I’ve been thinking a lot lately about comfort zones and routine. One issue I run into over and over again—seasonally, periodically, sometimes daily—is getting stuck. Whether it’s along the lines of writer’s block or more like an existential panic (both of these are more common than I like to admit), there is virtually nothing I dislike more than feeling like I’m in a rut. It might be a creative rut, a daily habit rut, a dinner rut… no matter the color of the bow on the outside, it all packages a sense of being stalled.
During these periods, time seems to simultaneously slow way down and disappear completely with little to show for it. It’s hard to know what to do to shake out of the feeling. I’ve always find time to be fascinating and frustrating in equal measure. The old adage goes that time flies if you’re having fun. It also flies, ironically, when you’re grasping at straws hoping to find the next strike of inspiration or—perhaps more aptly—motivation.
It brings to mind an episode of Radiolab from last autumn titled “The Secret to a Long Life,” which dove into the ways we evaluate not only time but how we perceive it and spend it. Radiolab producer Sindhu Gnanasambandan chronicles a couple weeks in which she tries to lengthen her perception of time, making it feel longer and perhaps more “full” or constructive by trying something completely novel every day. (I recommend giving it a listen.)
Neuroscientist and writer David Eagleman says:
If you force your brain to lay down new memories, then retrospectively, that makes it seem as though more time has passed.
Then Marc Wittman, a time perception researcher (great title) at the Institute of Frontier Areas of Psychology and Mental Health in Freiburg, Germany, adds:
And so you could say having a life with a lot of novelty, change, with emotions, such a life will imprint more deeply in your memory. And then, looking back at your last day, your last week, your last 10 years, even your lifetime, then the longer—subjectively—time stretches or time feels.
Sindhu embarks on her experiment, staying in a new place every night, doing things she’s never done, and talking to people she’s never met before. There’s a wonderful, pivotal point in her story in which she realizes that a constant stream of novelty leads to, well… monotony.
What I enjoy about this so much is recognizing how there are times when time seems to stand still and there are times when it feels like weeks have passed even though it’s only been days. And that even rewarding, exciting new events can eventually become exhausting, and that’s when a return to routine is regenerative.
Sometimes I want to be moving more quickly, but my brain’s just like, “Kate, absolutely not.” Other times, things are moving too quickly. Rarely, but beautifully, those flow states happen when my mind and hands connect seamlessly. It seems related to why, some days, I can sit and stare at a blank page for hours and nothing. will. come. While a couple of days later, I’ll write an entire essay as if it poured from a pitcher.
Recognizing the little ruts for what they are—opportunities to dive into something totally novel—often soon spurs a flush of energy. And then noticing when the energy wanes, harnessing that time to return to routine, can actually be quite a constructive kind of comfort zone.
See you next week!
—Kate
P.S. I’m skipping the featured exhibitions this week because, if I’m being really honest, I didn’t have the time to properly select a grouping I felt was strong enough to share. In return, I’ve added a brand new article on Dovetail supported directly by paid subscribers to this newsletter. Thank you so much for helping to support emerging arts writers!
Become a paid subscriber to directly support this newsletter and independent arts writing on Dovetail. You’ll be the first to see new opportunities, with access to the entire list all in one place—updated a few times each week.
What you’ll find below:
Featured artist: Aviv Benn
New on Dovetail: On retreat with (stillness) collective
Sixteen opportunities for artists with deadlines coming up soon
Featured Artist: Aviv Benn
I first learned about the work of Aviv Benn when she was pursuing a degree at the School of the Art Institute in Chicago several years back. I saw her paintings at one of the only MFA thesis shows I’ve ever been able to attend there, and they glowed in the exhibition space. She moved to London during the pandemic and has been making work that draws on her interests in childhood nostalgia—think sneaky ghosts and cartoons—while increasingly exploring elements of nature, especially through a childlike, imaginative lens.
“This latest body of work is a further exploration of the fraught relationship between humankind and nature,” Benn told me recently. “However, in this most recent series, the figures are almost completely absent, and ominous and lush nature is taking over the pictorial space.” Fragments of figures are revealed through foliage, illuminating magical eyes and spectral faces.
Benn describes her landscapes, like portraits of hybrid plants, as a “journey into our psyche,” where internal and external forces vie for precedence. Over time, her paintings have become darker and more tighter in composition, inviting us to peer closer at compositions which, at first glance appear lush and full of life but on closer inspection reveal moments of what the artist describes as “suspended decay.”
Find more on Benn’s website and Instagram.
New on Dovetail: (stillness) collective
Text by Megan Adams
The (stillness) collective is a place-based interdisciplinary and improvisational collaborative practicing deep listening and intensive making in nature. They offer their work in kinship with human and more-than-human partners along waterways in Midcoast Maine. In the summer of 2023, I experienced the work of the collective for the first time in their immersive exhibition Unfolding Place at Speedwell Contemporary in Portland, Maine.
I have never walked away from an exhibition feeling so moved. I was stunned by the potency of their environmental performance, captured and shared through music, film, poetry, and an installation of performance-related ephemera that included natural materials and collaboratively crafted artwork. As an ecologically focused art historian, writer, and curator, being a part of a retreat like the one that led to the work in this exhibition, was the opportunity of a lifetime. I experienced the magic of their environmentally engaged performance in person and witnessed their collaborative artmaking process, which collective member Susan Bickford coined “a recipe for collective stillness.”
After getting to know the members of the (stillness) collective, I had the honor of spending two days in June 2023 at the Bates-Morse Mountain Conservation Area in Phippsburg, Maine, on a making retreat with the artists as they prepared and filmed content for their new work Bodies of Weather.
Continue reading on Dovetail.
This article was directly supported by paid subscribers to this newsletter. Thank you!
Artist Opportunities
Young Space emphasizes fully-funded opportunities with low or no entry fees and programs that focus on creative and professional development for visual artists. Deadlines are coming up soon to apply for these grants, fellowships, residencies, and more.
Catskill Art Space Open Call for Exhibition Proposals
Deadline: July 1
Catskill Art Space (CAS) will accept applications from artists in all mediums, including and not limited to ceramics, digital, fiber, film/video, glass, illustration, installations, painting, performance, photography, and sculpture. All work will be considered for single artist presentations in one of the three ground floor galleries at Catskill Art Space at the recommendation of the Artist Council. Exhibiting artists are provided a $1,000 honorarium to underwrite art transit and preparation costs.
Submission fee: none
PhotoMidwest Biennial Exhibition 2024 Open Call
Deadline: July 1
In fall 2024, PhotoMidwest will produce its signature event, the PhotoMidwest Biennial Festival in Madison, Wisconsin. Festival exhibitions occur at various galleries, including the Arts + Literature Laboratory, Overture Center for the Arts, PhotoMidwest Studio, and the Pyle Center on the UW Campus. The festival’s capstone event is the 13th PhotoMidwest Biennial Juried Exhibition, which showcases photographers from Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, North Dakota, Nebraska, Ohio, South Dakota, and Wisconsin. This year's juror is Kris Graves. Prizes include a $500 Best of Show award and five $100 Images of Distinction awards.
Submission fee: $45 for 3 images, $10 per additional image, up to 5
West Hollywood Arts Grants
Deadline: July 1
The City of West Hollywood provides funding support, through arts grants, to eligible artists and nonprofit arts organizations for the production, performance or presentation of art projects that take place in the City of West Hollywood and that serve the West Hollywood community.
Community Arts Grant: The Community Arts Grant is intended to support non-profit arts organizations or individual artists with a history of supporting LGBQ, BIPOC ,and/or female artists and audiences. Grants are available up to $6,000. Proposed programs can include art-centered presentations or participatory programs (workshops) which enhance the community.
Transgender, Gender Diverse, Intersex + Arts Grant: This grant is intended to support and enhance the presentation of artworks in West Hollywood by artists, artist collectives or groups, and non-profit organizations that have demonstrated a significant commitment to and involvement with the transgender, non-binary, intersex, and gender non-conforming community. Individual artists, artist collectives or groups, and non-profit organizations with a history of supporting transgender, gender diverse, and/or intersex artists are all welcome to apply. Grants are available up to $6,500.
WeHo Artist Grant: The WeHo Artist Grant aims to nurture and support the long-term development of an artist’s ideas by providing funds that increase the capacity for artists to realize work, advance the conditions of creation, and navigate the complexities of both making art and making a career. Up to five grants of $6,000 each are awarded.
Submission fee: none
Visual Arts Thematic Residency at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity
Deadline: July 10
This residency is for visual artists who have completed formal education or training at the post-secondary level, or who have acquired equivalent experience through traditional knowledge and practices, and who have received recognition from their peers. With a focus on studio practice, artists will be encouraged to reflect on “why” they are making art, for “whom”, and to “what” end? Visual Arts Thematic Residency – The System and Other Universes welcomes participants to consider new, unique, or radical paradigms for being an artist in shifting, uncertain times. This residency runs November 3 to December 7, 2024. A scholarship of 100% is available to cover tuition, with 50% available to offset meals and accommodation costs. If you would like to be considered, complete the Financial Aid section when uploading your supporting materials.
Submission fee: CAD$65
Rupert 2025 Residencies
Deadline: July 14
Rupert invites artists, writers, curators, researchers, academics, cultural managers, and other thinkers to visit Vilnius, to live and work for 1 to 3 months between January and December 2025. Each resident is provided with a studio space that has a mezzanine (approximately 52 square meters) to be used as a space for production, research, and living during the residency. The studio is fully furnished and equipped with WiFi. All the residencies are free, thanks to the support of the Lithuanian Council for Culture, and the studios provided by Tech Arts. Applicants are responsible for personal (daily and travel) expenses.
Submission fee: none
Light Work Artist-in-Residence Program
Deadline: July 1
Light Work invites between twelve and fifteen artists to Syracuse, New York, to devote one month to creative projects every year. The residency includes a $5,000 stipend, a furnished artist apartment, 24-hour access to our state-of-the-art facilities, and generous staff support. Work by each Artist-in-Residence is published in a special edition of Contact Sheet: The Light Work Annual, along with an essay commissioned by Light Work.
Submission fee: none
ARTIST-RUN
Tiger Strikes Asteroid Los Angeles Open Call for Solo Exhibition
Deadline: July 14
Tiger Strikes Asteroid Los Angeles is pleased to announce a 2024 open call for a solo exhibition, which will run from November 2 to December 10, 2024. The opportunity will include an opening reception on Saturday, November 2, from 7 to 10pm, professional documentation of the installation, and promotion on all TSA LA social media outlets. There will be a $500 honorarium and a $1000 exhibition budget to offset the cost of artist’s travel and transportation of artworks.
Submission fee: $30
Kahn | Mason Studio Immersion Project Fellowship
Deadline: July 15
This intensive fellowship is designed to introduce artists from multiple disciplines to printmaking. We invite artists seeking creative exploration through printmaking, regardless of expertise, to apply their creative knowledge and conceptual goals to the print medium. Selected artists are each provided access to a community and professional printmaking workspace, a $2,000 stipend, three printmaking workshops, and assistance from EFA RBPMW staff.
Submission fee: none
Artadia 21c Research Triangle Award
Deadline: July 15
Launched in Louisville, KY in 2021, the 21c Artadia Award marked the beginning of a long-term partnership, which annually provides $15,000 in unrestricted funds to one artist living and working in the unique creative communities where 21c Museum Hotels are located. The 2024 award is slated for Cincinnati, Ohio.
Submission fee: none
FST StudioProjects Fund
Deadline: July 15
FST StudioProjects Fund was created in 2017 by Frederieke Sanders Taylor to fund studio rents for artists in New York City. The Fund helps to support and encourage local studio practice that is vital to the vibrance of the arts in New York City. Artists must have a current lease for a non-residential artist studio in New York City, but do not need to reside in New York City. Artists must be 21 or older.
Submission fee: none
Loghaven Artist Residency
Deadline: July 15
Loghaven Artist Residency’s mission is to serve artists by providing them with a transformative residency experience and continued post-residency support. The residency is located on ninety acres of woodland in Knoxville, Tennessee. Artists working in Writing, Visual Arts, Dance, Theater, Music Composition, Architecture, and Interdisciplinary Work can apply to receive room and board and an $850 weekly living stipend to support the creation of new work during a residency. Artists live in five historic log cabins that have been both rehabilitated and modernized to create an ideal setting for reflection and work, and they have access to new, purpose-built studio space.
Submission fee: none
Grand Canyon Conservancy Artist-in-Residence
Deadline: July 15
The Artist in Residence program at Grand Canyon National Park offers artists the opportunity to practice and share their discipline with park visitors at one of the most beautiful sites in the world. Through impactful, site-specific, community-engaged work, the program seeks to inspire the community to deepen their knowledge of Grand Canyon National Park. Contemporary artists focused on site-specific community engagement, social practice, and immersive or interactive artworks are encouraged to apply. Residencies may run three to ten weeks between February - April and June - August. Artists receive accommodation, $200 for travel, up to $300 for supplies, a $750 stipend per week, backcountry trip support, limited staff support, special access to park roads and trails, and more.
Submission fee: A donation of any amount
Moving Narratives Call for Applications from Prince Claus Fund and the British Council
Deadline: July 16
Moving Narratives is a multi-disciplinary mentorship program, which supports artists to explore and strengthen creative practices that reconsider historical legacies and explore emancipatory movements. This opportunity is geared toward artists and cultural practitioners recentering marginalized histories or challenging contemporary narratives. Supported by four mentors, participants are encouraged to collectively experiment, exchange, and develop artistic strategies that address dominant narratives and the inequalities they sustain. Each participant receives an award of €10,000 to work on the project or body of work outlined in their application.
Submission fee: none
Open Call for Art for Change Prize at Saatchi Gallery
Deadline: July 17
This opportunity is part of Saatchi's mission to make art, culture, and creativity accessible to everyone, with a prize that celebrates emerging artistic talent. Emerging artists around the world in the first five years of active practice are eligible. This year’s prize asks artists to creatively respond to the theme "Tomorrow'ing: Visions of a better future." A total prize fund of £20,000 will be split between six winners, five to receive £2,000 and one overall winner to receive £10,000. Winning artists will exhibit their work at Saatchi Gallery in London.
Submission fee: none
If your organization hosts valuable opportunities for artists and you’d like to learn more about featuring it in this digest and on Instagram, I’d love to hear from you! Reply to this email to inquire or check out yngspc.com/sponsor.
See all opportunities
Paid subscribers can access a full list of all current opportunities anytime—updated at least a couple of times each week.
Whether you’re a free or paid subscriber, you can also browse through listings in earlier digests in the archive.
Visit on the Young Space Instagram.
Read more on Dovetail.