BIBLIOPHANTICS at Mildred's Lane

Landscape / Democracy / Wellness
Mildred's Lane in an Age of Coronavirus Horror

BIBLIOPHANTICS

September 15 through 30

Thyrza Nichols Goodeve, a.k.a., THE BIBLIOPHANT

Visiting Readers include. Nina Burleigh / Moyra Davey / Alastair Gordon / Asti Hustvedt / Alex A. Jones / Leonard Nalencz / Barbara De Vries / Heide Hatry / John Wonoski / others to be announced.
 

This is an intensive reading retreat for book fanatics who want to think about reading, its history in relation to technology, the unique art book, and book annotations as art. Readers will experience plein-air installations in the landscape, designed for creative repose and relaxation, awakening all senses for complete comprehension -- reading and thinking amongst the trees, fields, and streams.
 

Activities include open reading sessions, guest speakers, annotation/drawing-in-books, and book-making workshops. Evenings are filled with shared dining experiences and socials during the most magical season of the year at Mildred’s Lane—early autumn.
 

Week 1 will be devoted to visiting speakers, field trips to local bookstores, and reading by the fire in the enchanting Mildred's Lane Library--consuming quietly -- aloud -- socially -- privately. Week 2 will be led by our session mentor, Thyrza Nichols Goodeve, in morning lecture/discussions of the history of reading/writing and technology from cuneiform to print to digital.  

Order of the Third Bird at Mildred's Lane

Year of
LANDSCAPE / DEMOCRACY / WELLNESS
2021 at Mildred's Lane in the age of Coronavirus Horror

The Attention Lab: The Bird’s Eye View
August 2-8, 2021

Justin Ginsberg and Anna Riley
With D. Graham Burnett / Adam Jasper / and Leonard Nalencz
Participating Fellows / Brad Fox / Jill Goldman / Billie London-Gray / Yana Payusova / Bonnie Saland / Roxanne Steinberg / Katarina Verguelis / Ruby Waldo

“Temporary metempsychosis may occur, but must not become permanent.”
-Manual of the Order of the Third Bird

Radical forms of sustained attention have transformative power. And the cultivation of our capacities for deep attention has never felt more important. The relentless commodification of human attentional resources represents a genuine threat to individual freedom, political solidarity, and the actual experience of the world around us – the phenomena of nature, the work of art and life. In this session, artists Justin Ginsberg and Anna Riley will lead a week of experiments in “practical aesthesis,” drawing on a set of formal “Birdish” practices and protocols for somatosensory activation. Committed to care, co-presence, and convivium, these durational exercises in collaborative, radical attention aim to create the conditions for a new world.

The Avis Tertia, or “Order of the Third Bird” may not even exist, though rumors of its activities abound. Its associates are said to engage in playful, insurgent, and anarchic forms of collective attention – perhaps as protest, perhaps as pure celebration of being (and/or its antithesis). Its history is the work of the research collective ESTAR(SER).

FOREST–BODY–CHAIR

Year of
LANDSCAPE / DEMOCRACY / WELLNESS
2021 at Mildred's Lane in the age of Coronavirus Horror

FOREST–BODY–CHAIR
July 5 through 25, 2021

Gina Siepel and Sara Smith

Featuring Francis Cape / Hope Ginsburg / Laura Mays / Bernadine Mellis / Chris Nassise / Karinne Keithley Syers / Gavin Van Horn / Amy Yoes /
with Fellows
Julia O. Bianco (Abakanowicz Fellow) / Leila Gordon (Abakanowicz Fellow) / Forrest Hudes / Joe Lerro (RAIC) / Rumpelstiltskin Anne Morgan / Lotte Walworth / Rachael Schmoker (RAIC) / Ainsley Steeves (CSU) / Samiha Tasnim (Abakanowicz Fellow)

When a tree becomes a chair, it enters our lives as an intimate partner. The relational dynamics between the forest, the human body, and the wooden chair provide an entry point for exploring the mutuality and false duality of nature and culture. In the domestic environment, chairs are places of rest for the body, social facilitators, and symbolic cultural forms. Chairs as we know them can also be poorly designed for the human body, causing a variety of physical problems.

We will immerse ourselves in the forests of Mildred’s Lane; conducting somatic, ergonomic, and hands-on research to develop unique, experimental chair forms that actively consider the forest, the body, and the domestic sphere. Multi-modal investigations of the forest, human anatomy, and vernacular American furniture design in relation to concepts of enlivenment and sustainability will form the basis of our explorations in the landscape. 

Gina Siepel is an interdisciplinary artist, designer, and woodworker. Her work explores cultural understandings of nature, gender, and American history, through the production of objects and collaborative experiments in public spaces. Gina has exhibited extensively in the northeastern US and has received funding from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the Berkshire Taconic Foundation, and the Puffin Foundation and is currently an artist in residence at the Macleish Field Station at Smith College. Gina holds a BFA from SUNY Purchase, an MFA from the Maine College of Art, and teaches studio art at Mount Holyoke College. Gina lives in Greenfield, MA, with Sara Smith. www.ginasiepel.com

Sara Smith is a transdisciplinary choreographer and librarian who creates speculative documentary works exploring interconnection and the poetics and politics of embodied and archival research. She is a recent recipient of the Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship award in Choreography and lives in Greenfield, MA, with Gina Siepel. sarasmithprojects.com

IRON–SILVER–LIGHT

IRON–SILVER–LIGHT
June 7 through 27, 2021

This Week's Contributing Artists
Michael Blanding / Madeleine Cass / Liz Collins / Jorge Colombo / Noah Doely / Susan Hapgood / Abby Lutz / Nate Padavick / James Voorhies / Rebecca Uchill / Amy Yoes /

Featuring Session Leader, Noah Doely and his assistant, Taylor Hansen (Mildred Fellow) / plus Fellows; Susan Fink (MCAD Fellow) / Rich Garr / Leila Gordon (Abakanowicz Fellow) / Nancy Grace Horton / Elizabeth Kelly / Leah Koransky / Joe Lerro and Rachel Schmoker (Resident-Artists-In-Complex(ity) / Samiha Tasnim (Abakanowicz Fellow)

Set in the landscape with an extravaganza of 19th and 20th-century equipment, we are facilitating a series of Plein-air tintype, cyanotype, and anthotype processes using various materials hand-coated plates, paper, fabric, and plant-based pigments. These alchemical processes combine science and wonder; collaboration and experimentation as part of events and activities throughout this session. Participants set up a photography studio in the field and Barn Lyceum for processing and development. The work will culminate in an exhibition at The Mildred Complex(ity) Project Space in nearby Narrowsburg, NY this coming fall.

Noah Doely received a BFA from the University of Northern Iowa and an MFA from the University of California, San Diego. He has exhibited nationally and internationally in venues such as Steve Turner Contemporary (Los Angeles), The San Diego Museum of Art, Locust Projects (Miami), The Cornell Fine Arts Museum (Winter Park), Viafarini (Milan, Italy), Seattle Center on Contemporary Art, and the Des Moines Art Center. Doely has been awarded fellowships and residencies at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, MacDowell, The Hambidge Center for Creative Arts and Sciences, the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, the Penumbra Foundation, and he is a 2018 Iowa Artist Fellowship recipient. His work has appeared in various publications, including the Los Angeles Times, Juxtapoz Magazine, The North American Review, and Burnaway Magazine. He is currently an Associate Professor of Photography at the University of Northern Iowa.

Image / Noah Doely / Lane Window

Workstyling the Wild at Mildred's Lane

Year of LANDSCAPE / DEMOCRACY / WELLNESS
2021 at Mildred's Lane in the age of Coronavirus Horror

Late May / Early June Session
WORKSTYLING the WILD

Contributing Artists coming and going are; Barbara Bourland / Deborah Davidovits / Donna Cleary / Sarah Doherty / Juliet Dunn / Coco Fusco / Jeffrey Jenkins / Alex Jones / Cameron Klavsen / Joe Lerro / Kristyna and Marek Milde / Barry Puett / Rebecca Purcell / Rachael Schmoker / Laura Silverman / and others To Be Announced.

There is a sleepy, shady garden at Mildred's Lane. We let it go after years of competing with varmints. Reclaiming it has taken several seasons and we are nearly there. Previous Wilding Fellows reconditioned the soil of the original oval garden, built with Yale Graduate Sculpture Students in 1999. Last year's Resident-Artist-In-Complex(ity) (*RAIC) ripped out the invasive species and leveled the site. Now, we are rethinking how to coexist, allowing for a vibrant community of flora and fauna sharing this wild place, as we turn toward a program about well being – come join in the dialogs.

We are planting pollinators, expanding on the Mildes' Project – Plantarium. We will forage the forest, set up a tincture-making laboratory, and keep bees – rebuilding the radical apiary after a bear ripped it apart last year. The art of composting will be featured with our Land Steward, Joe Lerro. Join in daily artful movement routines with Wellness Steward, Rachael Schmoker, and her new practice – Bed-ga.

Listen to wisdom lectures from non-humans, master gardeners, botanists, beekeepers, landscapers, and herbalists. Let's get down and dirty with daily events as we rebuild a landscape of medicinal rhizomes, roots, flowers, and herbs; foraging-digging-rearranging-building-planting-swimming -- come workstyle the wild with us.

Ongoing by the week or by the day.

Take a look at the Mildred's Lane Info-Zine describing the commons of discreet landscape interventions, environmentally site-sensitive installations, vernacular outbuildings, and exhibition spaces. Embedded is a section of upcoming projects, workshops, lectures, think tanks, and events with visiting artists residing throughout the season. We hope to see you here – Mildred's Lane.

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