By Artists in Residence in Everglades

Now in it’s thirteenth year, Artists in Residence in Everglades (AIRIE), proudly announces the 2013 AIRIE Fellows. This year AIRIE has selected a diverse group of local and national artists across several disciplines, including, painters, sculptors and installation artists, photographers, writers, performance artists and a composer.

South Florida is home to the only subtropical wilderness area in the country, AIRIE is the only program bringing artists to the Everglades. AIRIE’s purpose is to inform, connect, and support artists, writers and musicians who wish to be inspired by the Everglades and then become ambassadors for the Park and its resources. AIRIE partners with Everglades National Park staff to offer month-long artist residencies in the Park’s subtropical wilderness. At least twelve AIRIE Fellows per year live and create new work in the Park, and in return lead interactive activities with visitors and donate artwork to the Park.

2013 AIRIE Fellows include South Florida-based artists Naomi Fisher, Alice Raymond, Harumi Abe, dancer and performance artist Ana Mendez, and composer Gustavo Matamoros, New York-based artists Bryan McGovern Wilson, Susan Silas, Mathias Kessler, as well as Wade Kavanaugh and Stephen Nguyen of Striped Canary, writers Wendy Call, Beth Raymer, and Bill Maxwell, and painter Jane Abrams from New Mexico. Read more about each of the AIRIE 2013 Fellows.

With generous support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation Arts Challenge Grant, AIRIE is now focused on deepening its mission by connecting Fellows with the South Florida cultural community to bring attention to this unique and endangered part of our national heritage. Building on the success of the 2011 partnership with O, Miami poetry festival (an installation of banners with poetry by AIRIE Fellows throughout the Park and readings in the Park and in Miami), AIRIE will again partner with O, Miami in addition to new collaborations with other cultural organizations. AIRIE’s expanded programming will feature a year-round calendar of events both in the Everglades and outside the Park, including readings, performances, workshops and lectures. Through these outreach events, Fellows will use their art forms to engage the public, showcasing the Everglades as beautiful, ecologically important, and worth protecting.

The 2013 Fellows join nearly 100 AIRIE alumni who have produced an outstanding body of Everglades-related work, and inspired visitors and Park staff alike. AIRIE Fellows have the unique opportunity to get to know the ecology of the Everglades by being immersed in it, and then share their perspective through creative public programs. “In a park known for its spectacular and diverse wildlife, the art and voices of AIRIE artists reveal other unique, and often missed, dimensions of this special place,” remarks Park Superintendent Dan Kimball.

Rebecca Reeve and Trong Nyugen, AIRIE Fellows, December 2012