2014 Residency: May 31 – June 7

We’re excited to introduce our upcoming group of artist residents! We’re also pleased to announce a new residency partnership with the West Kortright Centre, a thriving arts and community center serving the northern Catskill region since 1975.

Dennis Friedler is a Boston-based mixed media artist working in film, photography, installation and performance. His work is informed by the nature of experience, the relationship between history and memory, impermanence, the limits of narrative, and ritual practice.

Gretchen Hayden is an internationally recognized performer and teacher of kathak dance, a classical storytelling art from North India. She is a senior disciple of the renowned master and guru, Pandit Chitresh Das and co-founder and Artistic Director of Chhandika (Chhandam Institute of Kathak Dance, Inc.). Hayden additionally instructs accredited kathak courses at Tufts University and Wellesley College in MA. She both teaches and performs regularly with her students, weaving tradition into innovative dance dramas, including The Legend of St. Lucy, The Story of Dymphna, and Kore. Hayden, together with her musician-husband George Ruckert and Chhandika, are bearers of tradition, carrying on the legacy of kathak and Hindustani music established in the U.S. and India by Pdt. Chitresh Das and Ustad Ali Akbar Khan. Full artist’s bio here.

Cheryl Kaplan is a distinguished artist, filmmaker, curator and writer based in New York. Selected for Creative Capital’s On Our Radar program, Kaplan’s work has been exhibited at the BMW Guggenheim LAB, Andrea Meislin Gallery, American Academy Rome, Royal Academy of Arts and the World Financial Center. She has produced films for Laurie Anderson, Eve Busman and Rosanne Cash, among others— all Official Selections at major film festivals, from Tribeca and Toronto to Locarno— and in the collection of MoMA, Whitney Museum of American Art and the Prado. Kaplan’s critical writing and interviews are published in Art in America, ELLE, BOMB, Tema Celeste, Art News, Deutsche Bank Art Magazine and the Forward. As Founder/Director of red square, (London), Kaplan debuted public debates with Sarah Lucas, Tracey Emin, Sam Taylor Wood, Carrie Mae Weems, Uta Barth, and 200 contemporary artists. Kaplan is a MacDowell Colony Fellow (USA); winner of a Special Bogliasco Foundation Visual Arts Fellowship, (Italy); and Starr Scholar of the Royal Academy of Arts (London) where she held a year-long artist in residency. Kaplan appears in the 2014 Oscar Nominated HBO Film First Cousin Once Removed on poet Edwin Honig, and also contributed additional cinematography and story consulting to the documentary.

Joe LaMantia is a community artist hailing from Bloomington, IN. He has worked with many schools (K-12) and organizations throughout the mid west since 1993. Artist’s website here.

Merridee LaMantia is a visual artist and dimensional designer who transforms creative ideas into visual communication with positive impact. Inspired by the harmony of energies within the consciousness of nature, she explores the infinite possibilities inherent in the natural world and uses her art to discover these qualities in relationship with material. A native of the mid west, Merridee explored the properties of space since early childhood drawing floor plans for fun, including hotels, single-family homes and the interiors of submarines. The only girl in her high school to take mechanical and architectural drawing, she pursued her affinity for architecture in college and went on to work as a graphic designer for architectural projects in Boston. In the early 1970s, she was a founding member of the first all-women carpentry collective in Cambridge, MA. In later years as the art director for a national magazine, she met her husband, a fellow artist, and returned to the mid west to create art and a family. Merridee LaMantia is a staff designer for the City of Bloomington, IN Community & Family Resources and maintains an active studio practice. Artist’s website here.

West Kortright Centre, East Meredith, NY

The West Kortright Centre is supporting this year’s artist residency by conducting community outreach and promotion for two 1/2-day workshops at Zelený Les, offered free of charge to the general public. Under the guidance of Zelený Les artist Joe LaMantia, local participants will create self-images from materials found on the land as part of the June residency. We seek to continue to build fruitful and synergistic relationships with organizations such as WKC to enrich Catskills culture!