Tabling at AWP

Cara and Caroline so happy at the Millay table!

It's our plan to be in DC this week. Table I-13 in the bookfair. Amidst the journals and books and readings and signings and poets and memoirists and screenwriters and bookmarks and of course the snow. All that snow! If the USPS can go on, so will art.

Snow Art in the Berkshires

New genre artist Sonja Hinrichsen descends in snowshoes on the rolling hills of Columbia County this January to make snow art in response to the landscape. The project will be open for the public to view and participate as Hinrichsen walks the “canvas” at the Columbia Land Conservancy managed property of the Ooms Conservation Area at Sutherland Pond.

Hinrichsen first conceived of the project while spending a winter in the Colorado Rockies photographing footprints and animal tracks in the snow. This led her to experiment with her own footprints as she was walking across large expanses of untouched surface area. “The snow became a giant canvas,” says Hinrichsen, “almost limitless, yet unforgiving of any execution flaws…my designs are required to be composed of one single uninterrupted line.”

Hinrichsen, a Millay Colony for the Arts alumna, will create each drawing as one single performance act, which can take anywhere between 20 minutes and several hours, depending on the size and density of each piece. Also varying is the length of time the art will survive. “At the time of its creation,” she says, “the duration of each piece is completely unpredictable. It can last as long as a few days or as short as a couple of hours only.” Hinrichsen doesn’t mind this. In fact, that is part of the appeal. “I like the ephemeral character of this work and how it defines the landscape during its short presence. I like that these works are reclaimed by nature within a short time, while they live on only in their photographic documentation.”

Sonja Hinrichsen received her MFA in New Genres from the San Francisco Art Institute and two State Exams in visual art and media art from the Academy of Fine Art Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany. Sonja, who exhibits nationally and internationally in solo and group exhibitions, has received numerous awards and fellowships as well as 21 residencies in artist colonies around the world including her 2007 stay at the Millay Colony. During the length of this winter visit she will reside as a Winter Shaker at the Colony with additional snow works on the grounds available for viewing.

The 180-acre Ooms Conservation Area at Sutherland Pond contains a scenic pastoral landscape with spectacular panoramic views of rolling countryside and the Taconic Mountains. The property is owned by the Open Space Institute and managed by the Columbia Land Conservancy. Hinrichsen plans to create a series of snow drawings during her two week stay.

Directions to the Rock City Road parking area and entrance at http://www.clctrust.org/ooms.htm. For further information the public can contact Columbia Land Conservancy at 518-392-5252.

MINI RETREATS for Arts Groups

The Millay Colony for the Arts Announces a New Program of
MINI RETREATS for Arts Groups



You already know The Millay Colony as a gorgeous pastoral residency program for individual artists. But you may never have thought about us as the perfect place for group-retreats. We have inaugurated an exciting new program offering retreats of between two days and two weeks to small arts groups all winter and in limited sessions throughout the year...

Your group (theater company, small press, gallery staff, band, collaborative duo...etc) can have a pastoral retreat/think-tank/working vacation with all the trimmings at our dazzling Upstate New York campus. This includes:

Up to Seven private bedrooms with double beds.
Up to Seven private studios for work.
Meeting and Dining Rooms.
A Fully Stocked Kitchen.
Wireless Internet, Computer, Printer, Copier, Fax Machine and General Supplies...
Possibility of Chef-prepared Dinners



Whatever your needs, we can make your Colony retreat productive, inspiring and refreshing.

www.millaycolony.org/winter_shakers

FRIENDS AND THE ARTS

BEN STATZ AND KATY LEDERER
and The Board of the Millay Colony for the Arts
invite you to celebrate
FRIENDS AND THE ARTS

Wednesday, November 17th, 6:30PM
The Rouge Wine Bar, 99 Bank Street, NYC
Open bar and hors d'oeuvres

RSVPs and donations kindly requested at
http://www.millaycolony.org/invite
All donations will be matched up to $5,000.

Your attendance at the event and your contributions support residencies for artists at The Millay Colony for the Arts. We are a 501(c)3 registered non-profit serving writers, visual artists and composers and bringing artists into Upstate schools. To read more about us, peruse our Web site.

Warmest regards - and hope to see you there!

Ecopoetics Workshop with Jonathan Skinner

October 30th to November 2nd
Ecopoetics after Copenhagen: Language, Form, Site with Jonathan Skinner

Jonathan Skinner leads a hands-on workshop in ecopoetics at The Millay Colony for the Arts. This retreat/class includes twelve hours of workshop time, all meals, and ample time to work, ruminate and explore our lush natural surroundings. Private bedrooms and spacious private studios are available for all participants.

...Join us and delve into your work, explore new ideas, meet an extraordinary teaching artist and collaborate with others while spending intense work-time on our gorgeous campus. Fragrant with blueberries, thyme, and wildflowers, the quiet loveliness of our campus provides uninterrupted calm and inspiration—the perfect retreat for creativity and relaxation.

Visit www.millaycolony.org/workshops for full details...


***

A field-based workshop, offering an introduction to environmental writing in relation to current poetic practice, in the post-Copenhagen moment. Setting our compass by key works of postmodern ecopoetics (Charles Olson, Gary Snyder, Lorine Niedecker, Larry Eigner, Ronald Johnson, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, Ed Roberson, Cecilia Vicuña), let's hit the trail, charged with bringing our writing practice to the task of response.

In what ways do land art (Robert Smithson), research poetry (Juliana Spahr), conceptual writing (Kenneth Goldsmith) or mestizo poetics (Cecilia Vicuña) change our relation to place? When the very air we breathe is bought and sold, can poets reclaim the commons? How do we meaningfully respond, as poets, to disrupted urban environments, collapsing bee colonies, displaced communities, or the Pacific garbage patch?

This workshop sets out some of the tools for redefining language practice in the face of climate change and related global catastrophes, with a special emphasis on site-specific writing.

www.millaycolony.org/workshops

Millay Colony Application Deadline (and a bit about blogging too)

Hi all,

I need to have a meta-moment here and note for the cyberspheric-record my reluctance to blog. Here I am blogging as an instrument of The Millay Colony for the Arts, and that is palatable. But, even though I enjoy reading blogs (as participant and as voyeuse both), I really resist the self-seducing lure of recording my thoughts in that beguiling netherworld betwixt personal missive and full-on publication. Who am I in this space and to whom am I responsible? I like to know those questions before I open my cyber-mouth. And yet, here I am. Because I want to let you all know that the Colony is exquisite in September. The vegetable gardens over-floweth with tomatoes, peppers, basil -- and the residents can pick and cook at their whim. When they are not working, and they generally are working. I love getting coffee in the Millay kitchen and hearing about break-throughs, new projects begun, old ones wrestled to completion...

...Lila Zemborain, Bob Gluck, Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich, Leslie Silver, Tisa Bryant, everyone ...our conversations in the kitchen, as I got my coffee in the morning, at the table as we ate dinner or drinking wine in the late summer meadows, were a big part of my year. I love hearing about your work, in your voice, in such casual environs....

...where, you may ask, oh reader of this post, is she headed, this blog-defying and yet blogging writer of this post? She is preparing to tell you that the deadline for applying to our little slice of paradise is fast approaching: October 1, 2010 is the deadline for sending in an application (online or by snail mail) for a one-month residency with all the trimmings at Millay...Yes! A lovely private bedroom! Yes! A huge private studio! Yes! All meals! Yes! A CSA from a local bio-dynamic farm! Yes! Acres and acres of loveliness! Yes! You will work hard! Yes! You will read and write and paint and sculpt and hybridize and compose and create and invite your soul and bike on bike trails and hike on hiking trails and pick fresh veggies and swim in swimming holes and hear and see and read great work. Yes! All that and more. So apply. If I can blog, you can go to www.millaycolony.org/apply We look forward to hearing from you. kisses, CC

Millay Colony Designates Cave Canem Residency

Millay Colony for the Arts inaugurates a Cave Canem Residency beginning with the 2011 season. The Colony, which offers one-month residencies to six visual artists, writers and composers every month between April and November, has designated one of each year’s 48 coveted spots for a Cave Canem poet.

Founded in 1996 by poets Toi Derricotte and Cornelius Eady to remedy the under-representation and isolation of African American poets in MFA programs and writing workshops, Cave Canem is a home for the many voices of African American poetry and is committed to cultivating the artistic and professional growth of African American poets.

Application deadline October 1. Details available:

http://www.cavecanempoets.org/residencies-millay
http://www.millaycolony.org/apply