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By Jennifer Hansen Rolli
In the 1980’s and 90’s, when time was untethered, my Jeep transported me most mornings to a rented art studio in Northern Liberties. An oasis of 18-foot walls, painted wood floors and large factory windows where design project deadlines held the only stressors.
By 1999, I had to close that studio door for the last time in the name of family —willingly, lovingly—but with any decision there is cost and gain.
For many reasons, not working was out of the question, so I took to carving out workspace that leaked throughout the family home. After my third child I started painting full time. Work hours had strict perimeters dictated by school bells. I worked at a feverish pace but after 4 p.m., I traded in my oils for glue and glitter, and as much as I was chomping at the bit to get back to my paintings, nothing beat spending time with my kids and I knew it was short lived.
And short lived it was. Twenty-five years later, raising my three children was now in the rearview mirror. At first it was all fun and games for my husband Anthony and I—coffee in bed, biking until dark on the canal, trying to convince ourselves things were “just like when we met.” But it wasn’t. We added three humans to our lives who had now flown the coop and found ourselves knocking around aimlessly in a hollow house. And where the heck did my crushing desire to work slip away to? Without a boxed-in time slot, work had no beginning or end. No urgency. Everything seemed coated in milk, and I love milk but not like this. It was a dull coating that needed to be cracked and soon.
When we met I had that Philadelphia studio, and the thought of finding a new space lit a fire inside. My husband curbed his blues finding himself a nice ’69 Corvette, my studio search didn’t prove so easy. I had to love it and that was going to take some time. I needed a tandem plan until I found space. I had dogeared an Instagram post of a writer friend on a working hiatus to a French chateau. A little late night research led to Chateau Orquevaux — an artists and writers residency. An hour later I was hitting “send” on my application.
And then I waited. Applying to an artist residency is an act of faith. You assemble your work. You articulate your intention. You send it into the void. Then you live your life. It took 4-5 months to hear back. And my placement would be another year. In that span, doubt crept in. Was this indulgent? Was it necessary? Could I live and work among other artists after decades of solitary practice? My entire adult life had been structured around working alone. The thought of communal living stirred both curiosity and apprehension. I reminded myself that growing up the youngest of five makes one capable.
As always, January had a way of sneaking up but this time I was going places. Packing was its own creative problem but I looked to Plein Air painting tactics to condense a working studio down to one transportable box. I planned on painting large canvases the first week so they could dry enough to roll; smaller works would be housed in a layered drying box I built myself. My French studio was to be in an old horse stable that I imagined to be very drafty, I ordered layers of merino wool and packed long and short puffer coats. I am very good at making do, but I do not like being cold.
At Charles de Gaulle airport, I was greeted by Nina from Finland, a fellow resident and first to arrive. Writers, painters and composers—all faces I recognized from a Zoom call gathered at our meeting spot to catch a 2.5 hour train ride south through the French countryside. Fields rolled by, pale winter light washing over it all. Large vans from the well-oiled residency awaited our arrival for the final leg of our travels. Packed in shoulder to shoulder was a grand ice breaker to get chummy.
When we rounded the bend entering Orquevaux all chatter quieted; all eyes were on the château sitting high above the untouched village and then poured out the oohs and aahs. I love listening to my video of this moment, once voices of strangers, now endearingly familiar.
My living quarters were on the second floor. Two tall windows opened to a sprawling lawn and young vineyard, a pond with swans and ironwork footbridges, a rollicking waterway that divided the Chateau from the town that twinkled just beyond its banks at night.
My room was lovely with a mirrored armoire to fit belongings, a soft velvet chair, a comfortable bed, and beside lights fixed into the wall with a chain to pull on and off. There were two large bathrooms for the floor to share with doors nearly impossible to lock. Come to think of it, everything was hard to open and close in this old chateau.
A grand Catholic Church was the center piece in the valley of the village with a bell tower that chimed every hour. Sometimes I woke in the middle of the night and was surprised to hear the bells, I counted to know the hour.
Breakfast was leisurely. On the kitchen floor, an enormous brown bag of fresh bread was fair game or you could opt for warm croissants, fresh gathered eggs, fruit and yogurt, and lots of cafe au lait from a dispenser you’d find at an IHOP.
Day and night, temperatures hovered at 40 degrees, always pleasant never bitter. I loved the walk down the gravel drive to my studio. Sometimes I’d take the long way past the swans and goats and chickens over the pretty iron bridge.
My studio was nothing short of the one I had been dreaming of all along. Creaky doors, complete with more complicated latches that kept the cold out, opened to high bricked ceilings and freshly painted walls. The well-worn floor and antique work table held the evidence of those before me.
On the first day, I took a different approach to my painting process to shake things up. Instead of setting up an easel, I pinned blank, gessoed linen directly onto the walls. Tinted varied colors, a grid of possibility. There is something liberating about working on walls instead of a single upright canvas. It invites movement.
A few days in, I stopped into Nina’s studio and she said something that lodged permanently in my brain: “Don’t think of your work as too precious.”
That sentence dismantled a barrier I hadn’t realized I’d built. Preciousness breeds hesitation. Fear of ruining something untouched. But if nothing is precious, everything is possible. Just start. Don’t overthink. If you mess up, scrape it off.
I produced a tremendous body of work in those two weeks. And I cannot recall the usual friction—the mental wrestling that precedes making. Over the course of two weeks, I completed 12 paintings. And I didn’t struggle.
That may have been the biggest surprise. But everyone was churning out the work. Each evening, we gathered for a one-hour social hour in the château parlor. Wine was abundant, we all loved the novelty of running down to the basement to the well-stocked Wine Cave to purchase bottles to share.
We filtered into the dining room when the dinner bell rang where Chef Marie, usually clad in some ’90s rocker T, emerged from the old kitchen and enthusiastically presented the meal in a thick French accent. Over two weeks, she never repeated a dinner. The food alone felt worth the journey.
What I feared most — living among so many creatives — became what was hardest to leave behind. Camaraderie snowballed. Painters, writers, composers, filmmakers. We hiked. We wandered the village. We cold plunged (okay, I only did it once). We collaborated. We had dinner conversations spanning long past desert. The ability to pick up where we left off the day before reminded me of being young, when responsibilities were few and friendships came easily. There was such a love that grew amongst us over those two weeks.
After dinner, I’d walk back down that gravel road and paint late into the night and fill that unbracketed time. The younger generation was usually up to no good after dinner. They knew I was working late and would ramble down to my studio and harass me while laying around on the floor drinking wine while I painted. Some of them would paint, too. I was happy they liked my music. I offered life advice no one had asked for and eventually joined them on the floor.
We were living like true Bohemians.
The best painting I made at Orquevaux was the last one. It was of Priya—one of the younger residents—stretched along the old Davenport in the château parlor. Late afternoon light streamed through the tall windows and washed over her, catching in her dark hair, grazing her hands. It was large. I didn’t treat it as precious. I didn’t hesitate. I didn’t overwork it.
At the end of each residency, artists are invited—never required—to leave one piece behind. I left my best. I wanted the best part of me to remain in the place that restored me. I will make more. For so many years, I had rationed myself—dividing energy between motherhood, responsibility and art. At Orquevaux, I stopped rationing. I poured.
Our last few days were spent preparing our work for open studios for the visual artists and an evening of readings by the writers and a musical performance by a singer/songwriter. For the final night, a group exhibition was mounted in the village gallery. A grand closure. We dressed up. We toasted. We pretended we weren’t down to counting hours.
Shortly after returning home, the stars aligned. Workspace in an old factory became available in the heart of Newtown, my hometown. Large windows of light, 16-foot arched wood ceilings and long walls with linen pinned to them make me smile every day.
It has been exactly one year since I returned. I’ve been in my studio now for nine months. I might not have chateau grade camaraderie but friends stop by. My neighbor Steve just waved goodnight and I hear church bells on the hour, too.
Looking back, nothing dramatic happened when I came home. Anthony didn’t tilt his head and say, “You’re different.” But something subtle had shifted. Work felt freer. More movement. Riskier. I’m lighter on my feet.
I didn’t set out to reinvent myself. I set out to find a studio and fill a gap. What I found instead was 22 souls who taught me that structure is not confinement, community doesn’t dilute solitude, gave me permission to not treat my work as fragile and to never stop taking risks.
Jennifer Hansen Rolli is an artist living in Newtown who exhibits her paintings at the Silverman Gallery in Doylestown. She is the cover artist and artist-in-residence at Bucks County Magazine.