Deer Isle, Maine – Haystack Mountain School of Crafts has announced its program offerings for the 2018 summer season. Thirty-seven workshops with forty instructors will be held from June through August in a variety of craft media, including basketmaking, blacksmithing, book arts, ceramics, drawing, enameling, fiber, glass, glass beadmaking, graphics, metals, mixed media, papermaking, printmaking, wood, and writing.

In addition, Haystack will host the two-week Open Studio Residency, free to accepted participants, and the school’s annual summer conference: Sustainability: Impulses, models, and practices. Deadlines for 2018 are March 1 for Open Studio Residency and summer workshop scholarship applications, and April 1 for general summer workshop applications. Registration for the summer conference will begin in late February.

Haystacks visiting artist series extends our commitment to providing time and space for the development of new ideas in a variety of disciplines. Visiting artists augment the summer programming schedule by living and working on campus, providing informal afternoon workshops and delivering a public lecture on their work. This past year, Haystack expanded the program to include a visiting curator, as a way of advancing critical thinking in the fields of art, craft, and design.

2018 Visiting artists will include: KATE RUSSELL, a Brooklyn-based theatremaker and poet. She is the Founding Artistic Director of Threadbare Theatre Workshop and an Emerging Leader of New York Arts fellow. Russell, and guest artist, Joshua McCarey, will lead informal workshops based on their approach with Threadbare Theatre Workshop. Russell and McCarey have an Island connection as well – Kate was the inaugural creative producing fellow at Opera House Arts, in Stonington, in 2017, and McCarey is Education Associate at OHA. JENNI SORKIN is Assistant Professor of Contemporary Art History at University of California, Santa Barbara. Her book, Live Form: Women, Ceramics and Community, about gender and post-war ceramics practice, was recently published. Also a curator, Jenni’s informal workshops will focus on deriving meaning, creating specificity, and offering more clarity and grounding in individual artistic practice to participants. JIN LEE is a Chicago-based photographer whose project centers on forming a deeper relationship to places through close examination of its landscapes, and is a Professor of Art at Illinois State University. Lee’s informal workshops will explore the relationship of landscape to time, memory, and perception. SHEILA PEPE is a cross-disciplinary artist using conceptualism, surrealism, and craft to address feminist and class issues. Pepe’s informal workshops will encourage participants to consider the various contexts in which artists’ work is seen—both literally and conceptually.

In addition to Pepe’s residency, she will be producing the 2018 Haystack Monograph. Initiated in 1991, Haystack’s Monograph Series provides a forum for thinkers from varied backgrounds to reflect on the idea, meaning, and implications of craft. The 2018 publication will become the 34 in the series

Throughout the summer Haystack faculty, visiting artists, staff, and scholarship students give evening presentations – these events are all free and open to the public. Read more about programs, faculty, visiting artists, and the Evening Program Series, on the Haystack website: haystack-mtn.org

 Haystack Mountain School of Crafts is an international, non-profit, research and studio program in the arts. The school’s campus is located at 89 Haystack School Drive in Sunshine on Deer Isle and the school’s Center for Community Programs is located at 22 Church Street in Deer Isle village, opposite Bar Harbor Bank & Trust. Haystack offers scholarships to over 100 students each year, funded by the school’s scholarship endowment, individual donations, and benefit auctions. For more information or to obtain a course catalog, contact Haystack at haystack@haystack-mtn.org, (207) 348-2306, or browse the catalog online at haystack-mtn.org.