Other Programs & Initiatives

Visiting artists augment sessions with informal activities.

Visiting artists are an integral part of the Haystack experience, providing a wider context for exploring the crafts. Haystacks’ Visiting Artist Program strengthens and intensifies the educational environment at the school. The exchange of ideas between diverse backgrounds stimulates imagination and inventiveness. Visiting artists participate in the core summer sessions, living in the Haystack community and working in their own dedicated studio space. The new visiting artist studio is spacious, allowing students to gather there at the end of the day for writing workshops, poetry sharing, impromptu musical performances, and more. (The new studio was inaugurated during the summer of 2005, and serves as studio space and housing for the visiting artists, as well as a space for installations, and small workshops.) Presentations are held nightly at the school, and visiting artists are invited to share their art, ideas and sources of inspiration. The audience for our visiting artists include a student body of over 80 individuals from around the world. Total audience for events is 100+, including students, local residents and visitors alike, who attend our nightly programs where visiting artists share their work.

Visiting Artists for 2010 include:

Neil Gershenfeld, Visiting Scientist, Session 3;

Dr. Michael White, Visiting Musician, Session 4; and

Bill Harris, Visiting Writer, Session 5.

The Visiting Artist Program has brought amazing talent to the school to share their work, including former U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser and poet Naomi Shihab Nye, writers Barbara Hurd and Ralph Caplan, jazz musicians Min Xiao-Fen and Nicole Mitchell, Obie Award-winning performance artist Dan Hurlin, MacArthur award-winning choreographer Liz Lerman, juggler Michael Moschen, jazz pianist Arturo O’Farrill, and writer and poet Alison Hawthorne Deming. All have been dynamic additions to our programming and have allowed the school to push in new and challenging directions. Our 2008 visiting artist line-up included the return of Liz Lerman, prominent jazz musician Donald Harrison, and award-winning writer David Jauss. The 2009 visiting artists included the esteemed author Akiko Busch and distinguished jazz musician Tom McDermott, seen below, at left, in the clay studio, playing his keyboard during Lisa Orr's Session 4 workshop. Tom set up his keyboard in most of the studios during his stay at Haystack.