May 1 2023
Hi. My name is Jenny Lee Craig and I am so pleased to be the first Archival Activatio Artist in Residence and a Hammock Alumni for 2023.
I look forward to sharing in this space. You can find me on instagram @jennyleecraig.โ
I think to start I would like to say one thing that I know I know about myself –> which is –> engaging in acts of creativity make me a happier, healthier human.
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For the first week of my month long residency I’ll be looking at my past projects and some things I feel have helped shaped my practice and interests. As an archival resident I’ll explore my relationship with the Hammock Residency and its influence on me.
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During the following three weeks I’ll be playing in my studio and taking you along with me. โ
May 2 2023
Reflect / Respondโ
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Shift Water or Water Shifts Meโ
Hold Waterโ
Carve Waterโ
Shape Waterโ
Pull Waterโ
Push Waterโ
Cut Waterโ
Fight Waterโ
Force Waterโ
Shift Water or Water Shifts Meโ
I made a video in 2017 while on a residency in a country far from my home. I organized this residency to make space for myself to play, but it came at a time when I had a really genuine exhaustion and burn outโฆ so I didn’t make much at all, but I did sleep a lot! At that time I was really hard on myself – like I’d ruined an opportunity to really dig?
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Fast forward to 2020: During the pandemic I did a 2 year program on Expressive Arts Therapy (EXAT). It solidified things I intuitively knew about my art practice and how I find value in art. These things I’m still learning how to articulate, maybe one day I’ll have the words for them.โ
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The work that I did while studying EXAT has been one of the things that has helped me no longer feel that way.โ
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Rest is essential, rest is creative, rest is brave. And although I’m not necessarily better at resting, I am better at not feeling guilty for sinking into it if it’s what I need.โ
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I may talk a lot about EXAT in the coming month. I may also talk a lot about water.โ ๐ฆ
May 3 2023
I think my first official Hammock Residency project was a play called 1/2 Diamond 1/2 Triangle, that I co-wrote with a dear old friend named Olivia. It was presented a space that doesn’t exist anymore but I really appreciated called Artbank in 2011. โ
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It was about a tender jewel that goes on a journey in a giant hat. It was very amateur, and I loved that about it. โ
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At the end of the play (spoiler alert!) the diamond gets blown up be a lasik machine and asks the question “what does it mean to be a million things at once?” I loved this question then and I love this question now. โ
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I know I’m a million things at once ALL THE TIME. But what does it mean? โ
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Maybe it’s a question with a million answers!โ
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The play was remounted at the Snowking’s Winter Festival in Yellowknife a couple of years later in 2013. We were featured in their local paper! The writer of the article really loved the play, but (I think) the Snowking didn’t. He called it peculiar and weird. The Snowking’s Winter Festival is wildly impressive, so even if he didn’t like it, being able to experience it was something I’m super grateful for. All of this wouldn’t have happened without encouragement and suggestion from without Kimberly Fuller who was living there at the time and connected me with the festival, and also performed as The Jewel.
May 6 2023
I am an Artistic Swimmer. Which is what they call Synchronized Swimming nowadays.โ
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I started syncronized swimming classes at Riley Park (near where Hillcrest is now) in Vancouver. I took a long break from age 15 to like, 32 – but since then I’ve been doing it on and off with my masters team.โ
I don’t know I immediately liked the sport – or if it just really liked me. Often when I go to practice I really don’t feel like it. But, once I’m in the pool my body takes over and it just does what it does. As I get older it does it slower, with less flexibility and with less strength, but it keeps wanting to do it anyway. โ
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The pool is one one of places where all the charging thoughts in my brain truly need to take a backseat – because if I’m not focused then I don’t do it right.โ
Here’s SOME reasons thoughts on why I love it:โ
- 1) it’s hard. it’s harder than it looks. i watch videos of the routines once we’ve done them and i think “that looks slow for how fast it felt?”โ
- 2) it’s precise. it takes so much work to just get it close to right, so when my team and i do it feels really good. โ
- 3) i get to connect with a group of people i really wouldn’t know if i didn’t do this. we come from a lot of different areas of life and i’ve learned so much about communication with others and how to stay โ
- 4) it’s given my body a relationship with water that feels so solid, but how can it be, when it’s a liquid? i love that contradiction. โ
May 7 2023
These are images from a sketchbook from a few years ago that reminded me of a pattern I have that does not really serve me, but I donโt know how to break.
I keep myself busy. Often so busy things fall though the cracks and I forget things, or I miss things that I really wanted to do or try.
One of the exercises we did while I was studying Expressive Art Therapy was to write letters to drawings we made. This was a process that was so uncomfortable for me at first, but almost always, in the end showed me ways to be gentle with myself. So although it feels mega cheesy I still try and do it sometimes.
May 7 2023
Setting up a new toy!
May 11 2023
Playing in landscape.
May 11 2023
Many years ago I had a dream to put on a play in a pool.
Thanks to the participation of many wonderful folks it was a dream that came true!
Images from Future Smuggler, a play in a pool about a Smuggler in the Future, 2015
May 13 2023
I was lucky to spend some time at Betonest (a residency in an old cement factory at the edge of Germany) in 2018 and made this little standing kaleidoscope by the riverside out of garbage Iโd found in a scrap heap nearby.
Should anyone ever have found it, they could have looked through the landscape. Or if two people had found it, they could look through each end and see more of each other.
May 15 2023
Although Iโm not a horse girl, I really like to draw a horse named Horsie. I have a few unfinished stories rolling around in my head about him.
One is called โHorsie Gets a Cellphoneโ and itโs about how Horsie gets his firstsmartphonee and develops an unhealthy addiction to it, spending a lot of time on an app called Vain Mane.
Another is called โHorsie Plays Niceโ. This is about how Horsie is a real jerk on the basketball court, and he needs to learn some sportsmanship.
Horsie never looks the same, and he never looks very realistic, and I like that.
May 17 2023
First attempts arenโt always easy, or look the way you want them to. Adventures in tufting!
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Videoclip of my first time trying a tufting gun.
May 20 2023
Weekend research images
May 20 2023
When talking about past projects it’s impossible to not mention Tin Can Studio, which I ran withย @carolineballhornย for many, many years. But also hard to know what to say because it was such a long project. Maybe 8 years? โ
Tin Can Studio was a mobile project space housed in a 1969 streamline trailer.โ
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Caroline created Tin Can as her Grad Project (in collaboration with Brodie Kitchen), a mobile studio on wheels, as a comment on the precarity of art spaces in Vancouver. I met her when I first moved back to Vancouver after a decade in Montreal. I came on board to work with her on the project in maybe in 2011 or 2012. Over the years we did so many things in the Tin Can, or as Tin Can (without the Tin Can) – art related and un-art related. You can see more photos from over the years of the project on IG here: @tincanstudio.โ
Some things we did: a residency at the Burnaby Art Gallery, a residency at the Roundhouse Community Centre, a residency at ArtCity in Winnipeg (no trailer, too far). We did lots of creative activations at various festivals and events. We worked with lots of schools and some neighbourhood houses.
We worked with the city. We were a radio station, a print studio, a bar, a workshop space. We ate pie. We sewed, we chatted, we listened we sang, we slept (once overnight in a park), we drew, painted, sewed, we presented – well one time I did a poorly attended presentation on how I believe anything can be a sandwich. โ
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The Tin Can also appeared at Hammock Residency events, like the Backyard Music Festival. โ
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The best thing about doing this project was being able to collaborate and work with one of my best friends, Caroline!โ
May 21 2023
More beginner tufting. What kind of freak will this first rug be?
May 22 2023
Following colour, not pattern.
May 23 2023
Maps made of thread and shiny things.
May 24 2023
I have many disorganized boxes of old papers that include things I wrote down or doodled. When I look at them, I donโt always know where they came from, but I find them interesting, so I keep it.
Here are 3 that have been floating around for a while. Maybe they will inform you of something one day.
May 27 2023
Satisfying / Unsatisfying
May 27 2023
I made these masks in a really transformative class I took during my certification as an Expressive Arts Therapist. Theyโre not like anything Iโd make aesthetically but the process of making and them and how they were used later is something that feels deep for me. They were made without looking at them, after many grounding exercises and with quiet focus. After they were created they were embodied and explored and expanded. By the time the class was done they felt like such true expressions of aspects of myself I hadnโt gotten to know yet.
May 29 2023
I wanted to share some photos of my grandmother’s salt and pepper shaker collection because I think they’re really cool. I’ve wanted to do an art project with them for a long time but I haven’t figured out exactly what would work. A series of dinners where we talked about the matriarchy? โ
There are over 450 pairs. After she left this world I sidelined them from going to another family member, which I feel guilty about, but that’s another story. โ
My favourite memories of them are not so much the salt and pepper shakers themselves but watching her unpack them and pack them up again. โ
Any ideas on what I could do with the salt and pepper shakers? โ
May 29 2023
@jennyleecraigย talks withย @hammockresidencyย about process, their evolution as an artist, and a little bit on what’s happening in the studio.
May 30 2023
Little bits of creativity every day.
June 1 2023
Looking into the horizon with gratitude โค๏ธ
Artist Quick Links
Jenny Lee Craig
Jenny Lee Craig is an artist and a cultural producer currently based in Vancouver, BC. Her projects are diverse and interdisciplinary, often striving for community engagement and collaboration. Though she is inspired by almost everything, her work often draws directly from craft, DIY, surrealism, and storytelling. Highlights from her extensive list of accomplishments include competing in the FINA World Synchronized Swimming Championships in Riccione, Italy in 2012, writing and directing a play about a tender jewel that goes for a journey in a giant hat, and acting as co-director for the Tin Can Studio.
