A GiveNOLA Giveaway!
April 19, 2021
This GiveNOLA Day, we are celebrating a very special milestone – 20 years of supporting artists. Over the past two decades, we have been building a network of artists working to imagine unique and better solutions to combat the effects of the climate crisis in our community. These are the voices and ideas that carry us forward and keep our hope alive through extraordinary change. A 20th anniversary gift to A Studio in the Woods this GiveNOLA will help support the next 20 years of innovative thinkers – those who can envision a world beyond our current limitations and expand the frame of what is possible. To mark this momentous occasion, we will select one lucky donor over the $50 level to receive a care package from our collection of artists’ products from the last two decades, details below. Make your gift today HERE or mark your calendar for May 4th and join in on this annual day of community support in real time.
Included in our care package:
- Dr. Michael White’s “Dancing in the Sky”, composed during his 2003 Open Call Residency. Dr. White, a renowned clarinetist, composer and jazz historian, has been a pioneer in perpetuating the origins of traditional New Orleans jazz. Among the most respected musicians in the Crescent City, White is one of a few clarinetists to explore and develop an original manifestation of the unique New Orleans clarinet tradition.
- Aurora Levins Morales’ “SILT”, a prose poetry project that explores the natural and social landscapes of the Mississippi River system and the Caribbean Sea. Aurora immersed herself in the ecology, history and people of the Mississippi River, working on these poems during her 2005 River Residency and returning to continue work in 2018 through an Adapatations Residency.
- Benjamin Morris’ “Ecotone”, featuring poems written for specific sites on the land during his 2011 Ebb & Flow Residency. Giving voice and life to an endangered landscape beset by disaster, degradation, and invasion, these poems chart the journey of an unknown group of travelers through a region renowned for its beauty and mystery. Ecotone features nine works by the painter Myrtle von Damitz III.
- Sarah Quintana’s “Miss River” and “The Delta Demitasse”, featuring songs composed during her 2012 Ebb & Flow Residency. In her creation process, Quintana used water as an instrument, transforming her studio into a mixed media sound installation with a number of professional and home made instruments.
- Andy Horowitz’s “Katrina: A History, 1915-2015”, which he worked on during his 2015 Tulane Scholarly Retreat. Winner of the Bancroft prize, the book serves as a history of Katrina while exploring the questions the disaster gives rise to about race, class, community, trauma, inequality, the welfare state, urban and suburban development, extractive industry, and environmental change.
- Byron Asher’s “Skrontch Music”, composed during his 2017 Flint & Steel Residency, which incorporates elements of sound collage and text from primary source documents to address the intertwined lineages of the formation of New Orleans jazz and anti-Jim Crow activism. Byron Asher is a multi-instrumentalist, composer and improviser based in New Orleans.
- Repeat resident Monique Verdin’s “Return to Yakni Chitto: Houma Migrations”, a compilation of her photographs and essays that includes contributions from fellow ASITW alumni Raymond “Moose” Jackson, Kathy Randels, and Nick Slie. Sharing both the history and contemporary culture of the Houma Nation, the book weaves the story of Monique’s family through their experiences over 300 years in the unceded land of south Louisiana.
- Our own “Overstory: A Field Guide to A Studio in the Woods”, which chronicles the history of A Studio in the Woods and the flora and fauna of the bottomland hardwood forest. Produced through a collaboration with Antenna, the book features essays about the land by David Baker, Andy Horowitz and Mead Allison, and includes stories from the founders, staff and residents of A Studio in the Woods.