2021 marks the twentieth year of programming at A Studio in the Woods! To celebrate this milestone, we will be bringing you reflections throughout the year, looking back on our programs, the artists and scholars who have shaped them, and the inspiring new works that have resulted.

At the close of the 2008 open call, we noticed a marked decrease in artists applying for Restoration Residencies, indicating to us that New Orleans and Gulf Coast artists were in a more stable position than they had been since Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Inspired by the drastic upheaval in our local ecology, Changing Landscapes was created, a six-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 the natural world. This series ran 2008-2011.

Ebb & Flow: Dialogues Between Art and Water was the next evolution of our residencies and reflected a movement to refocus our artists’ energies from the post-Hurricane Katrina landscape onto the worldwide importance of water as underscored by the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. These residencies ran 2011-2014.

The questions raised by both of these series challenged our thinking about how we fit with the world around us and how we shape it as it shapes us. They sparked conversations across cultural, disciplinary, and professional boundaries that revealed how differently we sometimes see ourselves and nature, and how differently we can express the things we discover about both.

Changing Landscapes Residents
Andrea Meyers, 2008
Tory Tepp, 2009
David Sullivan, 2009
Rafael Santos, 2009
Anne Devine, 2009
Eric Dallimore, 2010
William Cordova, 2010
Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts, 2010
Karen Rich Beall, 2010
Suzanne Bennett, 2011
Bernard Williams, 2011

Ebb & Flow Residents
Benjamin Morris, 2011
Roy Staab, 2011
Nina Nichols, 2012
Sarah Quintana, 2012
Andy Behrle, 2012
Emily Corazon Nelson, 2012
Rebecca Snedeker, 2012
Katie Holten, 2012
Daniel McCormick and Mary O’Brien, 2013
Isabelle Hayeur, 2013
Laurel True, 2013
Sebastian Muellauer, 2014
Monica Haller, 2014
Megan Singleton, 2014

“The founders and staff of A Studio in the Woods work hard to build connections between each artist’s work and the incredible resources of the New Orleans community. At other residencies I’ve been given the key to a cottage or apartment and left to make my own way; here the support of the staff has been like receiving the key to this city.” – Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts, Changing Landscapes Resident 2010

“I came here with some clear intentions, of making music with water: composing songs, experimenting with cups bowls, mason jars and singing bowls.  This residency has been one giant lost and found sound ceremony.  My work needed opening, experimentation, new instruments, more listening, and water.  It needed to be honest.  It needed to be outside and awake at 4 am.  It needed to be shared with others and given away.  It needed to happen right here in the heart and hands.” – Sarah Quintana, Ebb & Flow Resident, 2012

Images:

• Bernard Williams floats his sculpture, Ghost Trails, based on a map he found from the 1940’s tracing the meanderings of the Mississippi River, on the river itself.
• Sarah Quintana makes music with water on the banks of the river.
• Roy Stabb installs his sculpture, titled CHAISE ILE, with the help of volunteers on Bayou Bienvenue in partnership with the Lower Ninth Ward Center for Sustainable Engagement and Development.
• Andy Behrle’s living installation sited on the grounds of Longue Vue House and Gardens.
• Tory Tepp poses on a work in progress. The Spirit Ferry Project built community and investment in sustainable urban agriculture; the boat’s cargo included soil, seeds, and the tools needed to plant living installations in its wake.
• Sebastian Muellauer and Monica Haller launch Muellauer’s Open Research Buoy, an open-sourced, community-driven project that aimed to develop technology to monitor and research endangered water ecosystems, on our pond.
• Benjamin Morris gives a reading of his poetry in the Founders’ Studio.
• Anne Devine during her solo performative distance walk of 38 miles from New Orleans to Hopedale. The walk was created as a “kinetic valentine” to the residents and landscape of the area, a route that highlighted the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet and brought attention to its de-authorization and closure.
• Daniel McCormick and Mary O’Brien on a boat in the southern Louisiana landscape. The pair designed and installed reusable cages to protect cypress seedlings from invasive rodents during their residency.
• Katie Holten exploring Venice, LA. Her explorations formed the basis of a large-scale, site-specific installation titled Drawn to the Edge for New Orleans Museum of Art’s Great Hall series.