RABBIT ISLAND – Artists looking for inspiration from Michigan’s natural beauty are invited to apply for a unique residency program in the Upper Peninsula.
Applications are now being accepted for the 2021 Rabbit Island Residency Program in which artists can get paid $3,200 to live and work on Rabbit Island for three weeks.
The remote, 91-acre forested island in Lake Superior is located three miles east of Michigan’s Keweenaw Peninsula and is home to bald eagles and thriving lake trout and salmon populations.
Three residencies will be awarded for between mid-June and late-September. The program is made possible with the grant support from the National Endowment for the Arts and contributions from donors.
“The residency reflects on the American continent’s four-hundred-year history of settlement and division of land, and stems from the idea that in a developed society intelligent organization of wild spaces is one of the most civilized things we can pursue,” Rabbit Island’s website reads.
“The island itself, an unsettled and undivided space, enables artists to present commentary on these ideas, creating interpretations and solutions to issues of global importance–climate change, loss of natural habitat, the value of pristine watersheds, the environmental implications of entrepreneurship, and so forth.”
Modern understanding of our natural reality, as well as our cause-and-effect relationship to it, dictates a need for principles worthy of our time. If artists do not create the work that defines this new space, who will? Art is perhaps the purest form of creation and serves fittingly as a symbol for all human constructions.”
Artists can apply online until 11:59 p.m. on March 14. Work of selected artists will be featured in the annual Rabbit Island publication.
For more information, visit rabbitisland.org.