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When I first was chosen as an artist-in-residence for this year, I was thinking I’d be creating work about feminism. I chose Proverbs 8 to respond to, in which Wisdom, a woman, speaks about how ancient she is, and implores the foolish and naive to turn away from their pursuits and instead listen to the instruction of wisdom. I was thinking about making a political work about older women – and I still plan to, but not for this commission.

Find the complete progression of the work linked below.

Proverbs 8:32-36

Artist in Residence 2016: Lauren Ferebee Part 1

By 

Lauren Ferebee

Credits: 

Curated by: 

Spark+Echo Arts, Artist in Residence 2016

2016

Image by Giorgio Trovato

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March 14, 2016


When I first was chosen as an artist-in-residence for this year, I was thinking I’d be creating work about feminism. I chose Proverbs 8 to respond to, in which Wisdom, a woman, speaks about how ancient she is, and implores the foolish and naive to turn away from their pursuits and instead listen to the instruction of wisdom. I was thinking about making a political work about older women – and I still plan to, but not for this commission.


Instead, as I read the verse, I was struck by a question that bubbled up from within me, which was how does this verse relate to your life?


At that point, my brain drifted back to an exhibit I had seen some years ago at the Metropolitan Museum of Art about the medieval Book of Hours, which was a book of prayers created individually for the lay contemplative – a religious person who was not a monk, but wanted a structure that emulated the disciplines of the monastic life. The books were beautiful, full of illuminated letters and drawings, many of them kept in special cupboards. The prayers in this book feel so personal in their individual way, prayers that reach out like a grabbing hand, blindly away from the self into the unknown divine.


In Proverbs 8, Wisdom says:


Blessed are those who listen to me,

watching daily at my doors,

waiting at my doorway.

For those who find me find life.


I take this to mean that wisdom comes only to those who are willing to ask for help and are therefore willing to give up being right, to open up the heart to know more – in the broad sense of know, as in not only learning information and facts, but growing in the understanding of oneself and others


So instead of creating a Great Political Work, I am taking this project as a challenge to understand more deeply how it is that one can answer wisdom’s daily call to her gate, how all of us – whether Christian, non-Christian, non-religious or other – can engage with the call to continually seek wisdom.


Over the course of this year, then, I will be crafting a multimedia book of hours that engages the audience of the work in daily acts of contemplation that are theatrical and/or literary. The work examines the following questions:


– How does asking for help intersect with living a more contemplative life?


– What is wisdom? How do we know when it is found?


– How do we daily, in word and action, invoke the spirit of wisdom in our lives?


– How can wisdom and prayer live outside of their traditional forms? What are the many ways we understand prayer in different forms?



This month I’ll be in residence at the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center in Nebraska City and I’ve brought a lot of books with me as I move into the research and execution phase of this project, including edited works of Thomas Merton into a Book of Hours. I’m also enrolled in a Harvard Online class that’s very closely examining the form and structure of the medieval book of hours, which I was excited to happen upon in the last couple of weeks.


Next for me is the simultaneous actions of absorption and creation as I create a big list of ideas and an investigation into how the different pieces of Proverbs 8 will come under close examination in the larger piece. You can anticipate instruction booklets for contemplative action, philosophical dialogues with wisdom, video work and more as we continue forward together through the year.

Spark Notes

The Artist's Reflection

Lauren Ferebee is a Texan native and a multidisciplinary artist whose primary mediums are playwriting and installation/video art.


Most recently, her play The Reckless Season was selected for Stage West’s Southwest Playwriting Competition Festival of New Works, and her alternative screwball comedy Sexual Geography was a finalist for the Reva Shiner Comedy Award at the Bloomington Playwrights’ Project. In 2014, she was a juried fellow at Saltonstall Arts Colony, a semifinalist for the Shakespeare’s Sister fellowship and the first theatre-artist-in-residence at HUB-BUB in Spartanburg, South Carolina, where in addition to writing, she did community-based theatre work.


Her most recent work includes Sexual Geography (developed at HUB-BUB), The Reckless Season (The Spartanburg Little Theatre/HUB-BUB), Somewhere Safer (FringeNYC 2013, Inkwell finalist), and Blood Quantum (At Hand Theatre & WET Productions). Three of her short plays, jericho, jericho, Bob Baker’s End of the World and The Pirate King are published online at indietheaternow.com, where Somewhere Safer is also published as part of the 2013 Fringe Collection.


She is a member of playwriting collective Lather, Rinse, Repeat, and studied playwriting, screenwriting and television writing at Primary Stages/ESPA. Lauren also has regional and NYC credits as an actress on stage and in film, and from 2007-2010 was co-artistic director of a site-specific classical theatre company, Rebellious Subjects Theatre. She especially enjoys acting in and teaching Shakespeare and working on new plays. She holds a BFA in drama from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.


Lauren Ferebee

About the Artist

Artist in Residence 2016: Lauren Ferebee Part 2

Artist in Residence 2016: Lauren Ferebee Part 3

while in a foreign land

Wonders of the Deep

Artist in Residence 2016: Lauren Ferebee

Lauren Ferebee

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