Portal: A Studio for Meditative Making and Collective Transformation / Halsey Chait

May 27 - June 21

For the duration of this residency, a single basement room at Atelier Jolie will be transformed by Halsey Chait into a living, breathing art space—part personal studio, part open workshop, entirely devoted to the alchemical process of creation.

Rooted in his practice as a pen and ink artist, the studio becomes a site of deep reflection and expansive, collective imagination. Chait’s work is an act of transformation—mark by mark, drawing by drawing—opening intricate portals to both inner and outer worlds. His drawings are visual meditations: dense yet improvised, structured yet intuitive. With each line, he maps the hidden geometries of bodies, molecules, animal paths, and vibrating space. Working through repetition, instinctive algorithms, and unwavering hand-drawn finality, his practice channels a calm intensity and resilient wonder—especially vital in uncertain times.

This residency extends that philosophy into a shared, participatory environment. Chait will host a series of workshops inviting the public—regardless of background or experience—into meditative, exploratory acts of mark-making. No training, no expectations—just paper, tools, and time.

Using materials like ink, pencil, pen, pouncing wheels, compasses, and steel brushes, participants will explore drawing as a way of listening, noticing, and responding. Exercises may emerge around swarming lines, layered geometries, elemental rhythms, and organic structures. Themes of repetition, fragmentation, complexity, expansion, and erosion will guide the practice—each drawing a quiet record of presence.

The studio itself will evolve with the work. Walls will gather drawings in progress, trails of exploration, and marks left behind by many hands. Some pieces may feel complete. Others will remain in motion. What matters is the gesture: each line a moment, each moment part of a larger pattern.

In this way, Chait’s studio becomes a portal—a space to enter the creative process, to reflect, build, and change. A net woven from many gestures—a meditative archive of transformation offering both sanctuary and spark.

Halsey Chait draws with pen and ink on paper and panel because it is the most immediate and meditative channel for revealing visions of portals to universes within and without.

Using the center and an outer boundary as guides, the drawings feature dense aggregations of marks that bloom outwards, inspired by the mathematical rules that govern the growth processes of lifeforms and molecular structures.