Beyond the fact that you have to work all the time just to be able to afford living here, New York isn’t the most ideal place for sitting down and focusing on a creative task. There are friends dragging you out with them, roller disco parties, the infernal traffic noise everywhere. It’d be nice to just get away to somewhere quiet and finish that album or manuscript you’ve been kicking around, and it just so happens there’s a month-long residency, the Hill House Artist Residency, in the middle of nowhere that will allow you to do just that.
When we say “the middle of nowhere,” we’re not just doing our typical NYC provincialism. The Hill House Artist Residency puts you in a house near the Mackinaw State Forest in Michigan, which is blessedly free of car alarm noises and people arguing outside of the bar beneath your apartment. If you’re a visual artist, a musician, a designer of any kind or a writer, you’re eligible to stay in this isolated two-story log cabin, where there’s nothing to do but canoe, hike, bird watch and of course, work on your art. The residency can last between two and four weeks, but we say go for the month, because it takes time to record the next For Emma, Forever Ago.
If you want in, get some samples of your work together (three to five music samples, 10 to 20 pages of your writing, one to five visual arts samples, two to four examples of your dance or theater work) and upload them here along with your $25 application fee by October 1. You’ll be competing against plenty of people who also want to get away and work on their art, so just make sure your samples are so good the judging panel begs you to stay at the house for a month.
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