A Studio in the Woods is excited to announce our
2010-2011 Changing Landscapes Artists-in-Residence

Changing Landscapes are 6-week residencies 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 the natural world. 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. Changing Landscapes Residencies are sponsored  in part thanks to generous support of the National Endowment for the Arts.

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William Cordova (Lima,Peru, September 27th - November 5th 2010) envisions two aspects of his project. In preserving the spillage he plans to document and preserve traces of displaced and erased histories within the rich in New Orleans landscape. The other half of his project, in our life time, will focus on creating ephemeral monuments through 16MM films of secular sacred spaces/landmark locations within Louisiana history and folklore. This project proposes an alternative to State or City approved monuments of Civil War Generals by using cinematic monument of Black and First Nation’s people’s contributions in Louisiana.

Eric Dallimore (Denver, CO, November 9^th - December 19^th 2010) plans to produce an installation piece, a living public sculpture in the form of a pipeline, not a metal pipe carrying oil, but instead a zigzagging pipeline composed of entirely organic matter, housing a collection of seeds. The Pipeline will slither across the land, visually representing man’s destructive force of oil exploration on our Gulf coast, our wetlands and our forests. The pipeline will be engineered to intentionally burst at the seams using the wind and heavy rains to release the seeds onto the ground below and the pipeline itself will be entirely composed of organic materials to fertilize and germinate the seeds, raising new life from the saturated earth below. www.ericdallimore.com

Bernard Williams (Chicago, IL, January 18^th – February 27^th 2011) often works with a jigsaw and found wood.His sculptures use symbols and words to form the surface of the object. For his project in New Orleans, he plans to build a temporary structure blending architecture with the natural structure of plant forms and forces of nature. The work will be informed by research of rebuilt, un-built, and newly-built places through conversations with local individuals connected to building and designing. This would include local architects, artists, historians, various designers, lay builders, and others.

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We have also  offered a two-week Special Invitation Residency to Pulitzer-nominated documentary photographer and editor Alex Harris (Durham, NC, Dates TBA) Harris who will be completing a book in collaboration with ecologist E.O. Wilson who won the 1991 Pulitzer Prize in general non-fiction. They envision a new hybrid literary and visual form that is part memoir, part documentary, and part social and natural history connecting the insights and the important questions of science to the intuition and metaphorical power of art. alex-harris.com

Click HERE to see the pictures at NOLA.com

Click HERE for the article on NOLA.com

Because the center exists primarily to preserve the surrounding bottomland hardwood forest and to give artists-in-residence a peaceful setting in which to work, A Studio in the Woods is known primarily as a quiet, sparsely occupied place that seems to blend into the landscape. On Saturday, however, the studio will open itself up to an unprecedented degree with its inaugural FORESTival, a fundraiser and celebration of nature and the arts.

Aside from its spring and fall open houses and children’s summer day camps, “the studio is private a lot of the time,” said Ama Rogan, managing director for A Studio in the Woods. “There really are not a lot of opportunities for the public to come out and see what we do, see the buildings and the forest.”

The private nature, though, belies the supremely welcoming spirit of the Carmichaels, who have hosted countless friends, artists and other visitors at the site long before A Studio in the Woods was founded. The couple bought the 7.66-acre property in 1968 after picnicking on the levee and noticing a “for sale” sign nailed to a pecan tree by the road.

With help from their friends and a lot of patience, the Carmichaels built their house over eight years, using mostly salvaged materials and without cutting down any trees on the property. They filled the home with art – from their travels and their friends. At the same time, Lucianne Carmichael hosted groups of schoolchildren to visit the forest.

“Here I learned the amazing effects of the natural world on the often-troubled children of a bereft city neighborhood,” she wrote in an outreach letter for Tulane University, to which the Carmichaels donated the estate in 2004. “They became happy, giggling, singing, laughing children. It was a huge learning experience for me, the teachers and parents to witness such a powerful example of the human relationship to the natural world, the wise and caring parent of all living creatures.”

Since its founding, A Studio in the Woods has hosted artists from around the world. Its Restoration Residencies after Hurricane Katrina were offered to New Orleans artists, musicians and writers to escape from the tumult of post-storm life. Currently, the studio has a call open for its Changing Landscapes residency series, which aims to select artists who focus on “ecological and environmental issues as they are manifested here in southern Louisiana,” Rogan said.

“What was so interesting to me about (the Restoration) Residencies is that every single one of those artists, without even realizing it, were so inspired and healed by the natural environment, and it showed in their work,” she said. “It was such a powerful metaphor for how the natural environment was restoring itself after the storm.”

Saturday’s festival will highlight the work of past artists-in-residence, with presentations from writer Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts, sculptor Jane Hill and poet Raymond “Moose” Jackson.

ArtSpot Productions, performance troupe Mondo Bizarro and actor Nick Slie will present an excerpt of the 2009 play “Loup Garou,” in which Slie plays the titular Cajun werewolf and uses the story of his transformation as an allegory about the destruction of coastal wetlands.

Botanist Dave Baker will lead groups on tours of the woods, and music will be provided by the Panorama Jazz Band and Beth Turner and friends. Food from Slice Pizzeria and Juan’s Flying Burrito will be for sale.

Rogan said that, aside from giving the public an opportunity to visit this woodland retreat, A Studio in the Woods hopes to offer people an ecological antidote to the current environmental crisis unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico, where a massive oil leak sprung after a BP oil rig explosion April 20 has sent hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil into Gulf waters.

“In times of crisis like this, it’s always important to be in community,” she said. “This is a way that is celebratory to connect with the natural environment. It’s about … how we as humans can interpret and respect the natural environment.”

The world’s natural and built environments are endangered and the need to seriously engage contemporary thinking about these disappearing landscapes through the creation of art is of paramount importance. 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.

With this in mind, we invite artists to submit applications to our environmental residency series titled Changing Landscapes: A Dialogue Between Art and the Environment, 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 plowing new ground. 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. Four six-week residencies which include a stipend and supply budget are to be offered between September 2010 and April 2011. The deadline for submissions is June 18, 2010. Submissions must be postmarked by June 18, 2010.

With questions or for more information please email applications@astudiointhewoods.org

To download the application, please click HERE.

Saturday June 5^th
11:00 am – 5:00 pm
13401 Patterson Road

Music by:
Panorama Jazz Band
Beth Turner and friends

Artist presentations including:
ArtSpot Productions, Mondo Bizarro, and Raymond “Moose” Jackson present an excerpt from Loup Garou
Jane Hill sculpture demonstration
Poetic installation by Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts

Tours of the woods with botanist David Baker.

Food and drink for purchase.

Art activities with Kids in the Woods summer camp instructors Lisa Sirgo and Laura Richens.

Silent auction featuring works of art by:
Penny Baker, Karen Rich Beall, Ron Bechet, Frances Beck, Teresa Cole, Angela Driscoll, Jan Gilbert, Shawn Hall, Jane Hill, Charles Lovell, Norah Lovell, Kevin McCaffrey, Andrea Myers, Larry Daniel Nevil, Valentine Pierce, Rafael Santos, Christy Speakman, David Sullivan, Monique Michelle Verdin, Alexis Wreden

Other auction items include:
Audubon Yoga Studio, Blue Cypress Book Store, Café Beignet, Contemporary Arts Center, Crescent City Farmers Market, Frames Inc, GNO Tri Club, Gray Line Tours, Herbsaint Restaurant, Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra, Maple Street Book Shops, Mignon Faget, New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans Steamboat, The Ogden Museum of Southern Art, Parenting Center of Children’s Hospital, Pippen Lane, Scriptura, Sully Mansion Bed and Breakfast, Symmetry Jewelers & Designers, Brandon M. Wool, MD

Special thanks to our generous sponsors:
Barrios, Kingsdorf & Casteix, LLP, Beaucoup Nola Juice & Snowball, Juan’s Flying Burrito, Shawn Kennedy, NOLA Brewing Co., Carol Skriloff, Slice Pizzeria, Whole Foods Market

SCHEDULE OF EVENTS

11:00 – 3:00 * Sculpture Demonstration with former resident artist Jane Hill

11:30 – 1:30 * Beth Turner on piano

12:00 – 1:00 * Tour of the Founders Home: Joe & Lucianne Carmichael share lessons learned in Sustainable Building

12:00 – 4:00 * Kid’s Activity – nature crafting with Kids in the Woods summer camp instructors Lisa Sirgo, Laura Richens & Tavi Riddle

1:00 - 1:30 * Oliver A. Houck reading from his new book Down on the Batture

1:30 – 2:30 * Performance excerpt from Loup Garou presented by former residents ArtSpot Productions, Mondo Bizarro & Raymond “Moose” Jackson

2:30 – 3:15 * Tour of the Woods with Environmental Curator David Baker

2:30 – 5:00 * Panorama Jazz Band

3:30 * Silent Auction Closing – Section I

4:30 – 5:15 * Tour of the Woods with Environmental Curator David Baker

4:30 * Silent Auction Closing – Section II

* ALL DAY *

Poetic Installation “even the dead will not be safe…” by former resident writer Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts

Silent Auction featuring work by artists friends & former residents as well as goods and services from local businesses

The installation artist, who specializes in earthworks that manipulate a grassy space using shaped ridges, berms and depressions, completed a six-week fall residency with the nonprofit artists’ retreat center A Studio in the Woods, where he launched the Spirit Ferry Project, an earthworks and community garden site on a vacant lot in Bywater.

Though the residency is over, the Spirit Ferry Project is just starting to bloom, and Tepp returned to New Orleans last weekend to conduct a two-day planting event at the site.

Tepp’s original idea for the project was to create a mobile gardening center that could travel to different neighborhoods and create installations on-site. Tepp obtained a travel trailer and manipulated it to resemble a boat, or ferry, but decided to keep it in one location.

During the residency, Tepp planted in the trailer small camellia trees and live oak saplings donated by A Studio in the Woods, as well as white daffodils and a smattering of wildflowers.

“I threw wildflower seeds all over the thing, not knowing what would take, and already some of them are sprouting, ” Tepp said.

Using an excavator, Tepp built three berms on the garden site, one of which, 2 feet high at its tallest point, basically outlines three sides of the lot. “A lot of people think it looks like a levee, ” Tepp said. “Kids like to play on it.”

A second earthwork inside the “levee” creates a ramp up to the ferry. Tepp “envisioned it as the landing to the spirit ferry” and made the ramp’s highest point wide enough to be used as a one- or two-person stage for community events, he said. “I envision that berm as being kind of the podium, ” Tepp said. “That’s the place for voices to be heard.”

Last weekend, Tepp created a third earthwork, this one resembling a fire pit, which he lined with salvaged red bricks. Volunteers planted wildflower seeds around the circumference of the pit.

Tepp also filled small garden plots with seeds for zucchini, beets, snap peas and spinach, and hopes that community members will become more involved in seeing the crops through to harvest.

A big part of the Spirit Ferry Project, he said, has been establishing relationships with people in Bywater to tell them about the site.

“My hope is that some people from the community will feel comfortable to go in there and claim some of it, to take some ownership, ” Tepp said. “I wanted to provide something that could bind a community together. The site is designed to be basically an outdoor community center.”

Click HERE to visit NOLA.com for the full article with images.

Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts

Changing Landscapes writer-in-residence will read from her work in progress in conjunction with the museum’s Drapetomania: A Disease Called Freedom exhibition.

New Orleans African American Museum
1418 Governor Nicholls St.
Wednesday, April 7, 2010 from 6:30-8:30pm

Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts, a writer, Texas native and graduate of Harvard University, is A Studio in the Woods’ seventh Changing Landscapes resident. Inspired by a grisly footnote to Louisiana’s slavery past, Rhodes-Pitts plans to incorporate history and natural history, disappearance and preservation in a project that will tell the story of a 1811 slave uprising with consequences that most decidedly changed the landscape. Rhodes-Pitts is interested in this juxtaposition between an act of human violence and the natural environment, where the decomposition and disappearance of human remains was an accelerated version of events taking place in nature and the violence and domination of men echoed similar acts against the land.

In addition to the reading, the project will take the form of a hand-bound, letterpress-printed limited edition of her writing about the River Road area and the 1811 slave uprising. It will also include experimental artifacts she will create using handmade paper and calligraphy. She intends to craft paper using refuse fiber from the three main cash crops of Louisiana’s plantation economy: cotton rag, bagasse from sugar cane, and rice straw.

Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts is a writer whose work has appeared in Transition, The New York Times, and The Boston Globe. She has received awards from the Independent Press Association, the Rona Jaffe Foundation and the Lannan Foundation. Originally from Houston, Texas, she graduated in 2000 from Harvard University and was a Fulbright Scholar in the United Kingdom. Sharifa is writing a trilogy on African-Americans and utopia; her first book, Harlem is Nowhere, will be published in 2011 by Little, Brown & Company.

For more information about the reading please call (504) 392-5359. For more information about the museum, please call 504-566-1136.

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Drapetomania is an exhibition of 18th-, 19th- and early 20th-century material culture of the African experience in the Americas from the collection of Derrick Joshua Beard. The title of the exhibition is taken from an 1854 article in the monthly Southern journal entitled The Georgia Blister and Critic where noted Louisiana surgeon Dr. Samuel A. Cartwright coined the term “drapetomania” by combining the Greek words for runaway slave and mad or crazy. It was used to describe the mental disease that “induces the negro to run away from service, [and] is as much a disease of the mind as any other species of mental alienation, and much more curable, as a general rule.”

Photo by Monique Michelle Verdin.

NEW ORLEANS, LA – The Green Project will present A Studio in the Woods co- founders Lucianne and Joe Carmichael with the coveted “Green Giant” Award, honoring a local environmental hero. The award will be presented March 19,  2010 during the organization’s annual gala.

“Each year we honor those who have done exceptional environmental work in New Orleans with the Green Giant award. With the creation of  A Studio in the Woods, the Carmichaels built a sustainable environment from salvaged and reclaimed materials long before it was the accepted practice and then gifted it to Tulane,”said Phyllis Jordan,  one of the The Green Project’s board members. “What they’ve given to the city’s artists’ community is an invaluable gift that will last a lifetime.”

The annual “Green Giant” Award goes to a remarkable individual in New Orleans who has single-handedly improved the environmental quality of the city through their work over the last year. The Green Project believes the enduring gift made by the Carmichaels has shown the future of building with reclaimed materials, the longevity of sustainability and the very essence of sharing tranquility with local artists through natural surroundings.

Both Lucianne and Joe are active members of the board for A Studio in the Woods and are energetic ambassadors for the amazing program. Their journey began over 40 years ago when the property was first purchased.  “When the Carmichaels began building the studio it took ten years to collect all of the salvaged materials from around the city. As we embark on a plan to expand our facilities to accommodate more arts and environmental programming, we are thrilled to be able to have access to such a wonderful resource as our community has in The Green Project,” said Managing Director, Ama Rogan on receiving the illustrious award.

The grand celebration and award presentation, dubbed “Salvations 2010,” will be held from 7 to 10 p.m., Friday, March 19, 2010 at The Shops at Canal Place, 3rd Floor, New Orleans. The event will feature 16 pieces of handmade custom art furniture built using salvaged materials, and will also have cocktails, music and a silent auction to benefit The Green Project.  Click here to purchase tickets to Salvations 2010!

About The Green Project:
The Green Project, located in the Bywater neighborhood of New Orleans, has been providing high-quality used building materials and unique architectural items to thrifty, creative New Orleanians for the last 16 years. By preventing these materials from reaching the landfill, The Green Project meets its mission of being the leading hands-on environmental nonprofit in the region. More information is available at The Green Project.

About A Studio in the Woods:
A Studio in the Woods, a program of Tulane University, located in 7.66 forested acres on the Mississippi River in New Orleans, is dedicated to preserving the endangered bottomland hardwood forest and providing within it a peaceful retreat where visual, literary and performing artists can work uninterrupted. Programming includes community workshops in the arts and environmental preservation, and an outdoor classroom where students of all ages can experience and study the natural world. One of a few live-in artists’ retreats in the Deep South, A Studio in the Woods fosters both environmental preservation and the creative work of all artists. More information can be found at  A Studio in the Woods.

Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts is a writer whose work has appeared in Transition, The New York Times, and The Boston Globe. She has received awards from the Independent Press Association, the Rona Jaffe Foundation and the Lannan Foundation. Originally from Houston, Texas, she graduated in 2000 from Harvard University and was a Fulbright Scholar in the United Kingdom. Sharifa is writing a trilogy on African-Americans and utopia; her first book, Harlem is Nowhere, will be published in 2011 by Little, Brown & Company.

While at A Studio in the Woods, Sharifa will be researching and writing the story of the 1811 insurrection in which enslaved Africans attempted to fight for their freedom, inspired by the recent success of the Haitian Revolution. She is also interested book arts and plans to print the story on paper she makes using refuse fiber from the three main cash crops of Louisiana’s plantation economy: cotton rag, bagasse from sugar cane and rice straw.

Changing Landscapes are 6-week residencies 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 the natural world. 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. Four accomplished artists have been selected to participate in this year’s program, funded in part by the Ford Foundation, the Louisiana Division of the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. The artists in this round of residencies are Tory Tepp of Los Angeles (September-October 2009), David Sullivan of New Orleans (November-December 2009), Karen Rich Beall of Lebanon, PA (January-February 2010), and Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts of New York (February-April 2010).