Residency artist – Francine Conley

Just nu bor konstnärerna Francine Conley och Sean Patrick Hill i Konstbyns residens. Här kan du läsa om Francines bakgrund som konstnär och vad hon och Sean har för planer för sin gemensamma residensperiod (engelska):

I am an interdisciplinary artist who cross-dresses in the arts. Put simply, I write, sculpt, stage, design,
perform, and educate. I began as a writer and sculptor, then found through performance art I could
combine all media. In 2001, I was one of four founding members of a collaborative and itinerant
French theater troupe, Le Théâtre de la Chandelle Verte. As a traveling troupe of unconventional artists,
we designed, staged, rehearsed, and performed plays in French every academic year to student
audiences nationwide in the U.S. We toured as a nonprofit troupe from 2001-2018, and each season
we included craft workshops that taught participants performance strategies, how to move a text
from the page to the stage. All the while I toured with the troupe I was also writing, designing,
collaborating on and performing my own one-woman solo plays in English. These were art-based,
collaboratively made shows, even if I was the solo performer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Every one-woman show I designed started with a theme, after which I researched, did interviews,
collected stories that I adapted to become characters I performed onstage. Aspects of the stage
décor, props and accompanying background imagery as well as sounds came from working with
artists who collaborated with me. Together we explored themes like landscape, identity, journey, loss
and discovery.
As a stage artist I am used to collaborating with sculptors, photographers, media artists, soundscape
artists, musicians, painters, light and stage designers as well as performance artists. Those I
collaborate with are interested in cross-pollinating, which means we make discoveries in the rehearsal

and creation process. Besides these arts, I have written and published poems, reviews, stories, as
well as one full length collection of poems and a chapbook of poems.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At the Nordingrå Art Village residency I will collaborate with fellow artist, photographer and writer,
Sean Patrick Hill on a project we intend to embark on together. Our first conversations on this
collaboration had to do with our shared passion for the interrelationship between photography,
landscape and writing.

Specifically, Sean and I are drawn to the relationship between text and image, and while at the
residency together we will explore how the two art forms spark and maintain the conversation we
started months ago. In our time there in July we hope to find the forms that will best express how
words and images influence each other. In what ways can we approach the same landscape with
different sensibilities—language and image—and to what extent can these sensibilities inform one
other? One goal we have is to explore the region’s natural sites, take photographs (Sean) and spend
time crafting stories (Francine) that intersect our shared vision and art forms.

 

For Sean, the art of photography is an act of capturing shapes and presence of what grows and
flourishes in any given landscape. For me, I am interested in how landscape is entwined with
storytelling. Both Sean and I have a shared desire to study water; and are intrigued by how water in
the archipelago is everywhere. For now, our shared intention is to craft a visual and written story using
our artistic media and perspectives, to see where language, land, and shapes of words and images
meet, and how they might evolve as we conclude the residency and take our work overseas.

Du hittar mer information om Francine Conley på:

Facebook: Francine Conley

Instagram: @francineconley

Instagram: @rabblewriterscollective

Personal website: francineconley.com 

Rabble Writers Collective: http:rabblewriterscollective.com