Mildred's Lane Inc.

Announcing Mission & Vision for our new 501(c)(3) organization

After 25 years as an emergent art complex(ity), Mildred’s Lane is becoming a 501(c)(3) nonprofit arts organization.

Mildred’s Lane Inc. is an experimental cultural organization and residency program where interdisciplinary visionaries collaborate on new forms of critical social engagement at the intersections of art, ecology, science, and history.

Mildred’s Lane Inc. is becoming a nonprofit charitable organization on Main Street in Narrowsburg, New York, in the Upper Delaware Scenic and Recreational River Corridor. Building upon 25 years of history, we will continue to serve and grow as an impactful interdisciplinary project fostering a diverse program of lectures, exhibits, workshops, symposia, collaborative projects, and events by creative thinkers and makers working across fields of contemporary art and culture.

The engagement of Mildred’s Lane Inc. encompasses art, ecology, and education, seeking innovative ways to connect these topics with interdisciplinary projects, always in a spirit of exchange with the greater community, including the nonhuman environment.

Mildred's Lane Inc. forms a significant center for new forms of creative practice by hosting and supporting local and international cultural producers, and by organizing symposia to activate nexuses of art, science, environmental conservation, history, and critical theory. Core principles are to:

1. Facilitate research-based, project-based, and context-specific learning that fosters creative communities

2. Develop sustainable practices for art and life in this challenging century

History

The Mildred's Lane Project was originally formed around an old agrarian landscape renovated by artists J. Morgan Puett and Mark Dion deep in rural northeastern Pennsylvania bordering Narrowsburg, New York, beginning in 1997. Early iterations of the project defy easy categorization; it began as a home, fostering exchange and collaboration across disciplines, consistently reinventing itself in response to a rapidly changing world. Puett, Dion, and collaborators are currently publishing a book outlining twenty-five years of contributions to contemporary art history at Mildred’s Lane.

Mildred’s Lane has co-evolved as an energetic, artist-driven, grassroots project serving hundreds of artists and creative thinkers through programs, residencies, workshops, and events. The project has grown, moving out of the woods and onto Main Street in Narrowsburg, NY, to rigorously rethink the contemporary art complex. Topics which continue to animate the ecosystem of Mildred’s Lane include experimental education, environment, economic strategies for art workers, and expanding creative practitioners’ roles in contemporary society.1

New projects include Mildred’s Lane collaborators developing a long-term forestry and land-use plan for the Upper Delaware River Valley Region. Outreach strives to bring together creative thinkers nationally and internationally, as well as locally, culturally benefiting people in diverse, rural, and underserved communities. Mildred’s Lane Inc.’s organizational impact will be to continue programming to expand our diverse, interdisciplinary community and civic engagement.

---

2023 Fundraiser

For Mildred’s Sake! will be a blind art sale of works donated by over 100 artists associated with Mildred’s Lane and their allies. Proceeds will directly fund 2024 programming and staffing.

The wrapped packages’ contents will be a mystery to buyers. This concept echoes the original Brown Paper Package Fundraiser 2010 held at Mildred’s Lane, where buyers were asked to keep their packages permanently wrapped, affording perpetual mystique to the works inside. Tickets start at $300 per brown-paper package. Special edition prints and one-on-one excursions with artists will be offered to higher donations.

Save the date: Saturday, December 2 from 6:30-8:30 PM at Pierogi Gallery in Brooklyn.

A link with participating artists and more details including ticket purchases will be live soon!

---

The Mildred Complex(ity) Project Space

MILDRED’S LANE INC Field Station HQ and The Department of Interstitchiaries / 37B Main Street, Narrowsburg, New York

The upcoming installation featuring the Labor Portraits of Mildred’s Lane is a dense slice of Gesamtkunstwerk of the greater project and archives as it slips into the new entity, a 501( c)(3) arts and cultural organization. This workspace is activated by coming and going participants of Mildred’s Lane, with occasional readings, workshops, and events throughout fall and winter. Moreover, the Field Station HQ will house several contents of the new book, WORKSTYLES of Mildred’s Lane, coming out next year.  

---

From the Archives

Hear from artist Shelley Spector on her recent exhibit before the hill. For interest in purchasing work, contact mildredslane@gmail.com.

Our next project will be the installation of the Mildred’s Lane Inc. Field Station / Dept. of Interstitchiaries. Stay tuned!

Support Art & Ecology by Donating to Mildred’s Lane & The Mildred Complex(ity)

The costs are never-for-profit. Mildred’s Lane functions as a generosity project working towards a conservation land trust and site for collective art-making. All proceeds support the projects, maintenance, and repairs needed to become an official 501(c)(3) organization that will allow Mildred’s Lane to thrive for generations to come.

General Donations

Larger Donations (Fiscal Sponsor)

1 The entity is not engaged in any activity regulated by the New York State Department of Education.

Opening August 12: Shelley Spector at The Mildred Complex(ity) Project Space

Shelley Spector: before the hill 

Opening Saturday, August 12 from 2-5pm

before the hill is a gathering of works by Shelley Spector, a multidisciplinary artist based in Philadelphia and Dingmans Ferry, PA. In this show, her first in six years, she presents a selection of sculptures and installations made between 2007 and 2016 exploring themes common in her work that include time, systems of measurement, the environment, and human connection. In the years since she made these works, Spector has been deeply engaged in the deconstruction and reconstruction of a cabin property in the Pennsylvania mountains, working it into a sculpture, a future studio, and a site for interdisciplinary, creative and environment-focused practice. The cabin, it’s outbuildings (a shed and outhouse) and surrounding property are The Nowadays—a developing sculptural ecosystem made from underutilized and discarded resources. The project is inspired by excess, need, and the effects of human impact on our natural world.

Included in before the hill are works made with fabric and wood acquired through the deconstruction of clothing, furniture, and other discarded and collected objects that employ sewing, woodwork, and home-making techniques. In varied forms such as wallpaper, embroideries, and a motorized sculpture, this presentation of work is a reflective launch point for new work to be made in the soon-to-be-completed cabin studio.

Spector’s work is part of many public and private collections including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which presented her solo exhibition Keep The Home Fires Burning, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and Human Rights Campaign in Washington, D.C. Spector has received grants from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, Independence Foundation Fellowship in the Arts, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and Leeway Foundation. Spector joined Mildred’s Lane as a fellow in 2017 and has since remained involved, currently committed to the restoration, renewal, and repair of the property.

The Mildred Complex(ity) • 37B Main Street, Narrowsburg, NY 12764

Summer Hours: Saturdays 11–5 • Sundays 11–3 • or by appointment (contact mildredslane@gmail.com or call 413-652-1838)

The 2023 Corvus Report

What’s Next for Mildred’s Lane

At the beginning of this month we hosted our first Corvus Summit, to collectively re-assemble the terms of operation for the future of our organization as we prepare to become an official 501(c)3 non-profit. Strategies for leadership, fundraising, programming, and collective were lovingly deliberated by a gathering of “crows” (some of our closest colleagues and creative allies who have been close at hand in our strategic planning over the past several years).

Mission Statement

A vital part of this process is putting our values and vision into words. This is our current mission statement in progress:

The Mildred Complex(ity) is an art and ecology non-profit organization advancing new methods for social, cultural, and educational entanglement. Our program nurtures interdisciplinary collaboration, ecological relations, and creative domesticity, co-evolving experimental ways of researching, knowing, and being.

Committees in Formation

The Corvus Summit has generated a number of committees (including: Mission & Programming, Legal & Accounting, Fundraising, Grant Research & Writing, Department of Interstitchiaries) which will continue the strategic planning into the fall and beyond.

Transformation is happening—emergence is in process.

What We’re Asking From You

• Are there people or resources that are important for us to connect with? Are you able to help us connect with them?

• If so, email us at workstyles@mildredslane.com and mildredslane@gmail.com.

We’d like to thank Narrowsburg Proper, The Heron, The Blue Fox Motel, Niral & Elizabeth of the Ridge Haven Airbnb, and The Tyler Hill House for helping us to make this a special occasion for all involved. Please consider dining and lodging with them in your next trip to the Narrowsburg area!

2023 Arboreal(ity) Swarming

ARBOREAL(ITY)

with J. Morgan Puett / Trevor Tochydlowski / Julian Maza / Jennifer Coates / Laura Silverman / Gabrielle Schaub / others to be announced 

July 17 through 30

With thousands of years of coevolution and creative emergence, it might’ve been different here now – but because of centuries of dominant cultural neglect for the nonhuman world, the Northeastern Deciduous Forests are in trouble. The Ash trees are dead, the Hemlocks are dying, and Maples are next to fall to fast-spreading diseases linked to climate change.

ARBOREAL(ITY) is a study into the possibilities of collaborating with the forest of Mildred's Lane, while navigating numerous challenges to its sustainability, not least as the Ash and Hemlock trees — two of the land’s principal populations — quickly succumb to pestilent insect species. This July and August, we will bring together foresters, conservationists, and artists to envision and reconsider the meanings of a landscape’s lifespan and legacy. We will be joined by Trevor Tochydlowski of the Wayne County Conservation District, and Julian Maza of the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, among other experts. This swarming will include a Social Saturday on July 22. 

This swarming initiates a new project, WORKING (Withering) WILDS, conceived by 2023 Land-Steward-in-Residence J. Morgan Puett. It is a new emergent collaboration with the non-human community of Mildred's Lane. The ‘collaborative’ is too vast to list here. They are hidden, overlooked, and yet to be identified through experience. An old Lenape Trail in the woods holds biological and ghostly secrets and stories that emerge from direct engagement. The collaborative observes and intersects with the labors of the forest. A factory in the forest – mending, infusing, melting. Emergent possibilities include trees, insects, birds, mammals, rocks, streams, earth, and microscopic beings. An ecological collective becoming, awakening senses for those who enter and readdressing our understanding of nature and landscape by escaping the rooted behaviors of the Capitalocene and Anthropocene.

For more information on this swarming, email workstyles@mildredslane.com.

---

The woods surrounding Mildred’s Lane. Video courtesy of Erik Freeland.

Now Available

Year of Turns: 2023 Mildred’s Lane Events & Swarmings

---

Keep an eye on our instagram this week as we prepare for our Corvus Summit!

Alastair Gordon Reading & Deep Water Literary Festival

Alastair Gordon Reading & Talk

June 16, 4–7 PM

Artist Talk at 5 PM

Join us for an evening with Alastair Gordon, who will be reading from his books Spaced Out, Weekend Utopia, and others to celebrate his current exhibition at The Mildred Complex(ity) Project Space during the town-wide Deep Water Literary Festival.

The Mildred Complex(ity) • 37B Main Street, Narrowsburg, NY 12764 

Deep Water Literary Festival returns to Narrowsburg this June with a dynamic program of visiting and local authors and artists gathered to examine the timely and enduring work of George Orwell. Across the genres of fiction, non fiction, and journalism, no other author in the English language has entered the contemporary political lexicon as extensively, and yet the term “Orwellian” remains as misunderstood as it is overused. Join the festival to explore the continuing relevance of Orwell’s vision and the impact he maintains on our literature and society.

More info on the festival

Alastair Gordon: Pattern Recognition #2

May 22 – July 30, 2023

Alastair Gordon’s drawings are reflections on time, memory, patience, and what William Gibson called “pattern recognition”, simple markings and scratchings layered over rudimentary grid substrates. Alastair is also an author and critic. His books are about art, utopia, the built environment, and what Gaston Bachelard called the poetics of space. His drawings are fields of observation and duration. He draws with powdered pigments bound with gum arabic and black ink made from fermented carbon and pine-tree resin. The process is slow and repetitive, in the trance-like spirit of Henri Michaux’s mescaline drawings from the 1950s and 1960s, works that began as written texts but turned into abstract émergences.

Exhibition info

The Mildred Complex(ity) • 37B Main Street, Narrowsburg, NY 12764 

Summer Hours  •  Saturdays 11–5  •  Sundays 11–3  •  Or by appointment

Alastair Gordon: Pattern Recognition #2 Opening at the Mildred Complex(ity) Project Space

A L A S T A I R   G O R D O N

PATTERN RECOGNITION #2

May 22 – July 30, 2023

Alastair Gordon’s drawings are reflections on time, memory, patience, and what William Gibson called “pattern recognition”,  simple markings and scratchings layered over rudimentary grid substrates. Alastair is also an author and critic. His books are about art, utopia, the built environment, and what Gaston Bachelard called the poetics of space. His drawings are fields of observation and duration. He draws with powdered pigments bound with gum arabic and black ink made from fermented carbon and pine-tree resin. The process is slow and repetitive, in the trance-like spirit of Henri Michaux’s mescaline drawings from the 1950s and 1960s, works that began as written texts but turned into abstract émergences.

The Mildred Complex(ity)  • 37B Main Street, Narrowsburg, NY 12764 

Summer Hours  •  Saturdays 11–5  •  Sundays 11–3  •  or by appointment

Alastair Gordon is a writer and artist. He studied art at Princeton and Yale with Richard Serra, Tony Smith, Al Held, Joel Shapiro, Robert Ryman, Lynda Benglis, Barry Le Va, and Mel Bochner. He studied art history and critical theory with George Kubler, Andrew Forge, J.B. Jackson, Vincent Scully, and Robert Herbert. After receiving an MFA from Yale in 1978, he exhibited his drawings and installation works in both America and Europe. For more than twenty years, he wrote on art, architecture, and the environment for the New York Times and in 2008 became Contributing Editor on art & design for the Wall Street Journal. In addition to his critical journalism, Gordon has published more than 26 books, including such critically acclaimed titles as Weekend Utopia, Naked Airport, Spaced Out, Theater of Shopping, Arquitectonica, Romantic Modernist, Island Follies, and Wandering Forms. As Publisher’s Weekly wrote: “Gordon’s eye for the convergence of art, architecture and commerce is unerring.” In 2016, he launched “Poetics of Place,” a critical writing program at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design and has taught and lectured at many other institutions. Earlier in his career, Alastair served as the Robert Lehman Curator at the Parrish Art Museum in Southampton, N.Y. He has four children and lives in Milford, PA with his wife and publishing partner, Barbara de Vries.

More info here

Mildred's Lane Corvus Summit 2023

LIMITED CAPACITY

The YEAR of TURNS Announcing Summer Swarmings 2023

Summers at Mildred’s Lane have been slow since the plague. Opportunities for gathering fallowed everywhere over the last few years. Now, we are turning our hearts and minds to the future as we resume a modest summer program, while continuing to work on site repairs and upgrades required to fully re-open. 2023 is a year of turns.

turn | tərn | verb and noun / – go on to consider something next: we can now turn to another aspect (other aspects) of the problem.

Sustainability is an urgent ideal. We are orienting ourselves around this notion completely, seeking a sustainable future in more than one sense. Summer Swarmings 2023 focus on ecology and the land—as we look ahead, we find ourselves turning to our roots, not least the ground beneath our feet.

If you have the means, please consider sponsoring a fellow or swarming.All donations are tax-deductible via our fiscal sponsor, Creative Visions, with details below. For all reservations, inquiries, and proposals, contact us at workstyles@mildredslane.com. We look forward to connecting with you.

—J. Morgan Puett, Alex A. Jones, Nick Bennett

FREIZE- Featured in Issue 233: Mildred’s Lane is a Self Regenerating Art Complex

https://www.frieze.com/article/mildreds-lane-profile-2023

Looking to the Future: Mildred's Lane in Frieze

Looking to the Future: Mildred's Lane in Frieze

Envisioning a self-regenerating art complex

A message from J. Morgan Puett:

As you all know, Mildred’s Lane has been navigating challenges to its sustainability over the last several years. To ensure our collective legacy, we are all looking to the future and the changes required to grow. 

I want to announce out loud that I am stepping aside from my role as Ambassador of Entanglement. It is time. I put aside so many personal projects and interests for over a decade to act out increasingly demanding executive and administrative roles—in other words, being the director of Mildred’s Lane. It is far more than one person can mentally and physically do, yet all have been labors of love for art, friends, landscape—LIFE! 

I have been living in this expanded garment of a landscape for so long, raising a child, witnessing friends and colleagues come and go—expressing themselves, taking and making a small bit of its history—I feel it deeply, intimately. But now I see that it needs some mending, which requires thought, care, and calm retrospect. The next phase for me is emerging—a new, more focused role—a Land Stewardship to Mildred’s Lane. 

Land Stewarding is a way to pattern and tailor the landscape, establishing a stronger ecological program. Meanwhile, I will clear the path for a new executive generation for Mildred’s Lane. I would like to introduce those brave souls who are helping me in this transition from Ambassador of Entanglement, until we establish a rotating directorial position. 

Alex A. Jones (she/her) is now acting as Minister of Strategic Possibilities(one of seventeen Labors of Mildred’s Lane, this one initiated by Abby Lutz, whose ongoing collaborations with me include A Guide to the Field Project). Alex is helping to manifest and co-curate new conceptual potentialities for this mutable subject of Mildred’s Lane. 

Nick Bennett (he/him) is now Ambassador of Transhistorical Agency (another one of the Labors; Natalie Wilkin carved out this labor in all aspects of life here during her residency from 2011–2014). Nick’s labor of communication and administration is the core of the greater project. He will be critically negotiating entanglements forward. 

Alex and Nick can be reached at workstyles@mildredslane.com.

Now, to the future: 2023 brings new turns for Mildred’s Lane and the Mildred Complex(ity). The future of our lives and work depends on healthy ecology; hence, we put environmental conservation at the forefront of our artistic agenda. Mildred’s Lane is becoming a conservation land trust, shifting our attention to an innovative experiment in creative ecologies, including all creative non-human life.

I am excited to share a new piece published in the March 2023 issue of Frieze, which speaks to the heart of this vision, framing Mildred’s Lane in terms of sustainability and regeneration.

Yours, in complexity.   

J. Morgan Puett

Land Steward-in-Residence 2023

Mildred’s Lane is a Self Regenerating Art Complex

The constantly evolving event site uses perpetual adaptation and new notion of creative practice to face the challenges to sustainability

By J. Morgan Puett, written in collaboration with Alex A. Jones and Alastair Gordon

Frieze | March 2023

An excerpt from the article:

“We are all entangled beings here, experimenting with ideas and with one another – sometimes uncomfortably, but more often in wonderment – from the skilled artists who construct vernacular dwellings to the cultivated mildew that later blooms across their canvas walls. Raccoons scamper in the eaves of the Barn Lyceum (1997–ongoing) during evening lectures, making their nests as we exchange conversation. In early summer, seasonal colonies of bat pups learning to fly fall from the cracks of 200-year-old outbuildings. Hickory nuts drop and bang sharply upon the roof of the Lunar Camp (2015–ongoing) in autumn, startling the sleepers. Each year, the smallmouth bass in the Algorithmic Pond Project (2006–ongoing) grow larger. Some visitors swear that Mildred Steffens, the property’s previous owner who died here in 1986, still inhabits the old homestead, which has been rechristened The Mildred/Lillie Archaeology Project (1997–ongoing). If there are spirits afoot, they are as likely those of the Lenape people from whom this land was once stolen.”

Read the full article here

Support Mildred's Lane!

The costs are never-for-profit. You can make a donation through one of the following options. Every cent goes directly to supporting our most immediate needs towards establishing a land trust and becoming an official 501c3 organization that will allow Mildred’s Lane to thrive for generations to come.

Our Fiscal Sponsor (Creative Visions)

Our Website

Thank you to The Silbert Foundation / The Goldman Foundation / and all supportive individuals who prefer not to be mentioned.

Opening March 11: VIROSA

VIROSA Presents:

Degenerate Cinema

Opening Saturday, March 11 from 2–5pm

The Mildred Complex(ity) Project Space, 37B Main Street, Narrowsburg, NY

VIROSA Presents:

Degenerate Cinema

Opening Saturday, March 11 from 2–5pm

The Mildred Complex(ity) Project Space, 37B Main Street, Narrowsburg, NY

In cinema, degeneracy creates new possibilities for storytelling. VIROSA works to reconfigure conventions of filmmaking, undermining longstanding barriers between cinema and the finer arts. VIROSA Presents: Degenerate Cinema shines a light on potentials beyond the event horizon of Hollywood. 

Two short films are presented as part of the exhibition, Poor Magic (2020) and Fishbowl (2022). Poor Magic is VIROSA’s first narrative short, shot on location at Mildred’s Lane in winter 2020, on the cusp of the COVID-19 plague. The narrative concerns a precocious magician who tries to catch his shadow. VIROSA’s second short film is Fishbowl, named after the specimen lab at the LaBrea Tar Pits Museum in Los Angeles, where visitors observe scientists prepare remains extracted from the tar. In the film, a strange man sneaks into the museum by night to clean prehistoric specimens; his motives are unclear, as are those of an entity who watches him from the deep future.

The film screenings are interspersed by VIROSA Reels (2019-22) that showcase the collective’s moving image experiments. The exhibition also includes a new series of prints, Tar Pit Specimen (2023), featuring a 4-color silkscreen edition printed on plastic paper resembling oversize slide films. In addition to the edition is a limited series of unique, hand-painted prints that evoke the laborious process of colorizing black & white film. The print works invite reconsideration of “the screen” in expanded cinema.

Selected props from VIROSA productions are also on view. Film props are often treated as disposable material in conventional film productions, but VIROSA presents these objects as degenerate sculptures that outlive the filming process; as with radioactive decay, they are fragments emitted from an unstable center. 

About Studio VIROSA

Directions

Support Mildred's Lane!

The costs are never-for-profit. You can make a donation through one of the following options. Every cent goes directly to supporting our most immediate needs towards establishing a land trust and becoming an official 501c3 organization that will allow Mildred’s Lane to thrive for generations to come.

Our Fiscal Sponsor (Creative Visions)

Our Website

Thank you to The Silbert Foundation / The Goldman Foundation / and all supportive individuals who prefer not to be mentioned.

Photo credits / First image: FISHBOWL, 2022. Digital video, 10m 51s. Starring Austin Kase and Megan Zerga, with special thanks to the La Brea Tar Pits and Museum, Los Angeles / Second image: Phantom at Mildred’s Lane, 2022. Digital c-print on cotton paper, 18 x 24 inches (framed).

Mildred's Lane Reports: February 2023

Updates from Mildred's Lane & The Mildred Complex(ity)

February 5–August 27, 2023

Mildred’s Lane / Robert Williams, Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum—The Alchemist’s Shack (1998–2023) included in Prima Materia: The Periodic Table in Contemporary Art,curated by Richard Klein, The Aldridge Museum, Ridgefield, CT

Robert Williams is a British artist and academic whose interests include alchemy, archaeology, folklore, speculative fiction, and popular culture. Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum—The Alchemist’s Shack (begun in 1998) is an ongoing project by the artist that presents an idealized past and an unrealizable and lost future of alchemy through connecting the life and work of alchemist Eirenaeus Philalethes (George Starkey; 1627–1665) with the deep traditions of alchemical practice in Europe, particularly England. The title of the work, Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum, is taken from a scrapbook of alchemical texts assembled by Elias Ashmole (1617–1692), the founder of the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology at Oxford University. The Alchemist’s Shack exists as a specifically designed, freestanding building at Mildred’s Lane, the ninety-four-acre project site in rural Pennsylvania founded in 1998 by artists Mark Dion and J. Morgan Puett. For Prima Materia, the contents of the Shack have been disassembled and moved to The Aldrich and reconfigured to fit into the museum’s camera obscura space.

Opening March 11, 2023

VIROSA Presents: Degenerate Cinema at The Mildred Complex(ity) Project Space, Narrowsburg, NY

Degenerate adj. ||  1 having declined, as in function or nature, from a former or original state   2 morally corrupt or given to vice   3 [mathematics] being simpler than the typical use, i.e., a degenerate hyperbola   4 [physics & astronomy] characterized by atoms stripped of their electrons and by very great density, i.e., degenerate matter; a degenerate star

Degenerate v. ||  1 to pass from a higher to a lower type or condition   2 to sink into a low intellectual or moral state   3 to decline in quality   4 [biology] to evolve or develop into a less autonomous or functionally active form

VIROSA Presents: Degenerate Cinema is an exhibition of experimental film, prints, and sculpture by VIROSA. Two recent narrative short films will be on view, both with deep ties to Mildred’s Lane. Poor Magic, a surrealist short about a foolish magician in pursuit of his shadow, was filmed at Mildred’s Lane during the pandemic lockdown of 2020. Fishbowl, an experimental narrative about a man who breaks into a museum to clean fossils by night, was edited at Mildred’s Lane in the deep winter of 2022 after filming in Los Angeles and Brooklyn. In addition to the films, VIROSA will exhibit objects in materials including glass, paper, clay, and 3D-printed plastic which have emerged from their filmmaking practice.

The exhibition will be on view through April 2023.

SUMMER 2023

CALL FOR OPEN SESSIONS 

Mildred’s Lane, Beach Lake, PA

Mildred’s Lane is forming the summer 2023 calendar of co-curated events, lectures, and workshops for and with our community in the deep woods of Beach Lake, PA and The Mildred Complex(ity) in TOWN on Main Street in Narrowsburg, NY. We are inviting letters of interest for small groups and individual retreats for the upcoming 2023 season. Application details can be found on our website.

→ → →

We are currently accepting letters of interest, seeking rotating Ambassadors of Entanglement to direct Mildred’s Lane into the future. Please contact mildredslane@gmail.com.

→ → →

We continue working on the long-awaited publication WORKSTYLES of Mildred’s Lane. More information is coming soon.

Support Mildred's Lane!

This year we are fundraising $150,000

Mildred’s Lane is planning for the future. Although we are a Pennsylvania Nonprofit Corporation, in order to ensure our legacy and future, we are filing to become an official 501c3 organization.

To do this, we must make crucial updates to our landscape to satisfy local zoning laws. Though much has been accomplished to meet the township’s demands, there are still many maintenance projects ahead of us. These changes are expensive.

Please contribute today 

You can make a donation through one of the following options. Every cent goes directly to supporting our most immediate needs towards becoming an official 501c3 organization that will allow Mildred’s Lane to thrive for generations to come.

Our Fiscal Sponsor (Creative Visions)

Our Website

Thank you to The Silbert Foundation / The Goldman Foundation / and all supportive individuals who prefer not to be mentioned.

---

Photo credits / First image: Prima Materia: The Periodic Table in Contemporary Art (installation view: Robert Williams, Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum – The Alchemist’s Shack, 1998–2023, Collection of Mildred’s Lane, Beach Lake, PA), The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, February 5 to August 27, 2023. Photo: Jason Mandella / Second Image: Courtesy of Studio VIROSA / All other images courtesy of and copyright Mildred’s Lane

Upcoming News

MILDRED'S LANE

UPCOMING in 2023

JANUARY

Exhibition at The Mildred Complex(ity) Storefront/ Last days of Jeffrey Jenkins, RESURFACING. Open Saturdays and by appointment. Contact mildredslane@gmail.com

FEBRUARY/MARCH
RESIDENT-ARTISTS-IN-COMPLEX(ity)
This winter, Alex A. Jones and Cameron Klavsen of Studio VIROSA are visiting artists supported by the Abakanowicz Creative Community Fellowshipand Mildred's Lane.

Exhibition at The Mildred Complex(ity) Storefront/ Studio VIROSA will exhibit two recent narrative short films, both with deep ties to Mildred's Lane. Poor Magic, a surrealist short about a foolish magician in pursuit of his shadow, was filmed at Mildred's Lane during the pandemic lockdown of 2020. Fishbowl, an experimental narrative about a man who breaks into a museum to clean fossils by night, was edited at Mildred's Lane in the deep winter of 2022 after filming in Los Angeles and Brooklyn. In addition to the films, VIROSA will exhibit objects in materials including glass, paper, clay, and 3D-printed plastic which have emerged from their filmmaking practice. Opening date TBA. 

CALL FOR OPEN SESSIONS / SUMMER 2023
Mildred's Lane is inviting letters of interest for small groups and individual retreats for the upcoming 2023 season. We are co-curating Events / Lectures / Workshops for and with our community in these deep woods and in TOWN at The Mildred Complex(ity) Storefront on Main Street Narrowsburg, NY. 

FUNDRAISING 2023
This year we are fundraising to raise $150,000.00! Mildred's Lane is a Pennsylvania Nonprofit Corporation aiming to reopen as a Foundation later this year. We would appreciate your support. Recent events have slowed our efforts; with covid, local government demands, and general maintenance. 

THANK YOU! 
We are:
•  accepting letters of interest, seeking new Ambassadors of Entanglement to direct us into the future.
•  accepting letters of interest to be a part of our staff and team as Mildred Fellows, learning the fineries of Workstyles of Mildred's Lane.
•  continuing our work on the long-awaited publication, WORKSTYLES of Mildred's Lane, 2023. More information coming soon.

SUPPORT

Mildred's Lane is planning for the future. Please contribute today through our portal at the website, SUPPORT Mildred's Lane; Or through our fiscal sponsor,
Creative Visions / Workstyles of Mildred's Lane

THE SILBERT FOUNDATION / THE GOLDMAN FOUNDATION / and other supportive individuals who prefer not to be mentioned. Thank you all! 

Photo: Mildred's Lane / Erik Freeland
Lane Photo: Mildred's Lane

Planning for the Future of Mildred's Lane

HAPPY NEW YEAR 
2023
from Mildred's Lane
 

We send best wishes and hope for an awe-inspiring year ahead. Thank you for being part of our creative community! 

Mildred’s Lane is celebrating its 25th year of hosting international artists and cultivating shared experiences. Together,  pushing the limits of what art can do – collapsing the boundaries that separate life from art and inspiring methods of integrating environmental activism with everyday creative living. 

Mildred's Lane is a Pennsylvania Nonprofit Corporation aiming to reopen as a Foundation this year. We need your support in doing so. Recent events have deterred our efforts; covid, local government demands, and general maintenance.
 

We need to raise $150,000.00 in 2023!

Our goals are:
• Complete the renovations and upgrades required by our local government to establish a public facility.
• Seek a new Ambassador of Entanglement to direct us into the future. (Please inquire with a letter of interest.)
• Complete our work on the long-awaited publication, WORKSTYLES of Mildred's Lane, 2023.

Mildred’s Lane is planning for the future. Please make a contribution today through our SUPPORT portal on the website,  
 

Please SUPPORT Mildred's Lane

OR, SUPPORT through our fiscal sponsor,
 

Creative Visions / Workstyles of Mildred's Lane

Special gratitude goes to The Abakanowicz Arts and Culture Charitable Foundation, The Silbert Foundation, The Goldman Foundation, and every individual generously supporting Mildred’s Lane. Thank you!

Reception for the Artist/ December 3 / 4 PM – 6 PM

RESURFACING
Jeffrey Jenkins

The Mildred Complex(ity)

37B Main Street / Narrowsburg / NY 12764
November 7 through December 31, 2022
Reception for the Artist/ December 3 / 4 PM – 6 PM

In Jeffrey Jenkins’ recent work, Resurfacing, unexpected areas of his nonagenarian mother’s Longmont, Colorado home are illuminated solely by the light of projected 35mm slides taken by his father in the 1960s and 70s. Found in a box stored under a bed, the recently uncovered archive revealed connections to both memories and identity, linking both photographers to their shared interests and individual perceptions.         
 
Like a theatre constructed in the subconscious, the house in the post-midnight hours offered unconventional niches and vestibules to project his late father’s views of the world once again. The thin, ephemeral images of the past were painted onto the architectural surfaces of our present, mixing time and place in surreal juxtapositions. The exhibit is arranged much like a proverbial paternal slide show, with images recurring at a continuous and measured rate.
 
The vintage slides included images of activities and family members, typical of amateur photos of the era. His father, an astrophysicist, college professor, and aspiring photographer, captured the banal domestic scene, scientific observation, and framed view of nature. Images of the sky and the landscape were interspersed with family vacations, technical star and solar system photos, and NASA-sourced images used in his lectures. (There is even a slide of a frolicking nude, reputedly inserted into his colleagues’ lecture slides as a prank.) For Jenkins, the photos of nature and anonymous places were of particular interest, suggesting connections to his work in similar genres. 
 
With the unexpected death of Jenkins’ brother during the same time as this project, the nostalgic considerations of his father’s images were given a more poignant weight. All three men have spent their lives pursuing insight into the natural world through creative and scientific endeavors. With this genealogical foundation of visual and conceptual experiences, the evolving nature of time, place, and family are unexpectedly represented once again on the walls of a darkened home.

Untitled (Me with Lunar Module) / 2022 / 28 x 38 / Archival Giclee Print

RESURFACING - Reception for the Artist/ December 3 / 4 PM – 6 PM

RESURFACING
Jeffrey Jenkins

The Mildred Complex(ity)

37B Main Street / Narrowsburg / NY 12764
November 7 through December 11, 2022
Reception for the Artist/ December 3 / 4 PM – 6 PM

In Jeffrey Jenkins’ recent work, Resurfacing, unexpected areas of his nonagenarian mother’s Longmont, Colorado home are illuminated solely by the light of projected 35mm slides taken by his father in the 1960s and 70s. Found in a box stored under a bed, the recently uncovered archive revealed connections to both memories and identity, linking both photographers to their shared interests and individual perceptions.         
 
Like a theatre constructed in the subconscious, the house in the post-midnight hours offered unconventional niches and vestibules to project his late father’s views of the world once again. The thin, ephemeral images of the past were painted onto the architectural surfaces of our present, mixing time and place in surreal juxtapositions. The exhibit is arranged much like a proverbial paternal slide show, with images recurring at a continuous and measured rate.
 
The vintage slides included images of activities and family members, typical of amateur photos of the era. His father, an astrophysicist, college professor, and aspiring photographer, captured the banal domestic scene, scientific observation, and framed view of nature. Images of the sky and the landscape were interspersed with family vacations, technical star and solar system photos, and NASA-sourced images used in his lectures. (There is even a slide of a frolicking nude, reputedly inserted into his colleagues’ lecture slides as a prank.) For Jenkins, the photos of nature and anonymous places were of particular interest, suggesting connections to his work in similar genres. 
 
With the unexpected death of Jenkins’ brother during the same time as this project, the nostalgic considerations of his father’s images were given a more poignant weight. All three men have spent their lives pursuing insight into the natural world through creative and scientific endeavors. With this genealogical foundation of visual and conceptual experiences, the evolving nature of time, place, and family are unexpectedly represented once again on the walls of a darkened home.
 

Untitled, (Mom Napping), Early 1970s / 2022 / 28 x 38 / Archival Giclee Print

Planning for the FUTURE of Mildred's Lane

Mildred's Lane
YEAR OF SILVER
Fundraising Drive 2022

Mildred’s Lane is an artist residency and creative community compound celebrating its 25th year of hosting international artists. Mildred’s Lanecultivates shared experiences and interdisciplinary collaborations, pushing the limits of what art can do – collapsing the boundaries that separate life from art and inspiring each other to integrate political activism with everyday creative living.

To ensure that Mildred’s Lane continues in the future, its co-director, artist J Morgan Puett, and her co-founder, artist Mark Dion, have started the process and strategic planning needed to donate and shift the 93-acre site into a foundation.

Everything about Mildred’s Lane resists commodification. In our hyper-consumerist culture, Mark and Morgan believe in its mission: a place where the hierarchies of the outside world disappear in shared labor and collaborations on discreet landscape interventions and event-based projects.

Mildred’s Lane and its participants advocate for the environment – central to all planning for the future.

Last year, the local government ordered Mildred’s Lane to ‘cease and desist.’ They demand an upgrade to the site to meet newly passed ordinances for public gatherings and overnight accommodations. Though a lot was accomplished to meet the township's demands last summer, Mildred’s Lane hopes to make further changes to continue to house and grow projects with artists for years to come, but these changes are expensive.

Please consider a contribution to this incredibly important and special place.

Mildred's Lane announces partnership with a new fiscal sponsor – CREATIVE VISIONS – a 501 c3 EIN: 39-1902814.

Here is how to send a check to Mildred’s Lane. We are directing all donations to Creative Visions. Suggested contribution of 1000. to 5000. But any amount helps! Forward this to anyone you think might help. Thank you!

• Make sure checks are made out to Creative Visions.

• WORKSTYLES/Mildred’s Lane should be written on the memo line.

• Send checks to:

CREATIVE VISIONS
c/o Grace Breuer
1047 Ford Drive
Nipomo, CA 93444

Special gratitude goes to The Abakanowicz Arts and Culture Charitable Foundation, The Silbert Foundation, The Goldman Foundation, and every Individual generously donating to Mildred’s Lane. Thank you for all your support!

OPENING RECEPTION - DISENTANGLEMENT / RE-EMBODIMENT

JILL GOLDMAN
DISENTANGLEMENT/RE-EMBODIMENT

The Mildred Complex(ity)
37B Main Street / Narrowsburg / NY 12764

Opening reception / October 8 / 3 pm – 5 pm

Mildred's Lane and The Mildred Complex(ity) proudly present the installation Disentanglement/Re-embodiment by Los Angeles-based artist Jill Goldman.

In this new body of work—a response to two years of research into patriarchy—Goldman continues her ongoing exploration of transformative ritual and the gendered body. Developed at Mildred’s Lane during a residency in 2021, Disentanglement/Re-embodiment is an ambitious attempt to disentangle the bonds of gender-based oppression and imagine a re-embodied self, unencumbered by patriarchal power and domination. In videos, photographs and performances Goldman interrogates the intangible ways that patriarchy creates fictions of the body and then insists that these fictions are natural, essentializing socially constructed traits as biologically and divinely determined, thereby simultaneously constructing and compelling gendered realities.

While it's impossible to know if we can ever fully experience our bodies outside of the linguistic and patriarchal social institutions that not only regulate them but define them, Disentanglement/Re-embodiment challenges the viewer to take seriously the possibility of a self independent of a system based on power relations. In performances that use ropes and women's hair, music and dance, Goldman makes visible the invisible structures of patriarchy and attempts to untangle them, extricating female bodies from their insidious and subjugating webs. Goldman, a long-time activist who advocates for the rights of those marginalized by patriarchy is skilled at pragmatic resistance, fighting injustice from a position inside our political and social systems. In her art and Tantric meditation practice, however, she explores a more radical form of resistance, a resistance that is founded on an expansive consciousness that demolishes the oppressive structures the political right is so hellbent on solidifying.

The Sanskrit word Tantra derives from the verbal root tan, meaning to weave, and while Goldman attempts to unravel one fabric, she weaves another one, represented visually in videos and photographs printed on muslin in which the boundaries between the self and the world blur. From its origins in 6th century India, Tantric initiation has always been open to all genders and all social classes. With its revolutionary shapeshifting goddesses and panpsychism Tantra dissolves borders and erases binaries. By embracing this profoundly non-dualist consciousness, Goldman imagines a dematerialized liquid reality, an alchemical transformation that occurs in the world, via the body, revealing the sacred in the profane. Because this state of "oneness" entails a radical solidarity with every human, indeed, with every particle in the universe, the boundaries that separate the terrestrial from the numinous, the self from other, subject from object, collapse, and all hierarchies are razed. Patriarchy is rendered not only absurd but cosmically powerless.

-Asti Hustvedt

Jeffrey Jenkins Photography / Performers include Veronica Caudillo / Louise Hamagami / and Roxanne Steinberg / with music by Livia Reiner and Rose Reiner.

Narrowsburg Honeybee Fest

NARROWSBURG HONEYBEE FEST
Saturday / September 24 / All Day

The Mildred ComplexIty) presents an exhibition of curiosities celebrating our local Narrowsburg Honeybee Festival.
 
This idiosyncratic installation features a film by Jeremy Chien for Big Island Bees. The short film is about Garnett Puett and Whendi Grad's beekeeping operation and honey production located on the Big Island of Hawaii. The four-generation beekeeping family produces honey exclusively from Hawaiian bee colonies carefully attended to without using artificial feeds or chemicals. A slow and deliberate operation preserves the honey without heat or filtration. Samples of Big Island Bees Honey will be available. 

Other curiosities include a selection of vintage and classic books and pamphlets on bees and beekeeping from the private collection of The Grafter’s Shack, a J. Morgan Puett project, on-site at Mildred’s Lane.