Green Mountain Falls, CO, Dec. 20, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Following the resounding success of its 15^th Annual Arts Festival, which showcased over eighty events and featured the residency of New York’s renowned Paul Taylor Dance Company, Green Box proudly introduces an extraordinary lineup of artists for the fifth year of its Artists in Residency Program.

Gaining popularity as a sought-after destination for national and international artists seeking creative refuge, Green Box received hundreds of applications from across the world. From this pool of talent, eight artists representing a diversity of disciplines were selected for seven residencies in Green Mountain Falls throughout 2024. Nestled within the foothills of America’s Mountain, Pikes Peak, the rural hamlet of Green Mountain Falls provides an idyllic setting for these month-long residencies, offering 30 days of uninterrupted creative solace. In addition to a generous stipend and housing, artists are offered individualized support to fulfill their residency goals while living and engaging within the Green Mountain Falls community.

“Following an extensive review of over 250 applications we received from artists representing almost all 50 states and 26 International Countries, we couldn’t be more thrilled with the diversity of artists, disciplines and projects that comprise our exciting cohort of Green Box Artists in Residence in 2024” said Green Box Executive Director, Scott Levy. “We can’t wait to witness the creative practices of these outstanding artists as they become embedded in Green Mountain Falls and connect to the community throughout the year.”

Among the eight talented artists chosen for the 2024 residency program, all identify as either female or non-binary. The artists represent a wide range of exciting and diverse projects including: a hand-crafted animated film utilizing painted clay on glass, an ephemeral light sculpture to be installed indoors on the Green Box Campus, sonic experiences in Green Box’s Green Mountain Falls Skyspace by James Turrell, and an operatic experience inspired by celestial objects. Additional disciplines represented include photography, fiction writing, and podcasting.

Announcing the 2024 Artists in Residence:

Neena Pathak: Green Box could not be more thrilled to welcome its first Artist in Residence of the year, Neena Pathak, in March. Neena is an accomplished Producer and Editor formerly at NPR and the NY Times, and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 2021. Neena brings to her residency more than a decade of experience working in audio and is looking forward to developing new impressionistic and playful storytelling techniques related to podcasting projects, including work that will heavily involve community members from Green Mountain Falls and the surrounding Pikes Peak Region.

GAEYA: Our first of two musical artists in residence, GAEYA will arrive in April to create and record music for her upcoming album inspired by her connection with the surrounding natural landscape of Green Mountain Falls. Rooted in Sweden, GAEYA blends Scandinavian mystery - driven by powerful vocals - with sounds of natural ancient worlds and ambient synth-soundscapes by converting them into atmospheric landscapes. GAEYA takes you on an immersive journey to a different place for you to explore the earth by getting drawn into freshly woven webs of intergalactic pop music and deep-rooted Nordic frequencies. GAEYA will also perform intimate experiences in the Green Mountain Falls Skyspace by James Turrell.

Kristina Barker:  In May Green Box will welcome freelance photojournalist and independent fine artist, Kristina Barker. Currently living in Portland, Oregon, Kristina has documented news and communities for The New York Times, Cosmopolitan, The Washington Post, and many others. Kristina’s work focuses on our natural world, the climate crisis, grief, surviving trauma and exploring the bewildering experience of existing as a human. During Kristina’s time at Green Box, she plans to further her visual exploration of themes around the human experience and calling our souls back home to our bodies through a unique, place-based visual exploration of the remote Green Mountain Falls landscape. Her photography is made without any effect manipulation, and we expect a new work that she creates while in residence will adorn Green Box’s Lake Street Display next summer.

Thu Kim Vu: Based in Vietnam, Thu Kim Vu will be in residence throughout the month of June, creating a paper light sculpture installation inside the Lakeview Terrace building on the Green Box Campus which will be on display during the 16^th Annual Green Box Arts Festival. Thu’s work involves a meticulous process of craftsmanship using traditional materials like Vietnamese Zo paper, Japanese Washi, Chinese ink brush, calligraphic lines, and LED light. Her work reflects the relationship between herself and the surrounding environment, and how that relationship is always changing through moving, traveling, encountering new cultures, and by her fascination of architectural forms of different local landscapes.

Janani Balasubramanian & Sultana Isham: Arriving in August, Janani & Sultana will spend their month at Green Box writing a dome Opera entitled Rouge Objects, an operatic, immersive, and inviting experience for dome cinema that brings the emerging science of brown dwarfs to audiences around the world. Through original footage, archival materials, and animation built with data from the new James Webb and Gaia space telescopes, and an original operatic score constructed from sonified data of nearby brown dwarfs, Rogue Objects welcomes us into the wonderful life of celestial objects that abound and sing in the dark. The residency will culminate with a workshop presentation of the opera.

• Janani Balasubramanian is a multidisciplinary artist and researcher creating accessible, inviting, and beautiful portals to natural and computational worlds. Janani is a member of the Guild of Future Architects and has been the artist-in-residence in the brown dwarf astrophysics group at the American Museum of Natural History since 2017 and has received residency and commissioning support for their work from the MacArthur Foundation, Sundance Institute, New York Foundation for the Arts, Public Theater, National Endowment for the Arts, and more. Their work has been presented at dozens of venues internationally, including the New York Public Library, New York High Line, SF Exploratorium, Red Bull Arts, Academy of Natural Sciences, and Metropolitan Museum of Art.
• Sultana Isham is an award-winning film composer, violinist, writer, and published scholar based in New Orleans, LA. ​Isham's film composer credits range from avant-garde, horror, fantasy, and archival, combining natural sounds with composition. As an ethnomusicologist she has lectured at universities such as Tulane University and Reed College and conferences including ASAP/10 and Imagining America sharing her research on the gendered, racialization of sound as biology. Isham is a composer fellow with Sundance Institute and Skywalker Sound Design Lab 2020, and an Art of Practice fellow with Sundance Institute’s Interdisciplinary Program 2021-2022. In 2023 she made her conductor/composer debut with the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra. 

Lynn Tomlinson: Our season of acclaimed artists continues into October with this animated filmmaker. Best known for her unique clay on glass animation technique and her short films that use music and vibrant animation to tell stories drawn from history and the natural world, Lynn’s work has screened at festivals across the world and has been exhibited in one-person shows at Cornell University, the National Gallery, and in the Education Department collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Lynn is currently developing a new piece inspired by naturalist Rachel Carson’s writings about wonder and science, the earth’s past and future, the sea and the shore, and the spark of awe that the natural world ignites. During her month-long residency, Lynn will draw inspiration from the natural environment surrounding Green Box to create a new animated film using her unique hand-crafted animation process to evoke environmental empathy. Green Box will preview her work during an evening of shorts during our 16^th Annual Arts Festival.

Mk Smith Despres: Our 2024 cohort of resident artists concludes with this residency with Young Adult Fiction Writer MK Smith Despres who will be transforming their latest novel, designed for the middle-school set, into a complete novel written entirely in verse.  Mk’s work and process are also greatly influenced by place, and they are so excited about the possibility of finding and following ideas that will both give greater insight into their current characters and inspire new work while steeped in the beauty of Green Mountain Falls. Workshops with local schoolchildren will be an additional highlight of the residency.

Previous Resident Artists include: American Ballet Theatre, Bill Frisell, Carole D’inverno, Molly Rideout, Stillhouse Junkies, Amir Amiri, brooke smiley, and Sommer Browning

Green Box was launched in 2009 in Green Mountain Falls, Colorado and has grown into a year-round incubator of multidisciplinary visual and performing arts. The organization provides residents and visitors from Colorado and around the world the opportunity to participate in the creative arts in the natural beauty that awaits at the foothills of Pikes Peak. Anchored by an annual summer arts festival, Green Box also engages with community year-round through an active Artist-in-Residence program, arts education, and public art installations. Renowned for its public art, the new, permanent Green Mountain Falls Skyspace by James Turrell, joined a selection of past installations that include 1.8 Green Mountain Falls by Janet Echelman; The Musical Swings by Daily tous les jours; Field of Light and Tepees by Bruce Munro; and Footprint in Green by Patrick Dougherty. Dance companies that have performed at Green Box include  Ballet Hispánico, American Ballet Theatre and KEIGWIN + COMPANY, as well as Bridgman I Packer Dance, the Oklahoma City Ballet, and internationally-acclaimed ballroom duo Antonina Skobina and Denys Drozdyuk.  

Green Mountain Falls and Ute Pass –At an altitude of 7,800 ft., Green Mountain Falls is home to various festivals and events year-round. Most notably, related to the arts, it is known for the year-round work of the nationally acclaimed Green Box Arts organization. Surrounded by the Pike National Forest, the town is located near popular area attractions including Cave of the Winds, Manitou Cliff Dwellings, Garden of the Gods, Pikes Peak and the Manitou and Pikes Peak Cog Railway. An extremely popular hiking destination, visitors also enjoy fishing, swimming, biking, tennis courts and, in colder seasons, ice skating, in addition to the town’s unique restaurants, pubs and shops. The town is just 20 minutes away from downtown Colorado Springs, and even closer to Manitou Springs, Woodland Park and other Ute Pass communities such as Cascade and Chipita Park.

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Anna Faye Hunter
Green Box
7194653065
af.hunter@greenboxarts.org