Jewish Environmental / Eco / Land Art Residency
The Jewish Waltz with Planet Earth
May 1-22, 2013, Eden Village - New York
Art Kibbutz launched its pilot residency program at Eden Village Camp – a spectacular 248-acre venue bordered on three sides by the wooded hills of Clarence Fahnestock State Park in the Hudson Valley, 50 miles north of New York City. The pilot residency provided 30 international participants from 8 countries, all age groups and religious backgrounds, with the power to shape an innovative new program, the only one of its kind to explore creative art, Jewish teachings and tradition and environmental awareness. THE JEWISH WALTZ WITH PLANET EARTH marked a significant step that Art Kibbutz undertook towards the creation of an international Jewish artist colony at a permanent location.
Report by Patricia Eszter Margit, Founder of Art Kibbutz
As Putnam Valley roused itself from its wintry slumber the rich and vibrant landscape of Eden Village was enlarged and enhanced by several pieces of art installed and made part of this land's long history by thirty international Jewish artists from eight different countries, who participated in the first pilot residency of Art Kibbutz.
The residency was created to harness and maximize residents' creative work related to Jewish responses to the environment, farming and sustainability. Besides a bedroom and regular nutritious, kosher, vegan meals, each artist was provided with shared studio space. The residency program balanced concentrated, productive work time with the stimulation of cultural exchange and communal events. Artists also had the chance to acquire practical farming skills, learn about the larger context of our contemporary food systems, and how our traditional values and practices can inform our decisions, actions and art today.
Artists in residence shared their work, ideas, and experiences with each other in the evenings in a relaxed and informal setting at each others’ studios. The programming included daily discussions, events, trips, and artist beit midrash with Jonathan Schorsch (Columbia University), as well as planning sessions for the future of Art Kibbutz. We engaged with our host communities, both Eden Village as well as the Jewish Farm School, through discussions, working the land together and donating artwork for their communities. This innovative program was one of its kind to create a new type of a diverse, grassroots, intentional artist community (kibbutz) that is based on the premier Jewish value, ‘loving your fellow as yourself.’ The art works that were created reflected the traditional Jewish philosophy, that we are partners in creation; therefore residents used gentle, biodegradable, natural materials for their land art that would communicate their message, but not leave a permanent mark on the Earth.
Ceramic artist Emmett Leader created a beautiful gateway for the 2.5 acre organic garden that The Jewish Farm School’s intentional community is developing day by day. This gateway was dedicated on our Open Studio day on May 12th, when more than eighty people -- friends, journalists, families, came to spend the day, visiting artists' studios, and enjoying the beauty of the awakening landscape. They all got more than a glimpse of our artist residency, which is also leaving behind numerous prayer flags made by Carrol Philips.
For the entire time of the residency Asherah Cinnamon from Maine and Nikki Green from Western Australia were busy scouring the woodlands of the campgrounds, the hills surrounding the glacial lake collecting the branches, roots and saplings which they used to construct a twelve foot shin representing the Shma:Listen which the group jointly moved from the studio to the lakeside.
At sunset it was launched and set afloat on the lake. Its vibrations will long remain in this valley, possibly longer than the impact it had on the community that helped launch it and witnessed its movement across the lake.
Israeli composer Kobi Arad’s improvisation explored the Divine Names of Hashem in nature. Kobi created an entirely new musical language based on Kabbalistic numerology that inspired several collaborations. He started recording his new CD at Art Kibbutz and created a groundbreaking collaboration with Ikhlaq Hussein Khan, Pakistani sitar maestro who is on a similar quest from a Sufi perspective.
Diversity has been one of the most unique elements of our experience as art created a common ground for open and serious discourse. The residency provided a peaceful environment where leading professors from Canada seriously engaged a range of topics with a young, orthodox, emerging artist from Latin America straight out of yeshiva.
The atmosphere was safe enough for participants to be able to engage with artists from different disciplines, including those who worked in fundamentally different ways. Yet, collaborations, friendships, mentoring relationships, and even love affairs grew from these interactions.
Internationally known ecological artist Jackie Brookner with EcoArtSpace founder and curator Amy Lipton initiated a joint art project on an environmental theme. LABA Executive Director Ronit Muszkatblit (Germany-Israel) and Tirtzah Bassel (Israel) as well as several resident artists, COEJL and Jewcology answered their call.
It is not possible to report on the doings of all the participants, the writers, sculptors, dancers and musicians whose work will bear fruit as the leaves now blossoming fall to the ground. But we know the Art Kibbutz community, Eden Village and the Jewish art world has been enriched by the hands, hearts and minds of all those who have been inspired by the natural beauty of Putnam Valley.
The professional and cultural experience of Art Kibbutz enabled our gifted participants to transform the inspirational environment into work, which contributes to the constantly transforming Jewish sensibility and culture. This pilot project marks a significant step that our organization is taking towards the creation of an international Jewish artist colony at a permanent location. This experience extends the knowledge and capacity of Art Kibbutz, which enables us to pursue with increasing confidence our goal to be a transformational force in Jewish culture – and beyond.
The residency was created to harness and maximize residents' creative work related to Jewish responses to the environment, farming and sustainability. Besides a bedroom and regular nutritious, kosher, vegan meals, each artist was provided with shared studio space. The residency program balanced concentrated, productive work time with the stimulation of cultural exchange and communal events. Artists also had the chance to acquire practical farming skills, learn about the larger context of our contemporary food systems, and how our traditional values and practices can inform our decisions, actions and art today.
Artists in residence shared their work, ideas, and experiences with each other in the evenings in a relaxed and informal setting at each others’ studios. The programming included daily discussions, events, trips, and artist beit midrash with Jonathan Schorsch (Columbia University), as well as planning sessions for the future of Art Kibbutz. We engaged with our host communities, both Eden Village as well as the Jewish Farm School, through discussions, working the land together and donating artwork for their communities. This innovative program was one of its kind to create a new type of a diverse, grassroots, intentional artist community (kibbutz) that is based on the premier Jewish value, ‘loving your fellow as yourself.’ The art works that were created reflected the traditional Jewish philosophy, that we are partners in creation; therefore residents used gentle, biodegradable, natural materials for their land art that would communicate their message, but not leave a permanent mark on the Earth.
Ceramic artist Emmett Leader created a beautiful gateway for the 2.5 acre organic garden that The Jewish Farm School’s intentional community is developing day by day. This gateway was dedicated on our Open Studio day on May 12th, when more than eighty people -- friends, journalists, families, came to spend the day, visiting artists' studios, and enjoying the beauty of the awakening landscape. They all got more than a glimpse of our artist residency, which is also leaving behind numerous prayer flags made by Carrol Philips.
For the entire time of the residency Asherah Cinnamon from Maine and Nikki Green from Western Australia were busy scouring the woodlands of the campgrounds, the hills surrounding the glacial lake collecting the branches, roots and saplings which they used to construct a twelve foot shin representing the Shma:Listen which the group jointly moved from the studio to the lakeside.
At sunset it was launched and set afloat on the lake. Its vibrations will long remain in this valley, possibly longer than the impact it had on the community that helped launch it and witnessed its movement across the lake.
Israeli composer Kobi Arad’s improvisation explored the Divine Names of Hashem in nature. Kobi created an entirely new musical language based on Kabbalistic numerology that inspired several collaborations. He started recording his new CD at Art Kibbutz and created a groundbreaking collaboration with Ikhlaq Hussein Khan, Pakistani sitar maestro who is on a similar quest from a Sufi perspective.
Diversity has been one of the most unique elements of our experience as art created a common ground for open and serious discourse. The residency provided a peaceful environment where leading professors from Canada seriously engaged a range of topics with a young, orthodox, emerging artist from Latin America straight out of yeshiva.
The atmosphere was safe enough for participants to be able to engage with artists from different disciplines, including those who worked in fundamentally different ways. Yet, collaborations, friendships, mentoring relationships, and even love affairs grew from these interactions.
Internationally known ecological artist Jackie Brookner with EcoArtSpace founder and curator Amy Lipton initiated a joint art project on an environmental theme. LABA Executive Director Ronit Muszkatblit (Germany-Israel) and Tirtzah Bassel (Israel) as well as several resident artists, COEJL and Jewcology answered their call.
It is not possible to report on the doings of all the participants, the writers, sculptors, dancers and musicians whose work will bear fruit as the leaves now blossoming fall to the ground. But we know the Art Kibbutz community, Eden Village and the Jewish art world has been enriched by the hands, hearts and minds of all those who have been inspired by the natural beauty of Putnam Valley.
The professional and cultural experience of Art Kibbutz enabled our gifted participants to transform the inspirational environment into work, which contributes to the constantly transforming Jewish sensibility and culture. This pilot project marks a significant step that our organization is taking towards the creation of an international Jewish artist colony at a permanent location. This experience extends the knowledge and capacity of Art Kibbutz, which enables us to pursue with increasing confidence our goal to be a transformational force in Jewish culture – and beyond.