Craigardan welcomes artists back to ADKs, builds new campus

ELIZABETHTOWN | Creative residencies provide artists with the opportunity to live and create in a new place. They allow the artist to step outside of the bubble that is their studio, house, town, or even country. Craigardan's uniquely place-based creative residency program allows these makers and thinkers to have that opportunity on a working farm in the Adirondacks. Their residencies support traditional craftspeople like writers and visual artists, but also chefs, scholars and researchers. The program is all about how Craigardan and the Adirondacks can benefit them and their work, regardless of what that work is. "We believe that creative processes and creative thinking are going well beyond the confines of traditional arts and that people of evolved disciplines can benefit from this type of intensive, creative, community experience," Co-Founder and Executive Director Michele Drozd said. Craigardan was founded in 2016 and opened in 2017, in Keene. In 2019, they found out they couldn't stay on the property long-term. "We had to look around for a new property and figure out what we were going to do as an organization: if we were going to dissolve or keep moving forward," Drozd said. "We had such strong community support and such strong board support, we decided we want to move forward." Craigardan started fundraising and searching for a new property and found 320 acres in Elizabethtown, bordering Hurricane Mountain Wilderness. "It's beautiful because it has this wonderful main roadside accessibility, but also the remote feeling of the back property where we can build our new campus and host the residency program," Drozd said. By the time they got their permits in place, COVID-19 hit. Architect Nils Luderowski designed the campus in 2020. The project is getting done in phases, so it will still be a work in progress for a few more years. However, the residency program was able to reopen in 2022. Craigardan hosted about 65 artists over the course of the summer in a house they rented in Elizabethtown. Drozd said it was nice to see the artists in Elizabethtown again. "Unlike other arts programs, we really encourage that interaction with the local community," Drozd said. "We want there to be an exchange of ideas and skills and knowledge between local community members and the artists who come here." Some of the classes the artists take are open to the public, and the artists present a lecture series open to the public. Artists will be able to stay on the Craigardan campus again this summer. The residential buildings won't be complete yet but they have built individual artist cabins to house everyone. Drozd said the unique thing about their program is they are on a working farm. "We bring artists and writers and scholars from around the world to come here and spend time with each other, to do their own work, but also to be completely immersed in the Adirondacks and everything," Drozd said. "This region is so magical." A main feature of the residency is the multi-interdisciplinary nature of the program. "We want there to be that active exchange between individuals," Drozd said. "Someone working in ceramics can be surprisingly, incredibly influential on someone working on their manuscript for a novel in ways that you would never imagine." Artists don't just get access to people who work in new disciplines; they are able to participate in learning those different disciplines through classes and events. Ceramics is a large part of the program because Drozd and several of the founding board members of Craigardan are ceramic artists. In the early spring, they will begin constructing a kiln pavilion with a new wood kiln. "The wood kiln is really the hearth of the whole campus," Drozd said. "It's fire, it's magic, it's where people want to gather." The kiln will not only fire pottery, but it will also double as a gathering place for communal meals. "It is a multi-day process to fire a kiln like this," Drozd said. "You could say it's a spiritual process. It's a very easy way for people to get together and have a shared experience." Drozd said people participate in residencies for many reasons. "They might be new and fresh out of college and looking for something to build their resume and portfolio; they might be mid-career and looking for something that will energetically spur them on to the next phase of their work; they might be a writer who really needs the time and space to sit down and focus on the book they've always wanted to write; they could be someone more toward the end of their career who is looking for a shift or change or they just want to get out of their silo, have their own studio or their own practice and be around other creative individuals," Drozd said. "So this is a really common thing in the art world." Drozd has found that providing this creative space gives those involved an opportunity to go beyond their own work and think about how to change larger systems. One system Craigardan is especially passionate about changing is the food system. They do outreach in this regard with things opening a free food fridge and their farm store. They were also a founding partner of the North Country Food Justice Working Group. "We're going to keep thinking of ways of supporting a local food system, supporting consumers and trying to give consumers more access to local nutritional food," Drozd said. "That's a big piece of what we do." Admission to the residency is through an application process. Scholarships are available to anyone who applies. Work exchange and fellowship programs are also available. For more information, visit http://www.craigardan.org/.

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Craigardan welcomes artists back to ADKs, builds new campus

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