Chuck Stebelton Residency 2014
January 2 - 12, 2014
"My first Lynden Sculpture Garden residency was a pilot for future writers-in-residence. It also afforded me the time to begin organizing poems into a manuscript. This resulted in the publication of my second full-length collection of poems, The Platformist (The Cultural Society, 2012).
Observational practice is significant to my current work. I led birding walks for both Lynden Sculpture Garden and Woodland Pattern Book Center in 2013. I habitually make lists and take phenology notes along the Milwaukee River and Lake Michigan.
My current work takes the form of small print objects and occasional installations.
A recent folded print object, Trillium, lists the three species of trillium found in Milwaukee County, making specific use of the printed and folded form. Milwaukee and its trilliums fall within the Tension Zone, the boundary at which two climactic regions of plant communities intersect.
Another privately printed piece of ephemera, Dry Fly Etymology, consists of etymologies of “ephemera,” “dry,” and “fly.” This broadside is dedicated to the renowned Wisconsin fine printer and book artist Gaylord Schanilec in homage to his phenomenal Mayflies of the Driftless Region. The title of this broadside is a play on Dry Fly Entomology, a rare copy of which Schanilec loaned me for his Woodland Pattern exhibition.
'Tis served as a print companion to a gallery text installation. 'Tis makes use of two folds to fit a line from William Wordsworth's "The Thorn" into a proportionally shaped form. 'Tis (John Riepenhoff Experience, 2009) was included in the 2010 Wisconsin Triennial at Madison Museum of Contemporary Art.
This winter residency will result in at least one new sequence of poems from notebooks dating back to my previous residency in September 2010. I'll also begin work on a new piece titled Ongoing and its companion print object."
About the Artist
Chuck Stebelton is author of The Platformist (The Cultural Society, 2012) and Circulation Flowers (Tougher Disguises, 2005). Recent print objects and chapbooks include Dry Fly Etymology, Trillium, Aversions, Oubliette, and P.S. (all privately printed); Asterisk (Number 13, Fewer & Further Press); 'Tis (John Riepenhoff Experience); A Maximal Object (Mitzvah Chaps), Flags and Banners (Bronze Skull Press), and Precious (Answer Tag Home Press). He works as literary program director at Woodland Pattern Book Center in Milwaukee and serves as treasurer for Wisconsin Center for the Book. He led birding walks for both Lynden Sculpture Garden and Woodland Pattern Book Center in 2013.
