Residencies and Retreats x Craigardan
From 2018 - 2021, I collaborated as a contemplative artist and teacher with Craigardan, an interdisciplinary arts residency program and working farm that supports artists and scholars from the Adirondacks and around the world.
Wintering Retreat (2019)
Inspired by Jeannette Winterson’s essay “Why I Adore the Night,” the week’s programming of meditative walks, one-to-one lessons, group practice, studio hours, natural rituals, farm chores, meals, fireside chats, and quiet social gatherings were guided by changing seasonal rhythms and shorter days. Ceramic program residents and staff immersed in a schedule dictated by winter. We took elements of Winterson’s writing as a challenge for how we spent time alone and met as a community while gaining an appreciation for gifts of night and dark:
“Night and dark are good for us. As the nights lengthen, it’s time to reopen the dreaming space. Have you ever spent an evening without electric light?
It doesn’t matter whether you are in the city or the country, as long as you can control your own little pod. Make it a weekend, get in plenty of candles, and lay the fire if you have one. Prepare dinner ahead, and plan a walk so that you will be heading for home in that lovely liminal time where light and dark are hinged against each other.” - Jeannette Winterson
Via del Gangivecchio/Retreat to Sicily (2019)
To build on my relationship with my Sicilian friends and the region surrounding the Benedictine abbey at Gangivecchio, I joined forces with my collaborators at Craigardan to travel with a group for a retreat abroad. The purpose was to immerse in contemplative and cultural arts in a placed-based framework within the Madonie Mountains.
The Gardan Journal (2020)
When the reality of the COVID shutdown set in, it was clear that returning to Sicily for future retreats and all regular campus residency planning would be disrupted for a period of time. Craigardan’s director came to me with the idea of helping her to start an interdisciplinary journal to keep our community of artists and former residents connected in making and sharing art across the miles that separated us. Needless to say, it was a very satisfying pandemic project to focus as part of the team bringing the first four issues of The Gardan to life.
