A Studio in the Woods

Artist Salon with Tia-Simone Gardner
2018-02-28 08:00 - 17:00 UTC | A Studio in the Woods, 13401 Patterson Rd, New Orleans, LA, 70131, United States
You are cordially invited to meet A Studio in the Woods’ newest resident artist, Tia-Simone Gardner. Tia-Simone has been awarded one of five Adaptations Residencies at A Studio in the Woods this season. These residencies invite artists to examine how climate driven adaptations – large and small, historic and contemporary, cultural and scientific – are shaping our future.
This is a potluck, we will provide the main dish but ask that everyone pitch in a little something – drinks, salad, appetizer, dessert…
Please RSVP here by February 26th, 2018 and let us know what you plan to bring. Click here for map and directions: MAP. Please note that parking is limited, save on gas and carpool with a friend!
About the Work – While in residence, Tia-Simone Gardner will begin a new project, Reading the River, Yemaya and Oshun, which uses the Mississippi River, as a space to understand mobility, stasis, and change over time. Using remote controlled video cameras and live-stream technology she proposes to create a seven channel video installation that documents seven sites along the Mississippi River, chosen because of their relationship to the social, racial, and geographic formation of the United States. Working with faculty, students and community members from New Orleans, she will use her time at A Studio in the Woods to do archival research, conduct reading and writing groups that will produce the text for the video installation and to hold a community design workshop to prototype the floating modules that will capture footage of the River.
About the Artist – Tia-Simone is a mixed media artist working in methods of appropriation and installation. She investigates place-based knowledge through personal and collective experiences of space and time. Tia is interested in psychological relationships to locations and the idea of home. She has held residencies in the Netherlands, Sweden and Woodstock, NY and will add New Orleans to that list during her residency. She holds an MFA from the University of Pennsylvania and a BA from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She currently lives in Minneapolis, MN.

Inheriting Whiteness: A Workshop about Ancestors and History
2018-03-03 09:00 - 13:00 UTC | New Orleans Public Library, Algiers, 3014 Holiday Drive, New Orleans, LA, 70131, United States
The New Orleans Center for the Gulf South, A Studio in the Woods, and the New Orleans Public Library will host the workshop Inheriting Whiteness: A Workshop About Slavery, Race Mixing, and White Ancestors in Family History.
*SPACE FOR THE WORKSHOP IS LIMITED. PLEASE APPLY TO BE CONSIDERED.
Date: Saturday, March 3, 2018
Time: 9am–12pm (workshop)
12–1pm (lunch and conversation)
Location: New Orleans Public Library, Algiers
3014 Holiday Drive, New Orleans 70131
Description:

Inheriting Whiteness: A Workshop About Slavery, Race Mixing, and White Ancestors in Family History offers an opportunity to look at challenging facts of family and racial identity and to learn more about one’s own ancestry through research. People of African and European descent are welcome. In this three-hour genealogy workshop, participants explore subjects like slaveholding or enslavement, race mixing, and the role of whiteness in family memory. In the first half of the workshop, participants will be asked to share a brief family story that they have begun to research or wish to investigate. In response, workshop leaders Edward Ball and Greg Osborn will offer guidance and research advice about archives and genealogical methods. During the workshop’s second half, participants will discuss the promise and troubles that come with “difficult” stories of race in family history. After the workshop, participants are invited to share lunch and further conversation. In the South, monuments are coming down, while nationally, stories of race and memory compete for our attention. Inheriting Whiteness, a workshop in genealogy, offers to spread understanding through the shared project of storytelling in family history.
The workshop Inheriting Whiteness will be led by nationally-known author Edward Ball (Slaves in the Family) and by archivist and genealogist Greg Osborn of the New Orleans Public Library’s Louisiana Division. Inheriting Whiteness is sponsored by the New Orleans Center for the Gulf South at Tulane University, A Studio in the Woods, A Program of Tulane University, the New Orleans Public Library’s Louisiana Division/City Archives and Special Collections, and the Algiers Regional Library.
Inheriting Whiteness is a workshop in two parts, followed by lunch.
Part 1 / Sharing Family Stories (90 min.)
What is the “hard stuff” to investigate or talk about in your family history?
Part 1 of the workshop is a story-sharing circle led by archivist and genealogist Greg Osborn of the New Orleans Public Library’s Louisiana Division. Each participant will be asked to share a brief (three-minute) family story that they are investigating. Perhaps it is about the role of slavery, or the behavior of white ancestors, or about mixed-race forebears in the family tree. Workshop leaders will offer feedback and guidance for further research in available archives. By sharing personal histories and by building common questions, the circle of understanding about race and family memory grows.
Part 2 / The Dialogue (90 min.)
How do some stories in the family tree stir emotions—such as those about race mixing, or white supremacy, or slavery and Jim Crow—and what is to be done with those stories? What is the meaning, for us today, of slaveholding or enslavement in the family past?
In Part 2, author Edward Ball leads a conversation about themes and family histories that emerge during the Story Circle. Edward Ball and Greg Osborn together support a dialogue about the racial inheritance that whites and blacks share and seek ways to process it. The aim of the workshop is to help participants claim family stories that remain hidden or are purposefully forgotten.
Lunch
For those who wish to continue the discussion after the workshop, a brown bag lunch will be offered.
Registration
To attend the workshop, please submit an application by February 15th. To enable discussion, the workshop will be held to 20 participants. Only those who complete an application may attend.
Application Link: https://goo.gl/forms/mcL26jdwBkzpEk3K2.
A notice about attendance will go out by email on February 22nd. The workshop takes place on March 3rd.
Workshop Leaders
Edward Ball —
Edward Ball has published five books of history and other nonfiction, including Slaves in the Family, an account of his family’s 170-year history as slaveholders in South Carolina, and The Inventor and the Tycoon, a story of the birth of moving pictures. Currently, he is writing about the Ku Klux Klan in Louisiana, examining the race terror that spread through the South after the Civil War, during Reconstruction.
Winner of the National Book Award for Slaves in the Family, Edward Ball is the recipient of a Cullman Fellowship from the New York Public Library and a Public Scholar Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. He has taught at Yale University and was a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, at Harvard.
Greg Osborn —
Gregory Osborn is a native of Southern California with deep Louisiana roots. He is a graduate of Stanford University with a B. A. in Anthropology: Social Sciences. In 1991, he moved to New Orleans to work with Professor Gwendolyn Midlo Hall on her groundbreaking project “Africans in Colonial Louisiana” as a research assistant. He has worked at the Historic New Orleans Collection, Amistad Research Center, Xavier University, Louisiana State Museum and since 1997 he has worked in the Louisiana Division/City Archives of the New Orleans Public Library as a Library Associate and Archivist. He has been a licensed New Orleans tour guide since 1995, conducting tours in the city’s oldest graveyards. He is an avid genealogist and an expert on Louisiana’s African, Caribbean, and Creole history and cultures.
For more information, contact Regina Cairns at rcairns@tulane.edu or 504-314-2854.

Life of a Klansman: A Lecture by Author Edward Ball
2018-03-06 19:00 UTC | First Unitarian Universalist Church of New Orleans, 2903 Jefferson Ave, New Orleans, LA, United States
The New Orleans Center for the Gulf South and A Studio in the Woods invite you to “Life of a Klansman” with Gulf South Writer in the Woods Edward Ball.
Writer Edward Ball tells the story of a foot soldier in the race battles that erupted in New Orleans and throughout Louisiana during the period after the Civil War. This talk is one part history, one part family memoir.
The Klansman of the tale was an ordinary man, a French creole carpenter who fought with the White League (1874–75) and the Knights of the White Camellia (1869–72), two white supremacist militias in Louisiana in the post-Civil War years. He was also a member of Edward Ball’s own family.
In “Life of a Klansman,” Ball explores the making of a single guerilla fighter who violently opposed the experiment in racial democracy introduced in Louisiana during Reconstruction (1865–77). Louisiana saw one of the first attempts at race equity in the South. How did it fail? And why did white supremacy take root instead? As racial violence returns to public view today, Edward Ball explores the birth of tribal white identity through the eyes of his great-grandfather, a man active in the founding generation of the Ku Klux Klan. Whiteness has a history that is hidden and intentionally forgotten. It is a story relevant to the living, particularly now.
This lecture is the third public event in the inaugural Gulf South Writer in the Woods program, a two-year study with Edward Ball. The Gulf South Writer in the Woods program is co-sponsored by A Studio in the Woods and the New Orleans Center for the Gulf South (Nola Gulf South ) and includes a residency, public lectures and a workshop exploring race, family and place.
Edward Ball was born in Savannah, Georgia and raised in Louisiana, South Carolina, and Florida. He is an author who has written about the legacies of slavery in the Deep South. Edward’s book “Slaves in the Family” tells the story of his father’s family in South Carolina, the Balls, who were major slaveholders for 170 years, as well as the stories of ten of the African American families the Balls once enslaved. Slaves in the Family won the National Book Award for nonfiction, became a New York Times bestseller, was featured on Oprah and is widely translated. Edward Ball lives in New Haven, Connecticut, where he taught for five years at Yale University. He is working on a book about New Orleans during the years after the Civil War.
The lecture will take place at 7pm on Tuesday, March 6 at the First Unitarian Universalist Church of New Orleans, 2903 Jefferson Ave.

For more information, contact Regina Cairns at the New Orleans Center for the Gulf South at 504-314-2854 or rcairns@tulane.edu and visit our website: tulane.edu/NOCGS.

Uncommon Exchanges: Clay
2018-03-21 | Newcomb Art Museum, Woldenberg Art Center, New Orleans, LA, United States
In this new speaker series presented by Newcomb Art Museum in partnership with A Studio in the Woods, The ByWater Institute at Tulane University, and Nola Gulf South, unlikely pairings of Tulane and Gulf South experts use an aspect of Newcomb’s latest exhibition as the catalyst for interdisciplinary dialogue. In this edition, current resident Tia-Simon Gardner and English Chair Mike Kuczynski will use clay as the launching point for a deeper look into their own research and how they may, no matter how unlikely, overlap.
The discussion will be moderated by a representative from the hosting organizations and be held in the museum. The discussion will last around 45 minutes with 15 minutes of Q&A time at the end for audience engagement.
Both New Orleans and Tulane communities are encouraged to attend and take advantage of this opportunity to engage with academics, artists, and activists in a variety of fields.
Image Credit: Ana Gomez, “Combo Talavera”, 2008-2010, handpainted stoneware

A Thing that Floats: Collaborative Design Charrette
2018-03-22 18:00 - 20:00 UTC | Albert and Tina Small Center for Collaborative Design, 1725 Barronne Street, New Orleans, LA, United States
Join current Adaptations Resident Tia-Simone Gardner for ‘A Thing that Floats: Collaborative Design Charrette’. Participants in the charrette will collectively work on drawing designs and generate ideas for prototypes for small floating structures that can house cameras to capture images on the water. The goal is to think about the process of making images on a powerful moving body of water. This process includes thinking about the apparatus used to make those images and offers us an opportunity to collectively think about how we see and surveil the bodies of water that are a part of this city. The charrette will offer time to collaboratively think and talk about how, if, or when we perceive the bodies of water around us. Thursday, March 22, 6-8pm at the Albert and Tina Small Center for Collaborative Design, 1725 Barronne Street.

Bring Your Own + NOMA Present: 'A Queen Within'
2018-03-23 18:00 UTC | NOMA’s Besthoff Sculpture Garden, One Collins C Diboll Cir, New Orleans, LA, United States
Recent Adaptations Resident Aubrey Edwards will be co-hosting the next iteration of Bring Your Own, a live storytelling pop-up series that takes place in living rooms, backyards, after-hours storefronts and other intimate spaces within the New Orleans community. The theme is “A Queen Within”, featuring stories that reimagine gender, conformity, royalty, & power. Friday March 23, 6pm, at The Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden at the New Orleans Museum of Art, $5 admission.

Fossil Free Fest
2018-04-02 - 2018-04-08 | LA
In New Orleans, we know that times of transition are best met with community and celebration. Our society’s impending transition from the fossil fuel era is no different. Timed to precede the Jazz & Heritage Festival Presented by Shell, Fossil Free Festival (FFF) will unite community for a week of art, food, music, film screenings, and conversation, carving out a dedicated and open space for us to dig deep into the ethics and complexities of funding art and education with fossil fuel money and to imagine a Fossil Free Culture. A Studio in the Woods is a proud partner of Fossil Free Fest.
** Free and Open to the Public (including meals)! **
Register today!
http://fossilfreefest.org/
Films April 2-5 | Fest April 6-8
Films | April 2-5
Evening film screenings @ 6:00pm
The Broad Theater
636 N. Broad Street
April 2: My Louisiana Love, a film by Monique Michelle Verdin (offsite; location TBC)
April 3: Maquilapolis: City of Factories, a film by Vicki Funari and Sergio De La Torre
April 4: When Two Worlds Collide, a film by Heidi Brandenburg and Mathew Orzel
April 5: StoryShift Shorts Salon: featuring short films Cry You One, The Condor & The Eagle, Defend Puerto Rico, Water Warriors, along with storytellers Monique Verdin, Nick Slie, Michael “Quess” Moore, Bryan Parras, Yudith Nieto, Eli Jacobs-Fantauzzi, Michael Premo, Tara Rodriguez Besosa, Clement Guerra, Cherri Foytlin and Jayeesha Dutta.
Fest | April 6: “Equity”
Joan Mitchell Center
2275 Bayou Road
5pm-8:30pm
Keynote by Monique Harden of Deep South Center for Environmental Justice. Performances by Sunni Patterson and Sultana Isham. Screening of a special preview of Mossville. Panel discussion on “Equity After 300 Years of Extraction” moderated by Gia Hamilton, featuring Michael Dardar, Shana Griffin, Angela Kinlaw, Yudith Nieto, and Rebecca Snedeker.
The opening evening of FFF will connect the legacy and present of our nation’s extractive economy and culture (from plantations to petroleum and beyond); the crisis of climate change and its impact on communities in Louisiana; and the role and responsibility of individuals and institutions to hold the fossil fuel industry accountable.
Fest | April 7: “Complicity”
Joan Mitchell Center
2275 Bayou Road
9am-7pm
Keynote by Beka Economopoulos of Not An Alternative. Environmental Justice Tour by Hidden History and Louisiana Bucket Brigade (departure from and return to Joan Mitchell Center) and afternoon keynotes and facilitated group discussions. Performances by Sacramento Knoxx and Quintron and Miss Pussycat. “Complicity” session facilitated by Jackie Sumell. Bring Your Own Stories + FFF Present: “Action!”. Energy Fair presented by Alliance for Affordable Energy, EnergyWise and the Green Project. Lunch by Brown Girl Kitchen. Coffee and pastries by Shake Sugary.
Fest | April 8: “Vision to Action”
Grow Dat Youth Farm
150 Zachary Taylor Drive
9am-6:30pm
Keynote by Jessi Parfait. Performances including Rory Danger & the Danger Dangers, Spirit & Sparrow, Loup Garou, Raymond Moose Jackson, and “One Question” unity scroll by Rachel Schragis. “Vision” session facilitated by Sage Crump of Complex Movements. “Action” workshop with Another Gulf Is Possible. Buffet lunch and dinner by Carmo. Coffee and pastries by Shake Sugary.
FFF’s official after party is at Ace Hotel New Orleans!
Featuring: DJ AFRO/ANARCHY!
600 Carondelet Street
7pm-11pm

Fallen Fruit of New Orleans: Opening Reception
2018-04-13 17:30 - 21:00 UTC | Newcomb Art Museum, Woldenberg Art Center, New Orleans, LA, United States
Join us for the opening reception for Fallen Fruit’s EMPIRE, a new art installation on view at the Newcomb Art Museum. Friday, April 13. 5:30pm – 9pm
Celebrating the New Orleans Tricentennial, EMPIRE is an art installation by Los Angeles-based artists Fallen Fruit, David Allen Burns and Austin Young, commissioned and presented by Newcomb Art Museum, A Studio in the Woods, and Pelican Bomb. Through this assembly of over 300 objects, the artists will transform the entire museum into one immersive artwork.
The project uses objects culled from the diverse archives and collections across campus, including art, sound, documents of record, material culture, and artifacts. It activates objects held by the Amistad Research Center, Hogan Jazz Archive, Latin American Library, Louisiana Research Collection, Middle American Research Institute, Newcomb Art Museum, Newcomb College Institute, Royal D. Suttkus Fish Collection / Tulane University Biodiversity Research Institute, and Southeastern Architectural Archive, among other campus collections, shifting the lexicon of historical meanings into one work of art.
EMPIRE critically examines the principles of archives and anthropology to interrogate the ways histories are told, remembered, and revised. The immersive artwork considers the historical and contemporary effects that colonialism, slavery, trade, and tourism have had on the movement of culture across and beyond borders to better understand the geographic and cultural position of New Orleans in relationship to Africa, the Caribbean, and Latin America. EMPIRE invites viewers to creatively interpret the displayed objects, their connections, and their juxtapositions to generate new meanings.
EMPIRE at Newcomb Art Museum of Tulane University is part of “Fallen Fruit of New Orleans” a suite of site-specific projects taking place throughout New Orleans from June 2017 through June 2018, commissioned and presented by Newcomb Art Museum, A Studio in the Woods, and Pelican Bomb. “Fallen Fruit of New Orleans” was initiated by Pelican Bomb in 2015.

Fruit for All: Fun for All Ages
2018-04-14 10:00 - 13:00 UTC | Newcomb Art Museum, Woldenberg Art Center, New Orleans, LA, United States
In partnership with A Studio in the Woods, Pelican Bomb, Fallen Fruit, and the New Orleans Center for the Gulf South (Nola Gulf South‘s) Rosenthal Blumenfeld Gulf South Foodways Program, Newcomb Art Museum will host a free activity day for all-ages featuring zine-making, bandana tie-dye, fruit portraits, roving archivist tours, a fruit-themed DJ, food trucks, cotton candy, lemonade stands, and so much more! Free and open to the public; art and fruit lovers of all ages are invited to come join in on the fun!

Studio on the Half Shell
2018-04-19 18:30 - 21:00 UTC | LA
An evening benefiting A Studio in the Woods
Hosted by Patricia Strachan at her beautiful Greek revival home, built in 1848 in the historic Garden District
Thursday, April 19
6:30–9:00 in the evening
Oysters, seafood and more by Pêche Chef Ryan Prewitt
Music by Linnzi Zaorski
Cocktails to wet your whistle
Literary and artistic offerings from Jason Berry,
John Kleinschmidt, Julia Kumari Drapkin and more!
Oyster experts and silent auction

Bee Palace Celebration
2018-05-17 15:00 - 17:00 UTC | Audubon Zoo, 6500 Magazine Street, New Orleans, LA, United States
Join us at Audubon Zoo where we will celebrate The Bee Palace, a sculpture by Providence, RI artist Esther Solondz.
During Esther’s 2017 fellowship at A Studio in the Woods she created The Bee Palace as a nesting site for wild solitary bees. Installed in the Pollinator Garden at Audubon Zoo, it has successfully been promoting our local bee population in New Orleans.
Esther will be on hand, along with staff from the Audubon Insectarium and the zoo to applaud the ongoing project and answer question, (such as what are wild solitary bees anyway?!). Entrance for this free event will be at the Education gates (to the right of the main zoo entrance).

Afro-Haitian Dance Workshop with Jean-Sebastian Duvilaire
2018-05-24 18:30 - 20:00 UTC | Tekrema Center for Art and Culture, 1616 Caffin Ave, New Orleans, LA, 70117, United States
Join current Adaptations Resident Jean-Sebastien Duvilaire for two Afro-Haitian dance workshops, Thursday May 24 and Thursday May 31, 6:30-8pm at Tekrema Center for Art and Culture, 1616 Caffin Avenue, New Orleans, LA 70117. Classes are open to all by donation.
Jean-Sebastien Duvilaire (BabaSeb) is a young Hougan and Haitian Artist who strongly believes in the use of the performing arts to trigger social change. He has trained in African and Afro-Haitian techniques, as well as in classical ballet, modern, and contemporary dance. Jean-Sebastien has worked with many artists internationally, and travels to teach, choreograph, and collaborate with artists throughout the U.S., the Caribbean, and West Africa. He is the founder of the AfrikAyiti Project, and always wishes to promote Africa together with Haiti in sharing his culture where ever he teaches or performs. He recently moved to Boston, where he has been performing with JAE/Jean Appolon Expressions. Outside of JAE, Jean-Sebastien continues to teach and choreograph, pursue study of Vodou, and runs a small cacao processing company in Haiti called Tahomey. His commitment to cultural sustainability is mirrored in his work with Tahomey, which employs and networks small-scale cacao farmers in rural Haiti.

Tè Glise: Exploring Relational Ecologies of Cultural Practice through Haiti-New Orleans Connections
2018-06-01 14:00 UTC | New Orleans Jazz Museum, 400 Esplanade Ave, New Orleans, LA, United States
Cultivated by Dasha Chapman, Jean-Sebastien Duvilaire, Ann Mazzocca, and Phil Rodriguez, in collaboration with New Orleans-based artists
Tè glise, tè tremble. Sliding land, sinking land. This collaborative community-based performance project puts into conversation the artists’ Haitian and broader African diaspora performance knowledges with New Orleans ecologies, with the intention of excavating the cultural survivals integral to both. Developed in relation to archival research, community engagement workshops, ethnographic and site-specific inquiry, the work explores the relationship between Haiti|Vodou and New Orleans cultural vitality as it relates to ecological precarity. The artists hope to contribute a contemporary Haitian perspective through this work, and the project’s long-term nature is process-oriented, shared in multiple iterations.
On June 1st at 2pm at the New Orleans Jazz Museum, the artists offer components of the work produced during their residency at A Studio in the Woods. The event will be an open format, including dance and music performance, video, and conversation.

Bios:
Dasha Chapman is a scholar, dancer, and community connector. Dasha received her PhD in Performance Studies from New York University, and is a dancer who works in African diasporic techniques and collaborates with choreographers in New York, Haiti, and Durham, NC. She has collaborated with Jean-Sebastien Duvilaire and Ann Mazzocca on performance, teaching and writing projects since 2015. Currently Dasha is Visiting Assistant Professor of Critical Dance Studies at Hampshire College/Five College Dance. While Postdoctoral Associate in the Department of African and African American Studies at Duke University, Dasha worked alongside Duke’s Haiti Lab, the Program in Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies, and Dance. In the summer of 2017 she was in residence at the Power Plant Gallery in Durham developing a local history performance project, “Haiti/Hayti/History.” Her writing appears in The Black Scholar, Dance Chronicle, and Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory in a special issue she co-edited on Queer Haitian Performance and Affiliation (May 2017). dashaarielchapman.wordpress.com
Jean-Sebastien Duvilaire (BabbaSeb) is a Haitian Artist and young Houngan who strongly believes in the use of the performing arts to trigger social change. He has trained in African and Afro-Haitian techniques, as well as in classical ballet, modern, and contemporary dance. Sebastien has worked with many artists internationally and travels to teach, choreograph, and collaborate with artists throughout the U.S., the Caribbean, and West Africa. He is the founder of the AfrikAyiti Project and always wishes to promote Africa together with Haiti in sharing his culture wherever he teaches or performs. He recently moved to Boston, where he has been working with JAE/Jean Appolon Expressions. Outside of JAE, Jean-Sebastien continues to teach and choreograph, pursue the study of Vodou and runs a small cacao processing company in Haiti called Dahomey. His commitment to cultural sustainability is mirrored in his work with Dahomey, which employs and networks small-scale cacao farmers in rural Haiti.
Ann Mazzocca is a choreographer, performer, scholar, and educator who received an MFA in Experimental Choreography from the University of California, Riverside and danced professionally with Haitian and Afro-Cuban folkloric companies for several years based in New York City. Mazzocca performs and presents her choreography based in Afro-Caribbean folkloric themes and contemporary postmodern approaches to composition on the local to international levels from New York City to Haiti. Since 2015, she has collaborated with Dasha Chapman and Jean-Sebastien Duvilaire in creating and performing site-specific works in Port-au-Prince and Jérémie. Her writing focuses on Haitian ritual choreography and African diasporic folkloric performance including a book chapter published in the edited volume, Vodou in the Haitian Experience: A Black Atlantic Perspective, multiple co-authored journal articles in The Geography Teacher and a forthcoming co-authored chapter in the Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Dance. Chapman, Duvilaire, and Mazzocca co-authored an essay with collaborator Yonel Charles, which appears in Women and Performance: a journal of feminist theory. She is an Associate Professor of Dance at Christopher Newport University in Newport News, VA. www.annmazzocca.com
Phil Rodriguez (B.A. Jazz Studies, University of Southern California Thornton School of Music) is a trumpet player and composer, with many years of professional freelance performing and recording experience in both Los Angeles and New York City. He has also toured nationally and internationally with a variety of groups, most recently as a member of funk/soul outfit Sister Sparrow & the Dirty Birds, who have collaborated and shared the stage with a number of New Orleans artists including Trombone Shorty, Rebirth Brass Band, George Porter, Jr. and Glenn David Andrews. Phil also tours with up-and-coming vocalist Kat Wright and will be participating in the Listen/Space Commissions Residency in Utah, June 2018. This is his first collaboration with the group. www.philrodriguezmusic.com

Uncommon Exchanges: Juneteenth
2018-06-19 18:00 - 20:00 UTC | Newcomb Art Museum, Woldenberg Art Center, New Orleans, LA, United States
Newcomb Art Museum presents Uncommon Exchanges, a unique dialogue between unlikely pairings of Tulane and Gulf South experts, in partnership with A Studio in the Woods, The ByWater Institute at Tulane University, and New Orleans Center for the Gulf South . For this special program marking Juneteenth, artist Brandan “Bmike” Odums will be in dialogue with Dr. Rosanne Adderley, Associate Professor of African Diaspora History at Tulane University. Assistant Director of the New Orleans Center for the Gulf South Dr. Denise Frazier will moderate. The program is free and open to the public, and held in the Newcomb Art Museum at 6pm on June 19.

Fruit Tree Park Dedication
2018-06-30 09:00 - 11:00 UTC | Bayou Bienvenue Wetland Triangle, 5600 Florida Ave., New Orleans, LA, 70117
Join A Studio in the Woods, Fallen Fruit, Pelican Bomb, and Newcomb Art Museum for a celebration of the recently planted fruit park at the Bayou Bienvenue Wetland Triangle in the Lower Ninth Ward.
In these divided times, there’s one thing we can all agree on: fruit is delicious! Internationally acclaimed artists Fallen Fruit (David Burns and Austin Young) began their mission in 2004 to celebrate the endlessly giving resource of public fruit trees. They started by mapping the locations of fruit trees growing on or over public property in their neighborhood of Silver Lake in Los Angeles. Thirteen years later, the duo has worked in over 30 cities using fruit trees, public space, and collective participation as artistic media to transform communities with sweetness, leaving behind living sculptures that continue to give back.
This past winter, Pelican Bomb, A Studio in the Woods, and Newcomb Art Museum of Tulane University brought Fallen Fruit to New Orleans. The artists worked in partnership with The Lower 9th Ward Center for Sustainable Engagement and Development and the City of New Orleans Department of Parks and Parkways to plant networks of publicly accessible fruit trees in two neighborhoods, along the Bayou Bienvenue Wetland Triangle in the Lower 9th Ward and in Pontchartrain Park in Gentilly. Residents and community groups across the city joined in the fun, planting trees in front of their homes, churches, and businesses to provide a much-needed resource—fresh, healthy food—to their friends, neighbors, and anybody passing by!
Now join us for a fun dedication and celebration of this brand new public fruit park!

Aurora Levins Morales reading work in progress from 'Silt'
2018-11-03 10:30 - 12:00 UTC | Ashe Power House Theater, 1731 Baronne St., New Orleans, LA, 70113
Current Adaptations Resident Aurora Levins Morales will present a reading of work in progress on Saturday, November 3, 10:30am at Ashe Power House Theater, 1731 Baronne St. New Orleans. Free and open to the public.
Aurora Levins Morales is an internationally known Puerto Rican Jewish feminist poet and essayist whose work explores issues of identity, social justice, and the interwoven social and natural histories of our landscapes and our bodies. Raised in a house full of books on an abandoned coffee farm in the mountains of Western Puerto Rico by an ecologist father and an artist-intellectual mother, Aurora began writing as a child and never stopped. She’s the author of six books, and her work has appeared in dozens of anthologies, been incorporated into posters, theater performances, Jewish shabbat services, and bathroom stall graffiti. Her writing is both intimate and global, personal and analytical, drawing from multiple traditions, including Latin American feminist testimonio. She likes best to write sequences of short prose poetry sections that amplify, argue with and enrich each other, allowing her to fully express the complexity of her themes. Her current project, Silt weaves together prose poetry water stories of the Mississippi watershed and the Caribbean Sea.

FORESTival: A Celebration of Art and Nature
2018-11-10 11:00 - 17:00 UTC | A Studio in the Woods, 13401 Patterson Rd, New Orleans, LA, 70131, United States
Join us at A Studio in the Woods for the 8th annual FORESTival: a celebration of art and nature!
Suggested $10 Donation*, KIDS FREE!
Music and Performances:
12:00pm * Les Cenelles
1:00pm * Punica Granatum’s Bittersweet Orbit
2:00pm * The Original Pinettes Brass Bandjohnjohn
3:00pm * Jonathan Mayers’ Pirogue Poetry
3:30pm * GIVERS
Walks in the Woods:
11:30am * TREES with ASITW Environmental Curator and botanist David Baker
12:30pm * BUGS with ecologist Dorothy Cheruiyot
3:00pm * TREES with ASITW Environmental Curator and botanist David Baker
Musical performances by GIVERS, The Original Pinettes Brass Band, and Les Cenelles
Resident and guest artists John Kleinschmidt, Jonathan “rat de bois farouche” Mayers, Brandon Ballengée Studio presenting Crude Life, Delta Collaborative‘s TIMESHIP #39, Punica Granatum Collective performing Bittersweet Orbit, Antenna‘s Draw-a-Thon, Paper Monuments and more!
Food by Crêpes à la Cart- New Orleans, Pirogues, Faubourg Farms and Quintin’s Natural Ice Cream & Sorbet. No outside food or beverage.
Art activities in the Kids in the Woods Studio and walks in the woods with scientists.
FORESTival is the only time during the year that A Studio in the Woods is open to the public at large and this signature celebration of art and nature is fun for the whole family. A Studio in the Woods is located in Lower Algiers at 13401 Patterson Rd. New Orleans LA, 70131, about a 25 minute drive from downtown New Orleans.
*About our suggested donation: $10 helps keep our programming going and cover the costs of producing the festival. You might consider paying less if you are un- or under- employed, have significant debt, lack access to familial/other assets and/or are supporting dependents. You might consider paying more if you have full time employment that enables you to meet your basic needs and have expendable income, you have no dependents and little debt, and/or you have access to multiple assets or familial wealth. We seek to welcome all people to our space and encourage you to pay what is comfortable for you.

Artist Salon with Manon Bellet
2018-11-19 06:30 - 21:00 UTC | A Studio in the Woods, 13401 Patterson Rd, New Orleans, LA, 70131, United States
Meet A Studio in the Woods’ newest resident artist, Manon Bellet, who has been awarded one of six Adaptations Residencies at A Studio in the Woods this season. Manon will present on her work to the group and then we will all share a meal.
This is a potluck, we will provide the main dish but ask that everyone pitch in a little something – drinks, salad, appetizer, dessert…
Manon Bellet is a French visual and olfactory artist who has lived and worked in New Orleans since 2016. Manon will extract scents from strategically chosen historic places in New Orleans and its surrounding regions which are destined to disappear soon due to ecological issues. This work aims to highlight the notions of being rooted and uprooted, especially in Louisiana. The project intends to show the risks for people who remain attached to their land, their territory, their place. Through the experience of these scents the artist hopes to broaden awareness of environmentally vulnerable areas.

Empire Closing Party
2018-12-08 16:00 - 19:00 (America/Chicago) | Newcomb Art Museum, Woldenberg Art Center, New Orleans, LA, United States
Newcomb Art Museum’s tricentennial installation EMPIRE by Fallen Fruit closes on December 22. But before that happens, let’s celebrate the run of this incredible show in style! Join us on December 8 for a day full of festivities and friends as we mark the close with three unique experiences.
At 12pm, bring out the whole family for a behind-the-scenes tour of the exhibition with Justin Mann, the Collections Manager of The Royal D. Suttkus Fish Collection at the Tulane University Biodiversity Research Institute (Tulane’s infamous “Fish Library). Learn all about why Tulane has the largest fish library in the world, how it got started, and all about those jars of fish in EMPIRE.
Beginning at 4pm, enjoy an improvisational jazz concert featuring composer Courtney Bryan from the Tulane Newcomb Department of Music as she (along with special guests Denise Frazier, Free feral, and Tarrah Reynolds) interpret the objects on view using an interdisciplinary framework.
From 5 to 7 pm, the party continues with light refreshments, wine, and, best of all, a chance to meet David Allen Burns and Austin Young (the amazing artists that make up Fallen Fruit) and the team behind #EMPIRE.
This event is FREE and open to all! So join us on Saturday, December 8 and let’s celebrate in style!
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About the exhibition:
Celebrating the New Orleans tricentennial, EMPIRE is an art installation by Los Angeles based artists Fallen Fruit (David Allen Burns and Austin Young) commissioned and presented by Newcomb Art Museum, A Studio in the Woods, and Pelican Bomb. Through the assembly of over 400 objects culled from Tulane-affiliated archives, the artists have transformed the entire museum into one immersive artwork that explores the history of people and place in terms of cultural legacy, historical narrative, and social constructs.
EMPIRE at Newcomb Art Museum of Tulane University is part of “Fallen Fruit of New Orleans” a suite of site-specific projects taking place throughout New Orleans from June 2017 through June 2018, commissioned and presented by Newcomb Art Museum, A Studio in the Woods, and Pelican Bomb. “Fallen Fruit of New Orleans” was initiated by Pelican Bomb in 2015.

Artist Salon with Ash Arder
2018-12-19 18:30 - 21:30 (America/Chicago) | A Studio in the Woods, 13401 Patterson Rd, New Orleans, LA, 70131, United States
adaThe event is free, but RSVP is required.
Meet A Studio in the Woods’ newest resident artist, Ash Arder, who has been awarded one of six Adaptations Residencies at A Studio in the Woods this season. Ash will present on her work to the group and then we will all share a meal.
This is a potluck, we will provide the main dish but ask that everyone pitch in a little something – drinks, salad, appetizer, dessert…
Please RSVP via the ticket link by December 17, 2018 and let us know what you plan to bring. Please note that parking is limited, save on gas and carpool with a friend!
About the work: Ash Arder will continue developing a multi-sensory body of work that examines human-plant relations through the lens of agricultural experiments in 19th century Louisiana. Archival reports from these experiments and found field recordings will be used as source material for new works that question historic human-plant relations and speculate about the future of that exchange.
About the artist: Ash Arder is a transdisciplinary artist who creates idea and object-based systems for interpreting and re-imagining interspecies relations (i.e. relations between humans and plants). This highly flexible, research-based approach examines these relationships primarily through pop culture and historic lenses. Arder’s systems and “exercises” take on forms including installation, sound, drawing, electronics, video and performance. Each ponders the role of agency, both active and passive, in co-creating an event or phenomenon. Arder is interested in complicating viewers’ own understanding of their proximity to and participation in the systems and cycles reflected in her work and subsequently at larger societal and ecological scales. These complications or moments of tension between living things, objects and space serve as a catalyst for interrogating the very conditions responsible for the glitch. Arder’s work and research probe historical events and pop culture (future history) for insight into what she understands to be “relational glitches,” or ruptures in empathy.

Walk in the Woods with David Baker
2019-01-11 12:00 - 14:00 (America/Chicago) | A Studio in the Woods, 13401 Patterson Rd, New Orleans, LA, 70131, United States
50 years ago, Joe and Lucianne Carmichael purchased the land at 13401 River Road where A Studio in the Woods now lives. Since then, we have hosted more than 130 artists and scholars on the banks of the Mississippi River and worked hard to protect our precious bottomland hardwood forest.
The event is free, but please RSVP via this ticket link
Help us kick off our golden jubilee by getting into the Woods with Environmental Curator David Baker! This year one of the many celebratory programs we have planned are quarterly walks in the woods. Chat with David over lunch and then head out into the woods to learn about his work as Environmental Curator and the land first-hand.
Walks will take place on January 11, March 29, September 13, and at our 9th annual FORESTival on November 16. BYO picnic lunch at noon, walk will begin at 1pm.

Artist Salon with Geraldine Laurendeau
2019-01-24 18:30 - 21:00 UTC | A Studio in the Woods, 13401 Patterson Rd, New Orleans, LA, 70131, United States
Artist Salon with Geraldine Laurendeau
Join us Thursday, January 24, 2019, 6:30pm at A Studio in the Woods to meet our newest Adaptations resident, Geraldine Laurendeau.
This is a potluck, we will provide the main dish but ask that everyone pitch in a little something – drinks, salad, appetizer, dessert…
Geraldine Laurendeau is a multidisciplinary artist from Montreal. A trained ethnologist, she collaborates with First Nations, museums and research institutions as an independent curator, designer and consultant on projects related to environment, land planning, heritage, culture and biodiversity conservation, food security and health. During her residency, Geraldine will look at how Louisiana’s diverse cultural groups have developed strategies to adapt and deal with the abundance of water in the region. Geraldine will use drawing and photography to document the biogeography of the area, studying topography, water movements, landscape forms and vernacular architecture. Through this work Geraldine will explore solutions while creating a water resilient site-specific earthwork that will evolve over time.

Byron Asher's Skrontch Music
2019-02-12 19:30 - 21:00 UTC | Marigny Opera House, 725 St. Ferdinand St., New Orleans, LA, 70117, United States
Skrontch Music is an ongoing composition project led by multi-instrumentalist Byron Asher that investigates the history and lineage of New Orleans music in its social and political context through contemporary jazz composition and collective improvisation. The initial Skrontch Music suite was premiered in 2017 and explores the intertwined histories of New Orleans jazz and anti-Jim Crow activism in the early twentieth century. Asher worked on the piece during a 2017 Flint and Steel Residency at A Studio in the Woods. At the Marigny Opera House, the Skrontch ensemble will perform the original hour-long composition as well as a second set of brand new music.
Featuring Shaye Cohn, Emily Frederickson, Steve Glenn, Tomas Majcherski, Aurora Nealand, Ricardo Pascal, James Singleton, and Paul Thibodeaux.
Doors at 7PM | Suggested Donation: $15 General Admission / $10 Student & Senior

Territoires d'Impermanence
2019-02-22 12:30 - 14:00 UTC | A Studio in the Woods, 13401 Patterson Rd, New Orleans, LA, 70131, United States
Current Adaptations Resident Geraldine Laurendeau has been collaborating with Environmental Curator David Baker to investigate and respond to our site. Drawing on David’s fifteen years of experience restoring and managing our forest, Geraldine has installed several site-specific earthworks titled “Territoires d’Impermanence”, that remember, reveal, observe, experiment and mitigate features of this land.
Join us on Friday, February 22, 12:30 – 2pm for lunch and an artist tour of Geraldine’s installations. The event is free but please RSVP here.

Bulbancha to Tamarán
2019-03-09 - 2019-03-10 | Los Isleños Heritage and Cultural Society, 1357 Bayou Rd., St. Bernard, LA, 70085, United States
The Land Memory Bank and Seed Exchange will be activating for the 44th Annual Los Islenos Fiesta, March 9th and 10th, on the banks of St. Bernard Parish’s Bayou Terre aux Boeufs.
In the fall of 2018, in celebration of the 300 year colonial establishment of the city of New Orleans, the Cultural Office of the Embassy of Spain, SPAIN-USA Foundation and A Studio in the Woods partnered to offer a Spanish Exchange residency between the Mississippi River Delta and the Canary Islands. Saint Bernard Parish interdisciplinary storyteller and director of the Land Memory Bank, Monique Verdin, was the local artist awarded the opportunity to participate in the exchange on the island of Tamarán (Gran Canaria). Discoveries documented during Monique’s time on the island of Tamarán will be exhibited at the Fiesta, near the Land Memory Bank’s medicine wheel garden.
You can find the Land Memory Bank where the bottomland hardwood forest begins where they will be distributing indigenous pollinator seeds and offering opportunities for children and adults to weave with palmetto materials from the bottomland hardwoods of Saint Bernard Parish.
Another Gulf is Possible will partner to offer at sunset a CineSolar screening of video from Bulbancha (New Orleans) to Tamarán (Gran Canaria).

Artist Salon with Hannah Pepper-Cunningham
2019-03-12 18:30 - 21:00 UTC | A Studio in the Woods, 13401 Patterson Rd, New Orleans, LA, 70131, United States
Tuesday, March 12, 2019, 6:30pm at A Studio in the Woods, join us for a potluck and to learn more about our final Adaptations Resident of the 2018-19 season, Hannah Pepper-Cunningham!
Hannah Pepper-Cunningham has been creating performance work in New Orleans since 2009. A member of Mondo Bizarro from 2009-2018, Hannah served as co-artistic director of training programs and collaboratively developed and performed in “Cry You One” and “The Way at Midnight.” A member of Southerners on New Ground and Alternate ROOTS, Hannah organizes in multi-racial, multi-issue coalitions for racial and economic justice and LGBTQ liberation. In collaboration with New Orleans-based artists and organizers Hannah will create “Unfamiliar” (working title), a touring performance and workshop that will engage people to shift their relationships of care and responsibility in the era of climate change. Drawing on Hannah’s work in live performance, actor training and traditional music; the performance and accompanying workshop will be built to support organizing in multiracial movements for climate justice in the Southeast.
The event is free, but please RSVP here.

Post Coastal Film Retrospective at Tulane Climate Action Week
2019-03-20 06:00 - 20:00 UTC | Tulane University Jones Hall Room 102, 6801 Freret Street, New Orleans, LA, 70118, United States
New Orleans Video Access Center and A Studio in the Woods present a picture of life on the coast and a historical retrospective in three short films from the Post Coastal series. Refuge, Locked, and Ends of the Earth (a film from the 70s by local artists about Plaquemines Parish) provide a unique spectrum of perspectives on Louisiana’s current crisis of land loss. A panel discussion and Q+A are to follow. Wednesday, March 20th, 6pm. Tulane University Jones Hall Room 102, free and open to the public.
Click here to learn more about Tulane Climate Action Week.

Aurora Levins Morales: Gulf South Poetry and Ecology
2019-03-21 18:00 - 19:30 UTC | Rogers Memorial Chapel, Tulane University, 1229 Broadway St., New Orleans, LA, 70118, United States
New Orleans Center for the Gulf South welcomes you to Tulane’s Climate Action Week with a Thursday poetry reading from poet-scholar Aurora Levins Morales.
Levins Morales calls us to face the urgency and danger of the present with imagination and hope, making the time and space to dream together, dream big, and set a real course toward our dreaming. She will be reading from and discussing Silt, a prose poetry collection exploring the natural and social histories of the Mississippi River through Caribbean Jewish eyes, through the stories of her own body and through her vision of ecological justice, a global culture of reciprocity, generosity and inclusion.
“This is the ceremony of our cells, each one a sip of water, a tiny ocean. So let the water in you call to the water in me. Let the water in our veins call to the water in the world, one rainstorm gathering over the dry paararllaces, ready to pour down quenching relief, for we are all of us thirsty. As we gather ourselves in prayerful determination on the edges of endangered streams, look out over the peril and grief of dead zones that should teem with life, let the water in me call to the water in you, and from the deepest waters of our beings all of us feel the pull of a single moon bright with reflected light, and all move together, ebb tide and flow, knowing that the rivers are ancient, but this moment is new.”
Visit her website: http://www.auroralevinsmorales.com/.
This event is free and open to the public. For more information, please contact Regina Cairns at rcairns@tulane.edu or 504-314-2854.

Earthing/Unearthing: Exploring Our Kinship with this Land
2019-03-23 10:00 - 12:30 UTC | Newcomb Hall 119, Tulane University, 1229 Broadway St., New Orleans, LA, 70118, United States
Calling all writers: aspiring, experienced, and/or interested!
FREE WRITERS WORKSHOP, SATURDAY, MARCH 23, 10am-12:30pm, NEWCOMB HALL #119, TULANE UNIVERSITY
New Orleans Center for the Gulf South welcomes you to apply for a workshop with former A Studio in the Woods Adaptations Resident and renowned Puerto Rican-Jewish poet and scholar Aurora Levins Morales.

The workshop is called Earthing/Unearthing: Exploring Our Kinship with this Land. Levins Morales will use a collective process to probe stories about how we’re connected to the land and waters of the Gulf Coast. Participants will work together to name questions, examine contradictions, and craft new versions of kinship.
Apply here: https://goo.gl/forms/sSkvfOTeEqUZVlBK2.
15 participants will be selected for the workshop. Deadline to apply is Friday, March 15.

Walk in the Woods with David Baker
2019-03-29 12:00 - 14:00 UTC | A Studio in the Woods, 13401 Patterson Rd, New Orleans, LA, 70131, United States
Get into the Woods with Environmental Curator David Baker! This year, some of the many celebratory programs we have planned to mark the 50th anniversary of the Carmichaels’ purchase of our land are quarterly walks in the woods. Chat with David over lunch and then head out into the woods to learn about his work and the land first-hand. Bring a lunch to eat at noon, walk will begin at 1pm on Friday, March 29. The event is free but please RSVP here.
