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Summer Residents 2021: Juliet Davis-Dufayard

Selfie of Juliet’s face from the upper lip upwards. Juliet is a white person with brown hair in a mullet style and brown eyes. Juliet is gazing softly down at the camera and holding a broken cream coloured shell to their right eye which is looking through the shell as if it was a monocular. The image is soft in focus and the evening’s golden light is touching a side of the face, surrounded by light blue sky.A selfie of Juliet at Findhorn beach, Moray (2021). Photo: Juliet Davis-Dufayard.

This year we welcomed our first group of Summer Residency artists since COVID-19 restrictions were lifted in Scotland. We were fortunate enough to welcome:

Aaron Tan (@aaaatsl)
Juliet Davis-Dufayard (@julietdavisdufayard)
Ross H Frew (@ross_h_frew)
Abel Shah (@_abelshah_ & @residency1111). 

The group were originally planning to join us here at Scottish Sculpture Workshop in Summer 2020, but COVID-19 resulted in this residency being postponed to 2021.

In the following post, Juliet reflects on their time on residency here, personally and as a part of the wider residency group. Juliet made time to not only use the workshop and on-site facilities, but also to explore the wider area and landscape of Aberdeenshire, especially the north coast and Moray. Juliet also speaks to the social and interpersonal aspects of spending time at SSW – often a significant part of everyone’s time here.

Thank you Juliet for your time and energy in putting this blog together!

From the bottom left corner of the image, an emerald green jacket cuff leads to an open hand situated in the centre of the image. The palm of the hand is facing upwards and is flat. Five fingers are relaxedly spread. Sitting in this hand are four sandy coloured shells with dark flecks. The shells have texture surfaces. Varying in shape and size, all four take wide, flat conical forms.
Juliet holding four shells (2021). Photo: Juliet Davis-Dufayard.

As someone whose practice involves a lot of organising / producing / communicating, it was very valuable to be physically away from projects for a whole month, only doing minimal communications and limiting the amount of Zooms and other work.

  • Six molds of twigs made from ceramic shell sit on a bumpy, textured surface waiting for their ceramic shell to dry. The molds are fluorescent lime green in colour. All six molds have a bell shaped base with thin cylindrical shapes coming off the base - these are called ‘runners’. The backdrop is a white breezeblock wall.
    Molds of twigs covered in drying ceramic shell (2021). Photo: Juliet Davis-Dufayard.
  • The same green cuffed hand from the first image is now loosely holding a bunch of broken twigs. These twigs are a flat but shiney bronze colour as they are indeed made from the material, bronze. The bronze casting process has preserved lots of the detail from the twigs used to cast them, such as nooks, peeling bark and breaks.
    Juliet holding a handful of bronze castings of twigs (2021). Photo: Juliet Davis-Dufayard.
  • A person stands over a small furnace outside in the Scottish Sculpture Workshop yard, in front of the forge and iron cupolette furnace. The person has dark shadow cast over them. They are wearing a visored, white helmet and a respirator mask. They are looking into the furnace whilst using tongs to hold something in it. Whilst the furnace is also cast in shadow, a glowing orange colour is expanding from its interior.
    Bronze pour in the SSW yard (2021). Photo: Juliet Davis-Dufayard.
  • Two hands are extracting freshly poured bronze sea shells out of their broken sand moulds, using a filling knife to manipulate them as the bronze is still hot. The bell bronze has a lot of tink in it which gives it a more silvery colour than the usual bronze that the twigs are made of.
    Bronze bells being broken out their moulds (2021). Photo: Juliet Davis-Dufayard.

I appreciated spending time learning new skills and making things with my hands: collecting twigs to cast in bronze, and lichen to cast in slip. I sometimes almost felt like these activities were ‘active procrastination’, a way to avoid thinking/ unknown time by filling my days with time consuming tasks! Being in this rural environment working with raw materials also made me wonder about the extractivist nature of art practices… the material sheets and information about sourcing which I received, and witnessing working processes like the bronze pours made it more tangible than in urban exhibition settings which feel more removed from sculptural production.

Two blue boiler suits - which were worn by Abel Shah on the residency - hang on top of each other in the SSW main studio, which has white walls and a mid grey coloured floor. Sun coming through a window in the roof casts a bright box of light into the studio, highlighting the boiler suits and putting the divider they hang on and the rest of the studio into darkness. A desk with some things on it is just about visible on the right-hand edge of the image.
Boiler suits which were being worn by Abel Shah hanging in the main studio at SSW (2021). Photo: Juliet Davis-Dufayard.

Each artist came to Scottish Sculpture Workshop with different intentions. Some were very focussed on producing a certain amount of pieces and would spend longer in the workshops/studio than I did. It was interesting to notice when I was “working hard” because I “had” to, as opposed to when I was just following other people’s working routines even when they might not be the right ones for me at that time.

It also made me wonder about how to maintain a daily working practice when I don’t have a studio practice per se, and figure out what was needed to enable me to think positively and creatively.

Looking out from the beach at Banff on the north coast of Aberdeenshire. The sky and sea are not dissimilar in their ranges of blues. The sky is smooth with a subtle gradient of light to dark on the horizon where clouds meet two ships. The sea is frothy and rough right through with shallow waves. Some people are in the water just off the shore: paddling, surfing, boating.
Swimming near Banff, off the north coast of Aberdeenshire (2021). Photo: Irena Henderson.
Looking out from the beach again, this time at Findhorn, also on the north coast of Aberdeenshire. The image is soft in focus with the sun setting into the horizon of the sea. The sky goes from mid blues to light blues to pale pinks to dark lilacs. The glowing sun in the centre of the sky and sea leaks out bright yellows and oranges. The drier sand further inland from the shore is cast in darkness but the wet sand which merges with the tide glistens and reflects the colours of the sky.
Findhorn beach sunset (2021). Photo: Juliet Davis-Dufayard.

I was interested to see how I could develop a work/life balance in a new context. I noticed that the longer I spent in the studios, the more it felt like a huge effort to get physically away from them for a walk or trip. Thankfully I met Irena, who lives locally to SSW, through Forge Club. Irena took myself and Aaron on a walk to Tap o’ Noth, and later took me to the coast for a day, which reminded me it was possible and necessary to get out of the workshops regularly!

The day after the trip to the coast, I went wild camping on a hill an hour away from SSW. It was the first time I’d done this on my own, and it motivated me to go camping in my bivy bag for a couple nights on the north coast. These experiences were really inspiring and confidence boosting, as I would like to create more time (in my personal life and in my art practice) with people outdoors who might face barriers to those kinds of experiences.

Collection of bits of broken ceramic shell laid out on a brown studio table. The ceramic shell needs to be smashed once the bronze has been poured into it in order to retrieve the bronze casts. Around half of the pieces are from the twigs and are roughly between 2-10cm long. Their outside is white and their inside various shades of grey / light brown. The other half are from the parts of the shell that surrounded the lichen on the twigs.
Broken ceramic shell from after the bronze pour (2021). Photo: Juliet Davis-Dufayard.
Looking down the River Deveron at Huntly. Through the clear water are stones on the river bed. Juliet is swimming in the River, head above the water looking directly ahead. Juliet’s legs are stretched out behind Juliet beneath the water. The right hand side of the River is lush and green with foliage and trees overhanging the River’s edge. The left hand side of the River is also lush with grasses. The sky is cloudy with little peekings of blue.
Swimming in the River Deveron at Huntly (2021). Photo: Irena Henderson.

I facilitated a couple of outdoors activities such as a nightime slow walk and fire during the dark moon at the start of the month, centring on the idea of ‘resting’, and an afternoon of walks and games for queer folks. These were developed from some nature facilitation training I did last year, and running them in an art context with artist participants meant I got inspiring feedback and challenges which were different from the ones I got in the nature facilitation context. I had some interesting discussions around ritual, paganism and appropriation, which has been really helpful for future developments of that side of my practice.

The view from the back of the Bothy in summertime. In the foreground is tall green foliage topped with pink flowers. Behind this boundary of wildflowers are rolling, rich green grassy fields. A farmhouse sits on the hill in the distance. Thick, grey, ominous clouds bare over the landscape, however there is a break where the sun is shining through, lighting a forest far in the distance. Hills of heather also sit on the horizon.
View from the Bothy (2021). Photo: Juliet Davis-Dufayard.
A flower bed planted on a grassy mound in Forres, a small town in Moray. White flowers fill out the letters ‘NHS’, the backdrop is formed of purple flowers with a trim of red flowers.The grass on the mound and the lawn the mound sits on is trimmed short and the grass looks to be yellowing from dryness. Behind the mound is a wall with some houses and trees on the other side.
NHS flower bed at Forres, Moray (2021). Photo: Juliet Davis-Dufayard.

Throughout the month, a really important part of the day – the main social part – was the dinner. Myself and fellow residents (often joined by SSW staff member, Zoë Tumika) took turns to cook for each other and ate together. That tradition of all of us gathering in the bothy roughly between 8-9pm helped take the edge off the intensity of living on site and spending so much time in the workshops and studios.

An image of a Macbook with the lyrics ‘Deeper than I’ve ever dreamed of (oh-ho-oh, oh-hoh-oh) in a white, thick, sans serif font. The lyrics sit on a dark blue, glitter starry background. They are from Maria Carey’s ‘Emotions’. The room is dark so the Macbook’s screen is strongly illuminated.
Laptop karaoke: ‘Emotions’ by Mariah Carey (2021). Photo: Juliet Davis-Dufayard.

An absolute highlight of the month was the karaoke night which happened in the SSW Communities room, organised by the residents for Alex’s birthday, with all the artists and Zoë. It really stood out as a special moment as we started with our traditional group meal and then the night moved into collective singing and dancing. This reminded me of the importance of singing, dancing, and partying in bonding between people, enabling a different way of communicating and being together. Really made me want to bring back more singing into my life and perhaps include it in my practice more!

On our last night at SSW, I facilitated a ‘circle of appreciation’ for the artists, Zoë and Irena, where we took turns telling one person at a time what we appreciated about them and what we’ll remember them for. I’ve facilitated this in a few different contexts so it was interesting to try it with a group where several people expressed being quite uncomfortable with the idea of giving/receiving gratitude in a group. It reminded me that marking the end of an experience is important, and motivated me to keep finding ways to bring these practices into new contexts even if it looks like it might need some convincing or adjustments.

News / Residencies 9:03 am , October 22, 2021 Comments Off on Summer Residents 2021: Juliet Davis-Dufayard
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