a low-fi residency and retreat for thinkers, creatives, and researchers
Chop Wood, Carry Water runs a Spring and a Fall session. There are no residencies in July or August. Only up to 5 people will be in residency/week. This low residency is allows for physical distancing as well as the space for people to choose interaction when desired, allowing focus on your practice and process.
Access Description and application documents below
All genders, sexual orientations, religious beliefs, races, and ethnicities are welcome as Chop Wood Carry Water residents.
Applications are to assess if Chop Wood Carry Water lo-fi land-based residency is a good fit for you. There is no jurying of your past work.
This short and all those below were made by Megan Diddie and Tim Hogan
Artist and curator Ji Yang reflects on his experience at the Chop Wood Carry Water Residency. Yang attended the Fall session of 2022. This lo-fi residency brings together thinkers, artists, and collaborators on Pachamanka, land located in the driftless region of northwestern Illinois. Residents often end their days around a campfire telling stories, sharing a meal, and stargazing.
Aya Nakamura (@ayasembe) attended the Chop Wood Carry Water residency in the fall of 2022. In this short, she recounts some of her experiences drawing in the prairie. Nakamura’s drawings are colored pencil on handmade paper of different sizes and shapes. She states, “they have a physicality and assert themselves during the drawing process. They are meditations on death and metaphysics, and provide space for questioning, grief, memorial, humor, and healing.”
Kristin Abhalter Smith talks about the connection between working with the land of Pachamanka and being creative. Abhalter Smith is an artist and the Executive Director of Roman Susan, an art foundation that “celebrates and shares the work of artists in the Great Lakes Region.” She attended the Chop Wood Carry Water Residency in the Fall of 2022.
This is not an art residency. We do not expect you to be an artist. We are interested in a larger definition of what it means to think, make, build and collaborate with land, other humans and living beings. We believe edges and categories of what it means to be creative and how we live in this world are meant to be explored and that this is essential for a new coming together within ourselves and between ourselves.
Conversation, moving, studying, walking, biking, kayaking, writing, reading, furniture making, weaving, print making, performing, filming, painting, building, on-site installation, sculpture, ceramics, animation, soil work, dancing, experimentation with and processing of land-based materials have figured largely with past residents.
2021 – 2023 CWCW resident list
Kristin Abthaler-Smith, builder/gallerist (Chi., IL)
Gwyneth Zeleny Anderson, animator (Chicago, IL)
Brook Celeste, actor/writer (Chicago, IL)
Paul Dickenson, sound artist (Chicago, IL)
Megan Diddie, multimedia artist (Chicago, IL)
Susannah Donne, florist (Chicago, IL)
L. Goldstein, poet (Chicago, IL)
M.B. Hackleman, activist (Joshua Tree, CA)
Carl Harders, herbalist (Los Angeles, CA)
Tim Hogan, writer (Chicago, IL)
Anna Ialeggio, performer (Ithaca, NY)
Breanne Johnson, furniture maker (Detroit, MI)
Javier Jasso, sculpter/ceramicist (Chicago, IL)
Jennifer Karmin, poet (Chicago, IL)
Rob Kelly, builder (Chicago, IL)
Jen Langkammer, educator (Milwaukee, WI)
Lucky Li, landscape architect/papermaker (Hartford, CT)
Hope Lian-Vinson, brick maker (Kansas City, MO)
Paige Naylor, sound artist (Chicago, IL)
Jeff Prokash, furniture maker (Chicago, IL)
Ethan McGinnis, sculpture/installation artist (Boulder, CO)
Aya Nakamura, painter/papermaker (Chi., IL)
Blake Nemec, poet/somatic teacher (Chi., IL)
Ronan Nigh, fabric artist (Denver, CO)
Parissa Ott, illustrator (Atlanta, GA)
Megan Robertson, physical therapist (Chi., IL)
Alyssa Rooks, baker (Madison, WI)
Nathan Rutz, composter (Cleveland, OH)
Phera Singh, basket maker (Chicago, IL)
David Sprecher, sculptor (Chicago, IL)
Audrey Todd, outdoor educator (Chicago, IL)
Tanner McCleerey, woodworker (Chicago, IL)
Ji Yang, photographer/filmaker (Chicago, IL)
Sara Zalek, movement artist/musician (Chi., IL)
Cole Murphy, software engineer (Chicago, IL)
Tanner McCleerey, software engineer (Chi., IL)
Patrick Wojtak, psychologist (Chicago, IL)
Anjal Chande, curator/dancer (Chicago, IL)
Deirdre Harrison, archivist (Chicago, IL)
Julian de Lindgren, illustrator (Chicago, IL)
Lorene Bouboushian, dancer/noise artist (Chicago, IL)
Access Description and application documents below
All genders, sexual orientations, religious beliefs, races, and ethnicities are welcome as Chop Wood Carry Water residents.
Applications are to assess if Chop Wood Carry Water lo-fi land-based residency is a good fit for you. There is no jurying of your past work.