News

Today marks the launch of ARTISTS AT WORK (AAW) — a program that pairs artists with cultural hubs and community partners.  I am thrilled to be an Artist-in-Residence at Hancock Shaker Village (Pittsfield, MA)  partnering with Camphill Village (Copake, NY). AAW is organized by THE OFFICE Performing Arts + Film and FreshGrass Foundation. 

Inspired by the Depression-era Works Progress Administration, ARTISTS AT WORK (AAW) is a new program designed to give artists resources to continue to produce work during the immediate health and economic crisis brought by COVID, and to build new structures and partnerships that will help to sustain the creative sector in a post-pandemic America. Conceived in collaboration with the FreshGrass Foundation as a public/private partnership that combines government, corporate, and foundation support, AAW is a WPA for the arts reimagined into a modern context that is sensitive to the 21st century landscape (now drastically changed) of every artistic discipline’s place in the culture.

Artists At Work’s goals are to give a significant number of artists a living wage to continue to make work, to activate cultural institutions in support of that work, to put that work into the public sphere for free to audiences (and in doing so to boost local economies), and to connect artists and cultural organizations to local initiatives in areas like youth mental health, suicide prevention, food justice, prison reform, youth at risk, and campaigns for COVID awareness in communities of color, and other  civic engagements with the aim of fostering healthy communities. AAW provides a dynamic and flexible structure for funding to flow into the cultural sector with substantive, immediate, and tangible impacts for individual artists, institutions, and the general public—outcomes that will help art and artists to survive, and also embed the arts more deeply into communities to the benefit of society as a whole.

Within Western, MA there are a total of six hubs– Hancock Shaker Village, Images Cinema with artist Joe Aidonidis partnering with GAAMHA, Institute for the Musical Arts with Naia Kete partnering with The Alianza Project, Jacob’s Pillow  with Dante Brown partnering with Roots Rising,  MASS MoCA  with artist Sarah DeFusco and partnering with nbCC/Uno Community Center and The Mount with artist Lia Russell-Self partnering with The Rusty Anvil.

For more information, visit artists-at-work.org.

25 years ago, artist fellows began working/researching at the American Antiquarian Society.  “Creative and Performing Artist and Writers Fellows have included fiction writers, poets, playwrights, visual artists, sculptors, performance artists, and musicians, as well as non-fiction writers, documentary filmmakers, and journalists–anyone seeking to create original works based upon American history and present them to non-academic audiences and readers.”

Watch the video on the AAS youtube channel, or find the video on the AAS Blog, Past is Present.

Have you thought of applying to the AAS as an artist fellow?  The deadline is October 15, 2020!

Thrilled to be included in the Emily Dickinson Museum’s online exhibition, The World Writes Back: Postcards to Emily Dickinson.  View the exhibition on their website.

“Inspired by the poem “This is my letter to the World / That never wrote to Me –,” this exhibition showcases the powerful, global impact of  Emily Dickinson’s poetry. In late 2019, the Emily Dickinson Museum invited the public to contribute to a crowd-sourced project with a simple prompt: to purchase or create an original postcard with greetings to Emily Dickinson from their corner of the world. The response was overwhelming, as hundreds of postcards poured in from as near as Amherst and as far as Russia. Postcards arrived from thirty-one states and twenty-one countries, and were written in English, Spanish, Italian, Greek, Hungarian, French, Irish, and Portuguese. Particularly inspiring was the outpouring of submissions from students around the country, including entire classes at twenty schools.”

Thanks Botanical Colors and everyone that joined in for Feedback Friday.

From Botanical Colors website:

This week, we’ve got video from our live FEEDBACK FRIDAY featuring book making with natural dye and textile artist Brece Honeycutt.

Here’s the link for the Zoom recording.

Brece taught us how to do “Improv Book Making” with supplies found in our kitchen and desk drawers. She also took us on a virtual trek to think about journals as a way to document our natural color journeys, writings and drawings during these times.

From Emerson to Thoreau, Emily Dickinson to Mary Oliver and Patti Smith, the common thread for their creativity? A notebook.

If you are not familiar with FEEDBACK FRIDAY, every week, we are emailed with questions from our natural dye community. Weekly, all of  your questions are answered by Kathy Hattori, Founder of Botanical Colors. Both Kathy and Amy DuFault, Botanical Colors’ Sustainability and Social Media Director will be on hand to moderate and answer questions.

Join us May 1st, 9am Pacific/12 noon Eastern for a live Zoom FEEDBACK FRIDAY for a session on “Improv Book Making” with supplies found in your kitchen and desk drawers.  A virtual trek to think about journals as a way to document our natural color journeys,writings and drawings during these times. From Emerson to Thoreau, Emily Dickinson to Mary Oliver and Patti Smith, the common thread for their creativity? A notebook.

Please register via Botanical Colors website for the Zoom Link.

Honored to be included in the exhibition, Conversations:  Artworks in Dialogue at the Art and Design Gallery, curated by Lobsang Tsewang.

Fashion Institute of Technology, March 17 – April 7, 2020.

Read the exhibition review in ANTE.

HOLIDAY at LABspace opening on Sunday December 8 from 3-5pm, a big show of small affordable work from 200+ artists of the LABspace community.

December 8, 2019 – January 26 2020. On view Saturdays & Sunday 1-5pm.

fern a collaborative work by Caitlin Parker & Brece Honeycutt

LABspace, 2642 NY Route 23, Hillsdale NY (below Crossroads Food Shop).

“I belive in clean air. I believe in crystal clear beautiful water.”

“Tiny Pricks is an ongoing community project in which participants stitch quotes by Trump into antique textiles to create a material record of his presidency. Since Weymar started the collaborative project in January of 2018, over hundreds of people across the world have submitted unique, hand-stitched contributions. This exhibition marks the first time the work will be on display in Maine. As a call to action, Weymar and Speedwell Projects invite the public to participate by contributing to the Tiny Pricks public archive.”

“Tiny Pricks Projects holds a creative, accessible and cathartic space during a tumultuous political climate. The series counterbalances the impermanence of Twitter, other social media, and Trump’s statements by utilizing vintage textiles as a memory-making timeline. Weymar references the key role embroidery played in the women’s suffrage movement and notes it is symbolic of warmth, comfort, craft, civility, care, and a shared history.”

Speedwell Projects, 630 Forest Avenue, Portland ME. Gallery hours, Thursday – Saturday, 12pm – 6pm. On view until November 3rd, 2019.

Thanks to Grace DeGennaro for the image.

Josh Landes, WAMC interview, “With Plants and Trees, Honeycutt Paints A Picture of Natural Life at Naumkeag.”

Aired on August 29, 2019.

https://www.wamc.org/post/plants-and-trees-honeycutt-paints-picture-natural-life-naumkeag

Jennifer Huberdeau, “Honeycutt creates colors from Naumkeag Gardens,”The Berkshire Eagle. Published August 25, 2019.

https://www.berkshireeagle.com/stories/honeycutt-creates-colors-from-naumkeag-gardens,582923?

Please join me in the historic Jamesway Barn at Naumkeag on Thursday August 29th from 3pm – 7pm for an open studio to explore the works done during my Summer 2019 artist residency.

Naumkeag, 5 Stockbridge Hill Road, Stockbridge, MA 01262

Inside/Outside: Summer artist-in-residence

Naumkeag’s landscape architect Fletcher Steele wrote this about making gardens for his clients: “…he wanders into the house to see what kind of books she reads, what kind of furniture and bric-a-bric she gathers about her. He gets her talking about her travels and the places she likes best.”

Please join me on Thursdays in June and July, as well as August 1, 29 & September 5th, as I explore the house and gardens at the historic site, Naumkeag in Stockbridge, MA, linking the inside to the outside through objects and plants.  Each Thursday, I will lead a tour exploring a matched combination as well as continue to use gathered plant materials in the barn studio.

For information about Naumkeag visit The Trustees website