Artist Journal: Marianne Shaneen
The month I spent at Tusen Takk was pure inspiration, not only afforded by the quiet, solitude, and incredibly generous support of the Foundation, but by the architectural surroundings. The space infused my practice with a kind of sublime clarity. The proliferation of windows suffused every area in the residence with a gentle light that fostered a sense of spaciousness and tranquility, that I could feel myself able to expand into. The residence seems to extend beyond its borders and into the surrounding natural environment, and allows it to enter as well. The bedroom windows in the early morning would often be damp on the outside, giving a feeling of coolness and indescribable misty calmness, that would evaporate as it gave way to the sunrise.
The reflections and angles of the windows allowed a sense of integration between myself, my work, and my surrounding environment. I arrived at Tusen Takk with a knotty bundle of complex ideas to work with, and having so much breath and space to think through them allowed an openness and possibility that fueled my creativity. The entire environment seemed magically permeated with peace, support, and a calming comfort that after living with the pandemic for over a year, was extremely healing.
The pristine interior, instead of feeling slick or cold, generated a feeling of being nestled in the surrounding trees. The space has warmth embedded in it, that seeps from the materials, the wood, the copper, and the care invested in their design. The residence has many nooks that allow a coziness that’s important when you are far from the creature comforts of home. Many of the walls and windows meet at non-right angles, subtly encouraging a sense of movement, dynamism, and non-linear thinking. Not unlike the presence of the enormous body of water that is a few steps away. This was a Lake Michigan that I’d never seen before, with shockingly turquoise water. I was lucky enough to be there in August, when it was warm enough to swim, which I did almost daily. I felt constantly renewed by the solitude of the nearly abandoned beach and what felt more like an ocean than a lake, that sometimes swelled with gentle waves, and sometimes was still enough to reflect the clouds moving across the endless sky. The water is quite shallow for a long stretch before it gets deeper, which adds to the sense of nurturing and support that every aspect of my experience there radiated with. Whenever I felt overwhelmed with ideas or stuck creatively, being able to release it into the water’s cleansing power was transformative physically, spiritually, and creatively. It kept me in tune with the cyclical rhythms of nature, which can be easy to get disconnected from when your head is full of words and you are staring at a computer screen for hours at a time.
On my last evening there, I was swimming just as the sun was melting into mesmerizingly warm water. I swam out much further than usual, and floating out there I looked up into the sky. Seemingly out of nowhere, something came fluttering and circling above me. Was it a bat? A tiny bird? I instinctively held my hand up toward it and it came toward me to land in my palm: a monarch butterfly. I waded back slowly, with my arm extended up out of the water, the winged creature in my hand the whole way. When I got to the shore, I stood on the beach and admired its wings glinting in the last rays of that day’s sunshine, and then it flew away.
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