Point of Beginning: In the Studio with Zoë Welsh
In the Studio is an artist documentary series highlighting the Pittsburgh region’s creative scene.
Throughout the first half of 2023, before the official start of Bright Archives, I was visiting artist Zoë Welsh’s studio every other weekend to document the creation of a large painting—the 86” x 64” Red River. With hours and hours of footage backed up onto a few hard drives, I made Point of Beginning, a 46-minute documentary that shows Welsh’s studio practice interspersed with voice-over interviews. For the interviews, I took inspiration from oral history methodologies that Katherine and I used for the Carnegie Mellon University Oral History Program—open-ended questions and patient listening meant to encourage storytelling.
In the film, Welsh discusses how memory, abstraction, pregnancy, and the intrusion (or lack thereof) of the camera impact her art. The openness and honesty of Welsh’s answers is refreshing, and her answers provide more entry points into her boldly-colored mixed-media paintings that inhabit a space between abstraction and figurative landscapes.
This was a really fun project, and it’s a type of project that Bright Archives would like to pursue more frequently—documenting artist process. We premiered the film in the summer of 2023 with screenings in Pittsburgh at The Union Hall, Bottom Feeder Books, Brew House Arts, and Radiant Hall. Now, the film is available on YouTube, where apparently we’ve cracked the algorithm and have racked up 3,500 views in a couple of days.
Point of Beginning is a co-production between Bright Archives and Ongoing Box.
Stills from Point of Beginning, 2023.
This post was written by David Bernabo, founding partner of Bright Archives.
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