilege to get to know all of you even just a bit better.
251 is officially over. We expect no further participation from any of you, but we anticipate that most of you are not finished with the unique creative opportunities Burns Piñon engenders and with the creative facility we’re co-creating there. We’ll regroup about future trips and plans in the new year, but we’re thinking our next steps will be self-organized workshops in smaller groups, focused on one or two things at a time.
With regards to the rest of this week, I’m going to head up to drop the glass and work out the install procedure for a future visit. (I met with a local architect about this earlier today and feel like it’s well in hand.) I’m also going to try to execute my own “ride from the snow to the sorta-Salton” video capture project. A few others are pursuing their own creative projects. Others still are just enjoying the place for as long as they can. The weather is finally fine and seems to be staying that way. I also completely appreciate the gravity of LA and the exhaustion of the quarter setting in. I hope to see you all soon one way or another. Happy holidays.
A special thanks to Hiroshi Clark for his efforts and his willingness to be adopted by our not-so-little family!
Yours,
—Jesse & Liz