Brunel Park’s Artist in Residency Program
Open AIR at Brunel Park is open to established and emerging literary artists, botanical artists, horticulturalists, scholars, fiber artists, photographers, filmmakers, musicians, and performing artists whose practice explores the natural world. Work produced during the residency should embrace and reflect the influences of the land, water, and natural life at Brunel Park and the Catskill Region. Artists must be at least 21 years old to apply. Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis. The applications for 2024 residencies will reopen on June 1. Please note: given the configuration of the Cranesbill Cabin, we cannot accept canvas painters, sculptors, or artists who require an open loft studio space.
You can email the AIR at Brunel application form to Nikitin@brunelpark.org. Please state “AIR at Brunel” in the subject line.
Brunel Park’s Artist in Residency Program
Open AIR Residency Cost: $1,000 per month for a stay at Cranesbill Cabin. The fee also covers utilities, Wi-Fi, and one parking space. Trash collection and laundry access are available at a nominal additional cost. Artists from Indigenous communities and Tribal nations are invited to apply for a free 2 week stay at Cranesbill Cabin. Until we receive additional funding, we are unable to offer free residencies to non-Indigenous artists.
Take a look at what our Artists In Residence have contributed to our garden over the years by clicking here!
Inside The Cranesbill Cabin.
Reflect, build, and create amongst Brunel’s sculptures while staying in our fully furnished Cranesbill Cabin. Feel the energy of past visitors and residents, who all came to Brunel’s le Chalet Indien for artistic inspiration and spiritual meditation.
Max Ernst kissing his son, Jimmy. Both Max and Jimmy Ernst were frequent guests at Le Chalet Indien, a popular resort once located of the grounds of Brunel Park. Jimmy Ernst’s very first painting hung in the hotel’s dining room.
Residency & Guidelines
Artists at Brunel Park join a legacy of creatives who have been visiting since the 1920s. From Jimmy Ernst to Frederick Kiesler, Joseph Binder to Karol Rathaus, creative minds have found inspiration, serenity, and the time to reflect on themselves in nature amongst Brunel’s wondrous creations and spirit.
Today, Brunel Park offers one month-long residencies, year-round, depending on availability. Artists are provided with 24-hour access to the Garden, four acres of private woods, and hundreds of acres of surrounding watershed lands. Fishing, hunting, swimming, gardening, skiing, tennis, bicycling, and badminton are available nearby or on site, as is the 11-mile-long hiking and biking multi-use Ashokan Rail Trail.
During an AIR at Brunel residency, artists are strongly encouraged to share posts to the Friends of Brunel Park Facebook and Instagram accounts and to their networks about their AIR experience. Resident artists host, plan, and promote an open studio or other event at the end of their residency and are welcome to invite visitors to Brunel Park during the residency period.
Artists in Residence 2023
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Von Hyin Kolk
“I was interested in becoming an AiR at Brunel Park and learning more about Emile Brunel's mysterious sculptures and the history embedded in their conception and execution. Brunel's works are cross-cultural in the way that they combine his personal allegory with aesthetics of indigenous culture in which he was so immersed. Similarly, my practice explores cross cultural themes and false-histories, interweaving stories and images that are simultaneously integrated and disharmonious.”
Von Hyin Kolk has been painting and drawing since early childhood and received classical oil painting training from elementary through high school. She then attended Parsons School of Design where she received her BFA in Fashion Design with a minor in Fine Arts. Throughout her career at Parsons and after she received notable press for her wearable sculptures and fashion pieces from institutions and magazines including MoMA, Office, PAPER, Vogue Italia and WWD . Kolk worked in fashion for several years under the names "Voni Studio" and "Veronica H. Lee", before recommitting to her painting practice in 2020.
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Please Support the Residency of an Indigenous Artistic Creator
Artists in Residence 2022
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Julia Lucas
Julia Lucas is an artist currently working on a transformational spiritual memoir. Most of her career was focused on photography and film production, and on projects directed by Martin Scorsese, Oliver Stone, Brett Ratner, and Barry Sonnenfeld. She co-produced “Everybody Knows… Elizabeth Murray" (dir. Kristi Zea) featured on PBS's “American Masters”. A longtime meditation student of Bruce Joel Rubin, she teaches in the lineage of Swami Rudrananda, and also expresses herself in the culinary arts. She was an AIR at Brunel Park in the Spring of 2022.
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Dahlak Brathwaite
Since launching onto the national scene on the last two seasons of Russell Simmons’ Presents Def Poetry Jam, Dahlak Braithwaite has showcased his seamless blend of hip-hop, theater, and spoken word at over 100 universities in the US and Europe, as well as Off-Broadway, NYC, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, The Smithsonian, and other venues. During his Brunel BIPOC AIR in May 2022, Dahlak focused on developing a new music-and-spoken word performance piece with his collaborator, Mikey Rosenblum.
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Allan Madahbee
Ojibwa musician. songwriter, and culture-bearer Allan Madahbee was a Brunel BIPOC Artist in Residence during the summer solstice. Born on Manitoulin Island on Lake Huron, Allan’s musical background includes music study in classical, blues, and contemporary Native American music for flute, hand drum, and guitar. The Chippewa flute is part of Allan’s ancestral background; he has crafted these sacred wooden flutes by hand for several years. Allan’s musical influences include Joseph Firecrow, Carlos Nakai, Willie Dunn, Kashtin, and other Native American artists.
On Saturday June 18th, Allan offered a hands-on flute making workshop, followed by a live performance which concluded with a summer solstice fire ceremony celebration featuring members of Spirit of Thunderheart.
Allan’s AIR was funded by a JumpStart Grant from Arts Mid-Hudson. These awards are made possible with funds from the Statewide Community Regrants Program, a regrant program of the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature and administered by Arts Mid-Hudson.
Our Past Residents
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Brian Paccione
Filmmaker & Visual Artist
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Karla Brundage
Poet, Educator, Editor, & Activist