Chapter 2 - Gestalt Shift

My Time at the Art Residency

Gestalt is a German word meaning shape, form, or appearance.

I learned the term Gestalt Shift from a dear friend of mine who used the term to explain how your perspective can radically change based on the acceptance of a new piece of information, or idea. This picture is famous for showcasing this phenomena.

Where at first appears say, only the bunny, one need only inform you that it’s also a picture of a duck, and voila, you cannot undo the shift in your perspective. Now you see both the bunny and duck, no matter how hard you try to see only the bunny.

A more practical example is Galileo discovering the Earth was not the center of the universe. This discovery undermined all the accepted scientific explanation of the cosmos up to that point, thus creating a Gestalt Shift.

It’s important for me to explain what a Gestalt Shift is to you, because it’s the most accurate way to describe what happened to my worldview and perspective at the art residency.

Our residency was hosted in a place I can best describe as equal parts monastery, castle and farm. Entering that beautiful space for the first time will have a lasting impact on me and what I do for the rest of my life. It felt like a movie - massive, beautiful gates, a courtyard filled with grapes, 14th century architecture adorned inside with hand painted wallpaper, fine rugs and frescoes painted on the ceiling. As I was unpacking in my surreal accommodations, I glanced out the window to see a huge water bounce house. The bounce house happened to be set up for a child’s birthday party earlier in the day, so all of us residents changed into swimwear and played in the bounce house to round out our arrival to our home for the next ten days.

The second day of the residency began with one of many learning experiences that would lead to my Gestalt Shift. We started the day with breakfast and a tour of the farm from Luca and his infant son. Luca runs the farm and explained to us the history of the farm since it had been in his family. It started as a farm and restaurant run by Luca’s parents, Fabio and Paula. Luca returned back to the farm with his children and wife, Federica after receiving a graduate degree from the University of Gastronomic Sciences in food systems. His intention was to help his parents and community with the evolution of this dynamic space. They tried turning it into an AirBnB, but this strategy didn’t end up suiting a family with young children. Instead of trying to force the AirBnB business to fit into their new lifestyle as parents, they turned the space into a school and a farm that focused on making baby food! At some point in this transition they realized the farm needed lots of dishes… So Federica, as a passion project, created a ceramics studio to make them. As their children grew older, they changed the use of the space again to be a wedding venue and a place to host our artist residency! He explained how important it was for him that - as his life changed, his work changed alongside and not the other way around. He thought the idea of work dictating the way you live your life to be very unhealthy.

This was a profound idea for me, not just that your job shouldn’t dictate your life, but more so that you could creatively use your time, resources and energy to tweak your job to accommodate your lifestyle needs. Turning your bed and breakfast into a school and baby food business? As someone who is an artist-entrepreneur, who values the freedom to choose what I do with my time, seeing a real life example of how you could live the lifestyle I wanted was huge.

The rest of the second day was spent “playing”. The recommendation from our hosts was to soak up the space and play, and thus let the environment dictate what we would focus on creating for the remainder of our residency that culminated in a project and presentation. When I play, I sketch. So, I spent the rest of the day sketching and tracing various design elements from around the farm, not knowing that this tracing would actually be the crux of my final project.

Learning was a large part of what I did at the residency. Most learning happened by just being present in such a foreign environment, but some learning experiences happened through lessons and workshops. I took three workshops: breadmaking, croissant making, and tortelli making. I also taught a jewelry making workshop. The tortelli making workshop was less workshoppy and more watching the farm staff make HUNDREDS of tortelli for an upcoming event. After they finished, they took an enormous amount of leftover beschemel (the stuff in the tortelli’s) and made a dizzying amount of woodfired pizzas for the whole farm with it. This was the night we set up a projector outside in the courtyard and watched the movie “Call Me By Your Name” together. This was just the most amazing and tender experience. Watching that movie for the first time is so special, and couple that with watching it in this extraordinary courtyard with such wonderful people.

Workshops : )

I decided on my third day that my project would be encapsulating the heritage of the residency by putting various captured design elements from the space onto a poster for the residency to keep and display. I’m very happy to have made something that both honors the beauty of the space and celebrates our time spent there. I think it also reflects the way I was able to make art in that environment - I had the freedom to explore, the space provided the intrigue to discover, and the people fostered love worth commemorating. It’s really striking to see how different settings pull different artistic initiatives out of me.

Another feature of my time at the residency that heavily contributed to my lingering perspective change was dinner. Coming from America, it’s not to say that we don’t treat dinners, and specifically dinners with family and friends, as important. But on the farm in Italy, dinner was borderline sacred, and it came with its own culture and norms.

The food we ate was maybe the best food you could eat in the world. Ingredients were locally sourced, the very definition of fresh, and the production of the various dishes we ate required real patience and effort, because it was all made from scratch. This level of production gives all those partaking in the dinner an opportunity to help in creating the final product, which makes sharing the wonderful creation with each other very special. Because so much love and time is invested in preparing such a fine dinner, it logically follows that you don’t just eat, but also enjoy the company of everyone sharing the table - this convivial ritual actually has a name - sobramesa.

Sobramesa is a Spanish term that I was taught by my friend living in Madrid, which has an Italian equivalent, dopopranzo. I was taught that this word means - “if you aren’t going to stay for after dinner conversation, don’t bother coming to dinner”. What it actually means is the period after dinner where the table talks and relaxes, usually with wine and sometimes with music. This after dinner custom can last anywhere from a couple hours to dawn the next day. I was tickled pink by this custom and grew to love it so very much. It makes me emotional to think about how wonderful that culture is and how good it must be for individuals and communities to partake in. Every aspect is very therapeutic - purposefully sourcing the ingredients, carefully preparing the food, lovingly setting the table and gratefully sharing in the company of your loved ones.

I was starting to realize that this wasn’t just the way I wanted to live the rest of my life, but also, that maybe it was possible to do so.

GESTALT. SHIFT.

The second half of the residency was a dizzying blur of joy and the production value of the programming was so high. The lived experience I was able to fit into ten days was extraordinary.

On the fifth day, we were able to tour the Stradivarius Museum. Cremona is the birthplace of Antonio Stradivari and the museum houses some of the worlds finest violins. These violins need to be played for upkeep reasons, so we were serenaded in the museums interior, which looked to me like the architect built to resemble the inside of a violin! As if all this isn’t cool enough, the citizens of Cremona agree to keep quiet hours during archival recording projects for the violins. It’s so amazing that a 16th century culture steeped in beauty and dignity can bind even modern day residents to a joyous duty to honor and celebrate the culture in a display of social cohesion I have yet to see anywhere else in my life.

That evening and the following three nights were a culinary fantasy come true. First, we we’re taken to a town thirty minutes from the farm to a wonderful place called Cafe La Crepa. We were surprised with a custom menu for our residency, which featured a massive and exquisite four course dinner. We must’ve feasted for five hours.

The following dinner was a concept dinner at the farm put on by three residents. A chef and illustrator, Soojin, a sculptor, Sam, and a musician/professional researcher, Mike. The outcome of their collaboration was a dinner celebrating hay. They had discovered that the driving force of the farm was hay and cleverly showcased hay and its evolution on the farm by incorporating it into every dish they served. The dinner was called Hey, Hey, Hay!

As you can see, it was such a special dinner with insanely talented people. Sam made a soft sculpture candelabra, an “eggalabra”, in which sat soft boiled eggs that had been roasted in hay. We again engaged in world class dopopranzo and enjoyed each other’s company for hours in the courtyard with a castle as a backdrop.

The following day we spent wrapping up our projects for the final exhibition, after which, Genevieve and I collaborated on baking a maximalist cake. We spent hours listening to her high school playlist while we created the most absurd cake from freshly sourced plums and figs. Check it out -

To wrap up that evening, a supremely talented artist and baker, Dressler, held a private exhibition showcasing their project. Their project was researching the farm’s historical family recipes and recreating the desserts. As you can imagine, we spent that night eating Dressler’s desserts!

As I’ve gotten to live a variety of amazing human experiences, I’ve realized that the really transcendently good ones can’t be ranked. I call these, peak human experiences. These experiences come in a variety of domains, almost always having to do with what we know as virtues, and usually incorporating multiple manifested virtues in the same lived experience. The residency was all one big peak human experience, but the final exhibition day was the sort of day where almost every virtue was on full display: the courage we all had to challenge ourselves, the generosity of our hosts, our gratitude for each other, the diligence of our work, the integrity of the mission, and the respect we had for life itself. You’ll notice temperance didn’t make the list, because it was the best party I’ve ever been to in my life.

Around sixty people from the surrounding area showed up to our exhibition and presentations for each of our works were given in both English and Italian. We walked together around the whole farm to where each exhibition was located, giving the experience an exciting and exploratory flavor.

Natural wine producers from all over Italy were present, hosting an open bar featuring what must’ve been some of the best wines I’ll ever have. As the winemakers poured they told us about their farms and family histories. These winemakers we’re mostly young people taking over their family vineyards and doing artistic versions of what their families had done forever.

We ate great food, gorged on gelato, drank too much, and danced the night way for many, many hours. I never even went to bed, and at 6 am the next morning I got on a train to Venice.

My time at the residency could be its own book, a single chapter could never do it justice. However, the purpose of this chapter was to explain how this transformative experience led me to where I am today - trying to start an art residency on a Greek island. The lived experience of the art residency at Lago Scuro in Cremona, Italy helped with three things that collectively led to my gestalt shift and thus altered the course of my life forever.

1. Agency - The opportunity to immerse myself in an inspiring environment, away from my normal life, to create new and stimulating work put me in a position where I felt I was in control of my life. It gave me the capacity to be deliberate with my thoughts and behavior. The results were extremely empowering.

2. Self Direction - My time at the residency was self directed, meaning, it was completely up to me how I would spend my time and what I would create. This was an opportunity to let myself shine, and shine I did. Maybe the most important skill one can learn is how to let yourself shine.

3. Self Actualization - Because I was empowered with strong agency, and I was taking advantage of my self direction, I was able to self actualize. Meaning I was able to learn how to fulfill my potential and honor myself and the opportunities I’ve been given.

Thank you so much to everyone involved in the residency. I love you all very much. I’m excited to spend the rest of my life paying forward the incredible gifts you all gave me in those magical 10 days.