Art Farm’s mission is to support artistic vision, which may be impractical, obscure, and independent of commercial recognition—where failing is no less welcomed than succeeding. To offer artists, writers, performers, and others: studios, time, and resources for pursuing their range of expression, for experimenting, for developing projects, but most of all, for distilling the promise and potential of their creative enterprise, while working and living in a rural environment.
Art Farm's physical presence is in its buildings and land. More elusive to describe is the ambiance—the subtle influence of the environment's impact on time and space. The sun and stars measure your time, not clock and calendar. Space is shaped by proximity to sound and silence. The sky: your eyes: your ears will fill with the sound and shapes of an incredible number of birds and bugs. And, like it or not, the weather will be your collaborator in all undertakings.
Ed Dadey, Director
artist residency application forms
artist and writer residencies
1306 West 21 Road, Marquette, NE 68854-2112, USA
Art Farm is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt non-profit organization registered with the State of Nebraska
All rights reserved © 2010
Saturday, October 25,
1:00 - 7:00 PM
Sunday, October 26,
1:00 - 7:00 PM
Are you someone who thrives in the few pockets of quiet places left in this world, then take a minute, and stroll through some of the other web pages to see if an Art Farm artist residency or writer residency matches your standards. Not every day is peacefully idyllic as frogs make a mighty chorus after rains, migrating geese, ducks and cranes honk and squawk across the sky while the cicadas crank up their shrill at sunset and the basso hymns of the owls keep you company through the night. If this is your first visit here, you missed the deadline for 2009, but if Art Farm seems worth a try, come back in November when applications open again and click on one of the artist or writer residency images, which will be below this text, and jump right to the application form. Not enough yet: well, we will take the whole summer to convince you, so keep checking back to see what is happening or keep jumping ahead to see what you missed...some more>>
As a member of the Alliance of Artists Communities, we encourage viewers to fill out a brief survey. Click here or there (on the left image) to go to this survey. The survey is completely anonymous and is for statistical analysis only.
2010 Artist Residency Application Forms for Visual Artists
2010 Artist Residency Application Forms for Writers
What you, I or others do on earth in the daily course of our lives, artists do on roof ridges above tree tops. This is not phenomena vulnerable to objective description and we have no admission of verifiable or replicable answers for why they are so inclined. Sometimes clues exist in their choice of expression, but often that expression is subversively uncertain and not a copy of the world made beautiful, as they register their raw footage of unedited experience and exceed our articulation. It doesn’t lend well to executive summary, but it can take you, I or others to a new destination: not a place but a way of seeing. We give you a chance to appraise this speculation with sporadic events throughout the season ending with Art Harvest on a weekend in late October.
a bit more>>
You don’t have much interest in fauna and flora; then does something more in mid-air, above the bugs and blossoms, fit your style better? There is ample number of buildings, in various stages of function and completion, from freshly finished to the brink of ruin: yours to use for installations, performances—whatever your theatrical conviction and whatever you can conceive of doing in them, on them, over them or under them: short of destroying them...still more>>
Do you have an inner pioneer yearning to get in touch with the source experience of subprime primary existence? It could be your ideal of disheveled dignity—a mud brick conceptualization center, free of all techno-distractions and high-concept fabrication, fully appointed with outdoor furniture.
These are just a few of the items from the cafeteria of options you’ll find at Art Farm, with more arriving every day.... <start over
Miruna Dragan surveys the countryside atop one of Art Farm’s barns as she plans her installation.
Cheryl Ratliff takes a break from basic living to soak up some sunshine.
This is not the chaotic representation of civilization’s collapse in which Meredith stands amid, but one of Art Farm’s more elastically organized areas of source materials that she has chosen to surmount and claim for the letterpresses.
Each year Art Farm races head on into projects of higher purpose, although, for some projects, stakes must be set to show forward progress. For years, too long ago to remain in memory’s capture, Art Farm has collected and stored throughout its various buildings, letterpresses and auxiliary equipment found in print shops (state of the art, 1910). Like so many things in life, this equipment, waiting with the stoicism of animals, wondering if anything is ever to be more than life's unfulfilled potential. But, sometimes, suddenly the clouds of despair do part and the sunshine of promise warms the day. Among the resident artists of 2009 is Meredith, greatest among the mighty and the brave, coming with skills necessary to release these machines from their entombment. She gave physical shape to, of what has only lingered in the fog of fantasy: a letterpress/bookmaking residency, by clearing and organizing a studio and the equipment
to become
a functioning paradise for letterpress printers...allmost done>>
When a building on Art Farm retires under the influence of age, neglect or weather’s assaults and the projected victory of its restoration fades from view, it still lives on, renewed from its rubble, offering components as material for a new structure; a new purpose: a new vision. This is the vision of Charles Tucker: to introduce others to a location, through a structure, like an aperture, to behold the subtleties of a landscape of which they were previously blind.
Under a crepuscular sky, two assistants take a paradisal diversion from their labor at day’s end to enjoy the intoxicating addictiveness of vaporously ethereal stratospheric splendor. You might imagine their taciturn prudence imposed by concentrated labor giving way to stock phrases of exultant and exclamatory delight and prolonged joy at the sight—perhaps you would
echo their sentiments
.
Our notion of nature, like life and love, is something we pretend we know the true ways of, but we live satisfied with the piles of lies we build around it, offered as shape and structure for metaphors we expound. Ignoring the western tradition that presumes nature as separate and open to all projects, a precept intimately handled with onanistic exuberance by real estate speculators and developers, perhaps there is a possibility for integrating the referent, ‘self’ and the environment. Nature has not always approved of our meddling nor have we always been equal to or qualified through fragile judgment to meet the tasks envisioned, but there is no need for forever foreclosing any effort due to past examples of blank incompetence. An alternative to approaching nature in a no-knock police raid manner, or treating it like a backseat queen, might be to mingle with it by empathetic invitation, subsidized by other minds previously there living in accord with it. Think of nature as an aesthetic lay-a-way program, waiting for us to collect the ecstasy of an exhilarating moment surrounding us in a special domain. We could keep pretending, remaining indifferent to this caucus—shouldn’t be difficult..
Twenty-five residents and interns will spend a part of their lives at Art Farm this year. No amount of speculation can determine what may transpire; maybe some event pops up out of the dynamic energy of what they imagine—we’ll let you know if it happens. Meanwhile, we invite you to take a minute to look at more of what Art Farm has under way, adduced as empirical evidence for the claim that it may just be the place for you. There is plenty of information hiding here to stumble over and stick to—only takes a click .....more>>
