During the month-long residency in Lithuania I lived in a traditional Kabeliai village farmhouse and sheperded a flock of Skudde sheep together with another artist in residence. Sheep, the main axis of the “Spinners’ Creative Pastures”, were a connecting part of the village community and no longer function as units of meat or wool, raised according to purely material levers, but as a platform for creativity, a school of coexistence with the Other, mediators between man and the natural and social environment.

The sheep were our teachers. Twice a day we took them out into the fields, not far from the fenced border with Belarus, to let them graze and wander. The rest of the time we worked on our artistic research or explored the rural community.

I learned to spin wool, did little interventions and used natural materials to work with. Every day, I collected the sheep’s favorite plants and turned them into natural ink. The sheep were obsessed by and loved apples and I believe I got as close to thinking like a sheep when I started to obsessively paint apples with the ink I produced. 

The residency was closed off with an exhibition, I wrote this text for the catalogue: Weaving thoughts

Kabeliai (LT), 2023