Conversation with Anne Holub
2019 Open AIR Artist-In-Residence
in Partnership with the
Flathead Lake Bio Station
"I ended up living next door to 3 amazing fellow artists-in-residence (and one cute baby) and that little artist compound we made for ourselves was restorative and amazing. We don't often get to talk about our work (we just put our heads down and get to it), so talking art and writing, and the amazing natural world (and great science!) going on around us was like a magical tonic."
- Anne Holub
Open AIR: How was your residency experience?
Anne: Too brief for sure! In the first session, our time was shorter than later sessions would be, and I definitely hated to come out of my writing bubble at Flathead Lake. I thought of it this spring as everything in the world changed, and how lucky we were to do it in 2019.
Open AIR: What was your research process during this time?
Anne: We definitely tried to get just a few minutes of FLBS' researchers' time as much as we could. We got great tours of facilities and of ongoing experiments, talked to students on site who were assisting in research, and got some great hands-on time to explore what Flathead magic was waking up from winter. We found that while we were a bit timid about using up folks' time, they were all so very open and eager to chat about their scientific passions that it became kind of a marathon of mini lectures. None of us were science majors, but we all had a passion for the interplay between science, the natural world, and expressing that learning through our chosen mediums.
Open Air: What are you up to now/post-residency?
Anne: I'm still working on my original poetry collection that started right before Open Air, and am workshopping those poems with a new writing group. I'm also working on some small poetry projects, like my new "poetry postcards" where I type poems for order on vintage postcards. I've found it makes a great pairing to local art walks, and started doing them back in Fall 2019. Unfortunately, I broke my leg in November (crazy dog park accident -- the dogs are fine) and I've been sidelined and unable to sit up and type Now that COVID-19 doesn't allow for public interactions as much, I'm also not doing poetry in front of an audience, but I am still doing them online and for order.
Open AIR: How has COVID-19 affected you?
Anne: For sure it's harder to get out and interact in the world, and I wish I could go to things like art shows and readings, but it also affords me a lot more reading time. As we've entered in to a new global consciousness, I've also been making an effort to expand my reading materials to include an even wider range of voices. Some of my new favorites that I'd highly recommend are: poet Audre Lorde's collection of essays and speeches Sister Outsider and even this online collection of poems of protest from the Poetry Foundation that moves from some of the earliest works of poets of the early 20th Century, to contemporary poetry arising from the Black Lives Matter movement. Poetry, it has been pointed out by many, is a key form of expression but also introspection during hard times. It affords us all an opportunity to connect with our world through language in ways we are otherwise unable to comprehend.