2011 Residency Season Underway!

The long winter seemingly has not left the hills here. No, not snow. But chill and fog and huddling over hot drinks are still with us. The signs of spring do show themselves. The robins poking the field for worms - there must be 30 of them at any one time - the mudded road, and oh, the residents! Artists and writers and music at the Colony. Creatures all foraging the lay of the campus for words, color, lines, and notes. (And coffee, of course.)

Tisa Bryant Workshop Retreat

Try Anything: A Lab for New Writing
May 29 to June 2, 2011

According to the Oxford Dictionary, an experiment is defined as "an action of trying anything." To try to reproduce the mind's questions, the eye's scrutiny of place, relation, space, the meaning of being in the world, alive and feeling, may demand that we break rules, trespass borders, re-imagine the embodied voice, its language of signs and symbols. What does one do when such attempts at translating ourselves are not easily contained within a single genre, form or register? This class is lab for such questioning, regeneration and discovery. We will create new writing borne from the Millay environment, the bodies of your own poems, essays, fictions or plays, all inspired by various source texts, trunks of special junk and myriad cellular memories. We will make new writing that functions on a number of levels (or not at all!), by design, or by the nature of the beast. Throughout, we'll share our own attempts, findings, failures and intentions, and encourage deeper forays into creative possibility. Requirements: Bring some old, new, or in progress works, and try to give yourself over to fascination, obsession and different ways of doing.

Tisa Bryant is the author of Unexplained Presence (Leon Works, 2007), a collection of hybrid essays on black presences in film, literature and visual art. She is co-editor of the cross-referenced journal of narrative and storytelling possibility, The Encyclopedia Project, which produced Encyclopedia Vol. 2 F-K, in 2010. She is also co-editor of War Diaries, an anthology on black gay men’s desire and survival, published in 2010 by AIDS Project Los Angeles. Her work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in the journals 1913, Animal Shelter, Mandorla, Mixed Blood, in the ‘zine, Universal Remote: Meditations on the Absence of Michael Jackson, and the solo exhibits of visual artists Jaime Cortez, Wura-Natasha Ogunji, and filmmaker/installation artist Cauleen Smith. She teaches prose, hybrid forms and innovative ethnic literature at the California Institute of the Arts.

The Millay Colony for the Arts offers four-day retreat workshops on Colony's sylvan setting. Each 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.

These workshops offer artists a chance to delve into their work, explore new ideas, meet extraordinary teaching artists 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.

For more information and to apply: http://www.millaycolony.org/workshops

Updated Deadline for 2012

We know fall is a long way off. Oh don't we feel like spring isn't even here yet.
Regardless, it's time to let everyone know we've moved up our application deadline for 2012 residency season to September 15, 2011. This will help us get all our wonderful artists and juries and slides and colors and lines in conversation prior to the holidays. Yes, a V8 moment...

Mourning Akilah Oliver

All of us at The Millay Colony are mourning Akilah Oliver. She was one of our poetry jurors this year and two years ago. We are grateful to her for this, as for we are for her poetry and her self.

http://www.litmuspress.org/oliver.html

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