Ebb & Flow: Dialogues between art and water
Four six-week residencies which include a stipend and supply budget are to be offered between September 2012 and April 2013. The deadline for submissions is May 18, 2012.
To download the application, please click HERE. With questions or for more information please email applications@astudiointhewoods.org
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Ebb & Flow is a 6-week residency based on the premise that Southern Louisiana can be seen as a microcosm of the global environment, manifesting both the challenges and possibilities inherent in human interaction with urban and natural ecosystems. We ask artists to describe in detail how the region will affect their work, to propose a public component to their residency and to suggest ways in which they will engage with the local community. A Studio in the Woods, located in the Louisiana wetlands, has observed firsthand the dynamic nature of this rapidly changing territory which in turn affects the entire northern hemisphere. We envision this as a powerful context for the exploration of critical thinking, the development of new ideas and strategies, and using the creative process as a catalyst for social change.
“Water is H2O, hydrogen two parts, oxygen one, but there is also a third thing that makes water and nobody knows what it is.”
D.H. Lawrence, Pansies, 1929
At one level water is easy. Its chemical and physical properties are not hard to understand nor is its fundamental importance to all life on Earth. But, there is another dimension to water that is just as essential but which is much less understood. That is the realm of our relationship with water and how we experience it. Water serves us, soothes us, and inspires us. We manage it, study it, abuse it, celebrate it and fear it and yet we are continually surprised by it. Water has always been central to how and where we live– a fact that hurricanes, droughts, rising seas and changing climates remind us are no less true today, particularly in New Orleans and the Mississippi River Delta.
The water we experience is not just hydrogen and oxygen but is the intersection of water as a physical, economic, legal, spiritual, cultural and artistic thing. Those factors, and perhaps others, make up the third component of water, a component which this Studio in the Woods residency seeks to explore and express.
Mark Davis, Tulane Institute on Water Resources Law & Policy
We invite artists to submit applications to our environmental residency series titled Ebb & Flow: Dialogues between art and water, addressing the ecological challenges exemplified by Southern Louisiana. The call is open to artists of all disciplines who have demonstrated an established dialogue with environmental issues and a commitment to seeking and plumbing new depths. Artists are invited to design their own interface with the public and are encouraged to propose ways to engage the larger community of New Orleans and beyond.
Ebb & Flow Residencies are sponsored in part thanks to generous support of The RosaMary Foundation and the Surdna Foundation. This program is supported by a grant from the Louisiana Division of the Arts, Office of Cultural Development, Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourism, in cooperation with the Louisiana State Arts Council. The grant is administered through the Arts Council of New Orleans.
