Author Lu Chekowsky
We’ve all heard the story too many times now: mid-March, the sudden slam of breaks to the world. Here at the Studios at MASS MoCA, our international, all women’s cohort of artists-in-residence (celebrating the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment) booked whichever of the dwindling flights home they could find. For four months, the Studios remained quiet. Until, in mid-July 2020, we reopened our doors.
Writer Lu Chekowsky was one of the first artists to arrive when the Studios at MASS MoCA reopened to a reduced number of residents during the COVID-19 pandemic. She and her husband Peter Campbell were among only four artists (instead of our usual 12) to attend a two-week session in late July. Several months later, Studios at MASS MoCA staff caught up with Lu to learn more about what the writer had been up to since her residency and how the two weeks of time and space at MASS MoCA helped her on her ongoing projects.
Lu Chekowsky is a writer and creative director who built a successful career in media and advertising through her gut, intuition and addiction to approval. Full bio below the interview.
Coming from corporate life, returning to my origins of writing in my own voice and being identified as an Artist has done wonders for my belief in myself and my vision for the things I want to make.
READ LU’S 2021 POETRY & ESSAYS
”Britney’s People” on Hobart
”How Sex Work Prepared Me For a Career in Advertising” on Pigeon Pages
”To The Fat Woman in Economy Class Who Spilled Over Into My Seat” on Book XI
~INTERVIEW~
WHAT DID YOUR STAY AT THE STUDIOS ALLOW YOU TO DO?
It allowed me to feel like a legitimate artist, I had the endorsement and support of an organization I admire so much. It gave me confidence to believe in my vision and to go deeper than I have been able to at home. As my residency was during the first summer of Covid, it gave me a safe place to recenter myself on my art and my voice in a chaotic time.
It gave me quiet and a space to make my own. I used the walls to house old memorabilia from my life -- taping up old photos and writings. As a person who is currently working on memoir, it acted like a portal to another time. It allowed me to break up my day-to-day process, to find new pathways and themes to work with.
I left the residency with upwards of 100 new pages, so much new, raw material -- more than I have completed over the same amount of time, before or since.
Being so close to the art in the galleries and the outdoor concerts was beyond inspiring. There was an intense energy that radiated into my own work. I wanted to do right by the artists that came before me.
WHAT HAVE YOU BEEN UP TO SINCE YOUR RESIDENCY?
I’ve been so lucky with a great rate of response to a series of submissions I did while in residency at MASS MoCA! I did use a few days to gather and refine material that found homes right after. I have acceptances out at two other journals that will be publishing this spring! That makes SIX in total publications since my Assets for Artists residency!
I continue to work on my larger manuscript, I Exist to Please You, a memoir of my lifelong addiction to pleasing, and how it almost killed me.
I am working on writing more poetry and flash prose that can capture feeling and mood and moments in time, and I continue to work with my husband Peter on a daily journal project we’ve been keeping for one year, every day, since the pandemic started.
ANYTHING ELSE YOU’D LIKE PEOPLE TO KNOW ABOUT YOU OR YOUR TIME AT MASS MoCA?
I feel so lucky to have been a part of this residency, at the right time and in the right place for me in my career. I have such a love and appreciation for visual art -- to be surrounded by such inspiring and energetic work, gave a jolt to my own practice and made my own storytelling more visual and visceral. There is nothing more glorious than being able to be in the galleries of MASS MoCA any time of day you want to be there! Also I swam in a beautiful lake almost every morning, and it cleared my head and felt like magic.
BIO: LU CHEKOWSKY
Lu Chekowsky is a writer and creative director who built a successful career in media and advertising through her gut, intuition and addiction to approval. Most recently Lu worked as the Lead Creative Director for Video at Facebook and SVP of Brand Creative at Comedy Central, where she led Comedy Central’s 70 person in-house creative team on campaigns for The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, The Comedy Central Roast of Justin Bieber, Inside Amy Schumer, Drunk History, Broad City, and South Park, among others. Previously, Lu was VP, Creative Director at MTV and a Creative Director and Copywriter at Wieden+Kennedy.
Before advertising, Lu received an MA in Creative Writing from The University of Central Florida. For the last two years, she has been working towards what she is calling her DIY MFA and has attended residencies at the Gullkistan Center for Creativity in Laugarvartn, Iceland, the Tin House Summer Workshop, and she’ll attend SPACE on Ryder Farm in the summer of 2021. She was recognized as a finalist in both the Nonfiction and Poetry categories for Slice Literary’s Bridging the Gap Award and has won the Pigeon Pages essay contest, judged by Morgan Jerkins.
Lu lives in the Hudson Valley and has been a whole bunch of things, including: a stand-up comic, a burlesque fire dancer, a relationship columnist, a telephone psychic, and a tram-driving emcee on the backstage tour at Disney/MGM Studios. If you’d like to see some of the ads she used to spend a lot of her time making, you can find a few at luchekowsky.myportfolio.com.