BMAC Climate Change Artist Residency
Introduction
In response to the ongoing climate crisis, BMAC has created an artist residency program to support artists seeking time and resources to engage with the profound questions and challenges presented by climate change. We believe that artists have a unique and vital role to play in responding to the climate crisis. Through their work, artists can foster personal and emotional connection to the issue, encourage empathy and collaboration, imagine new futures, and in so doing help effect positive change.
2023 Climate Change Artist in Residence: Lia Rothstein
In 2012, Lia Rothstein held an artist residency at the Baer Art Center in Hofsos, Iceland. She traveled around the country and observed firsthand its diminishing glaciers, heightening her awareness of the effects of climate change on our fragile environment. Her search for biodegradable materials with sculptural potential has led her to experiment with bioplastics. During her BMAC Climate Change Artist Residency, Rothstein will continue to explore bioplastics made from materials like agar (seaweed), gelatin, cassava, and tapioca. She will offer workshops, give talks, work with schools and students, and connect with other artists and researchers who are engaging with climate change.
2022 Climate Change Artists in Residence: Elizabeth Billings, Evie Lovett, and Andrea Wasserman
Through their creative placemaking collaborative, Ask the River, Elizabeth Billings, Evie Lovett, and Andrea Wasserman have worked together in the Brattleboro area since 2016, reconnecting our community with its natural surroundings through art. Each of the three artists is using the BMAC Climate Change Artist Residency to deepen their individual practices and their relationships with the environment through writing, research, activism, and art making. Learn more about their work on our blog, Art Loves Company.
About the Residency
BMAC awards one Climate Change Artist Residency per year to an individual or group. The residency comes with a $6,000 stipend. The nature of the residency is flexible and will be designed based on the artist-in-residence’s needs and the resources BMAC is able to provide. Our aim is to meet the recipient(s) where they are and to provide meaningful support for their work in whatever ways we can. That may or may not include providing accommodations in Vermont or elsewhere, developing exhibitions or other public-facing activities, or fostering connections with other artists, curators, scientists, educators, and activists tackling climate change.
